LONDON — In the hilarious 1959 Peter Sellers movie, “The Mouse That Roared,” the tiny Duchy of Grand Fenwick, nestled in the Alps between Switzerland and France, invades America and inexplicably defeats us.
Ha ha.
But, over the past 20 hours, for American tennis fans, there’s been little at Wimbledon that’s been hilarious. At this Grand Slam,
Taiwan’s Yen-Hsun Lu and Bulgaria’s Tsvetana Pirokova, were tennis’ answer to the Duchy of Grand Fenwick: less than imposing forces. In 19 majors Lu never had reached the fourth round. The lowest ranked player still in the draw, he had lost in the first round of Wimbledon four straight times. He was ranked No. 82.
Incredibly, so was Tvetsana Pironkova.
Who?
Haven’t heard of her?
Well, not many knew of the Bulgarian, who in five years had never gotten to the third round of a major, had never won a tournament, whose highest ranking was 40, had lost seven times in qualifying (including Eastbourne) and lost in the first round at Roland Garros.
But, massive upsets were in the mist and the same author who scripted Lu’s shock win over the No. 5 seed Andy Roddick came out with a similar script as the Bulgarian faced the five-time queen of Wimbledon, the No. 2 seed, the grass court wonder — Venus Williams.
But the American was hardly a superpower. Pressing, tentative and running haplessly from corner to corner, in the fifth game the usually imposing “Vee” dropped her serve. The Bulgarian, who does have a win over Elena Dementieva this year, never looked back as she swept to a 6-2, 6-3 win she quickly put in a spiritual context. To her Wimbledon was “like a religion.” True she had won just one match in four years here. But now, she said, the Wimbledon Gods had blessed her due to the experience she had gained.
But Venus saw the plot of this “scream play,” largely as a matter of her own ineptitude. “I just let it spiral and didn’t get any balls in…I missed all [the] shots today: forehand, volley, backhand. I If there was a shot to miss, I think I missed.
Venus then unleashed one of the most sazzy left-handed compliments in Wimbledon memory, saying she wanted to congratulate Pironkova “for hanging in there and waiting for me to make a mistake.”
In many ways this has been a splendid year for Venus, as she claimed titles in Dubai and Mexico and reached two finals as she climbed to No. 2. But she was thumped in big matches from Miami to Rome to Paris. She won the first of her Wimbledons a decade ago, but has not claimed a non-Wimbledon Slam since the ’01 U.S. Open. So when her dismal performance prompted the usual (“you’re 30, the sky is falling, when are you going to be retire”) questions, she bristled and said it was not in the equation.
What was in this year’s whacky (“e” does NOT equal MC squared”) Wimbledon equation, was a kind of ‘girls gone wild’ draw of ‘who dat’s’ and ‘what’s her names’ who had the temerity to to dismiss the big names in the game. Kim Clijsters had dismissed her Belgian arch rival – Justine Henin – in the fourth round. But, Vera Zvonereva, once the No. 5 player in the world who has been struggling to come back from a brutal ankle injury, kept her often volatile emotions in tact and scored a runaway 3-6, 6-4, 6-2 triumph.
Beyond this two of the most obscure players in memory to face off in a Wimbledon quarter-final met in a battle of Eastern European wannabes.
The only Estonian in the top 100, Kaia Kanepi, had never won a grass-court match coming into Wimbledon. She was ranked No. 80 and ‘only’ had won $120,000 this year. But in the first round she rudely dismissed defending French Open finalist Sam Stosur and battled her way to the quarters.
Her foe, Petra Kvitova, was No. 60 in the world, had gotten beyond the second round in a Slam only once and was suffering an indifferent year. She seemed to be about to suffer a certain loss. But, she stiffened, raised her level, took advantage of Kanepi’s suddenly errant forehand and the Estonian’s edgy nerves at the finish line, as she survived five match points before claiming a scintillating (and extremely loud) 4-6, 6-2, 8-6 victory.
In a Grand Slam that exploded form and expectations, the win set off celebrations all the way from Court One to the Czech Republic back to that storied homeland of all those mice that roared – the spiritual homeland of this year’s Wimdledon women’s tournament – the fabled home of giant killers, the Duchy of Grand Fenwick.
