As Sam Stosur’s 33rd and final unforced error touched down a few inches beyond the baseline, sealing the first upset of the Australian Open, I found myself wandering back to last year’s U.S. Open, where Stosur became the accidental Grand Slam champion of the year.
Oh yes, she played well that day. Maybe even very well, but who can say for sure in a New York final in which, at least in my mind, Serena Williams was about 50 percent fit to go on court.
If Serena had been at 75 percent, Stosur would not have won that match, and she wouldn’t be carrying around the debilitating weight of that victory, either.
One can’t help but wonder if, despite her first and probably only major title, Stosur really believes she’s a Grand Slam champion. She certainly didn’t look it on Day 2 at Melbourne in a 7-6 (2), 6-3 loss to world No. 59 Sorana Cirstea.
Was Serena indeed playing on a still-unhealed foot that day at the Open? To her credit, she didn’t overtly plead any excuses after that loss. However, I’ve got one remark memorized from that post-match press conference.
“Well, I’m here,” she replied when asked directly about her lingering foot problems. “No athlete is ever 100 percent. I’ll just leave it at that.”
As you no doubt know, Williams didn’t play another match the rest of the season and, despite three months to regain at least a semblance of full fitness, she’s playing the Aussie Open hurt, giving a third-round walkover last week in a work-up event to Melbourne. Draw your own conclusions about Williams’ condition for that Open final.
Stosur, meanwhile, has played since her U.S. Open triumph, and had a couple of pretty good matches at the WTA Championships at the end of the 2011 season. But this embarrassing lost to Cirstea leaves her just 8-8 since she became the Accidental Grand Slam Champion.
I have a certain level of empathy with Stosur, as we both live in Tampa. But that wouldn’t keep me from pegging her as one of the great mysteries of women’s tennis.
No one on the WTA Tour, and I think I’ll include Serena here, looks as physically athletic as Stosur. The triceps . . . the biceps . . . the lean but muscled legs. . . It all looks particularly impressive, too, with a thin coat of Melbourne sweat emphasizing the cut lines.
Then there’s the technically perfect Stosur service motion. If you could win tennis matches on cosmetics alone, she’d be No. 1. The problem is that her game doesn’t often enough match how good she looks on court.
It’s easy to be seduced by Stosur’s fluidity, but while I admire fluidity, I’m less interested in that than in results, and as good as that serve looks, mechanically, she’s no ace machine, and her second serve lacks punch, depth and location.
Moreover, she has a very mediocre backhand that doesn’t complement a strong forehand.
Cirstea played this match the way you’d expect from someone 54 spots below in the rankings – going for the lines and playing risky ball. She had early success and Stosur apparently thought she could just push back defensively until Cirstea’s hot streak ran its course.
That’s not a bad strategy, but it needs to be combined with an appropriate amount of aggression, which Stosur did not bring to court. All the air Sam put under her forehands left Cirstea plenty of time to measure and crunch, and she did.
And Cirstea just fed on Stosur’s second serves.
Sam came in to do press after this match and was, as always, quite cordial. But you can see how she’s trying to grapple with the sort of results which are unacceptable for the No. 5 player.
“Part of it is just that heightened expectation of wanting to do well, all that kind of thing,” she said. “I struggled for a couple weeks after the U.S. Open and than finished well at The Championships, had a month off, then trained for a month.”
To what end, Sam? Where did you leave it? In the locker room?
And so, in front of an admiring Melbourne audience, Stosur is one-and-out for the second time in a row, having lost to Francesca Schiavone, a top-20 player, last week at Sydney.
It’s also the second time in her last three majors that she’s gone in the first round, or did you forget the loss at Wimbledon last year to No. 262 Melinda Czink.
Sam Stosur. It would be easy to excuse all this disappointment by suggesting she’s still getting used to success. But she’s closing in on 28 years of age. There is supposed to be a high level of maturity by this time.
Maybe she is just what the rankings say she is — a very fine player who is a clear cut below the best in the game, Grand Slam title or no Grand Slam title.
Charles Bricker can be reached at nflwriterr@aol.com