Part of the mystery and magic of Wimbledon as a sports experience (separate from the poor way in which the tournament is operated — the refusal to start matches at noon on Centre Court keeps brushing up against the curfew which Novak Djokovic couldn’t fully defeat on Sunday night) lies in the gentleness of the environment on the surface. Politely clapping spectators overlooking a small, gentle English lawn in summertime looks and feels very soothing. Any picture of a Wimbledon court in the first week of the tournament, provided that the day is sunny, looks like an oil painting. Rare is the photo or image from a sunny Wimbledon day which isn’t aesthetically pleasing. This tournament is easy on the eyes, and the pastoral nature of those lush lawns in summertime contains a timeless quality which sets Wimbledon apart.
There really is no other tournament like this in tennis.
Yet, the gentleness and the soothing aesthetic charms of The All-England Club are deceptive. They mask the soaring tensions inside athletes’ brains and bodies in the heat of competition. Wimbledon, on the surface, is classic tennis whites on sun-kissed summer lawns, with Englishmen and women desperate to enjoy the sunny and pleasant weather while it lasts. Underneath that surface, however, is a raging hunger among the competitors to not only win the world’s most prestigious and high-profile tennis event, but to also solve the mystery that is grass.
It is true that grass claims so little of the tennis season that players can’t properly prepare for it, but that reality actually adds to the fervent nature of the desire among tennis pros to figure it all out.
Iga Swiatek is a dominant clay-court champion, headed for historic and shattering greatness on the surface if she stays healthy for the next 10 years. She has won the U.S. Open and owns a fat stack of hardcourt titles at non-major events. Her prowess and comfort level on tennis’s two main surfaces are impossible to ignore.
This leaves grass, the one surface Swiatek hasn’t mastered. You know she has been asked many questions about grass. You know she wants those questions to go away. You know — and Swiatek knows — that winning Wimbledon is not just an immense and historic prize; it is the gateway toward silencing oceans of reporters and their familiar questions. Winning Wimbledon would confer three-surface greatness on Swiatek and dramatically elevate her place within the larger story of tennis.
Naomi Osaka dominated hardcourts. Justine Henin was a natural on clay. Neither woman won Wimbledon, though. Swiatek doesn’t need to be told how transformative winning a championship at SW19 would be.
This — not just a lack of full comfort on grass — explains the edgy, nervous, unsettled way Swiatek played most of her match against Belinda Bencic on Sunday. It’s not just about winning Wimbledon. That alone doesn’t create the cauldron of pressure just underneath the pastoral perfection of Centre Court. The hunger to solve a puzzle, and the yearning for a much more elevated place in history, flow into the overwhelming, suffocating tension which is part of this tournament, part of this place.
Pastorality and pressure. Gentle lawns and searing hot coals. Aesthetics and anxieties. No other tournament quite matches what Wimbledon creates inside the professional tennis player.
Iga Swiatek lived that full experience against Bencic.
What was noteworthy and remarkable about Swiatek’s razor-close win is not that it ultimately happened, but that Swiatek — who was so visibly nervous for most of the match — found inner calm precisely when she was down two match points. It was only then that Swiatek, spraying the ball around the most famous tennis court in the world, began playing with margin — not timidly, not cautiously, but with the right mixture of reined-in power and measured ambition.
She didn’t stop hitting the ball, but she did stop overswinging. She hit with a little more topspin, a little more margin, and was still able to hit the ball with angle and placement such that Bencic couldn’t get an easy look at a winner or a forcing, point-changing shot. Swiatek dictated those two match points she saved. She dictated a few more points shortly afterward. She held for 6-6, won the second-set tiebreak with a composed display, and escaped trouble. She busted loose at 3-3 in the third set and scored the kind of win great players regularly deliver.
Iga Swiatek still doesn’t have grass fully figured out, but her desire to solve this puzzle — often too intense for her own good on Sunday against Bencic — is the fuel great players call upon when they need something more. Has Swiatek turned a corner on grass, or will future opponents with a little more consistency than Bencic stop her short of a Venus Rosewater Dish?
We can’t wait to find out, but in the meantime, we know that Iga Swiatek learned more about herself this Wimbledon. She has at least taken a step toward walking over lush lawns and hot coals at the same time. That can only help her on the road ahead.
Tennis with an Accent 