FLUSHING MEADOWS, N.Y. — Not since American Express built its ill conceived “Where’s Andy’s Mojo?” campaign around Andy Roddick in ’05 has a player been burdened with such Madison Avenue-infused pressure. That was the year a Mojo-less A-Rod — two years removed from his U.S. Open triumph — fell in straight sets to unseeded Luxembourgian Gilles Muller in the first round in Flushing Meadows.
Last year, when Melanie Oudin toppled four Russians in becoming the youngest American to reach the USO quarters in a decade, the spunky 5-foot-6 Georgian covered the courts in a pair of adidas inscribed with the word “BELIEVE.” Looking to capitalize on the publicity, adidas has once again outfitted the 18-year-old in a pair of personalized shoes. Only this year they’re emblazoned with “COURAGE.”
It’s fitting, really. Considering her last 12 months, she’ll need a good deal of courage if she thinks she can top last year’s performance. Since the ’09 USO, it’s been a tough road. Outside of her Fed Cup heroics, she arrived in New York with a 1-3 record at the Slams and has yet to score another win over a top-20 player. And her ranking has stalled in the 40s.
“Everybody was asking me if I was going to do the same word again, ‘believe.’ I was like, ‘No, I want to do something different this year.’ Not that I’m sick of ‘believe’ or anything…but I wanted something different. I think ‘courage’ was really, really good for this year, especially because of how well I did last year.”
“They’re kind of intertwined aren’t they?” asked Martian Navratilova, commentating for the Tennis Channel. “You have to have the courage to believe.”
If the pressure to come through for adidas wasn’t enough, Oudin was picked to usher in the 2010 U.S. Open, kicking off play on opening day at 11 a.m. in Ashe Stadium. But the third highest ranked American woman couldn’t have drawn a better first-round opponent: 22-year-old Ukrainian qualifier Olga Savchuk, ranked No. 144, who’s never won a WTA Tour title.
Oudin capitalized on the first break point opportunity of the match at 3-3 in the first set and closed out the stanza in 38 minutes.
“It felt so good to be out there again and hearing the crowd, just being on Ashe again and playing. No matter who I was playing, it feels good to be back again,” said Oudin. “I was definitely nervous. My stomach felt a little bit funny in the beginning of the match. But I loosened up.”
Having shed the nerves, Oudin jumped out to a quick 4-0 second-set lead without losing a point and went on to close out the match 6-4, 6-0 in an efficient 56 minutes.
“There’s a lot of relief,” confided Oudin, who’ll next face Alona Bondarenko, a 6-0, 5-7, 6-4 winner over Vera Dushevina.
Oudin, who’s always relished the role of underdog, has struggled with the expectations that come part and parcel with Cinderella runs like hers. But as she notes, athletes really only have one Cinderella run in them.
“Mine was last year,” she said. “Now it’s like everyone just expects me to do that because I did it last year. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to happen. I mean, I’m going to have to play well. It’s not just going to happen for me. I’m going to have to play well and fight hard like I did last year and, hopefully, it will be good for me and I’ll be the better player out there.”
Much has changed for Oudin in the last year. She was an unknown 17-year-old ranked No. 70 prior to the ’09 USO. But after a string of seemingly miraculous wins (including three straight come-from-behind three-set victories over Russians Elena Dementieva, Maria Sharapova and Nadia Petrova), she was a household name. Suddenly, she couldn’t go out to the movies with her little sister Christina without getting mobbed.
“I’m in the bathroom and there’s like this whole group of little girls. They’re maybe about 11 or 12, and they knew it was me. My little sister is, like, trying to pretend that she doesn’t know me and I’m not who they think I am. So they all come into the bathroom and wait for me to get out. And then they go out, they’re, like, ‘Yeah, there’s a bunch of boys outside waiting for you.’ So I go outside, and I’m bombarded by like 12-, 13-year-old little girls and boys. They just couldn’t believe that was me. They’re like, ‘You live here?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I live really close.’ They’re like, ‘Oh, my Gosh. I can’t believe you live here.’ It was pretty creepy.”
Overall, Oudin says she’s handled the attention (and the media crush) well considering her relative inexperience, that she actually feels more like a professional, rather than just a promising teen. But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t feeling the jitters upon her return to Ashe Stadium.
“Definitely nervous last night,” she admitted. “And opening the tournament on Ashe was something that I definitely didn’t expect, so it was a shock to me.”
There’s nothing like a little courage to pull you through.
