Playing at Wimbledon, the Australian great and three-time champion John Newcombe said, brings out the truth in a tennis player. If you can’t put it all on the line here, the place you always dreamed of playing, you shouldn’t be in the sport in the first place.
Here’s a look at how five different pros, of varying statuses and at different stages in their careers, handled their opening matches at the 2018 Championships on Tuesday.
The Debutante
Naomi Broady is a 28-year-old from England, but she had never played a match on Centre Court before Tuesday. She finally got her chance, fortunately or unfortunately, against No.3 seed and defending champion Garbiñe Muguruza. Broady, as expected, started slowly and anxiously on that most nerve-racking of tennis stages.
She struggled to find a rhythm, was broken early, and lost the first set 6-2. But after half an hour of running and competing, even Centre Court can cease to be a mythical place and become, well, a tennis court. With a supportive crowd behind her, Broady used her unorthodox game - she’s a rail-thin 6ft 2in - to push Muguruza in the second set.
A backhand winner for 5-5 brought a scream, and a hopeful roar from the audience. Was an upset possible? Not quite; Muguruza leaned in and won the last two games. Like so many other Centre Court debutantes, Broady had to exit the big stage just when she was starting to feel at home there. Will she ever have a chance to return?
The Ghost
Vera Zvonareva, it seems, should be older than 33 by now. The 2010 Wimbledon finalist got married and became a mother in 2016, but it feels like she’s been gone from the game for much longer than that. At least that was true until she suddenly showed up to play Angelique Kerber on Tuesday.
Zvonareva began her quiet comeback last year, and she won three qualifying matches last week to make the main draw. It wasn’t hard to spot her, and recognize her. The visor, the crosscourt backhand, the emotional reactions after a miss: The Moscow native didn’t look much different than she did when she was No. 2 in the world eight years ago.
When she was mad at herself, she even leaned forward on her racket handle the same way. But it was her casually lethal cross court backhand that stayed in the mind, and recalled old times. Champions age, but their perfect strokes don’t.
The Home Favourite
Jo Konta hasn’t had an especially memorable season so far. Despite having reached the semi-finals at Wimbledon last year, she came in ranked No.24, and with no titles to her name in 2018. But as with Andy Murray and Tim Henman in years past, everything starts anew for the Brit when she gets to Wimbledon. With the country watching her, she has no choice but to block everything out and just play tennis.
Konta played tennis well in her opener, against 21-year-old Natalia Vikhlyantseva, in front of a crowd that had filled every seat by mid-morning in anticipation of her match. But the same crowd may have energized the young Russian, because she pummelled her way into a second-set tie-break, and saved five match points.
On the sixth, Konta put together her best rally of the day. She lasered three backhands into the corners, and closed the win out with a forehand volley into the open court. The Fortnight is a new season for her, and on that point at least, she looked like a new player.
The Hopeful
Taylor Fritz was supposed to be part of the ATP Next Gen that was going to grab the baton from the "big four" and run to the top of the rankings. At 18, the 6ft 5in Californian reached a tournament final and cracked the top 60. But now it was two years later and he was still ranked No.68, was still playing Challengers, and still hadn’t won a match at Wimbledon.
It had been a while since anyone mentioned his name in the same breath with Sascha Zverev’s. Worse, after half an hour on Tuesday, Fritz was down a set to Lorenzo Sonego, a lucky loser from Italy ranked No.121. Fritz was throwing his best forehands and backhands at Sonego, and Sonego was throwing them back for winners. How could an Italian play so well on grass? How could someone ranked 60 spots lower be beating him? Would he ever win anything at Wimbledon?
Those were the questions that seemed to lurk behind Fritz’s worried eyes. But slowly, gradually, he found his answers. Sonego’s shots started to go awry, the way his ranking said they should, and Fritz’s own big serve and forehand began to have their way in the rallies. By the fourth set, when he was pulling away for his first All England win, Fritz’s face showed relief: He belonged.
The Champ
Unlike Naomi Broady, Rafael Nadal knew just what to expect when he walked on to Centre Court today. And he knew just what to do. The quick wave to the crowd, the purposeful walk to his chair, the water bottles lined up precisely, the intimidating leaps during the coin toss: every step Nadal takes before a match is exactingly choreographed.
It was the same routine he had when I saw him play for the first time, on a side court at the US Open in 2003. It’s a way to keep nerves and stray thoughts at bay, and it’s a way to force his opponents to react to him and play at his tempo. On Tuesday that opponent was Dudi Sela, who was overmatched from start to finish; Nadal looked like he could send the ball past Sela with the most causal of racket flicks.
When it was over, in three quick sets, Nadal’s closing routine was as precise as his introduction had been. The headband came off, the arms went up as he walked to the middle of the court to acknowledge the audience, the shirt was removed, the shoestrings were loosened, and he was gone again with a turn and a wave. The biggest stars treat Centre Court like its theirs.
