By John Huston
Victory comes in all sizes. For proof, look no further than the first title champions of this year’s US Open Series, 5’3” Dominika Cibulkova and 6’9” John Isner. Has there ever been a greater difference in height between the winners of a week’s premier tournaments?
In taking this year’s Bank of the West Classic with a come-from-behind three-set win over top seed Agnieszka Radwanska, Cibulkova didn’t just conquer a height disadvantage. She went into the final as a definite underdog, not only 0-4 against Radwanska in their matches to date, but also having lost 6-0, 6-0 in their previous meeting at Sydney earlier this year.
For a while, the Stanford final followed that familiar script, with Radwanska taking advantage of Cibulkova’s errors. The crafty Polish player served well on break points and called on her strong defensive skills and flair for improvisation—including a deft backhand lob and a languid overhead—to go up a break and eventually take a 6-3 lead. Slowly but surely, though, the diminutive but muscular Cibulkova gained a foothold in the match. Using her windmill forehand and compact backhand, she seized control of rallies and began hitting to the open corners of the court on her way to claiming the second set, 6-4. The Slovak’s trademark point-winning cry of “Pome!” grew louder and more frequent.
In the tense final set, however, Cibulkova once again found herself fighting back from a deficit. At 4-2, 40-15, Radwanska appeared to have the championship in hand. But the fast courts at Stanford reward aggression, which isn’t her forte. Reviving fresh memories of her Wimbledon semifinal loss to Sabine Lisicki this year, at the cusp of success, Radwanska began waiting for errors from a hard-hitting opponent. Fatigue and tentativeness crept into her game. Drawing even to 4-4 and then breaking to serve for the title, Cibulkova finally started to draw a bead on the Pole’s soft second serve, which clocks in as the second-slowest in the WTA top 20.
The last game of the two-and-a-half hour battle was dramatic, with Cibulkova falling short on four match points. As she made nervous forehand errors and Radwanska pulled off a lunging forehand drop volley, the tournament win seemed in danger of falling out of her grasp. But on a fifth chance she blasted a crosscourt backhand winner and was hugged by her ecstatic court-storming father, Milan, before she could even shake Radwanska’s hand at the net. “I was just so happy, and he scared me a little bit,” she said with a smile afterward. “He gets so emotional, and I think I [take after] my father and get into the matches so much. I just put my heart into it, and I think he did the same today.”
It was Cibulkova’s third WTA championship, giving her the opportunity to swing a bit more freely as she moves on to try and defend her previous title win at the Southern California Open this coming week. California is a home-away-from-home for the top Slovak players—with her victories in Stanford and San Diego, Cibulkova joins 2002 and 2007 Indian Wells champion Daniela Hantuchova as a two-time champ in the Golden State. Cibulkova’s Stanford win also reverses some past bad moments at Stanford. In 2008, she retired while down triple match point against Japan’s Ai Sugiyama, after having failed to convert three match points of her own in the second set. Her 6-4, 6-0 defeat of Romania’s Sorana Cirstea in this year’s semifinal avenged a three-set quarterfinal loss to Cirstea at last year’s tournament.
While at the outset the Bank of the West Classic held the promise of a potential American breakthrough, the top US hopefuls ultimately fell short. Jamie Hampton lost in straight sets to her nemesis Radwanska (who is now 5-1 against her) in the semifinals, while Varvara Lepchenko gave Radwanska a tougher test before succumbing in a 7-6 (2), 3-6, 6-3 quarterfinal. Eighteen-year-old Madison Keys lost in the second round to Vera Dushevina. In the tournament’s doubles final, top seeds Raquel Kops-Jones and Abigail Spears defeated the No. 2 team of Julia Goerges and Darija Kurak, 6-2, 7-6 (4).
For John Isner, victory at the 2013 BB&T Atlanta Open was hard-won in more ways than one. To reach the final, the onetime University of Georgia star had to overcome veteran Slam champ Lleyton Hewitt, who’d beaten him in their previous two matches, both this year. Having done that, he next had to contend with an 0-2 record in the last round of the tournament: the overwhelming Atlanta crowd favorite lost the title to Mardy Fish in 2010 and 2011, squandering a match point in 2011. One look at Isner’s dejected face in photos of that year’s trophy ceremony makes it clear—whether or not the former Bulldog would admit it, he’s carried some extra weight of expectation on his sizeable shoulders at the tournament.
Things didn’t get any easier for Isner in his third Atlanta final—he faced 6’8” Kevin Anderson in the tallest title match in ATP history. The encounter quickly established itself as the kind of serving duel more often associated with the Sampras ‘90s than the top-flight grinding baseline battles of today. Isner blinked first, when some loose forehands in the opening set tiebreak gave Anderson a 7-6 (3) advantage.
But top-seeded Isner’s 2013 Atlanta campaign was all about clutch play at decisive moments. His very first match, a 7-6 (9), 4-6, 7-5 win over the younger Harrison brother, Christian, set the tone for his arduous path to victory, in which—time and again—steel nerves proved crucial. (He was down 4-6 in the first-set tiebreak against Harrison.) Isner needed a pair of tiebreaks to overcome James Blake in the quarters, while in the semis, he edged out the relentless Hewitt in a 6-4, 4-6, 7-6 (5) nail-biter, coming back from a 0-40 deficit on serve in the pivotal seventh game of the last set.
Still, the final gave Isner’s strong mental resolve its truest test. Simply put, Anderson’s more reliable ground game helped him to control much of the match. Another strong tiebreak performance allowed Isner to level terms at one set each, but at 5-6 in the third, on the brink of defeat and despair, he was forced to fight off a pair of match points. Once he did, the momentum swung firmly in his favor and he stormed through the last tiebreak to notch a (3) 6-7, 7-6 (2), 7-6 (2) win. The tale of the match could be told in failed breakpoint conversions: Isner was 0-1, while Anderson was 0-11.
At two hours and 54 minutes, the match was the longest ATP final this year, but we all know that John Isner is the last player to shrug off a marathon challenge. Perhaps most impressively, by the end of the tournament, Isner’s tiebreak record this year reached 26-7, the best on the men’s tour. His BB&T Atlanta Open victory moves him to No. 20 in the ATP rankings, preventing the US men from falling out of the top 20 for the first time in the Open era. “This is a tournament where I could have been out in my first match,” a jubilant Isner said afterward. “I lived on the edge all week, and seemed to come through for the good every time.”
