D2 EZ M2 THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 7 , 2019
EDUARDO MUNOZ ALVAREZ/ASSOCIATED PRESS
The first set was a bit tough for Rafael Nadal against Matteo Berrettini, but he cruised after that and will face Daniil Medvedev in the final.Evert: “A nd that’ll go with the
dad.”
Even the decision to come back
distinguishes those who do.
“Once I had children,” Evert said,
“I never wanted to do anything
else but just be a mom. And I
couldn’t e nvision myself, I actual-
ly remember, I felt like, when I
was pregnant... every woman is
like: ‘Oh, I’ve never felt so good!
And my skin and my hair! And I
have so much energy!’ ”
Shriver laughed.
“Okay,” Evert said. “I felt like...
I don’t know what word to use
here. I was the opposite. I felt big
and bloated, and I didn’t have
energy, a nd I just didn’t f eel great.
So I kept thinking to myself, when
I have this child, I’m going to go
play team tennis because that was
an option. I did. Yeah. I’m going to
go play some team tennis. I had
talked to Billie Jean [King], and
there’s like three or four weeks in
the summer, and I’m going to go
play. Once I had that baby, I was
like: ‘No team tennis. I want to be
here 24 hours.’ You know, I just
wanted to be a mom. My nesting
instincts took over. So that’s why I
admire Evonne, Margaret, Sere-
na, I admire Kim Clijsters for
being able to do that. I don’t t hink
I could do that. I feel like I could
only do one thing well.”
In that light, Williams didn’t
sound cheeky when she said, on
her way to the final: “Yeah, I think
it’s cool that I’ve been in more
finals than I think anyone on tour
after being pregnant. That’s kind
of awesome. That’s currently on
tour [smiling]. I kind of look at it
that way because it’s not easy to
go through what I did and come
back and so fast. To keep playing,
to also not be 20 years old, yeah,
I’m pretty proud of myself.”
[email protected]“We’re talking over a hundred,
well over a hundred majors, and
you think that, you know, not one
mom won a singles major. Well,
one of the things to me, it makes it
difficult, is the choice women
have to make is, if they’re going to
play a long, full career, you’re
missing prime time to have a
baby.
“That ended up happening to
me where, because of my tennis,
it just got really late in the game,
and I ended up needing a lot of
help to try to have [a baby]. It
didn’t just happen.”
Evert saw Goolagong, an ath-
lete of rarefied ease, as a rarefied
case: “Only Evonne because she
was just so carefree” and had a
supportive husband.
She said to Shriver, “Can you
imagine playing?”
Shriver: “Some people would
be better. Actually, I think about
Martina [Navratilova], how she
could compartmentalize, you
know, with whatever was going
on.”
Evert: “Yeah. She’s perfect.
She’s great at that. Yeah.”
Shriver: “I actually think she
could have, had a difficult situa-
tion going on with your kid,
whether it was a high fever or.. .”
Evert: “Whatever. Smoking
weed or whatever.”
Shriver: “Depending on the
age. Smaller kids, smaller prob-
lems. Bigger kids, bigger prob-
lems.”
Evert: “A nd then there’s the
sleeping issue. You have a baby.
Or you have a young [child].
Hands-on. I had to be hands-on,
24 h ours a day. T hat’s just how I’m
different.”
Shriver: “You want a baby that
sleeps well. You want a baby that’s
easy to be put down to sleep and
sleeps a lot.”Not that it’s not a priority now,
but now she feels less guilty about
leaving to play tennis because she
feels [her daughter] doesn’t de-
pend as much on her as when she
was really small. So maybe this I
would not expect.”
Unlike Court or Goolagong or
Clijsters, who all gave birth in
their 20s before resuming, or
Williams, who gave birth at 35
before resuming, Evert and Shriv-
er played long careers, stopped
for good and then became moth-
ers, Evert first at 3 6, Shriver at 4 2.
Each has three children, Evert’s
in their 20s, Shriver’s in their
teens.
“I have to say,” Evert said, “I
didn’t know what to expect when
Serena got pregnant and was
going to have a baby and come
back because I thought, ‘Ohhhh,
you have no idea.’ You don’t know
the love. You’ve never felt that
kind of love before and that tug-
ging at the heartstrings. So, you
know, it’s taken her a while. And
it’s still tough for her. But at least
she’s got a goal, so she’s going for
it.”
Shriver marvels at the twin
endurances going on as with Wil-
liams, calling motherhood “one of
the most endurance-ridden as-
signments that you have in life.”
She remembers finding it more
routine as an 18-year-old in 1980,
when Goolagong beat Evert, 6-1,
7-6 (7-4), in the Wimbledon final
— “A fluke,” Evert joked — and
forged a conversation as the first
mother since Dorothea Lambert
Chambers in 1914 to win Wimble-
don. Shriver then remembers
feeling surprise that when Cli-
jsters resurfaced in 2009, it had
been...
