By John Huston
There was a telling moment when Sloane Stephens dispatched fellow American Jamie Hampton 6-1, 6-3 at the US Open Friday afternoon, and it happened after the match. I’d been watching in Arthur Ashe Stadium. Stephens’ game was clicking. Her serve was a weapon, her two-hander consistent, her slice effective. Most of all, she stayed composed and mentally on-point, choosing the right moments to pull the trigger on her forehand, while Hampton repeatedly strained and failed to hit winners. After Stephens joked to Pam Shriver during her on-court interview that she had to delete Twitter from her phone “twice a day” to stay focused during a major, I began making my way from the seats on Ashe back to the media center, at the ground level of the stadium. On the Tennis Channel’s broadcast stage, Virginia Wade was finishing an interview, and I stopped for a few seconds to look at the great champion.
When I got back to my desk, I glanced up at my TV monitor, and who was there, ready to be interviewed in the ESPN studio, at the front of Ashe? None other than Sloane Stephens, a bit breathless and sweaty, but excited like someone who had good news she wanted to share. Stephens appeared right as Chris Evert was talking up her talent (“She has everything … I’ve always said you have to think from the ground up, and her foot speed is unbelievable’). Commentator Chris Fowler actually seemed taken aback when Sloane walked right on in and took a seat. Indeed, she may have set a new speed record for arriving at a post-match studio interview.
It’s no secret that Sloane Stephens likes herself, and enjoys seeing her own reflection on posters and refracted through the media. But it was hard not to detect an underlying message from her eager and cheerful ESPN visit. In a certain way, she was sending a message—and not through Twitter—that she wasn’t living in fear of an upcoming match against Serena Williams in the fourth round. Why should she dread such a match, you ask? Let’s face it, no less a player than Maria Sharapova might have a word or 13 to say—in private, at least—about the humilations of facing Serena when she has a score to settle.
In her preppy, “popular kid” manner, 20-year-old Sloane shrugged off talk of friction with Serena. “We’re all good now, and that’s all that matters,” she said. “We’re competitors, we’re co-workers, so it’s tough. But we’re in a good place.” Hearing it phrased so lightly, it would almost be easy to forget the most popular soap opera in tennis this year, the Serena-and-Sloane story, from “so disrespectful” on-court complaints and bedroom poster boasts, to cryptic Tweets (by Serena), and character attacks (by Sloane) sent through interviews. That’s not even taking into account the match that “set it off,” Stephens’ 3-6, 7-5, 6-4 upset victory over a hobbled Serena in the quarterfinals of this year’s Australian Open. Crazy like a fox when it comes to PR, new girl Sloane may claim, as she did in her post-match third-round press conference, that all of this is “old news.” But rest assured, it will be fresh in the mind of Serena’s fans and quite possibly Serena herself when the two women step onto the court at Arthur Ashe Stadium on Sunday afternoon.
The mindset of iconic and multifaceted Serena, who is still forging a legend, might be the matchup’s biggest question mark, because both players are going into the showdown looking sharp. In the case of Serena, this is hardly surprising. Since she began working with Patrick Mouratoglou, she has refashioned her dominance as impressively as she’s picked up French. Talking with IT’s Bill Simons this week: Mouratoglou pointed to Serena’s newfound balance, and unsurprisingly, he’s exactly right. One key to Serena’s perfect record on clay this year is that her fluid and aggressive shotmaking was consistent and metronomic, like Chris Evert during her prime. Serena has made such an unlikely transformation seem effortless. Doubts about her form at the moment (and a recent loss to Victoria Azarenka supplied some) focus on whether she can—much like her sentimental favorite Rafa—effectively transition her clay game to the hard courts. Consider this crazy role reversal: Serena is the one with the undefeated clay record in 2013, while Rafa is unbeaten on DecoTurf.
Going into the US Open, yes, a fourth-round match with Serena looked like something Sloane Stephens should dread. For a while it appeared Stephens might not even make it past the first round—the pressures of fresh stardom and tournament expectations threatened to trip her up at least as much as initial opponent Mandy Minella. But moving from Louis Armstrong Stadium to spacious upscale Ashe in the second round, Sloane promptly blossomed, making quick and efficient work of an opponent—Agnieszka Radwanska’s younger sister, Urszula—who’d beaten her earlier this year. (Make no mistake: Stephens is a big-stage player, almost to a fault.) Sloane has sneakily rope-a-doped her way to impressive Grand Slam results this year, in a fashion that’s leaves doubters and naysayers somewhat bewildered. But in the second round, and again on Ashe in the third, her burgeoning talent has been obvious. Instead of playing up or down to her opponent’s level (to paraphrase Evert’s description of her tendency), she took charge from start to finish, for perhaps the first times in 2013.
That won’t be happening at Arthur Ashe Stadium on Sunday. Serena Williams has a bigger game on her every front, though Stephens’ forehand has grown more vicious with each match at New York. There is definitely more than a possibility of a rout—Serena has 16 Grand Slams to her name, while Sloane only recently reached No. 16 in the rankings. Yet even if Serena’s gameplan is to righteously crush Sloane as if Sloane stole something from her (it’s hard not to think of the pivotal, electrifying beatdown Serena administered to Sharapova in the 2007 Australian final), that might not be so easy. As Serena discovered in Melbourne this year, Sloane is a lightning-quick mover—if the WTA was devoted to 100-meter sprints, she’d already be No. 1. Sloane’s backhand has been consistent in her last two matches, but there is no doubt that Serena will be gunning for it, and looking to attack Sloane’s second serve. The challenge for Sloane Stephens this year has been understanding how to deploy her developing game, when to be aggressive or rely on defense. Against Serena, she’ll be weathering a storm, but she’ll also have to shore up her focus.
The challenge for Serena Williams is more formidable than just taking on her far less-accomplished but quickly improving opponent. At 32 and still arguably peaking, Serena is cast in the role of the all-time great fighting off the upstart, the grand diva confronted with the new starlet. Such challenges are what we demand of our foremost champions and idols, and though Stephens—one should definitely note—has yet to even put a WTA title on her resume, much less a major one, there’s a hint of early Roger-and-Rafa to the Serena-Sloane pairing, from Serena’s potential all-time dominance of the game, to her and Sloane’s contrasting backgrounds and charismatic personalities, to the lingering suspicion that Sloane may be growing into exactly the type of player that could trouble Serena. (Rewinding a bit, if ever a player were to make her first tour title a Slam, it would be Stephens.) There is no doubt that class and generational differences play a role in the Serena-Sloane schism. Just as Richard Williams’ svengali approach to Venus and Serena’s initial ascendance was viewed as a defiant affront to the US tennis establishment, Sloane is seen as privileged and impudent by some dedicated Williams fans.
Whatever the result, Serena Williams vs. Sloane Stephens on Sunday afternoon is a victory for American tennis, a profile-raising boost for women’s sports and the WTA, and—like the arrival of Victoria Duval—a refreshing counterpoint to the reactionary and race-baiting currents coursing through mainstream pop culture this past week. Tennis still knows how to serve up a great story.
