“She’s the most special person I’ve ever been around.”—coach Adam Altschuler, on Bethanie Mattek-Sands.
By Bill Simons
Let’s face it, Bethanie Mattek-Sands is one heck of a media-savvy, camera-friendly publicity maven. So how come, in recent days, she’s generally been ignored?
After all, when it comes to women’s tennis, the focus has been on the dominance of someone named Serena and the mass-emergence of Generation Sloane: that snazzy rookie brigade of freshly-minted Americans crowding the top 100.
The sands didn’t always swirl this way for Mattek-Sands. For many a season, fans were either delighted or horrified by the inventive outfits she imposed on tennis’ straight-laced fashion police.
With a glint in her eye, the nymph of Neenah, Wisconsin shamelessly perpetrated one fashion crime after another. One of her outfits was described as “dimestore-cowgirl-meets-soccer-player.” Others were said to be based on “designs for living beneath the bread line.'” A New York fan claimed Bethanie’s knee-length socks reminded her of “the ones they give you in the hospital so you don’t get blood clots.” For Eleanor Preston, one Mattek getup evoked “a church group doing a stage version of Barbarella.” As ESPN Greg Garber put it, Mattek-Sands’ outfits were “sort of like car crashes—even though you know it’s wrong, you can’t help but look.”
But of late, few were looking Mattek-Sands’ way. It got so bad that there were times when she was bent on quitting, and it didn’t help that she suffered from 26 different allergies. (Don’t offer her any glutens, dairy, pineapples, peaches, or garlic.) Still, she labored hard and formulated detailed game plans, and things began to turn around. This spring, she reached the finals of an obscure tournament in Kuala Lumpur, spanked ‘It Girl” Sloane Stephens 6-2, 6-0 in Charleston, and came through qualifying to beat last year’s French Open finalist Sara Errani en route to the semifinals in Stuttgart.
Still, today, when the game’s most adorable redneck—who loves gas-guzzling trucks, big dogs like her Bullmastiff, and hunting white-tailed deer—went out to play on red clay (at Roland Garros’ storied bullring court) against the greatest player to emerge from the former red China, few took notice.
Mattek-Sands had lost her two previous matches against sixth seed Li Na, including a recent semifinal defeat in Stuggart. The 2011 French Open champion had reached this year’s Australian Open final and was one of the favorites to win the tournament. Not surprisingly, Li routinely streaked out to a 4-0 first set lead. A gazillion or so Chinese fans breathed easy.
But things happen in life. Even the mighty get confronted. One man stands up at a square in China to confront an imposing line of army tanks, or (to make a completely ill-conceived analogy) when Li Na was up 4-1 in the first set, according to Li’s coach Carlos Rodriguez, “She had an easy volley on the backhand and the match completely changed. She missed it bad, and right away Bethanie started to have more time.”
“From that moment,” Rodriguez observed, “Bethanie started to play very good. She started to step into her returns, and Li was not there anymore. She didn’t bring a game to put the pressure on today, especially in the second and the third set. Li has a lot of pressure on her. She was focused more on trying not to do bad, rather then trying to win and taking the benefit of all that is here. But the same thing happened in Rome and in Madrid.”
The second-round match featured numerous swings in momentum, with both players struggling to grab the offensive. After the first of two rain delays, Li came out on fire, unafraid. But following the second delay, Mattek-Sands turned the tables. Blasting returns, stepping into her groundies, and unleashing a perfect backhand lob (part of her bag of tricks as a fabulous doubles player), she won seven games in a row and raced out to a commanding 5-7, 6-3, 5-0 lead. Li rallied for two games, but there was no choke from the American redneck, who scored one of the dandiest wins of her career, 5-7, 6-3, 6-2. The victory over Li at the very least matches Mattek-Sands’ 2008 Wimbledon win against Marion Bartoli, who’d reached that tournament’s final the previous year.
Mattek-Sands next faces No. 118-ranked Paula Ormaechea from Argentina. To find out what today’s win meant to her people, IT spoke to Mattek-Sands’ coach for over three years, Adam Altschuler. At first, he simply said that the triumph meant “we’re in the third round,” before adding, “To beat one of the best players in the world is a huge win. As a team we believe Bethanie is this good, and all the work and effort is paying off. But we have a long way to go. So we can enjoy this for five minutes and then must go on.”
“Today after the rain delay, [Bethanie] came out and started crushing the ball the way she wanted to,” Altschuler continued. “For those seven games, it was probably the best level she, or anyone, can play. It just happened at the right time. We feel Li Na is probably the best player in the world from the middle of the court, and we wanted to be aggressive and play our game and push her to every possible corner and make her beat us for two hours. Bethanie’s so disciplined and determined. She works harder than anyone I have been around. She wants to do this more than anything. Every day we’ve got to do it. It’s not just beating Li Na.”
What kind of result, we wondered, can Mattek-Sands get here at the French Open?
We thought Altschuler might say she can go a couple of more rounds. Instead, he replied, “She can win this tournament.” So we asked whether Mattek-Sands, now ranked No. 67, could reach the top 30 or even the top 20 this year. “We’re going top five,” Altschuler said, adding, “Whatever people think, they’ll think. But she’s the most special person I have ever been around.”
As for Bethanie’s husband Justin, when we asked him what makes her so special, he quipped, “Well, she’s my wife.” More seriously, he said, “She gets this label as the badass of tennis. But she’s a lot of fun to be around. She’s awesome, just a great all-around person … She just started to appreciate tennis, to love what she does, and that makes it easier.”
Sounds simple. Just love what you do and maybe you, too, can win seven straight games against one of the sport’s greatest players.