“Twenty-nine times four,”
Shriver said, noting the interim
between Goolagong and Clijsters.from hearing Williams and Evert
and Shriver and others, it also
appears that, like so many other
areas in life, the hurdles vary in
size and by person.
Clijsters, for one, won the 2009
U.S. Open and described the
physical rigors, referring to “the
core, the lower back area, that
was always something that was
very strong, but after pregnancy,
that just — yeah, it just goes.”
She told of withstanding waves
of “the most boring exercises
ever,” beginning that previous
winter.
Williams certainly has spoken
of the physical while straining to
three defeats in Grand Slam fi-
nals since Sept. 1, 2017, when she
gave birth. Briefly unable to re-
member dropping a 2018 Wim-
bledon final against Angelique
Kerber, Williams said Thursday
night: “Oh. That doesn’t count.
God, I had, like, an 8-month-old.”
Ye t while moving into another
final at 37 opposite 19-year-old
Canadian revelation Bianca An-
dreescu, Williams has mentioned
the emotional roadblocks. At one
point in a considerable descrip-
tion of what Shriver calls “a very
unusual workplace juggle,” Wil-
liams told of a worry many might
not have pinpointed:
“I don’t want her to forget me.”
“The first months are very dif-
ficult after the birth,” said Wil-
liams’s coach, Patrick Mourato-
glou, soon adding: “She was feel-
ing that the baby needed her a lot
because a young baby is very
weak, and I think as a mother you
feel like you need to be here all the
time to protect the baby. Whenev-
er she was not here because she
needed to practice or to play a
match, she was feeling guilty....U.S. OPEN FROM D1TELEVISION AND RADIO
COLLEGE FOOTBALL, SEE PAGE D5
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TRACK AND FIELD
Lyles adds 200 title
at Diamond League
T.C. Williams High graduate
Noah Lyles raced to the 2 00-
meter t itle at t he Diamond
League finals Friday in Brussels,
extending his winning r un ahead
of the world championships.
A chilly evening was hardly
good preparation for Qatar’s h eat,
but s teady r ain a nd s tomach
pains tested Lyles to clock
19.74 s econds. O nly two other
men have been faster this season.
A little legal wind assistance
helped c arry the gold medal
favorite w ithin 0.24 of his
personal record, set in July in
Lausanne, Switzerland.
The defending w orld
champion, Ramil Guliyev of
Turkey, was l evel with Lyles deep
into the straightaway a nd was
pulled through to his season-best
time of 19.86 as runner-up.
Lyles won the Diamond League
100-meter t itle last week.
The world championships start
Sept. 2 7 in Doha, Qatar....
Caster Semenya signed with a
South African soccer club and
may be considering g iving u p
track a nd field.
The Olympic 800-meter
champion, w ho is in a legal battle
with the IAAF over her right to
compete w ithout taking
testosterone-suppressing
medication, said she h as joined
Johannesburg-based w omen’s
club JVW F C. Next year’s Tokyo
Olympics are in July and August,
when the women’s s occer season
in South Africa w ill be in a ction.
Semenya is barred f rom
defending her 800 t itle a t this
month’s w orld c hampionships.
HOCKEY
Joe Thornton i s coming b ack
for a nother season at a ge 4 0,
signing a one-year, $2 million
contract with the S an Jose
Sharks.
Thornton, t he NHL’s 2005-06
MVP i n his first season with San
Jose after he was traded b y
Boston, has 413 goals and
1,065 assists in 1,566 career g ames
with the Bruins a nd S harks. He
ranks 14th in points a nd needs
just 22 to reach 1,500 for h is
career. He’s eighth in assists and
needs 15 to pass Adam Oates....
The NHL for the first time
selected four female officials to
work on the i ce a t prospect
tournaments t his w eekend.
Katie Guay and Kelly Cooke
were selected as referees, w hile
Kirsten Welsh and Kendall
Hanley will work as linesmen, the
league announced Friday.
The four were selected out of a
group of 96 officials, including
11 women, who participated in the
league’s a nnual officials exposure
combine last month i n Buffalo.
It’s t he f irst time w omen h ave
officiated a t the pre-training
camp prospects tournament
level. It’s t he n ext step in the
league’s b id to have women
officiate at t he NHL level....
The Carolina Hurricanes
signed defenseman Jake
Gardiner to a four-year c ontract
that will pay him a n average of
$4.05 million each season.
Gardiner, 29, had three g oals
and 2 7 assists while p laying
62 regular s eason games with
To ronto last season.
