By Christopher Lancette
Unseeded No. 54 Radek Stepanek was so relaxed before his Legg Mason Tennis Classic championship match against top seed and No. 7-ranked Gael Monfils on Sunday that he strolled out on to the court with his laces undone.
Then he tied his shoes and went to work – beating Monfils 6-4, 6-4 for only the second time in five tries on hard courts. En route to winning his first title of the year and becoming the oldest man to win the Legg Mason since Jimmy Connors did it in 1988, the 32-year-old Stepanek appeared to run with his 24-year-old opponent’s legs.
“We are like a fine wine,” Stepanek said of veteran players like himself. “The older we are getting, the better we are.”
Stepanek, who lost by the identical score to Monfils last month in Hamburg, earned $264,000 and a trip higher up the rankings for his week in Washington. He also improved his record to 2-5 in finals against opponents ranked in the top ten. Stepanek also happened to become the last player from the Czech Republic to win the Legg Mason since Petr Korda, now his coach, won the title in 1992.
Relying on the tenacity of his doubles game, Stepanek suffocated the net throughout the match. Up 2-1 and serving at 15-0 in the second set, he ran the famously fast Frenchman from sideline to sideline while working his way forward. He finished the point by rolling his right wrist over a ball to cut a forehand volley for a sharply angled winner. Stepanek finished that game with a drop volley that even Monfils could not touch before it bounced twice.
“I wanted to be in the control of the match … the one who is deciding what’s going to go on,” Stepanek said. “I wanted to have the match in my hands and [be] the one who was deciding who wins and it. I was right to come to the net because that’s my game. That was my game plan to be aggressive.”
Stepanek displayed steady nerves, too – keeping his calm on a point very similar to one that Monfils’ opponent John Isner blew last night. Ahead 4-3 and 15-0 in the first set, Stepanek sent Monfils scrambling to every corner of the court only to see ball after ball come back to him. While Isner ultimately lifted his head and missed the finishing volley, Stepanek angled a backhand crosscourt winner.
“You don’t want to do it because when you take your eyes off the ball or off your racquet, you’re increasing the chance of mis-hitting the ball or not hitting the volley clean,” he said. “It [Monfils’ speed] is a distraction and I didn’t want to be distracted for any second of the whole match. Gael is such a great athlete and his speed all over the court is amazing. Even though I won the points, I would say normally nobody would run for those balls that he did. I was just trying to close out the points, no matter if it would be another five or six volleys.”
Monfils gave the older man credit.
“He imposed his game more than me today,” Monfils said. “He didn’t miss a lot today so this was a bit tricky for me.”
Monfils also observed that his own reactions were slower than usual, perhaps because of the late night he had in the semifinals when he finished his win over Isner at 1:15 a.m.
“I was a fraction slower,” he said. “Maybe I was seeing the ball a fraction late, and I didn’t hit aggressive returns.”
The other oddity apart from the fountain-of-youth role reversal was that Monfils played more cautiously than usual. While he made fewer careless mistakes by not over-hitting some shots, he also failed to claim the collection of winners that comes with his high-powered, gambling style.
Stepanek looked different too, compared to last year’s Legg Mason. A summer ago, he made more jokes and played to the crowd in his matches – keeping fans in stitches but also leaving before championship Sunday. His 2011 tournament was marked by less high jinx, more business.
The Changeover with Radek Stepanek
2011 Legg Mason champion Radek Stepanek sits down to chat about his sense of humor, playing with his heart on his sleeve, what stopped him from having a hockey career, the origin of his “worm” victory dance move — and why it’s so important to sign autographs for kids. Interview by Christopher Lancette. Video produced by Won-ok Kim.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y13TxUoCPt0&w=550&h=343]
Photo credit © Won-ok Kim
