{"id":1015,"date":"2009-05-07T17:40:36","date_gmt":"2009-05-08T01:40:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/?p=1014"},"modified":"2009-05-07T17:40:36","modified_gmt":"2009-05-08T01:40:36","slug":"serena-and-safina-the-heavyweight-bout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/serena-and-safina-the-heavyweight-bout\/","title":{"rendered":"Serena and Safina: The Heavyweight Bout"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Serena Williams called out Dinara Safina this week and that sent us looking for a few theories to explain what makes Serena a champion.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>People were entranced by the <b>Manny Pacquiao<\/b> &#8211; <b>Ricky Hatton<\/b> heavyweight prizefight in Las Vegas last weekend, but tennis had its own version of a heavyweight bout when recent number one player <b>Serena Williams<\/b> called out current number one player <b>Dinara Safina<\/b> at the WTA event in Rome this week.<\/p>\n<p><div style=\"float: left; margin-right: 5px;\" class=\"picappstyle\"><a href=\"http:\/\/view.picapp.com\/default.aspx?term=dinara safina&#038;iid=4723288\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.picapp.com\/ftp\/Images\/3\/5\/2\/2\/WTA_Sony_Ericsson_a605.jpg?adImageId=1078981&#038;imageId=4723288\" width=\"380\" height=\"230\"  border=\"0\" alt=\"WTA Sony Ericsson Tour - Rome: Day Two\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.pis.picapp.com\/IamProd\/PicAppPIS\/JavaScript\/PisV4.js\"><\/script><\/div>\n<p>This is not new behavior from Serena because she\u2019s well known for being dismissive of her competition, but this was an aggressive move with the clear message: if you haven\u2019t won a slam, you\u2019re not qualified to be number one.<\/p>\n<p>What Serena said was this: \u201cWe all know who the real number one is. Quite frankly, I&#8217;m the best in the world.\u201d Ouch! Safina had no trouble getting the message because this was her response: &#8220;She can say this because she won like many more Grand Slams than me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Yes, Serena does have slams, 10 of them, and I doubt it bothered Serena one bit that she ended up in the same position as Ricky Hatton \u2013 on her butt in the first round. She was taken out in Rome with a left from Swiss player <b>Patty Schnyder<\/b>.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s very disappointing because I\u2019d loved to have seen Serena and Safina go at it, but it did get me to thinking: What makes Serena the champion she is? I don\u2019t exactly know but I do have two theories on the matter courtesy of this week\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/reporting\/2009\/05\/11\/090511fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all\">New Yorker<\/a> magazine.<\/p>\n<p>The first one has to do with mirror neurons and it comes courtesy of <b>Vilayanur S. Ramachandran<\/b>, a neurologist who is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/reporting\/2009\/05\/11\/090511fa_fact_colapinto\">profiled by John Colapinto<\/a> in the magazine. It turns out that if you open and close your hand, certain neurons in your brain will fire. That\u2019s not surprising but this is: if you happen to be sitting next to a person and you see them open and closes their hand, those same neurons will fire in your brain even though it\u2019s the other person doing the action.<\/p>\n<p>You can see whey they might be called mirror neurons and Ramachandran theorizes that autistic people might be lacking in mirror neurons because they have trouble imitating others and empathizing. I\u2019m not suggesting that Serena is autistic, far from it, she\u2019s a very highly functioning and social person. But I was wondering if someone like Serena, who doesn\u2019t seems as concerned about what her fellow competitors think of her as much as most of us are, might have fewer of those somewhat empathetic neurons.<\/p>\n<p>The next theory comes to us from <b>Malcolm Gladwell<\/b>, author of <i>The Tipping Point<\/i>, <i>Blink<\/i>, and <i>Outliers<\/i>. In another article in the magazine titled <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/reporting\/2009\/05\/11\/090511fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all\">How David Beats Goliath<\/a>, Gladwell shows what happens to people who win ugly.<\/p>\n<p>Gladwell describes a girl\u2019s basketball team coached by someone who didn\u2019t know much about basketball with players who didn\u2019t have much in the way of basketball skills. The coach decided that the best way for the girls to win was to use a full court press for the entire game. In other words, harass and frustrate their opponents by closely guarding them every inch of the court instead of waiting until they\u2019d thrown the ball in and advanced to the offensive basket.<\/p>\n<p>The team won its games by large scores and reached the national playoffs but they pissed off a lot of opposing teams because they beat them badly. And since teams didn\u2019t like getting beaten badly, they complained that this wasn\u2019t how the game should be played, especially because, they said, girls should be learning basketball skills instead of running around like their hair is on fire.<\/p>\n<p>When you defeat a traditional approach to the game with an unexpected strategy, you can expect backlash. The little team that could played the third round of the playoffs against a team that was playing on its home court and had supplied the referees for the game. These referees decided to negate the full court press by calling a ridiculously high number of touch fouls, thus forcing the team to abandon the full court press.<\/p>\n<p>The point here is that outsiders sometimes win by taking a different, controversial approach and Serena has always been an outsider. Her father <b>Richard Williams<\/b> trained Serena and her sister <b>Venus<\/b> outside of the traditional junior tennis channels and he kept them out of junior tournaments. The sisters are also outsiders because they\u2019re black and there were few black players on tour when they started. They were racially harassed in Indian Wells in 2001 after Venus pulled out of a Venus vs. Serena semifinal at the last minute.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s what you call backlash and though it was racially motivated, it was also a response to the Williams\u2019 way of doing as they pleased regardless of what anyone else thinks. Venus isn\u2019t far behind Serena with seven slams, but Serena has that extra bit of toughness and it goes back to something these two theories share: being a social outsider.<\/p>\n<p>Venus doesn\u2019t call out her opponents; she\u2019s more sympathetic to her opponents\u2019 feelings. Serena doesn\u2019t care.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s hard to know whether Serena can return to number one and stay there because she has trouble playing week in and week out due to recurring injury problems. The WTA has has added more required events and heavy penalties for missing them. That will also make it harder on Serena.<\/p>\n<p>Safina is starting to take on the leadership that comes with the number one ranking. She lambasted the Rome tournament organizers for threatening players\u2019 careers by making them run around on wet clay (you can see why in the image above), and I expect she\u2019ll get her slam. But right now, I have to say that I don\u2019t disagree with Serena.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Serena Williams called out Dinara Safina this week and that sent us looking for a few theories to explain what makes Serena a champion. People were entranced by the Manny Pacquiao &#8211; Ricky Hatton heavyweight prizefight in Las Vegas last weekend, but tennis had its own version of a heavyweight bout when recent number one [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}