Fleet-footed Williams turns back clock to put 24th major title in sight
Hcoach believes lack of crowd is robbing side of intensity haustralian backs moves to add week to World Cup finals
Serena Williams powered into her 40th grand slam semi-final yester- day by beating arguably the best defender in women’s tennis at her own game.
Simona Halep usually frustrates opponents with her ability to reach would-be winners. She did so in their last meeting with a near-faultless 6-2, 6-2 demolition of Williams at the Wimbledon 2019 final. But yesterday Williams turned the tables by finding an answer for every one of the Romanian’s attempts to grind her down, and showing the significant improvement in on-court movement which has turned heads in Melbourne.
Defensive work and speed were strengths Williams was once known for – footwork to marvel at and covering the court with ease. But since returning from the birth of her first child in 2017 it has been a weakness preyed upon by her opponents.
“If they can get Serena moving around, they will have a chance here,” has so often been the musing of commentators, as challengers successfully targeted Williams’s sometimes laboured lunging or awkward flat-footedness.
This Australian Open has been a different story though. The 39-yearold has been explosive, chasing down balls to keep points alive, and clinching longer rallies where she previously would have run out of steam. Against Halep, it gave her more time for decision-making to hit ruthless winners – 24 in total – later on in points and ease to a 6-3, 6-3 win.
When asked post-match how long it had been since she felt those longer rallies were hers to win, Williams was in a jovial mood: “It’s definitely been a minute. It’s been a long minute. I think the summer of 1926 was the last time I felt that.”
But this shift in Williams’s game is no laughing matter for her opponents, and she knows it. She nodded enthusiastically when on-court interviewer Jim Courier admired her defensive work in the aftermath of her win: “Last year my coach Patrick [Mouratoglou] had a long talk with me about how I needed to be better on defence.
“I know throughout my career speed has been one thing that’s been super good in my game. Sometimes I’m getting points and getting balls and I know I have the legs to do it. So it’s exciting.”
Halep was not at her best yesterday. From the first point she served, which Williams dismissed by pummelling a forehand
Quick work: Serena Williams on her way to beating Simona Halep winner, she looked on the back foot and frustrated.
While Halep’s confidence was shaky and she never found her rhythm, Williams’s new speed and resilience are contributing to her looking more relaxed than she has in years, as she seeks her recordequalling 24th grand slam title.
While the pressure to deliver another trophy has weighed heavy in the past, losing four major finals since her last win at the 2017 Australian Open, Williams has found confidence in knowing she has a more complete game in Melbourne.
With the added cushion her movement allows, she is no longer all-reliant on that famous serve to get her out of trouble. While her unforced-error count ticked into the danger zone at 33 and her serve was nowhere near its best yesterday – hitting just four aces, only 55 per cent of her first serves in and being broken three times by Halep – she still won.
It was a similar story on Sunday when she defeated fellow heavy hitter Aryna Sabalenka, and on neither occasion did she look too rattled.
“When you’re not in a good day, you need a plan B, and to be able to have a plan B, you have to be able to move well,” Williams’s coach, Mouratoglou, said ahead of the match. “I think it cost [Williams] a few important matches [in the last two or three years]. So we have decided to find a way to bring back the footwork she used to have in the past.”
It will no doubt help in the semifinal, where Williams faces Naomi Osaka, who defeated Hsieh Su-wei in straight sets 6-2, 6-2. It will be the toughest mental test of the tournament for Williams and the pair’s first meeting at a major since their infamous 2018 US Open final, when Williams had an on-court disagreement with the chair umpire before going on to lose.
But the American is no longer the outright favourite for the title; Osaka and Ash Barty are vying for that honour.
With Osaka’s growth in profile in the past year after picking up her third major title in New York, and the pressure on Barty to deliver Australia’s first home-grown singles champion since 1978, Williams has navigated the first nine days of the tournament relatively under the radar – or as under the radar as a 23-time champion in a onelegged catsuit can. Her breezy demeanour suggests it is helping. If she keeps the pace on the court, No24 could well be within reach.
Eddie Jones is discussing arousal problems. In his view, England simply were subdued in the opening Six Nations defeat against Scotland. Against Italy, they were better but still not their usual frisky selves.
According to Jones’s research, it afflicts even the best teams with the absence of crowds inhibiting performance.
This is based on a study by the University of Salzburg that found a marked decline in players’ “emotional behaviour and interactions” in the Austrian football top flight. One of the report’s authors concluded that without supporters, players were calmer and less aggressive.
The implications for international rugby teams, which rely so much on emotional intensity, are clear and may help explain England’s lacklustre start to the Guinness Six Nations.
“The arousal level is the thing we are looking at the most,” Jones, an Umbro ambassador, said. “Games have tended to be less aggressive generally in rugby and I think it has been the same in football. There’s a bit of research that shows the arousal level of players has dropped and therefore the type of play and the type of behaviour has been less aggressive. As you know in our sport that is a particularly important area, so we have to investigate that.
“If you look at our performance against Scotland we lacked our normal aggression, we lacked our normal go-at-them game. We were a little bit better against Italy, but still not where we need to be.”
Identifying the problem is one matter, finding an answer quite another. Jones has consulted a number of experts outside the England bubble to find out how they can “get the right chemistry in our team moving forward”.
From his own experience, Jones has learnt the “hairdryer” treatment of yesteryear simply does not work on the modern generation of players. An added complication is how hard it is to build team spirit with social distancing restrictions. “The big thing we are missing at the moment is the interaction,” Jones said.
Much, instead, will depend on the internal dynamic of the England environment that the players can build when they return to the bubble tomorrow ahead of the match against Wales on Feb 27. “We don’t have any solutions, but that is the area we are looking at the most,” Jones said. “We have looked at behaviour in sport and how difficult it is to get players aroused.
“If I look at Liverpool, who are an aggressive team, they are really at their best when they are pressing hard and they attack hard, their whole crowd is aggressive. Is that one of the reasons why they have dropped off?”
When England are struggling, Jones says he is inundated with offers of help. Most of the time, he takes to writing down what is really important on a piece of paper. He used to keep all his past notes in vast files. Then, when he was moving from the Stormers in South Africa to become England head coach, he lost all that research along with his medhis
als from the 2003 and 2007 World Cups. “I asked someone to send it over. I’ve never seen it,” Jones said. “Someone has probably sold the World Cup medals by now.”
Jones welcomed World Rugby’s attempt to add an extra week to the World Cup in spite of opposition from the Rugby Football Union. “Anything we can do to make it fair and equitable amongst the teams is good,” Jones said. “Anything that we can do to make it better in terms of player welfare is good.”
He was more on the same page as
employers after Conor O’shea, the RFU’S director of performance rugby, suggested bringing back the England Saxons team. Jones said: “It’s a great idea, particularly when we are picking from 12 clubs. To have the ability to see players in a different environment, playing at a different level before they get exposed to Test level, is only beneficial.”