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One for the ages Ivanisevic rides serve into history
The ultimate wild card came up aces at Wimbledon Monday afternoon. Goran Ivanisevic arrived in London on tennis' version of the dole. Ranked outside the top 100 before the tournament, he was given a free pass into the main draw by dint of his previous achievements at the All England Club. Three times prior, the eccentric lefty with an elephant gun for a serve had reach the final. Each of those afternoons ended with him clenching his teeth behind a gracious smile as he held the runner-up trophy aloft.
At last year's U.S. Open, he lost his first-round match to Dominik Hrbaty by the tanks-for-coming score of 3-6, 6-0, 6-1, 6-1. He cemented his reputation as one of the game's all-time head cases several weeks later when he was defaulted from a match at the Samsung Open in Brighton, England, after breaking all of his rackets in a fit of pique. "At least they'll remember me for something," he shrugged, a tacit admission that his legacy was destined to be as other than a Grand Slam champ. Rock bottom came at this year's Australian Open, when he endured the indignity of going through qualifying and then promptly lost to someone named Petr Luxa. There was no single moment of reckoning, but this spring, a few months removed from age 30, Ivanisevic decided to apply the defib paddles to his moribund career for one last run. He entered lower-tiered events in order to garner points. He kept his head in close matches and won some rounds at Masters Series events. Though his serving shoulder left him throbbing in pain after matches, he responded that he'd simply play until it fell off. The beauty -- some might say the travesty -- of Wimbledon is that as long as a player comes to the Championships armed with a potent serve, he can become a contender. Despite his ranking, despite the muddled straits of his career and despite a draw that left him facing Andy Roddick, Greg Rusedski, Roger Federer, Tim Henman and Pat Rafter, Ivanisevic brought his serve with him. The player who set the Wimbledon record for aces with 206 several years ago surpassed his benchmark this fortnight with 213 untouchables, including 27 Monday. Time and again, Ivanisevic would give his opponent a sliver of daylight, only to seal shut the window of opportunity with a 130-mph bomb down the middle or a 125-mph cutter that all but left a divot in the grass. Still, befitting tennis' most endearingly eccentric player, this command performance was not without its shaky moments. In the third set of his semifinal match against Henman, Ivanisevic was on the court in body only and lost 6-0. But for a fortuitous, momentum-halting rain shower, he could easily have packed it in. In the fourth set of the final against Rafter, he blew a head gasket, tossed his racket and karate-kicked the net after a second-serve ace was called wide. In the past, this would have been a cue to quit; Monday he steadied himself for a fifth set. Even with the match on his racket, anticipatory tears of joy leaking from his eyes, Ivanisevic double-faulted three times in the decisive game. After squandering three match points, he finally launched one last bomb that Rafter batted harmlessly into the net. Before coming forward to shake Rafter's hand, the most unlikely champion in Wimbledon history -- and the only unseeded titleist beside Boris Becker -- fell to his knees and lay face down. It was as if he were hugging the grass that had had been such a valuable, willing accomplice during his run. "When I came here nobody even talked about me," he said moments later. "Now I am holding this trophy." Sports Illustrated senior writer Jon Wertheim covers tennis for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Click here to send a question to his Tennis Mailbag.
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