What Makes a Champ? Don't Ask Safina

NEW YORK -- You can be cocky, polite or crude. You can be defiant, petulant, single-minded or worldly. You can be a sportsman or a cheat.

There are so many different personalities, mindsets and mannerisms for champions.

Whatever it is that matters most, though, whatever the common thread, it's just not in Dinara Safina.

"I serve, and then sometimes I don't even think what I'm doing," she said Tuesday, after squeaking past young Olivia Rogowska, who seems to have won one match in her career. Safina won 6-7 (7-5), 6-2, 6-4 in the first round of the U.S. Open. "I double-fault and I look at my coach, like, and he's like...

"I know what I have to do, but I just don't do it. And then at the changeover, it's like, 'Please, just look at the ball to the end.' "

Whatever is in the mind of a champion, that's not it.

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The Curse of No. 1 has hit again on the women's tour. In the past 16 months, since Justine Henin retired, the top ranking has been fumbled around from player to player like a hot potato.

Maria Sharapova to Ana Ivanovic to Jelena Jankovic, back to Ivanovic to Serena Williams, to Jankovic, to Williams and then to Safina.

She holds it now, and I would say it won't last, but no matter how hard she tries to fumble it away, no one seems inclined to take it.

What has happened to all of these people? Different things. Williams, the best player, doesn't try during non-majors and doesn't stay fit enough to play every day, so she can't keep enough computer points.

Sharapova got hurt. Jankovic decided to use her ranking as a starting point, and added 15 pounds of muscle. "It made me much slower," she told me Tuesday, after winning her first-round match. "I really felt awkward on the court.

"I thought I was going to be better being stronger, but it made me worse. I play my best tennis when I'm light on my foot, when I'm dynamic, when I can move."

Ivanovic had the ranking and then suddenly developed the yips on her toss. She could not simply lay the ball up in the air where she needed it to serve.

In other words, No. 1 crushed her. And that's what is happening to Safina.

Her match Tuesday could have been a colossal upset. It would have been the first time a woman seeded No. 1 lost in the first round of the Open.

Last year, No. 1 Ivanovic lost in the second round.

What happened to Safina? She choked, but her opponent, in way over her head, choked more.

It was awful, two players afraid to win. On one crucial point, Rogowska had an easy overhead, but couldn't bring herself to swing hard and just poked it back.

"My heart was just going crazy," she said. "And I was breathing very fast."

She almost beat Safina anyway.


The two combined for 113 unforced errors, more than half of the match's 217 points. They had 24 double-faults and 15 service breaks.

Rogowska moved in to return Safina's serve. She described Safina's serve as crumbling under that pressure. Safina is the worst No. 1 ever, the least like a champion. Ivanovic wasn't much of a No. 1, either, but she had an aura, a look, and a major.

Safina's ranking has been a controversy since the minute she got it, when she apologized for it. She has not won a major, and if you can't win in the biggest moments, if you're not a champion, then how can you be No. 1?

It's because she builds up enough computer points in the non-majors, fighting all year.

For so long, it looked as if Safina, who's 23, hadn't won a major because there's a learning curve for such things. She was getting there.

Now, her arrow has turned down, as she falls to the Curse of No. 1.

I thought she was going to be the one. But it was the French Open final where she lost it. Panicking, she turned to her coach in the stands during the match, nearly in tears, and asked him why she was "such a chicken."

Look, I have a young daughter, and tennis, more than any other sport, provides great examples to young girls. Strong, independent, athletic, intelligent women fighting alone. And then the No. 1 player provides that scene.

Until she wins a major, that's going to be the image of this No. 1.

On Tuesday, when Safina looked up to coach Zeljko Krajan, he would turn his head or grimace. In the past, he has called her names.

And maybe that's a fine motivational tool for some, but Safina has absorbed the negativity, and believes every bad thing now.

Do you respond better to negativity or to a positive approach?

"We'll skip this answer," she said.

Well, it's hard to say what's so hard about No. 1. Jankovic said she didn't feel pressure from it. But it did make her alter her approach entirely. Ivanovic still can't toss. Sharapova's trying to come back, and Williams won't bother taking it.

Safina is it. And she pointed out that at least she won Tuesday. There will be another day.

Another day for the curse.

Email me at gregcouch09@aol.com