In her post-match press conference Serena Williams lost concentration as she was speaking. She then almost pleaded to be allowed to leave and didn’t bother or couldn’t answer subsequent questions in any meaningful way.
“I’m really losing focus up here,” she said. “I’m trying to figure out when this is going to end. What’s the next question?”
She was aware that the conversation was creeping away from her second-round win over Chanelle Scheepers towards a more personal exchange involving what advice she had given to Caroline Wozniacki. The two friends had spent a weekend together in Miami last month after early exits from the French Open.
Under scrutiny
It was not a commanding performance from the most successful women’s player in the sport and, of all the people at Wimbledon, Williams should know best that the women’s game comes under scrutiny here more than anywhere.
Women have already won the battle for equal prize money but yesterday as Williams and Rafa Nadal began their respective matches, Williams on Court One and Nadal on Centre Court, the American was packing her racquets after 49 minutes.
She began the match at 1.12pm and was twirling and waving to the crowd at 2.02pm, having beaten South Africa’s Scheepers 6-1, 6-1.
Nadal’s match against Lukas Rosol finally concluded shortly after 4pm, the contrast again prompting questions about the lop-sided nature of many of the women’s games and whether spectators, who pay €75 for tickets, are getting bang for their buck.
Questions about whether it’s a good advert for the game seem also justified.
Williams’ first set took 25 minutes, her second 24 minutes and the match was played in almost total silence except for weak ripples of applause when she carved one of her usually penetrating forehands into the net to offer Scheepers momentary relief.
The players aren’t paid by the hour but what they do at Wimbledon falls under the heading of entertainment and the closest the South African came to threatening the five-time winner was going up 15-30 on Williams’ serve.
The top seed did not have to defend any break points on her delivery and won 83 per cent of her first serves, which were averaging 13mph faster than those of Scheepers.
Whatever vapours the 32-year-old was having at her conference, it was not because of the drain on her physical resources in the first match of the day. It happens every year with some years more poignant than others.
Nerve-jangling action
In 2009 spectators flocking to Court One on the second Wednesday hoped to witness nerve-jangling action on women’s quarter-final day.
Instead they got two one-sided contests lasting a total of two hours 14 minutes. Another on Centre Court lasted little more than an hour.
It meant Andy Murray’s four-hour duel with Stan Wawrinka that same day lasted longer than three of the women’s quarter-finals combined.
On Tuesday, Williams’s win against fellow American Anna Tatishvili lasted 61 minutes, while Nadal’s first-round match was almost two hours longer at two hours 56 minutes.
Jérémy Chardy’s match with Australian Marinko Matosevic went on for four hours 16 minutes, while Novak Djokovic went 12 rounds with Radek Stepanek for three hours 18 minutes.
Williams has been asked the question before and has nailed her colours to the mast. She is a top athlete and people want to see the top players performing the way they can. But the point is that it’s not about Williams but the other top 100 players,
The stature of Nadal in the men’s game is similar to that of Williams in the women’s game. Still, Rosol, with an ATP ranking of 52 took a set and at one point threatened to claim the match. Scheepers is ranked 94 in the world and leaves with €53,800 as a second-round loser, exactly the same as Rosol.
Before her energy to talk was exhausted Williams explained that her mentality coming into Wimbledon is to keep winning with improvement each time and hopefully peak for the final.
“I do like to feel great in the beginning but I think it is also important not to peak too soon,” she said. “I think in general I always have room for improvement in my game.”
She will face Alizé Cornet, who has beaten her in the past. Cornet’s progress has been slower with both of her opening matches lasting over two hours.
“She does everything good,” said Williams. “That’s why she was able to get a good win off me. She never gives up. She’s a good fighter. She gets a lot of balls back. But I’m ready. It’s time for me to step up my game and do what I know I can do what I’m best at.”
It might please Williams to know on a day when Maria Sharapova, Ana Ivanovic, Sabine Lisicki also advanced, the issue of lop-sided matches is not a modern phenomenon.
In the 1922 Wimbledon final Suzanne Lenglen defeated Molla Mallory, 6-2, 6-0, in 23 minutes and a few years later in the 1925 Wimbledon final Lenglen defeated Joan Fry in 25 minutes, 6-2, 6-0.
In modern times Steffi Graf won, 6-0, 6-0, in 32 minutes against Natasha Zvereva in the 1988 French Open final and that may resonate with Williams.
Graff won 22 Grand Slam titles, five more than the number one’s current tally of 17.
