Clutch Serena bends, doesn’t break
Mattek-Sands takes first set, forcing Williams to rally; ailing Raonic sent packing
NEW YORK— Serena Williams was the freight train and Bethanie Mattek-Sands was the damsel in distress tied to the tracks.
A third-set pasting to love decided the matter Friday night, one American to another. And nationality is about all these two women have in common.
Williams is zeroing in on her 22nd Grand Slam title. Mattek-Sands has twice reached the round of 16 at a majors.
The imbalance verged on ridiculous.
This is the Summer of Serena, after all. The Summer of Slam. But the 33-year-old did put a scare into her adoring legion of fans. Or rather Mattek-Sands, ranked a lowly 101st, was the author of a potentially unfolding horror story — except for the ending. Because Williams, while occasionally toying with an opponent, is ruthless when rallying. She so rarely is denied.
Still, Mattek-Sands, whose own career has been fraught with injuries, pulled it all together for one fleeting episode of superiority, taking advantage of a surprisingly clumsy Williams in the first frame under the bright night lights of Arthur Ashe Stadium. And the would-be giant slayer hung in tough with the living legend on the other side of the net in the second set, with the score knotted at 5-5. But Serena was clearly surging: three straight winners punctuated with a 103-m.p.h. ace straight down the middle. Then Mattek-Sands was serving to hold and force a tiebreaker. Instead Williams did the breaking, taking the set 7-5 and setting the tone for a goopy doughnut in the third.
By that point, Mattek-Sands’ fight-or-flight option was clear — just stay away from that serving fusillade. Williams whipped it home, 3-6, 7-5, 6-0.
“I’m not trying to live on the edge,” Williams insisted of her first-set wobble. In fact, she’s dropped 10 sets on the Calendar Slam this year, so it hasn’t all come as easy as it might look.
“I don’t think I came out too slow today. I just think Bethanie played really well. I had to do things and adapt to her game.”
Williams converted only six of 21 break point chances and racked up 28 errors, compared to 10 for Mattek-Sands. But ultimately the un-Serena-like stats made no difference. In the clutch, there’s no one better.
“I told myself, you know what Serena? Just keep going. Here’s another one. Keep trying, keep trying, keep trying.”
Big sister Venus — at 35 the oldest player in the draw — reached the round of 16 a couple of hours earlier. The two-time U.S. Open champion, a mere 17 when she first won here, upset 18-year-old Belinda Bencic, 3-6, 7-5, 6-0, sending the 12th seeded Swiss Miss home earlier than expected — and doing her sister a solid, on the side. It was Bencic who handed Serena one of only two losses this year, at the Rogers Cup last month.
The Williams siblings are headed toward a quarter-final confrontation if both emerge victorious from the round of 16.
Friday night was the end of the line also for Canada’s (via the French Riviera) Milos Raonic, who submitted to the inevitable in straight sets at the hands of Feliciano Lopez. Inevitable because Raonic has been clearly fettered by back woes that once again required repeated medical timeouts for massages and physiotherapy. It was a triumph of willpower that Raonic pushed the Spaniard to a second-set tiebreaker in the 6-2, 7-6 (4), 6-3 loss.
Asked later where, on a frustration metre of zero to 100, he would place this experience, the endlessly impassive Raonic responded: “85”.
That’s all? Well, how about in comparison to other days, other matches here he has persevered through, with pain?
“I guess it started 20 per cent worse. And probably ended up around 60 per cent worse than other days.”