FLUSHING MEADOWS, N.Y. — It was her mother’s illness that brought Yanina Wickmayer to the sport. It was an escape. Something to take her mind off her mother’s two-year-long bout with cancer.
As it turned out, it proved a distraction of necessity after her mom’s death, too. It was the only thing that would dull the pain. So committed was Wickmayer to tennis that she asked her father to leave behind all that the family had ever known and relocate from their home in Belgium to the United States. So – no questions asked — Marc Wickmayer liquidated his construction company, sold his car, bid his friends goodbye and moved to Tampa, Florida, where his daughter would eventually pursue her dream of becoming a professional tennis player.
“We just left,” said the unseeded 19-year-old, who, 10 years after leaving her homeland finds herself in the U.S. Open semis. “He put his whole life [on hold for] me, so I respect him for that. Everything I have now is a little bit because of him just because he trusted me. He wanted to make me happy no matter what. I guess he always believed in me…But he gave up everything just to make his little girl happy, not to make her a tennis champion.”
That sacrifice is starting to pay off.
She didn’t even speak a word English (she’s now trilingual), but it didn’t take long for Yanina, who trained on the proving grounds of the Saddlebrook Resort (think Capriati, Hingis, Blake, Fish, the Bryan Bros., etc.), to emerge from the pack. By ’06, she was scaling the ITF charts. By ’08, she had cracked the WTA Tour’s top 100, reaching her first final in Birmingham. Then, earlier this year, she won Estoril and reached the ‘s-Hertogenbosch (Netherlands) final. But she came to Flushing Meadows a virtual unknown. She had advanced beyond the first round of a Grand Slam only once in six attempts. Nobody expected much out of the Belgian-born righthander.
But surprise, surprise, while New Yorkers were (understandably) being swept up in the remarkable run of 17-year-old Georgian Melanie Oudin, Wickmayer was quietly taking down Virginie Razzano 6-4, 6-3; Shuai Peng 2-6, 6-1, 6-4; Petra Kvitova (who had clipped No. 1 Dinara Safina in the third round) 4-6, 6-4, 7-5; and Kateryna Bondarenko 7-5, 6-4 in the quarters, all but unnoticed.
By the look of the scrum of photographers who on Thursday surrounded Wickmayer during a photo shoot at the Unisphere — the aging centerpiece of the ’64/’65 New York World’s Fair, which sits just outside the gates of the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center — she’s no longer a well-kept secret.
“Coming here, I was feeling pretty good,” said Wickmayer, who has since relocated to Belgium, and now lives in Deurne. “Physically and mentally, I was feeling really strong. So the first couple of matches, of course, you’re always a little bit surprised of winning great matches in a Grand Slam…When you get to the third, fourth round, you start surprising yourself. But actually, I’ve been staying pretty calm. I’ve worked really hard for this.”
Wickmayer will face the toughest test of the Open in her semifinal opponent, the No. 8-ranked Caroline Wozniacki. While they’ve never faced each other at the WTA level, the Dane Wozniacki beat her three times in junior competition. But the Belgian will likely come into the match unfazed. After all, she’s become quite adept at putting negative thoughts out of her head and using the sport as a distraction.
