MIAMI -- It's often said that "the numbers don't lie," but usually by people who haven't spent a lot of time watching Serena Williams play tennis. Take Wednesday, here at the Miami Open.
The stat sheet for the match between top-seeded Serena Williams and Sabine Lisicki -- the No. 27 seed who inflicted a painful loss on Williams at Wimbledon the last time they met -- had 13 categories. Serena Williams put up better numbers than Lisicki in just two of them.
Lisicki had more aces and fewer double faults, a higher first-serve conversion percentage, and she won a higher percentage of those successful first serves. She also put more returns into play and made fewer unforced backhand errors. She won more points in the match -- more than a game's worth more (90-85).
Serena Williams won the match. So what else is new?
The score was 7-6 (4), 1-6, 6-3. Once again, Williams demonstrated that successful tennis isn't merely about how many more points you win or how high your successful conversion rate is, because it's almost never so high as to be preemptive. It's not about how well you execute the fundamentals, as anyone who's watched Williams hit a flat-footed inside-out backhand winner can tell you. Successful tennis, at least at the highest level, is about which points you win -- and when you win them.
This was one of those days when Williams looked sluggish and out of sorts; you know the telltale signs by now. She walks with her head lowered and shoulders slumped. She takes small, almost mincing steps, as if the soles of her feet are sunburned. And when play finally commences, a startling number of her opponent's shots seem to take her by surprise; she swings and hits them off-balance, as if the ball could knock her over backward.
"I know today wasn't my best day," Williams said after she won. "I just told myself, 'I'm not serving the way I normally serve and hitting the way I normally would hit, so at this point all I can do is just fight and try to give 200 percent instead of 100 percent.'"
True enough. But the decisive factor in this match wasn't Williams' determination and ability and willingness to fight. It was her talent for winning the points that matter -- for wiping out any negative residue from specific, errant shots, games or sets and for putting the hammer down when it's most likely to crush her opponent's spirit and confidence. The more threatened she is, the more likely Williams is to do lethal harm.
Nobody, but nobody, in either the ATP or WTA game is comparably gifted. She's blessed with greatness, which is an altogether different thing from talent. One thing the two qualities share, though, is that they cannot be learned. Or can they?
"I don't know," Williams said. "I mean, I think it's a little bit of both. I think it's innate and also something that you learn over time."
Williams is gifted and she's also learned well. Take the beginning of the third set, which is where this match was decided. Williams had squeaked through the first set in a tiebreaker, then collapsed in disarray as Lisicki roared back to win six games in row and the second set, 6-1.
But Williams snapped to life in the first game of the third set after hitting a double fault that made it 15-all. During the next point, she forced Lisicki into a backhand error. After that, she whacked a monstrous forehand approach winner, accompanying it with a lusty cry of "come on!" Then she won the game with an unreturnable serve.
Pressing, Williams pinned Lisicki to a 15-30 deficit in the next game and converted a smash to reach double-break point. She made a return error on the first of those, then engaged Lisicki in a wild rally that ended with a backhand error by Lisicki for the break. Williams was only threatened once after that.
Well, there has to be some sort of physiological explanation for why Williams can so frequently pare down a match to the essentials, for finding a way to win that elusive, select cluster of points that can make the difference between losing and winning -- points that may not seem to be so obviously critical before she wins them, but in retrospect clearly have a shaping influence in a match.
The explanation, I think, is that Williams, more than anyone else, is capable of hitting any shot at any time. It has absolutely nothing -- and everything -- to do with what the scoreboard says. Here are just two examples culled from Wednesday's match.
In the critical first-set tiebreaker, while Williams was frustrated and seemingly incapable of getting a grip on things, she had two serves to come with a mini-break lead. She won the first point to go up 5-3. She missed her next first serve and Lisicki then drove a pretty backhand return right down the line. The ball already seemed past Williams when, with her back to the net, she carved off a heavy sliced backhand winner that caught Lisicki -- and everyone else -- looking. A score of 6-3 looks a better than 5-4, when a server like Lisicki has two coming.
In the third set, Williams appeared to be in some danger of losing her slim, one-break lead when she served at 3-1. But from 30-all, she cracked an ace wide. She missed her next first serve, but her second produced a rally that she ended with an unexpected inside-in backhand winner down the line.
It's in moments like those when matches are won -- or lost. In Williams case, they are almost always won. Her only shortcoming is that she's so good at making the sublime look routine that we sometimes take her greatness for granted.