Garbiñe Muguruza banishes nerves to write her name in Wimbledon gold | Sean Ingle | Sport
Throughout this Wimbledon Garbiñe Muguruza has paused at the Centre Court honours board, immersing herself in the legendary names of the past before willing herself to join them. On Saturday afternoon she got her chance â€" and, with a performance of stunning clarity and brutal unsentimentality, she took it. Now, following her 7-5, 6-0 victory over the five-times champion Venus Williams, her name, too, is etched in gold.
The 23-year-old Spaniard’s talent has never been in question but she has always blown hotter and colder than most. This fortnight, however, those tennis winds must have come from the Sahara. Throughout the tournament she dropped only one set, and had her serve broken just four times. It was quite a transformation given she had lost in the early rounds at Birmingham and Eastbourne last month.
Yet here she was, hands in the air then over her eyes after becoming only the second Spaniard, after Conchita MartÃnez in 1994, to win the women’s title. Appropriately MartÃnez was there in the coaches’ box, urging her on and celebrating her triumph.
This victory was both two weeks and 20 years in the making. Muguruza, who has a Venezuelan father and a Spanish mother, started playing tennis when she was three â€" but only because she wanted to copy her older brothers, who would spend hours practising in their small club in South America. She began by lobbing the ball against the wall but by the age of six she was good enough to enter and win her first tournament.
Her brothers eventually fell away from the sport but she soared and by 18 she was playing on the main woman’s tour.
Not that she enjoyed her initial grass court experiences. When she played her first games on the surface, at 17 or 18‚ she thought the bounce was “weird†and felt uncomfortable on it until she reached the final here against Williams’s sister, Serena, two years ago. After that match, Williams whispered to her that she had the game to win Wimbledon. The prophecy came true â€" but not perhaps how the younger Williams would have wished it.
The steady mizzle over Wimbledon throughout the early afternoon meant that the women’s final was played under a closed roof for the first time in history. It made Centre Court feel like a metropolitan Eden Project, the hubbub and tension of the 15,000 crowd unable to squeeze out.
Still, the place looked splendid. The same, however, could not be said about the baselines at both ends of the court, which looked like they had been attacked by a sand wedge wielded by a once-a-year golfer. Indeed it looked so bad that before play began Williams asked the umpire to check it wasn’t slippery to the point of dangerous.
If the American was distracted by the court she didn’t show it, given she started with a venomous 109mph ace. Yet Muguruza remained standing by the baseline, refusing to retreat, egging her on to do it again. Perhaps it initially led to a number of cheap points for Williams â€" but, as the match went on, also five double faults as the American frequently went for broke.
Yet the strategy was working. For as the match progressed one of Williams’s greatest weapons was being neutralised. By the end she had won only 61% of points on her first serve and just 33% on her second â€" far below what she would have usually expected.
The second key battleground was Muguruza’s forehand. In the first set it gave the impression of a firework loaded with too much gunpowder, and too often it was hit hard, flat and over the baseline. The seven unforced errors on that side early on told the story â€" but when it started clicking Williams had no answer. “Maybe I was too hungry and too aggressive at the start, but I wasn’t too worried as I thought it was only nerves,†the Spaniard said.
She was right. In the second set any lingering nerves dissipated and Muguruza treated Williams in much the same way that the great American has done to her rivals over the years â€" win a tight first set and then race away with second.
Even so, no one expected a 6-0 demolition in 17 minutes. It was the first time Williams had lost a set to love in her 20 years at Wimbledon.
Most of the damage came from the Spaniard’s backhand, a weapon of such elegance and destructive beauty. There were seven winners off it in the second set, some ripped, some caressed, all deadly to Williams’s chances. In truth the American didn’t look quite herself, and played the second set as if she had been tranquillised.
For most of the encounter it had been hard to tell which side the crowd were tilting towards. Really, they just wanted it to go on as long as possible.
Muguruza, though, had no plans to oblige. As she left the court and entered the clubhouse she balanced the Venus Rosewater Dish on her head. Given the way she had just performed there was no way it was going to slip.
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