Another day at Wimbledon, another long, hot, very busy stretch of tennis around the grounds. While the big names advanced without much trouble, there were rumblings of revolt on the side courts, especially on the women’s side. Here’s a look at a few of Wednesday’s highlights – as well as a lowlight or two – that might not have crossed your radar.
He Moves in Nick Kyrgios Ways
That’s one of the songs that the Aussie Fanatics sing, to the tune of U2’s She Moves in Mysterious Ways when their young star in the making plays. Until he tells them to cut it out, that is. Kyrgios had to shush his all-yellow rooting section a couple of times on Wednesday; he plays so fast that he often has to stop and wait, a little impatiently, for them to finish singing their tributes to him before he can serve.
Which makes sense, because Kyrgios doesn’t need any help putting on a show. He started by complaining of a headache, and said he was having trouble seeing straight, yet he still beat a solid veteran, Juan Monaco, in straight sets. Kyrgios maintains that his “raw” style is good for tennis, that fans want to see players’ personalities and emotions on display. To me, what he can do with a racket is entertainment enough. Nothing Kyrgios says, or wears, or puts in his hair will ever have the appeal of his easy-rocking service motion, or his buggy-whip forehand. Those are the things that make him a star, and that have him in the third round here again.
Venus Hearts Wimbledon
Every young tennis player dreams of winning Wimbledon – even in the States, I’ve never heard of kids pretending to win the US Open (let alone Indian Wells). Some adult players never lose that childhood obsession with the Big W. On the women’s side these days, you can count Petra Kvitova and Venus Williams as players who seem to gain strength and energy from the surroundings here.
Watching Venus beat 20-year-old Yulia Putintseva 7-6 (5), 6-4 on Wednesday, I could sense that extra bit of strength and motivation in her. Like Lleyton Hewitt, as Venus has aged, she has struggled in tight situations, especially tie-breaks. And when Putintseva came back from 0-4 to square it at 4-4 in their first-set tie-break, I thought Venus was in serious trouble. Instead, she stepped back and hit an ace for 5-4; then, with set point on her racket at 6-5, she pulled a couple of veteran moves on the youngster. First, to ice Putintseva, Venus took an extra couple of seconds before serving; then she took a little pace off her first serve. The combination worked, as Putintseva, out in front of the ball, pushed her return into the net. I’m not sure Venus would have gone to those lengths, or hung on to win that tie-break, anywhere else but Wimbledon.
Armless, But Not Harmless
According to a Wimbledon staffer, Ricardas Berankis’s last name means “armless” in his native Lithuanian. But on Wednesday afternoon, the 25-year-old had all of his limbs working perfectly in his five-set match against Marin Cilic. The two men had been bumped up to Centre Court after Kei Nishikori’s withdrawal, and Berankis made the most of his moment in the tennis sun.
In fact, he stretched it into a very long moment, as Cilic-Berankis turned into the showcase match of the afternoon. At some level, Berankis, despite standing just 5ft 9in and spending years slogging through the qualies, must have felt that this was where he belonged. In 2011, he was part of an ATP youth movement that included Grigor Dimitrov and Milos Raonic. Berankis, beset by back and groin injuries, never followed them into top 10, or the top 50, for that matter.
For most of his five sets with Cilic, Berankis looked as if he belonged with the big boys. He played within himself, with a calm sense of purpose, nearly the entire way. But as so often happens, just at the moment when it looked, for the first time, as if he could win, he lost that calm. At 5-5 in the fifth, Berankis went up 15-40 on Cilic’s serve. On the second of those break points, he sent an easy forehand long. “It’s the first loose shot he’s hit all day,” the commentator said. Berankis would win just one more point. At 5-6, he was broken, on a double fault that, according to Hawk-Eye, was out by a centimetre. Tennis, Berankis knows now, is just as cruel on Centre Court as it is anywhere else.
Setting the Right Tone
What’s a woman like Bethanie Mattek-Sands, lover of all things colorful and brash, supposed to do when her clothes have to be all-white? Well, there are still her tattoos, and there’s still her hair: The American had a dash of pink and purple in it for her second-round match against Ana Ivanovic.
Whatever Mattek-Sands did, it worked. The qualifier, who is ranked No.158 at the moment, upset the seventh-seeded Ivanovic in two quick sets, 6-3, 6-4. And she did it by playing some of the most exciting, aggressive, grass-court tennis of the tournament so far. Mattek-Sands, who has already won two doubles majors this year with Lucie Safarova, attacked relentlessly, but never mindlessly. She won 29 of 38 points at the net, and had no trouble charging forward from behind the baseline on a ball hit straight down the middle. Mattek-Sands can be an erratic ball-striker, but she moves her feet with precision. Today she showed that old-style, proactive grass-court tennis is still possible. You just have to know how to do it.
