How a Seles-Huber Quatrerfinal Pairing Came to Pass |
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How a Seles-Huber Quatrerfinal Pairing Came to Pass |
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A glorious day for star-watchers was in store for the Thursday crowd that filled the du Maurier Stadium for third-round action today. The matches scheduled for Centre Court featured five of the most popular players in the game. In order of appearance: Seles, Hingis, Graf, Sanchez Vicario and Kournikova. In the early afternoon the weather was perfect for a big day of tennis: sunny and comfortable, but windy. But dark clouds appeared in the late afternoon, perturbing the evening session, which risks being cancelled as I write these lines.
Monica Seles and Yayuk Basuki opened the proceedings at 11:00, while the conditions were still delightful.
Monica Seles (5) def. Yayuk Basuki, 6-3, 6-3 (time: 1 hour, 1 minute)
Third Round
Previous head-to-head: Seles leads 3-0.
Indonesia's 37th-ranked Yayuk Basuki was fresh from a remarkable upset win over Dominique van Roost, the 12th seed, in which Yayuk stormed back from a 1-5 first set deficit, winning 10 consecutive gains on the way to a 7-5, 6-3 triumph.
A Seles-Basuki matchup recalled memories of the 1996 Canadian Open in this same city. That year, Basuki had stormed to the semi-final, upsetting three seeded players before running into eventual champion Seles, who drubbed the Indonesian 6-0, 6-3. In truth, Monica has never had difficulty disposing of Basuki, conceding a total of only 10 games in their three previous matches. Today The Indonesian was to play her best match to date against Monica. But it wasn't good enough: a 6-3, 6-3 loss in which Basuki's frustration with the officiating was bigger news than the match itself.
The encounter started promisingly for the Indonesian, as she kept pace with Seles in the early going. Monica appeared slightly flat, and in fact seemed a bit lethargic for most of the match. Throughout the match, her serve was "haywire", as Monica hercself phrased it after the match. Although her first serve percentage was a respectable 64%, she seemed to be serving without much pace and often right in Basuki's hitting zone, prompting one reporter to ask her if her shoulder was all right (Monica answered that the shoulder was fine, and blamed the sun and wind for her serving problems here this week).
As for Basuki, she was not playing as well as she had in the first two rounds. Her backhand, rock-solid until today, started to break down. 17 of her 29 unforced errors came from her backhand side. Of course it must be said that Seles puts tremendous pressure on her opponents from the baseline, and she was working over Basuki's backhand pretty ruthlessly.
Seles siezed control of the first set at 2-3, Basuki serving. In a sequence all too typical of her streaky pattern of play, Yayuk took a 40-15 lead with two blistering service winners and a huge forehand, only to lose the game on a double-fault, a drop shot that barely reached the bottom of the net, a netted backhand approach, and a wild inside out forehand that landed well wide. Suddenly it was 4-2 Seles, and the three-time defending champion consolidated the break and closed out the set at 6-3.
In the second set Seles broke Basuki early to lead 2-0, and one had the feeling this might be over quickly. But Basuki climbed back into contention and pulled even at 2-2, by breaking an impatient Seles who double-faulted twice in this game alone. However, Monica immediately broke the Indonesian's serve at love to take a 3-2 lead that she would not relinquish. The key point came at 0-15 of this fifth game, when Yayuk hit an inside-out forehand blast that appeared to have Monica beaten. But the American hit a miraculous one-handed running forehand cross-court that stunned Basuki and brought a huge roar of approval from the crowd.
During this rally Basuki felt the line judge missed a call on the baseline and discussed it with chair umpire Anja Rasmussen. This was just the beginning of Yayuk's problems with Rasmussen.... Anyway, a double fault and a netted slice backhand later, it was game and 3-2 in favour Seles, and Monica had the lead for good.
The rest of the match was highlighted by Basuki's running battle with umpire Rasmussen. With Seles serving at 3-2, 30-30, Yayuk thought a Seles serve was long, parried the ball back gently and stopped playing. But the ball was ruled good: Seles kept playing, hit the ball into an open court and was awarded the point. Basuki crouched for long seconds on the baseline, hanging her head in disbelief. Maybe the ball was a bit out, gal, but you gotta play 'em....
Then, at 30-30, Yayuk stopped playing in the middle of a point for reasons that were unclear. Again Rasmussen awarded the point to Seles, much to the dismay of an anguished Basuki. Monica explained after the match: "Yayuk's vibration controller on the bottom [of the racquet] fell out, I guess. That's what she was saying, but the umpire was thinking she has to say to stop the play, and not the player."
