I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Author: Sheila Morris

  • The Smiles Have It!


    From the Williams Sisters to the Italian Sisters, the US Open tennis tournament for 2015 was an unforgettable one. The tales of not one, but two, underdogs rising to the top of their game in a twenty-four hour period inspired prime time tennis-crazed New York City on one side of the Pond and the entire country of Italy on the other.  Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, the youngest Italian PM ever, and his entourage, made a whirl-wind trip  to Flushing Meadows and the Billie Jean King Tennis Center on Saturday to watch the Women’s Championship match which was the first all-Italian Grand Slam final in the Open Era.  Awesome.

    002

    Prime Minister Renzi is lower front…

    and couldn’t be happier

    Roberta Vinci and Flavia Pennetta were long shots to win the Grand Slam title, and why wouldn’t they be? Vinci had lost in the first round of 23 of the 44 matches she’d played in the US Open before the 2015 tournament, and Pennetta had lost 48 times playing singles in the tournament prior to this year’s Open. They had been beaten a combined total of 92 times in their previous attempts, and neither had high hopes for stronger finishes this year.

    Yet, they showed up. They brought their finesse games to the hard courts that in recent years have belonged to the big power hitters who dominated the US Open as well as the other Grand Slams in Melbourne, Paris and London. They showed up.

    They came, they played, they conquered; and then they smiled with real joy in their moment of triumph.

    008

    Roberta Vinci (l) and Flavia Pennetta at the trophy presentation ceremony

    The two thirty-three-year-old women who played against each other in this final have known each other since they were nine years old. They started playing tennis together as children and later shared a home for four years when they began playing on the professional tour. They successfully played doubles together and with other partners for more than fifteen years, but neither was a singles star…until the 2015 US Open when Vinci defeated the number one American singles player Serena Williams and Pennetta dismissed the number two seed Simona Halep.

    Miraculously, they stood together with their trophies at the awards presentation ceremony following the championship match.

    011

    The ecstasy of victory

    In her trophy acceptance speech, Flavia Pennetta stunned the tennis world by announcing her retirement at the end of this year. She said she made the decision a month before the US Open and that she never dreamed she would win the tournament but was thrilled to be able to leave the professional arena with a Grand Slam title. A Cinderella ending to years of hard work and determination.

    When someone from the press asked her afterwards about why she was leaving, she replied, “The moon is going up and down, no?” It is, indeed, and Flavia will now have a view of it from somewhere other than a tennis court. We wish her well.

    006

     In the past fifteen years, many of the tennis champions have won more than one major title – Serena has twenty-one, Roger Federer has seventeen, for example – and while their happiness is apparent in every victory, there is something magical about a ceremony with a first-time champion who has loved the sport and persevered in following her dream all over the world from Italy to New York City and will go home carrying a Grand Slam trophy.

    Wrap this one up for the history books. It’s a memory-maker. Do you remember when…at the 2015 US Open…those Italians…

    The End.

  • Turn Out the Lights…


    …the party’s over.

    Serena Williams’s search for the ultimate prize of the Calendar Grand Slam in 2015 ended Friday afternoon with high drama in the third set of her US Open semi-final match against Roberta Vinci on the courts of Arthur Ashe Stadium in Flushing Meadows, New York. Roberta Who??

    Exactly. Roberta Vinci, an unseeded player from Italy, was a very long shot to win. The odds makers had her at 200:1 or thereabouts – depending on your bookie. Now that’s an underdog.Think David and Goliath, the first recorded upset in a match that was crucial to a lot of folks in days of yore. In the biblical account David the little shepherd boy goes up against the great Philistine warrior giant Goliath and manages to take him down with a single  stone from a  slingshot. Score David 1, Goliath 0.

    In her press conference following the loss, Serena looked like a giant who had been slain by a barrage of unbelievable shots from an opponent comparable in rank to the little shepherd boy. Surely Goliath must have had a similar shocked expression on his face as he tried to figure out what hit him before he fell to the ground.

    The tennis world reeled from the results of both semi-finals in which the top two players lost, and the widely anticipated match-up between Serena and Simona in the final was not to be. The media scrambled to find a new story line, and the ticket-holders for the final were disappointed in the lost opportunity to watch an American sports icon make history in her country’s most prestigious tournament.

    The Serena Saga came to an unceremonious end with much doom and gloom in the atmosphere at the Arthur Ashe arena, but as the poet Kahlil Gibran wrote: The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on.

    Tom Rinaldi’s interview with Roberta Vinci after her match with Serena introduced an Italian tennis player with a great smile and sense of humor to go along with her slingshot.  She was the beginning of a new story that captivated tennis fans and gave the world an unprecedented opportunity to witness a magical moment in sports in an American tennis final that belonged to Italy.

    It’s why they play the game.

    To be continued.

  • Both Have Prevailed


    004

    Venus Williams and her little sister Serena

    005

    For the past seventeen years the Williams sisters have carried the heavy burden of American tennis on their shoulders, and the load has never been an easy one. Their two-person dynasty has been controversial, but their attitudes about the sport they represent have matured as their games have become more powerful. Their popularity increased as they became more comfortable with their celebrity and confident in their games. They grew up in front of a nation and, eventually, the world.

