Dinara Safina

How complex and contradictory is Dinara Safina’s career? One only needed to consider how the woman ranked No. 1 in the world managed to advance to her first-ever Wimbledon semifinal on Tuesday afternoon.

Laboring for two and a half hours on a sweltering summer day in England, Safina played–by any reasonable standard–a grubby, patchy, subpar quarterfinal match against unseeded Sabine Lisicki. Safina imploded on serve, coughing up 15 double faults will failing to smoke a single ace against her German foe. The best of the bevy of Russians who heavily populate the ATP Tour hit only 23 winners against Lisicki, while spraying 38 unforced errors.

And this was the winning player?!

Yes, that’s how screwy and strange Safina’s tennis life has become over the past year. The Russian’s 6-7 (5), 6-4, 6-1 win over Lisicki was hardly a work of art, but it fattens the 23-year-old’s paycheck and sends her into the semis, where she’ll face defending champion Venus Williams on Thursday at Centre Court.

The story of this encounter was as simple as it was painful: Nerves sabotaged both players, and in the end, it was Lisicki who leaked more errors than her Russian counterpart. The German tried to hand Safina the first set when she missed an easy put-away at 6-4 in the tiebreak, but Safina insisted on giving the 19-year-old a lead by double-faulting at 5-6. This match wouldn’t be won; it would be lost. Yet, after cracking early on, Safina managed to steady herself just enough to allow Lisicki to unravel.

At 3-all in the second set, Lisicki missed a very easy forehand (much like the 6-4 tiebreak point) and then double faulted herself to give Safina a break lead that the Russian wouldn’t concede. The two wobbly women trudged on into a third set, and when Lisicki shanked shot after shot in a three-game sequence midway through the set, Safina–for all her miscues and missteps–forged a 4-1 lead that held up the rest of the way. In one of the more revealing games of the match, Safina improbably double faulted on three straight points when serving at 4-1 in the third, but when a challenge showed that a Safina forehand barely clipped the line, the Russian was spared the embarrassment of blowing a 40-love lead and held for 5-1. That’s the kind of day it was inside the world’s most famous tennis court.
The sour performance with the sweet result only added to the layers of mystery enveloping the No. 1 seed at Wimbledon. On one hand, there’s so much to like about Safina. Marat Safin‘s sister is just as expressive as Big Brother ever was. The world No. 1 has handled herself quite professionally in recent months, fighting deep into virtually every tournament she’s played and working to become a competitor worthy of her lofty ranking. Her outbursts and on-court displays are still off-putting, but Safina has tried to temper her reactions as well as she possibly can. Safina’s markedly improved results–today’s win gives her a streak of four consecutive Grand Slam semifinal appearances–stand as a testament to the Russian’s heightened level of concentration. For all her ugly emotional meltdowns, Safina takes tennis seriously, as any aspiring champion should.

Ah, but then there’s the dark side of Dinara. The No. 1 ranking, rather than existing as a reward or a blessing, has understandably and–some might say–rightly existed as a curse. A player bereft of a Grand Slam title frankly shouldn’t be the No. 1 gal in this game, unless a weak era renders the rest of the competition unfit to seize the mantle of greatness. Safe to say, champions such as Serena Williams (at press time, about to take the court for her quarterfinal match following Safina’s three-set win) and Venus Williams (an easy winner over Agnieszka Radwanska in an earlier quarterfinal on Court 1) merit consideration for the top spot in women’s tennis. Safina has every right to a No. 2 ranking, but Numero Uno? It seems premature to say so.

Today’s tilt with a teenager from Germany exhibited the Jekyll-and-Hyde qualities of Safina’s existence on the WTA Tour. The same woman who could barely hit a serve on Tuesday is also the person who finds herself in a fourth consecutive slam semifinal. The player who so constantly curses herself and telegraphs so much negative body language to her opponents manages to dig out of trouble and win a bunch of matches in each tournament she contests.

You try figuring out this mercurial Russian. Pundits and scribes are running out of sensible things to say. One thing’s for sure, though: Dinara Safina is one of four females still alive in the chase for a Wimbledon title.

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