Vera Zvonareva of Russia will be the No. 4 women’s tennis player in the world as of Monday. She had a splendid six-round run at the Open, same as she did at Wimbledon, beating the No. 1 seed and defending finalist, Caroline Wozniacki, in two emphatic sets in Friday’s semifinals. And then came Saturday night, when you watched Zvonareva beneath the lights at Arthur Ashe Stadium and you wanted to run out on the court and lead her to safety, help her find comfort and shelter someplace where they weren’t keeping score, and where she could maybe get her self-loathing and self-criticism under control.
Kim Clijsters was magnificent Saturday night, needing just 59 minutes to win her third Open title, and she probably would’ve beaten any woman on earth with the way she jack-hammered her forehands. It only made the spectacle of Zvonareva even sadder. There hasn’t been a shorter championship match in the Open, in games or time, in the last 30 years. There hasn’t been a player with worse body language than Zvonareva in longer than that. The match was just a little longer than an average therapy session, which perhaps would’ve been a better use of Zvonareva’s time.
Zvonareva is 26 years old and a world-class ball striker, a woman who even outhit the powerful Clijsters at times Saturday night. She said that she felt slow and that Clijsters never let her get into the match, but Zvonareva’s biggest enemy is the way she pounds on herself, sometimes literally and figuratively, when she is not playing well. In last year’s round of 16, she had one of the all-time tennis meltdowns when she failed to convert six match points against Italy‘s Flavia Pennetta, wound up crying beneath the stands between sets, smacking her leg over and over when she fell on the court and then had a pouty fit in front of the whole tennis world, furiously unraveling the bandages on her knees.
Anyone who has ever had a child who plays sports, or has a heart, had to feel for Zvonareva and her abject humiliation. It was no different Saturday night, which was about as bad a big-time competition as you will ever see, and seemed even worse coming as it did just a few hours after Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic played with so much courage and conviction.
“I always believe in myself,” Zvonareva said after the match. She said she knows she can beat anyone she faces when she’s on her game. She happens to be right; the problem is that when she isn’t on her game, she turns into the competitive zombie she was Saturday night, sulking on prime-time television, whacking her racket on the court, holding up her hands in disgust, looking to her box in even more disgust. Minutes after the match, as Clijsters clambered up into the stands to hug and kiss her husband and family, Zvonareva was sitting in her chair, furiously texting on her purple cell phone. We don’t even want to know what the text was, but probably it was not, “I love myself no matter what.”
Zvonareva briefly picked up her game in the middle of the second set. She smacked a few winners, won a game for 3-1 as the crowd, desperate for some action, exhorted her all the way. But Clijsters broke her with a swinging forehand volley, and soon Zvonareva looked to be loathing herself again, on the verge of tears beneath her white visor, burying her head beneath a towel on changeovers, looking as if she could be anywhere else but Flushing Meadows.
Vera Zvonareva won a silver plate and $850,000 for being runner-up Saturday night, and in a totally sweet moment when Mary Carillo asked her on the court how she was doing, said, “A little bit better right now than I was 10 minutes ago.”
Then she said she loved New York and the crowed cheered and Vera Zvonareva finally smiled, and felt even more heartened when Clijsters, a kind-hearted soul, reminded her that Clijsters lost four Slam finals before breaking through. Vera Zvonareva has lost only two. She has all the talent in the world, and as she left the court Saturday night, you wished for her that she would be able to appreciate that and get out of her own way.
