This time it won’t happen. You can draw on that ol’ the magic just so many times. Lightning just isn’t inclined to strike in the same spot twice (especially if it’s in the world’s biggest tennis palace). The darling of our late summer daze is at last down and on the brink. Melanie Oudin — once so bright, sparkling — has come up flat. She dropped the first set to the formidable Nadia Petrova 6-1 and is down a key break 4-3 in the second.
But the Arthur Ashe throng will have nothing to do with defeat. “COME ON, MEL, DIG — DIG DOWN!” they shout. The magic must not wane. But Petrova is one powerful, broad-shouldered (okay, just slightly artless) Muscovite. A former French Open semifinalist who has run tennis’ gauntlet for years is now up a break — 6-1, 4-3 and just two games from victory.
Sadly, Our Melanie at last seems overwhelmed. The spunkmeister’s sizzle has fizzled.
But wait, think again. Maybe, our Little Mo has her foe precisely where she wants her. This is a Yankee princess who loves to bring down the monarchs of Euro tennis: think Jankovic, Dementieva and Sharapova. This three-set sweetie who has been whacked in the first set in three consecutive matches loves to come back. “That girl amazes,” says a USTA official. “She loses 6-1 and you figure it’s over.”
So not to worry — right?
Wrong!
The seasoned Petrova is about to go up 5-3 and would thus be a game within raining on the considerable Flushing Meadows parade. “HERE WE GO — KEEP GRINDING,” a fan calls out. But the tone wavers. This is more a brave soldier cheer, a kind of stiff-upper-lip cry, then a heartfelt, in-your-gut order. But Oudin, who on the surface seems like she could be just another obedient girl-next-door-type – takes the directive to heart, blasting her open-stanced down-the-line forehand for a winner. The sleepy afternoon crowd – warm under the last heat of a lingering summer — is awakened, their roar returns and seems to induce a Petrovian forehand error, giving our wonder girl a break point to even the second set. But Oudin nets a standard 107 mph Petrova serve. Still, the 17-year-old is nothing if not tenacious. So the Georgian unleashes another down-the-line forehand, and when a Petrova forehand sails long, Oudin claims her treasured break. The fans had their match. The magic found its mojo. The battle was engaged.
“GO GIRL,” yells a broker from Brooklyn in a Heineken cap. And from 4-all in the second set the match sprints to a critical tiebreak. With only three Americans (herself, Serena and fellow Georgia product John Isner) still in the draw, Oudin seems to have plenty of weight on her diminutive but sculpted shoulders. Not surprisingly, at times her forehand wavers. Other times her foe seems to be a lumbering Russian puppet on her corner-to-corner string. And as the vein-popping pretty lady with pearls screams, “GET IT DONE!” the two foes soldier on to a critical second set tiebreak.
“BELIEVE!” shouts a Great Neck lawyer. So, after Petrova blasts a forehand return long and sees her second serves falter on the net cord, Oudin smacks two forehand winners to gain a commanding 4-0 lead and doesn’t let up. When a Petrova forehand drifts wide the kid again shrieks. The tiebreak is hers (7-2), the match is tied a set apiece, the momentum has an American drawl.
Stating the obvious, an anonymous pressroom voice proclaims the obvious: “Quite frankly, this is getting ridiculous.” A grandfather from Darien yells “MEL, YOU CAN DO IT!”
Maybe she can.
After all Oudin, despite huge differences is a bit like her idol Justine Henin. No, she doesn’t have seven majors etched onto her still-modest resume and she doesn’t come to net that often. Nor does she have the Belgian’s sublime one-handed backhand. (No one else on this planet does.) But she’s a compact sparkplug who embraces the big moment and the big stage. A tireless and smart scrambler, she adores defense and crafting points and boy, just like Henin, she relishes bringing down those who try to impose Big Babe tennis.
So it’s not shocking when the Russian, a career underachiever, double faults in the first game a pressroom cynic complains, “She’s just a choke.” In the CBS booth, JMac argues that Petrova’s focus and intensity are gone. Has Oudin taken out her legs? Time and again, Petrova’s backhand flies long. But the Russian blasts some brave forehand winners as the first game turns into a nail-biting marathon.
“You know it’s a long game,” says one editor “when you go to eat lunch and the same game is still going on when you come back to your desk.” And yes, it was “only” her seventh break point opportunity that Oudin stroked a sweet Seeing-Eye (with the wind) lob that kissed the line and gave her a key break. An American stroking a brilliant lob: “Where’s her birth certificate,” asked CBS.
Sure, Oudin may be, as Bud Collins suggested, “pretty and perky, and right off a Norman Rockwell cover,” but Petrova didn’t care as she fought back and tried to attack as she did in the first set. But Oudin — so young, so green, so tough — battled to score another break. Her fight, McEnroe had claimed “is as big a weapon as Roddick’s serve. If it was so easy [to unleash that fight] all the players would do it.”
And on Oudin’s third match point, the Georgian hit yet another sweet forehand to record her third win over a Russian at the Open. Her mom, Leslie, stunned and overwhelmed, gushed, “It’s all surreal,” while her twin sister Katherine sobbed with joy and disbelief. Recalling Federer’s less-than-joyous breakdown in Australia, Mary Carillo told IT, “It’s been a good year for tears” (and for a little Georgian gal —”our Melanie.”)