COLLEGES
Virginia Te ch’s 1 6th-ranked
men’s s occer team r aised its
record t o 3-0 b y defeating Loyola
(Md.), 2-1, i n the J MU Invitational
in Harrisonburg, Va. Daniel
Pereira scored in the f irst half for
the Hokies. After Barry Sharifi
tied it in t he 5 0th minute for t he
Greyhounds (0-3), James Kasak
scored t he w inner in the 7 0th....
Georgia approved an
$80 m illion e xpansion to its
sprawling football complex.
The 165,000-square-foot
operations building will include
coaches’ offices, an expansive
locker r oom a nd players’ l ounge,
a sports-medicine f acility, a much
larger weight room and a
multipurpose space to entertain
recruits. This is t he third major
project f or the f ootball p rogram
since Kirby Smart took over as
coach in 2016, at a total cost of
$173 m illion.AUTO RACING
Erik Jones signed a contract
extension with Joe Gibbs R acing
for t he 2020 season. Te rms of t he
deal were n ot announced.
The 23-year-old Jones has two
career NASCAR Cup S eries
victories in three-plus seasons
and 1 00 s tarts. He w on the July
race l ast year at D aytona
International S peedway a nd took
the c heckered flag last week a t
Darlington (S.C.) Raceway.PRO BASKETBALL
Diamond D eShields s cored a
career-high 30 points, a nd t he
Chicago S ky b eat the Connecticut
Sun, 109-104, i n overtime i n
Uncasville, Conn., t o hand t he top
seed in t he WNBA p layoffs t o the
Washington Mystics.
Chicago t ook a 34-33 lead i n
the h ighest-scoring first quarter
in league history.
Connecticut (23-10) e ntered
with a 15-1 h ome record b ut
dropped two games behind the
Mystics. All teams have o ne game
left t o play in the r egular s eason,
which e nds S unday....
Odyssey Sims scored 22 points
and g rabbed 1 1 rebounds a s the
Minnesota Lynx beat the host
Phoenix Mercury, 8 3-69, t o stay a
game ahead o f Seattle for sixth
place i n the WNBA standings....
The New York Liberty c linched
the b est chance to win the WNBA
draft lottery b y losing to the
Indiana Fever, 86-81, in White
Plains, N.Y. Kelsey Mitchell
scored 2 2 points to lead t he Fever.MISC.
Scottish rookie Robert
MacIntyre carded a bogey-free 7-
under-par 65 to take a four-stroke
lead after the s econd round of t he
European Tour’s E uropean Open
in Hamburg.
MacIntyre, tied f or third a fter
an opening 68 a t Green E agle Golf
Course, was f our shots c lear of
Germany’s Bernd Ritthammer ,
who shot a bogey-free 66 to sit at
7 under....
Also in Hamburg, Donyell
Malen scored in h is debut to lift
the Netherlands t o 4-2 win over
Germany that brought it closer to
qualifying for the E uropean
Championship.
It w as the f ourth time G ermany
and t he Netherlands m et i n
11 months.
Elsewhere, World C up finalist
Croatia r ecovered f rom a recent
slump to hammer host Slovakia,
4-0, in Trnava a nd close i n on a
qualification spot in G roup E.
Belgium s wept aside host San
Marino, 4-0, as it marches toward
qualification in Group I , and host
Slovenia beat Group G leader
Poland, 2-0, in Ljubljana to spoil
the Poles’ spotless qualifying
record....
Two Slovenians took charge of
the S panish Vuelta, with Tadej
Pogacar winning t he d ifficult
13th stage and Primoz Roglic
crossing the l ine just behind him
in Los Machucos, Spain, to
increase his overall l ead.
Roglic, a former ski jumper,
opened a gap of 2 minutes
25 seconds over Spaniard
Alejandro Valverde. Pogacar
moved into third place, more than
three minutes behind Roglic....
Chester Williams , the o nly
black p layer on S outh Africa’s
famed 1995 Rugby World Cup
winning team, died of a heart
attack. He w as 49.
Williams became one o f the
faces of the n ew S outh Africa
when the Springboks won t he
World Cup on home soil in front
of Nelson Mandela. It was just a
year after apartheid officially
ended and South A frica elected
Mandela as p resident i n its first
all-race e lections....
Abdul Qadir , a former Pakistan
cricketer who was widely regarded
as one of the greatest leg-spinners
in history, d ied of a cardiac arrest.
He w as 63.
— From news services
and staff reportsDIGESTBY CHUCK CULPEPPERnew york — A U.S. Open that
fumbled two of the renowned Big
Three in its first nine days some-
how wound up with a sparkler of
a final anyway. Second-ranked
Rafael Nadal will play No. 5
Daniil Medvedev, and anybody
counting the fait as accompli
before Sunday at 4 p.m. is guilty
of excessive napping.
