by That was marvellous. Simona Halep played out of her skin to obliterate Serena Williams in only 56 minutes. She was brilliant from start to finish. Her tactics were simple but effective. One, get everything back. (How she was able to retrieve some of those balls from seemingly hopeless positions, only she knows.) Two, don’t miss. And three, stay relentlessly positive. She was very impressive on serve, knowing that her second serve would likely be pummelled by Serena, as on occasions it was.
As Simona racked up the early games in the first set, I thought, she’s a quarter of the way there already, now she’s a third of the way, but I wasn’t getting my hopes up too much. Serena looked sluggish, as if she was, you know, almost 38 and a mother, but she was liable to click into gear at any moment. I felt reasonably confident in the first game of the second set, when Serena let out two huge screams after winning successive points. It looked like she was trying to bully, intimidate, barge her way over the finish line using her presence alone, and yesterday that clearly wasn’t going to work. At 2-2 in the second, Simona was on another plane, breaking Serena’s serve via a fantastic passing winner and incredible court coverage on two occasions. At 3-2, a lucky net-cord gave Serena a 15-30 lead, but Simona served, well, similarly to how her opponent so often does, to close out the game. The 4-2 game was the longest of the match, a game that Serena should have won but made so many errors; that game just about summed up her day. 5-2. I felt somehow privileged to watch such a great ambassador for the sport and for Romania win the sport’s greatest prize, here in Romania and with Romanian commentary. She served out to love.
Simona Halep seems a thoroughly nice person. She came across very well in her interview and would have made some new fans. She’s quite shy, and that makes me like her more. Also her ascent to the top echelons of the game was atypical in the modern era; she’s not a product of a farm or academy. It was a pleasant surprise to see her win Wimbledon, just like Ashleigh Barty’s French Open win was unexpected. Both players won on their least favourite surfaces.
As for the runner-up, who knows if she’s got another grand slam in her. Maybe she’ll be stuck on 23, one short of Margaret Court’s “record” (the inverted commas are because Court’s 11 Australian Opens are grand slams in name only). Serena hasn’t always endeared herself to the public in recent times, and some people were celebrating yesterday’s result because she lost, not because Simona won, and that was a bit sad. Serena was very gracious in defeat.
I also saw most of the men’s doubles final involving pairs from France and Colombia, a marathon in complete contrast to what went before. It lasted three minutes short of five hours; the first four sets all went to tie-breaks, with the Colombians Cabal and Farah winning the final set (played under the roof) 6-3. It had its dramas: Nicolas Mahut was struck full in the face at the end of the first set, and he was hit on two consecutive points in the penultimate game, in which the French pairing was broken. There was also controversy when the umpire gave a point to the Colombians following a challenge. The umpire (who was brilliant throughout) was dead right, though. At the end of the match, Mahut’s partner Edouard Roger-Vasselin was in tears. He didn’t have his partner’s consolation of having won it before. The Colombians, who had saved a handful of match points just to reach the final, were overjoyed.
This afternoon we’ve got the men’s final (and the women’s doubles final involving Barbora Strycova, let’s not forget that). I’m in a clear minority of people wanting Djokovic to beat Federer. If Federer’s second serve is as effective as it was against Nadal, and he can work the crowd (who will be firmly on his side), he could lift another Wimbledon trophy.
