Kerber dud compounds disorder on the court
The arms and legs are rippled with muscle.
The face flashes a gallery of gritty expressions.
The talk is invariably about believing in herself.
Every outward indication speaks of a strong female athlete in her prime. But Angelique Kerber is so much less than the sum of her parts.
A player who could not handle the pressure and expectation that comes with being world No. 1 doesn’t have to worry about that anymore — she lost that status a few weeks ago.
A player who arrived at the U.S. Open in psychic and performance disarray, palpably burdened by the weight of being defending champion, doesn’t have to worry about that anymore either — ousted in the opening round on Tuesday, upended with ghastly ease, 6-3, 6-1, by an unseeded teenager. How much farther can the German tumble? A year ago she stood astride the tennis world — two Grand Slam titles, Olympic silver medallist, runner-up in the WTA finals and racking up more than $10 million in prize money.
It’s all gone haywire. Since her triumphs at the Australian Open and U.S. Open in 2016, Kerber hasn’t won a tournament: not a major, not a tour event.
In Melbourne, she was halted in the round of 16, in straight sets by American Coco Vandeweghe — and few would have predicted that would be one of her better results for 2017. At the French Open — actually for the second year in a row — she exited after one match, first top seed in the open era to lose in the first round at Roland Garros.
At Wimbledon, defeated again in the round of 16 by Garbine Muguruza, although at least it was a hard-fought contest.
On half a dozen occasions this season she’s failed to survive the opening round.
And now the ignominy at Flushing Meadows — only the second defending women’s champion (after Svetlana Kuznetsova in 2005) in the open era to be eliminated in the first bracket.
She insists there’s nothing inherently wrong with her game. She insists she has been practising well. She insists the nerves are manageable once play starts.
But it doesn’t make sense. The unavoidable conclusion is that the left-hander simply doesn’t have the mental rigour required to underpin her undeniable talent. Hasn’t got the right stuff. Not a shred of the intestinal fortitude for which Serena Williams — from whom she stripped the No. 1 title last September — is famous.
Williams, so desperately missed on the women’s side of the game as she awaits the birth of her first child within weeks. But Williams turns 36 this month and she can’t carry women’s tennis on her shoul- ders for much longer even if, as vowed, she has every intention of returning to competition.
Nobody has seized the opportunity to make an indelible mark in her absence. Wimbledon champion Muguruza might rise to that stature — a pair of Slam titles so far — in the years ahead, but only a fool would make any hard predictions.
So yeah, welcome back Maria Sharapova, if only as a female player who can genuinely engage the sport’s fan base, love her or hate her. Unfortunate, however, that the doping truant — at her first major in 18 months — took out No. 2 seed Simona Halep in the first round Monday evening.
There went the tough luck Romanian’s latest bid to capture world No. 1 laurels, strangled in the crib of Arthur Ashe Stadium. Halep keeps skidding by that Numero Uno eminence, currently held by Karolina Pliskova of the Czech Republic, though eight women came to Queens with a shot at leaving with the crown.
Wide open is another way of saying a slip-sliding mess.
And Flushing Meadows has not been kind to some of the most prominent seeds in the past 48 hours. Three of the top seeds were gone by tea-time Tuesday: Halep, Kerber and No. 7 Johanna Konta of Britain. Only the Kerber bounce could be characterized as un-stunning at this point, with a season record of 25-18 overall and 0-9 against opponents ranked in the top 20.
Might have been even worse had day-long rain not wiped out the schedule with 55 matches cancelled, as play continued only on the roofed Ashe court. Canadian Genie Bouchard’s encounter with Russia’s Evgeniya Rodina was among the matches put over to Wednesday.
Still, Kerber’s loss to 45th-ranked Naomi Osaka of Japan was disturbingly lopsided.
She had no answers for the questions which have become too familiar: “I don’t know.” A shrug.
“It was not my day, completely not my day today,” Kerber said afterwards, assuming the now chronic position of having to explain herself to a room full of journalists. “Yeah, of course it’s not the result … and I’m sad but … I don’t know.”
Can’t the reporters understand that she tried, she seemed to plead. “I was always believing until the end that I can turn around the match, because I turn around a lot of matches.”
She grants that it has all become so much harder since the spotlight was trained in her direction.
“This is for sure something. Yeah, gives me maybe also not the confidence when I go out there, you know.’’
She insisted that she simply needs more matches, more competitions. But she can’t get those matches in by so quickly getting dismissed.
“I was trying to find my rhythm, especially in the important moments. Sometimes it’s not working. But I’m still the same player, the same person. It’s just the matches and how I played last year from the beginning to how I’m struggling this year.
“At the end, I know that I am strong and I know that I will come back stronger, for sure. I know that I will not be giving up like this.”
In the 19-year-old Osaka, she came up against an opponent who, as the defeated always say, had nothing to lose. The teen could play free, cocky even, yet mindful of what happened at the Open a year ago — up 5-1 on No. 8 seed Madison Keys in the third set before the American stormed back to win the third-round match. “That experience last year helped me this year.”
She drew also on a third-round loss to Venus Williams at Wimbledon this year. “I tried to tell myself I’m probably not going to get as nervous against Kerber as I did against Venus.” Pause to grin. “So that wasn’t the most assuring thing I have ever said. But, I mean, it helped me through. But when I stepped on the court and I heard all the people, and I saw how big the stadium was, I got a little bit freaked out. But I tried to hold it in.”
Not that freaked out, actually, for a teenager who’s only been on tour for less than two years. Though born in Osaka, Osaka grew up on Long Island and now lives in Florida.
“When we were little, we would come to the U.S. Open every year. I grew up watching the greatest players on that court. The site feels really familiar to me. It’s, like, nostalgic every time I come here.”
Unbeknownst to Osaka, her mother had flown in to spectate her daughter’s turn on the big court. “She kept it a secret, so I saw her after my match and I was so surprised. Then I just started crying a little bit because I was really shocked.”
Dad was here already but he can’t bear to watch her matches, ever.
“He just pops up at the end and says congratulations and that’s it.”