Certainly, Nadal would be ev-
ery bit as favored as his upper
arms, with his 2019 season blos-
soming from an early night of
wreckage. At ages 32 and then 33
starting in June, he has reached
the Australian Open final (where
Novak Djokovic destroyed him),
the French Open title podium, a
Wimbledon semifinal and the
U.S. Open final as of Friday
night’s 7-6 (8-6), 6-4, 6-1 break-
down of Italian revelation Mat-
teo Berrettini.
Speaking of revelations, the
Djokovic-lessness and the Roger
Federer-lessness of it all didn’t
leave Nadal opposite somebody
scarily overmatched. It left him
playing Medvedev, the 6-foot-6
definition of lankiness, w hose 7-6
(7-5), 6-4, 6-3 win over longtime
Bulgarian stalwart Grigor Dim-
itrov exhibited Medvedev’s will
and pluck.
Nobody reaches 20-2 in a sum-
mertime hard-court season in
North America without will and
pluck, but there Medvedev
stands. He has beaten 12 top-40players, three top-10 players and
the players ranked first (Djok-
ovic) and fourth (Dominic Thi-
em) in a run through Washington
(to the final), Montreal (to the
final), Cincinnati (to the title)
and Flushing Meadows, to his
first Grand Slam final in his first
passage beyond a fourth round.
He will find an opponent playing
in his fifth U.S. Open and 27th
Grand Slam final, seeking titles
No. 4 and 19 in those abundant
categories, yet he will find one
who said, as did Nadal, “He’s the
player that is playing better to-
day on tour during the summer.”
By “better,” in his charming
second language, Nadal seemed
to mean “best,” and he said of
Medvedev, “He’s making steps
forward every single week,” t hose
steps including the Montreal fi-
nal where Nadal schooled Med-
vedev, 6 -3, 6 -0, another backdrop
here.
“He just fights right,” Dimitrov
said of Medvedev. “That’s it. He
puts every ball in the court.
Somehow he gets to the balls.
Doesn’t give you enough free
points. I think that’s the major
thing that I see right now.”
Medvedev’s capacity for es-
capes that seem almost illusory
turned up against Dimitrov in a
first set in which everyone
seemed to agree the Bulgarian
who ousted Federer p layed better
than the Russian who had
pounded through Stanislas
Wawrinka in the quarterfinals.In s eeking c lues as to why Medve-
dev won a set in which he got two
fewer points, you might look at
confidence. “The confidence
means a lot in this case,” Medve-
dev said, “because I do think he
was better player i n the first set. I
do think I was kind of lucky to
win it. Then the momentum
changed completely.”
He also said, “We had some
amazing level, I think.”
They had some amazing level,
all thought, but then Medvedev
proved superior even in the first
semifinal of a 23-year-old. And in
that way tennis undresses a per-
son and reveals some inner mox-
ie, he apparently has that, too,
having sparred a bit with New
York fans along his six-match
path to this pinnacle.
“It’s funny because actually
when I was like, I don’t remem-
ber, 6 or 7 [in Moscow], I liked
wrestling because I thought it’s
for real,” he said. “My parents
were like: ‘Why are you watching
this? This is just a show.’ I was
like, ‘No, they’re fighting for real.’
But I don’t think it has any —
how you say? — impact on what’s
been happening here. As I said
before, I want to be a better
person than I was a few days
here.”
His coach, Frenchman Gilles
Cervara, said he requires a differ-
ent, subtle kind of coaching and
called Medvedev both “smart”
and, a fter rummaging a round for
the English word, “subtle.” That’sright: A so-called villain who
gave a subtle finger to a third-
round crowd comes off as a guy
unusually personable and nice.
“Yeah, I will not say that I’m a
kind person or a good person,” he
said generously. “I can only say
that I’m a really calm person in
life. I actually have no idea why
the demons go out when I play
tennis.”
Demons are coming Sunday in
Nadal’s shots, which slowly wore
down Berrettini, who proved far
more impressive than perhaps
anticipated. That first-set tie-
breaker saw him arrange a 4-0
lead and two set points at 6-4
before he lost them against the
all-time fighter, including an ill-
advised drop shot that wobbled
into the net.
Berrettini, like Medvedev in a
first Grand Slam semifinal at 23,
also walked a rope for a good,
long while, saving the first nine
break points Nadal had against
him. Finally, a 10th came
th rough another dying-quail
drop shot, and when a low Ber-
rettini attempt went low into the
net, Nadal pumped those fists.
The match would show the
stresses of the Italian’s task in
that he served for 117 points,
while Nadal just 75. Break-point
rates: Nadal 4 for 16, Berrettini 0
for 0.
Such numbers do cause incon-
venience, especially against Na-
dal.
[email protected]U.S. OPENNadal and Medvedev earn their way into the final
For Williams, a title would be the mother of all feats