After a third disputed call at 3-5, Yayuk angrily slammed a ball against the back fence, drawing a warning from umpire Rasmussen. Basuki responded by turning to the crowd and raising her arms in a "what can I do?" type of gesture, and was greeted with jeers and boos from the largely pro-Seles crowd. I know it must sound like I'm describing Ilie Nastase and not Basuki, the winner of the WTA's 1996 Sportsmanship Award. But there you have it, she was not a happy camper out there! After the match she marched past the umpire without engaging in the customary handshake.
So Monica moves on in quest of a fourth straight Canadian Open crown. She claims to have no specific goals in her career, having already felt what it is like at the top of her her sport. "I've been number one, I've won the Grand Slam. It's wonderful, but it's not really my goal. I wouldn't say that's why I play tennis right now. It's really to see how far I can go in every aspect of my game."
Seles now advances to play Anke Huber in Friday's quarterfinals, in a remake of last year's Canadian Open Open final won by Seles. It's hard to know what will happen, since Seles appears -- at least to my eyes -- to feeling the exhaustion of playing for five straight weeks, while Huber is trying to recover her form after an enforced four-month layoff (foot surgery and Achilles' tendon injury). In other words, one could be losing strength while the other is gaining hers....
Speaking of Anke, here's how she reached the quarterfinals.
Anke Huber def. Amanda Coetzer (8), 7-5, 7-6 (8-6)
Third round
Previous head-to-head: Huber leads, 3-1.
Every time I look at Anke Huber's name on the draw sheet
this week and see no seeding number beside it, I fight the
temptation to pinch myself
or rub my eyes in disbelief. Her unseeded status is a bit of a shock,
but is the inevitable result
of a four month hiatus from the tour for injury reasons.
The Canadian Open is only the third event of her comeback, and things had not gone at all well before this week. At the Fed Cup in July she lost to modest Russians Tatiana Panova and Elena Makarova, and last week in Boston won by default over a nauseous Olga Barabanschikova before losing to Mariaan de Swardt.
So it's pleasantly surprising to see Anke put it together suddenly at the Canadian Open, eliminating the dogged eighth-seed Amanda Coetzer to earn a quarterfinal date with Seles. It was a tooth-and-nail baseline battle throughout, pitting Huber's aggressiveness and power against Amanda's speed and retrieving skills. Coetzer had chances to win both sets but ultimately collapsed when on the verge of triumph, and a happy Anke lives to fight another day.
Neither Coetzer nor Huber could win many games on their own serves in the first set. I was thinking that "hold points" would be a more meaningful statistical category than break points for a set in which seven of twelve games were won by the receiver. On reflection, maybe we should bring good old "game point" back into tennis vocabulary. Whatever happened to that one?
Coetzer had a glorious opportunity to take the initial set. Huber was making many impatient errors, while Coetzer was running, retrieving, and waiting patiently for the mistake to come. The South African actually served for the set at 5-3, but was never able even to get a look at a set point. Huber, who played her best tennis in this match when behind, came on with some strong baseline points and suddenly Coetzer appeared to be feeling the pressure. Huber reeled off four straight games to take the opening set 7-5.
The second set saw the intensity of this ferocious baseline war continue unabated. The women did a better job of holding serve, with the first break going Huber's way in the "heavenly seventh game". The German soldiered on, and had a chance to serve for the match at 5-4. But she hadn't been in this position in about five months! Despite the vocal support of many in the Court 1 crowd, Anke's nervousness was apparent. At 15-15 Huber sent an easy overhead into the net and let out a shriek of anger. Coetzer siezed the moment, and at 15-30 unleashed a relatively rare aggressive shot, a perfect inside-out forehand bullet. The South African went on to break serve, staying in the match and ultimately forcing a tie-break.
The tie-break started out distinctly in Coetzer's advantage.
Huber committed a string of nervous errors, overhitting her
groundstrokes. Coetzer streaked to a 5-1 lead, and at
6-3 held three set points. But the wheels came off for
Amanda here. Urged on by the crowd, Huber ripped a
backhand down-the-line winner to close to 4-6. A rattled
Coetzer then proceeded to hand Huber the final four points
and the match:
So an elated Huber savours by far the biggest win since her injury
layoff. But she must recognize that she had a lot of help from Coetzer,
who is beset with confidence problems and perhaps a slight
drop in her fitness level, and was unable to profit from the
chances that she worked so hard to get to win both sets. Consequently
the likeable Anke Huber is an unexpected, but pleasant,
addition to the quarterfinal table. A Monica-Anke gruntfest
awaits us on Friday!
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