By Bill Simons
After scoring the biggest win of her career and the biggest shock upset of this Wimbledon, a 1-6, 6-3, 6-4 victory over Serena Williams, Alize Cornet kissed the soft grass of Court 1, while Williams—the No. 1 seed, and prohibitive favorite—kissed away her third straight Grand Slam opportunity.
Why?
Why has Serena Williams been slumping?
She’s the dominant player of our era. Some say she’s the best player of all time. She has power and ‘tude and 17 Slams.
She only considers it a good year if she wins two Slams a season. But now she seems a bit sluggish, and her confidence and ability to bring it at crunch time appear to have waned. She lost to Ana Ivanovic in the third round of the Aussie Open. Well, anything can happen in the first Slam of the year, said some. Then she lost to Spain’s, big hitting youngster, Garbine Muguruza in the 2nd round at the French Open. Well, clay still is not her best surface.
But here on the grass at Wimbledon, where she has won five times, it would be a different story. One of the greatest motivational players ever, she would be dialed in and determined, and there’s nothing like a motivated Ms. Williams eager for blood and todayafter a four-hour rain delay, Williams wasted no time sprinting to a domineering 6-1 first-set win.
Ho-hum.
But Cornet is a tough, feisty Frenchwoman. She improved her movement in the second set, and began to unleash her own considerable firepower to streak to a 5-0 lead in a whiplash match.
Serena, whose concentration seemed to wane, eventually rallied, and despite many a double fault, came back strong to tighten the set, before Cornet finally prevailed 6-3.
Now, certainly the American veteran would righten her considerable ship and prevail. All this talk of the curse of Martina and Chrissie—who both won 18 Slams, one more then Serena—was just superstitious hogwash. While Cornet did beat Serena earlier this year in Dubai, this was Wimbledon, where most presumed our dominant diva would again win the match en route to raising the trophy in seven days.
In the first game of the third set, after stroking a running passing shot, Serena roared and lifted her fist at her French foe. This was the ferocious Williams who has long spread fear in the WTA forest.
But Cornet was not shaken. Later Serena offered an obvious, but perplexing explanation, saying “I think everyone in general plays the match of their lives against me … These girls when they play me, they play as if they’re on the ATP Tour, and when they play other girls [it’s] completely different.”
Certainly, the Frenchwoman was on her game. Running easy, flashing adept footwork, leaning in with a devastating backhand and spanking topspin forehands, Cornet suffered few errors and opened the court with ease. She toyed with the lethargic Williams, who at times seemed close to tears. Repeatedly, Cornet delivered devilish drop shots, and after squandering opportunities to break Serena’s first service game, the French giant killer took advantage of a wretched Williams volley error and then handcuffed her with a deep return of serve to score a break to go up 3-2. Serena was never really back in the contest. She shanked a backhand to suffer another break, and then was hapless at the end, as the nice player from Nice sprinted to a 1-6, 6-3, 6-4 come-from-behind upset, which was clearly the biggest win of her career. Under steely gray skies, Williams, the No. 1 seed, left the court as the tournament’s No. 1 disappointment. And the big loss opened big questions.
Is she at last in the twilight of her career, or is it just too early to say? Surely, the US Open will be pivotal. For the 32-year old to go a year without a Slam would be a problematic result for a proud champion. Serena will certainly feel pressure at Flushing Meadows.
But for Cornet, this soggy day was “just a dream that now I can’t realize.”
As she put it, “If somebody would have told me a couple years ago that I would be in second week here in Wimbledon, beating Serena, I wouldn’t have believed it … The most important [thing] is that I got to like it [grass,] actually, because before I didn’t like grass … Since last year, it’s the contrary. I like coming here.”
Then Cornet, clearly a French romantic, admitted, “It was the first time in my life actually [I kissed a court]. It’s very symbolic because it means ‘Now I love you, grass, and I didn’t before.'”
As for Serena, she seemed in a bit of a daze. In the last question of her brave but unhappy press conference, she was asked about playing doubles with her sister. “Well … I suck right now at doubles,” she confided. “I told Venus … I don’t even want to play because I’m so bad … She should get a new partner.” And tennis soon may have to get a new dominant player. After all, our longtime alpha-lioness is now licking her considerable wounds.
