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by Prip Once again, the Australian Open shares its limelight in Melbourne with Australia Day, this time, its centenary. The junior players weren't so thrilled, though, having to play with F/A-18 Hornets booming overhead, circling low around Melbourne Park. To make matters worse, 20 seconds after the loud display ended, the rain started to fall for the day, and once again, matches on Show Court 1 would be moved to the Vodafone Arena while the juniors simply had to wait the weather out. When they finally came out on court for the women's doubles final, the Williams sisters must have had their slow starts against Martina Hingis at the back of their minds -- they weren't going to make the same mistake and miss out on a doubles title as well. Both Lindsay Davenport and Corina Morariu weren't doing so well, and let their opponents easily overpower them. It must have crossed Corina's mind that at 5'8 ¼", she was the smallest player on court, but she certainly didn't show it. After losing the first set 2-6, Corina suddenly picked up her game, and was making bold moves at the net. Picking the right times to cross and anticipating well where either Williams was going to hit the ball, she started winning the points for her team, and tried to pick Lindsay's game up. She succeeded, even playing the "I" formation on Lindsay's serve, and played so aggressively she managed to do something no one had yet: hit Venus Williams with the tennis ball. She and Lindsay turned the match around, got the break back and took the second set 6-4. Venus didn't take getting hit too lightly, though. Corina started to become cannon fodder on the court, and both sisters came close to possibly ending the birthday girl's career by slamming huge overheads right at her. With Lindsay's serve failing miserably and Corina playing a little less than superhuman tennis, the sisters once again got the edge and took the third set 6-4 to capture the title to complete their Grand Slam collection. Gracious as ever, Lindsay congratulated her opponents in her acceptance speech, with no visible reaction whatsoever from the sisters. On the other hand, the sisters' acceptance speech was as self-centred as it could get, and perhaps they had their reasons, considering the crowd was less than supportive of them when it came down to crunch time. The Williamses remain unpopular in Australia, where the fans have almost always backed their opponents. In the second big match of the day, Arnaud Clement's escape act would humble even the great Houdini. Sebastien Grosjean, despite being seeded lower, had been favoured coming into the match, and had certainly shown more solid tennis in humbling Carlos Moya than had Arnaud against Yevgeny Kafelnikov. After the first two sets, it looked like the all-French affair would be as disappointing as the second men's semifinal's ending, with Sebastien up 2 sets to none and Arnaud making a whole slew of unforced errors. Things looked even more hopeless for the shorter (by one whole inch) of the two, when Sebastien went up 4-2 and held 3 break points for a 5-2 lead. That's when Sebastien started missing big time, and Arnaud started to play less reckless tennis. Blowing a total of 6 break points, Sebastien found himself up 4-3 instead of 5-2, and very slowly, Arnaud felt that he had a chance albeit a small one, to just hang in there and at least push the match further. With Sebastien still moving a lot quicker around the court and running around backhands to blast forehand winners, Arnaud went down 0-30 on his serve at 3-5. Two points away from the match, Sebastien just couldn't hold it together, and came up with the first error in the next three rallies to bring it to 40-30. Here was Arnaud's chance if he ever had one, but he blew an attempt at a drop volley to bring it to deuce. The next point would characterize the rest of the match. Both players traded backhands, trying to either get the easy error or to open up the court and go for the forehand. Arnaud found himself at the receiving end, though, and was fighting at the brink of death when he went for a huge cross-court forehand winner on the full run, which landed a fraction of an inch wide. Match point for Sebastien. Arnaud knew he had to attack Sebastien's backhand, and he tried to, but Sebastien kept running around it and drilling forehands. But as long as he had a chance, Arnaud went back to the same side, gradually opening the court up enough to go for a winner down the other side, and must have felt ten feet tall when the ball landed in for a winner, to a huge roar from the crowd. Arnaud got an inside-out forehand winner, and then a backhand unforced error from Sebastien to take the game and keep himself in the match. Both players should know each other's games as well as his own, and why Arnaud didn't attack Sebastien's backhand before this, I will probably never know. And probably neither will he. Instead of being aggressive in that way, Arnaud had tried to be aggressive in coming into net, but with his small size and without his prescription glasses, Arnaud had neither the reach nor the reaction speed necessary to get the job done, and got only a 64% winning percentage on his net approaches. Late is certainly better than never, and Arnaud will probably stick by this age-old adage for the rest of his life. With Sebastien really drilling his forehands and merely pushing the ball back on the backhands, Arnaud started to put the pressure on, and managed to take Sebastien to 30-all on his service game. However, he found himself facing another match point, and sticking to what worked for him, he carried on the attack on his opponent's backhand, getting the short ball and running in for a beautiful volley winner down the line. From there, Arnaud's confidence soared, and his body language told a different story altogether. He held serve to go up for the first time in the set, and with the way he was carrying himself, anyone would have thought that he would break to take the third set. Three aces and one service winner from Sebastien put a stop to this, though, and the third set would culminate in a tie-breaker.
From there, the match evened up, with the same long rallies and tactics used, but the difference came in the number of unforced errors both players made. From a whopping 27 unforced errors in the first set and 17 in the third, Arnaud cut it down to just 10 in the fourth and 4 in the fifth. On the other hand, from only 3 unforced errors from Sebastien in the second set, he had 22 and 24 in the third and fourth sets. With Sebastien's mind perhaps lingering at his lost opportunities and confidence dropping with every game that the match went on with, Arnaud's grew, and before anyone could believe it, Arnaud Clement was serving for the match at 5-2 in the final set. Sebastien managed to stay ahead on points, bringing the game to deuce, but Arnaud got the advantage to hold match point. In fact, he would get the advantage a total of five times and save one break point before Sebastien made the final error to give everything away after coming so close. In no other match would you probably see no reaction or emotion whatsoever from the victor after such a physically and emotionally exhausting match. And yet, Arnaud had hardly a smile or fist pump as the realization that he had won the longest match of the tournament set in. Instead, he felt the sorrow and disappointment of his friend more than his own joy of winning, and the moment the two had at the net was more somber than when Venus beat Serena for the very first time right in this very venue back in 1998. Even at his press conference, Arnaud displayed very few emotions, although a lot of that could be attributed to the fact that the fatigue was really starting to take hold of the Frenchman. And so it is set, the men's singles final in the first Grand Slam in the new millennium. Andre Agassi, a familiar face and name, against Arnaud Clement, a fresh new face who had no expectations of himself coming into the tournament and who posted his best Grand Slam showing only recently by reaching the quarters of the U.S Open. Holding a 2-2 record against Andre, with Arnaud winning their last proper encounter (Agassi retired against Arnaud in Lyon last year) in straight sets and at Flushing Meadows, no less, the Frenchman will certainly have confidence going into the final. And if it's one thing that Arnaud has taught us all, it's to never count him out. |