    Never in their 27 professional matches have the theater and drama been more exciting than last night in the quarterfinals of the US Open under the lights in New York City.  Approximately 23,000 fans came to the Billie Jean King Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows to watch a match that was more than a game, and the Williams sisters delivered another thrilling exhibition of tennis at the highest level. As the ESPN commentators noted before the match, this was a big-time American sporting event with all the bells and whistles we love in our fascination with sports.

    Tom Rinaldi who has replaced Dick Enberg as the TV tennis philosopher who adds the stories to evoke our emotional attachment to an event, made these remarks prior to the match: “In an individual sport, their stories will always be linked…in our view of the Williams sisters, we see champions sharing a court, a desire to win, and a name. True, one will win –  but both have prevailed.”

    008

    Serena Williams is now two matches shy of her goals of a Calendar Grand Slam in 2015 and a total of 22 Slam titles to tie Steffi Graf’s record in the Open Era. Two matches…and counting.

    To be continued.

  • Sister Act (2015)


    Lord help the mister who comes between  me and my sister,

    And Lord help the sister who comes between me and my  (slam).

    Actually, Irving Berlin’s lyrics in the 1954 romantic musical White Christmas ended that second line with “man” because Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen played sisters in love with the same man, Bing Crosby. In my 2015 version the two sisters are in love with the same dream: winning major tennis tournaments like the US Open in New York City this week so I took poetic license and inserted “slam.” My apologies to you, Mr. Berlin.

    For Serena Williams the stakes couldn’t be higher since she is now three matches away from a Calendar Grand Slam, something which hasn’t been done since 1988.  She’s also chasing Steffi Graf’s record of winning 22 majors in the Open Era. She’s at 21 and counting, which already secures her place in tennis history but 22 would place her in the conversation of being the best ever.

    The tennis gods have aligned the Open draws with their usual good sense of humor and placed a familiar obstacle in Serena’s quarterfinal match. She will face her older sister Venus for the 27th. time in their professional careers. Serena has won 15 of those matches and Venus has won 11. Venus has won seven Major titles herself and at the ripe old age of 35 appears to be playing up to her personal best tennis again in 2015.

    Both sisters have said the one thing they know for sure is that a Williams will be playing in the US Open semi-finals but neither claims to know for sure which sister it will be.

    How many times have these women taken to the practice courts in their lifetimes? How many tennis balls have they hit together as a team and separately as the solo act on those courts…they have won 13 Grand Slam titles in their doubles career together, too. Extra kudos to them for these wins.

    I have mixed emotions about this quarterfinal match. I wonder about the tension at the Williams family dinner table when everyone tries not to talk about their match or whether they kid each other about who has the better chance of winning. As an only child, I have no point of reference in winning or losing to a sister; but my sense is that Venus and Serena both want to win very badly whenever they step onto the court and this ultimately trumps any potential guilt one might have for standing in the way of the other.

    Lord help the sister who comes between me and my Slam.

    To be continued.

  • Dancing with Destiny


    In 1999 the paths of two of the most recognized women athletes in the world crossed twice in different stages of their tennis careers.  Steffi Graf was twenty-nine years old and was about to retire from a career she began in 1982, and Serena Williams was seventeen years old  at the very beginning of her career that continues to the present day.

    They played each other twice in 1999. Steffi Graf won their first meeting in Australia several months before she won her 22nd. major tournament at the French Open that year.  Graf had won a Golden Slam in 1988 when she won all four of the major tournaments plus an Olympic Gold Medal in the same calendar year. No tennis player has won a calendar year Grand Slam since 1988.

    The second time Graf and Serena Williams met in 1999 was in California at the Indian Wells tournament where Serena won in three sets.  Two months after that match Graf retired, and three months after that contest Serena won the US Open which was the first of her current total of 21 majors in her sport.

    Tonight, in just a few minutes, Serena Williams will begin her third round match in the 2015 US Open in New York City. She has won the Australian Open, the French Open and Wimbledon already this year. If she wins the US Open, she will have accomplished a calendar year Grand Slam and will be the first woman since Graf in 1988 to make that happen. Somewhat appropriately and coincidentally, it would be her 22nd. major title that would tie Graf’s record.

    Serena is truly dancing with destiny, as one of the TV commentators for the Open said earlier this week. She is thirty-three years old but not the oldest gladiator in the Williams family in  the Open this year.  That honor belongs to her thirty-five year-old sister Venus who moves on to the Round of 16 next week following her victory today over eighteen-year-old Belinda Bencic from Switzerland, who is one of only two players to defeat younger sister Serena this year. Don’t mess with my sister, girl.

    Win or lose at the Open this year, Serena Williams has already secured her place in history that allows her to be mentioned in the same breath with Steffi Graf, Martina Navratilova, Chris Evert and Billy Jean King. The Williams sisters have been the face of American tennis for the many years the male American players have wandered in a wilderness of mediocrity.  Whether you are fans of theirs or not, they have earned our respect for their longevity in a sport that is physically demanding and mentally challenging.

    To be continued.