By Bill Simons
Snowflakes were spotted in Paris earlier this week. A guy showed up on site at chilly Roland Garros on opening day toting skis. And there was a curious dialogue on Roland Garros radio:
“Everywhere you look it’s climate change,” said one broadcaster.
“Oh, it’s a fallacy,” countered another.
“Unless you live in the real world,” came the closing argument.
A reporter actually asked Roger Federer whether he has ever been requested by TV types to slow down his game so his on-air victories weren’t so quick. Federer offered a disdainful chuckle … And speaking of Roger, there could there be a new Roger—well, a new Rogers—on the landscape. The appealing 20-year old American wannabe, Shelby Rogers, won her first-round match.
But, in some measure, day one of the French Open was about art. Not the artistry of Federer or some French drop-shotting whiz from Lyon. Rather, it was about Serena Williams’ whimsical explanations, after her 6-0, 6-1 rout of Anna Tatishvili, of how she is getting into painting.
“My friend Val was … taking a painting class,” she told the bemused press corps. “[So] I said, ‘Wow, that sounds so French, you go to Paris and you paint and you meet someone. That would be really cool.’
I was like, ‘I want to get in the class.’ I ended up going … [and] it was fun. Really random. I’m probably the worst artist alive. So I didn’t do so well, but it was really, really, really fun … The teacher put something on the table. It was like, vases and a couple of apples, and then something to hold the apples and a tablecloth, and we were supposed to paint that. I was like, ‘Come on.’ I had art school … and I failed my midterm because we had to draw this body, and I just lost it. [This] reminded me of art school because we started out with charcoal, and I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is what I used on that midterm’ … You start out with charcoal, and then you go to watercolor, and then you use chalk … to blend the colors in. And I just wanted to paint landscape. I can paint a sky really well. I can paint grass really well.”
Digesting all of this, IT then asked, “A lot of artists from hereabouts are known for their self-portraits, so if you’re doing a self-portrait of Serena Williams, are we talking realism, or an abstract? Do you focus on the face, the hair, the forehand?”
Serena responded, “I just draw a circle with a line and then two arms, and then I draw a lot of hair and a stick figure. I’m telling you, I’m a terrible artist.”
And Serena’s sister, Venus, is in a terrible place. Yes, her tightly-wrapped hairdo is striking and her pink outfit for Roland Garros is bright and imaginative, a stunning contrast with her deep brown skin tone. But Venus has long has been struggling with Sjogren’s syndrome, and more recently with a wretched back—and wretched results. This year there have been just a handful of wins in the scant four tournaments she’s played. More significantly, the once-powerful former No. 1 withdrew from three tourneys. And on opening day in Paris, against another sister—Agnieszka Radwanska‘s younger and less-accomplished counterpart, Urszula—Venus struggled so much on serve that one reporter asked, “Is that a serve or a lob?”
Good question.
The champion, once so grand and commanding, now No. 30 in the world, could not hold serve in a truly ugly first set. She did save five set points against her 22-year-old foe, who is ranked No. 37. But in vain. She dropped the set 7-6 (5).
Venus then called on all her heart, desire, and experience to gain the initiative. As the Parisian light turned gold, Williams (who’d won Olympic gold in doubles ten months earlier) seemed in control. But the Pole countered, and Venus—hands on hip, wincing and looking up in despair at her mom and sister in the largely empty stands—again failed on her serves. Radwanska charged back to even the second set, and Venus began an error-strewn tiebreak, falling behind 0-4. Then suddenly, the warrior—seasoned and lean—roared, scoring seven straight points to claim the tiebreak and even the match.
Venus is now an aging wonder from an earlier era. Looking winded, she immediately fell behind 1-5 in the third set of the high-drama battle, before mounting yet another counter-offensive. In the end, she just didn’t have the resilience, netting a standard backhand to suffer her first Roland Garros first-round defeat since 2001. The 7-6 (5), 6 (4)-7, 6-4 encounter presented three hours and 19 minutes of messy but nonetheless riveting tennis. All of which prompted observers to ask: Will the artist known as Venus Williams ever return as a singles player to her “off” surface—Paris’ fabled clay canvas—to paint the lines? Will she ever again craft those lanky, angular pictures that tennis fanciers have long relished?
