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Amelie Shows Resolve of a Champion
Saturday, 8 July, 2006
After scratching her name on the Wimbledon roll of honour, Amelie
Mauresmo can afford a wry smile and put behind her all those nagging
worries that she might have been etched on that champions' list many
years earlier but for the disastrous tendency for nerves to get the
better of her on the big occasions.
For the last few years, Mauresmo has been marked out as a woman with
the physical attributes and skills to be a Wimbledon champion but,
alas, the mental frailties that left her a semi-final bridesmaid
rather than a Championship-winning bride. Not just once but on her
last three trips to the lawns of the All England Club.
So after the 27-year-old had impressively held her nerve to beat
Justine Henin-Hardenne in the ladies' singles final, it was clear
she was pleased to have got that particular monkey off her back.
"I don't want anybody to talk about my nerves any more," she told
the Centre Court crowd after accepting the Venus Rosewater Dish.
This was the match when Mauresmo finally came good, underlining
her merit as world number one and showing she could win a Grand
Slam in the heat of combat, rather than by default, as had happened
at the Australian Open in January, when the same opponent retired
because of illness.
Henin-Hardenne had bounced back from that early-season low point,
winning her third French Open in four years last month and bidding
to become only the tenth woman in tennis history to capture all four
Grand Slams.
The Belgian had promised she would attack. So had Mauresmo. Someone
had to give way, and in an opening set in which stroke-making was
rendered difficult by a gusting wind, it was Mauresmo who blinked.
Broken in the opening game as Henin-Hardenne repeatedly charged the
net, Mauresmo found herself a set behind with only half an hour played.
The nervous Mauresmo of old might have folded but the new-look world
number one, buoyed by cries from the crowd of "Allez, Amelie" fought
back spiritedly, if not always accurately.
In that respect, Mauresmo enjoyed good fortune, since she found herself
at times in a decidedly patchy set playing marginally less poorly than
Henin-Hardenne, whose forehand went to pieces and whose famous steely
resolve went out of the window.
Two breaks of the Belgian serve and then a set-clinching ace did wonders
for Mauresmo's resolve, levelling the match with an hour and 21 minutes
gone, and putting her in the right, positive frame of mind to march on
to glory.
In contrast, Henin-Hardenne never reclaimed her authority of the opening
set. Consistency was a stranger as she struggled to contain the athletic
tennis for which Mauresmo is rightly famous. It was a losing battle.
One break of serve, early on, was all Mauresmo needed to use as a
launching pad towards the title.
Serving for the match, crunch time for nerves, was a matter of routine
rather than a challenging chore, helped by her seventh and eighth aces,
and she was duly crowned as the first lady champion from France since
Suzanne Lenglen in 1925, 81 years ago.
First, though, she had a quick weep before climbing up to the VIP box
to embrace her coach, Loic Courteau, and then returning to accept, and
hold, the Venus Rosewater Dish in the sort of firm grip which indicated
that Amelie Mauresmo planned to hold on to it for a long time.
Written by Ronald Atkin
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