Serena Williams’ missing her calendar slam appointment by a whole day may have disappointed US Open tennis organisers, but the alternative outcome showed sport to be much more more than a rolling spectator entitlement to the next big historical milestone.
Her demise presented both her semifinal victor Roberta Vinci and eventual trophy holder Flavia Pennetta with the Cinderella moments of their careers.
These two self-described tour journeywomen first faced each other across the net at age nine in their local Italian junior comp. In the twilight of their careers (Pennetta already knowing it was her last match), the pair highlighted no less than the finest qualities of a lifetime of shared sporting camaraderie.
That Vinci had forfeited critical vitality to the previous day’s heroics against Serena became obvious in the second set, though there have been far more lopsided women’s finals than her straight set loss to the deserving Pennetta.
And who could ever forget her show of chest thumping self -affirmation the previous day when she rousingly remonstrated with fans not to write her off against a resurgent Serena?
If tennis needed a showcase for the argument that career redemption comes in more forms than hitting the genetic jackpot of a Williams or a Steffi Graf, the Italians supplied it. Two finer adornments of sportsmanship have rarely appeared in a slam final.
Serena, for her part, was upset with herself and understandably cautioned the press gallery not to attempt to wring from her an impossibly fraught epitaph on her slam failure. She graciously acknowledged that Vinci had put up the fight of her life and that was that.
A day later Pennetta gave her thanks and announced her retirement with such benign grace that you almost wondered if her career had in fact been, in some intangible way, more gratifying than Serena’s.
And along the way the Italian pair cheerfully exploded the silly myth, so important to commentators, that self belief is essential to capturing important trophies.
“I didn’t think I would win today” both girls explicitly confided to interviewers after their respective triumphs.
It would have helped further correct the ludicrous self-belief cliche had they added that you don’t need self worship to believe in trying your hardest. But that would have been asking for too much goodness in one day.
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