Serena Williams lifted the trophy at Wimbledon for the third time in her career, denying sister Venus of a record-equalling sixth title in London with a 7-6(7-3), 6-2 win.
After Serena’s thrilling victory over Elena Dementieva in the previous round, the final had a high benchmark to try and match it, and unsurprisingly was unable to do so. The opening set was dominated by some serious serving by both players and went to a tie-break where an opening was finally made, first with a Serena forehand, and clinched with a gorgeous backhand lob worthy of taking any set.
The second set followed the same pattern for the first five games before Venus’ serve started to falter and she threw in a rare double fault as she was broken and Serena took a 4-2 lead. Two games later it was all over as Venus netted a forehand to hand Serena the title on her fourth match point. It wasn’t an entirely unsuccessful day for Venus though as the sisters would later take the Doubles title in straight sets against Sam Stosur and Rennae Stubbs.
So for the women, another year at Wimbledon was over and it was time to move on; twenty four hours later, following an exciting mens final – featuring the longest ever fifth set in a mens singles final at 95 minutes, eventually settled 16-14 in favour of Federer – it was time for the circus that is the British media to wrap things up too. As good as Wimbledon is, it’s a relief to wake up on a Monday morning knowing that there are WTA tournaments this week in Bastad and Budapest and that the press don’t care at all. Even leaving aside the continual hype surrounding Andy Murray, which despite his semi final exit was almost justified for once, we’ve had the usual blah-blah-blah surrounding equal prize money and the obvious bashing of the current world number one. Throw in the complete slating of every British player bar Murray, the shameful goading of Anne Keothavong after her 1st round exit, the ridiculous Gruntwatch, the coverage of whether the womens matches on Centre Court are placed there based on the attractiveness of the players involved, the somewhat shortlived proclamation that Gisela Dulko is ‘the new darling of SW19’, a headline that we wouldn’t have seen had a ‘plain’ looking player beaten Maria Sharapova, and ended with the somewhat predictable and to be fair, creditable wonderment that Serena stays ranked number two despite holding three Slam titles. But for anyone living in Britain, all of that is now over for another year and we can return to tennis – Andy Murray exempt – flying so low under the radar that you’d think the WTA were on their annual eleven month break before the 2010 Wimbledon tournament starts. Thankfully that isn’t the case and although the next few weeks will be fairly quiet as we return to clay courts before taking to the hardcourts of America, there’s still plenty of action to enjoy in 2009.
The Cat's Furry Balls 