Wimbledon: Women's Final

Saturday, I watched the women's final. Venus Williams vs. Marion Bartoli. Venus Williams has been hyped since she was like 12. Bartoli I hadn't heard of until, oh, Saturday.

Since the Williams sisters have been around for so long, all the animosity that they faced when they first came out seems to have disappeared. If you read what the Williams sisters said, you thought they were arrogant.

Well, I wrote this a while back (July 8 at 10:48 PM, it seems) and never got around to finishing it. I'll try to recall what I was thinking.

First, I remembered way back when, when the Williams sisters were criticized for their bravado. Some people didn't like uppity African American women strutting their sexuality, having confidence in their ability to win. I used to read a newsgroup in tennis where people made scathing remarks about Venus and Serena.

And yet, I felt there were many positive things. They valued education. They wanted to do other things besides tennis. Indeed, they talked about making clothes, leaving the tour, and so forth.

Venus was the star first, being the older sister, then Serena looked poised to be the better of the two sisters. Nowadays, both seem to suffer from injury and occasionally, boredom.

Venus loves Wimbledon, and even when she comes into it less than her best, as she did this year, she has some chance to win it all. Playing solid tennis to knock off former Wimbledon champ, Maria Sharapova, she came into the final a prohibitive favorite. She looked to be playing pretty good tennis.

Even so, it was Bartoli, Bartoli, Bartoli. How she swooned when she heard Pierce Brosnan, aka former 007, in the audience. How her father had weird, possibly abusive techniques to train her. How she had candies given to her when she did things right. How was this girl's stamina?

Personally, I had never seen her before. She seemed a full-figured gal, cut of a similar mold as Jennifer Capriati, but possibly the heft of Lindsay Davenport of old. In Mary Carillo's words, she's big babe tennis. Hits hard, move so-so. Her two-handed shots recall Monica Seles.

For the first 2 games or so, Bartoli looked like she could get toe-to-toe with Venus. She certainly hit hard, and Venus had a hard time keeping up. But at this stage, a lot of tennis can be mental. Given two players of seemingly equal skills, the one that stays in it mentally, hits good shots at important points, is the one that tends to win it. Occasionally, you have superior talent beating inferior talent as Graf did with many of her opponents.

Venus struggled a bit towards the end, as both she and Bartoli took a medical break, which smacked a bit of gamesmanship, though both colluded. Bartoli had blisters on her feet, but the thinking was she was tired, and needed the rest, and it was at that point, Venus looked like her hip was bothering her.

Even so, she moved around just well enough, and it was a matter of just hanging in there, just hanging in there.

And then she won Wimbledon. What was it? Her fifth? Somehow people rack up titles at Wimbledon, and the rest of the world doesn't notice anywhere near as much as when Borg won his fifth, or when Martina went for her ninth.

Now we head into the US Open, and see where the women take us.