Williamses’ double escape

The unimaginable transpired Monday around quarter after 5 on Centre Court in the fourth round under mixed skies between rain delays: Serena Williams became a sympathetic figure.

A rich, glamorous, imperious, strong, towering 25-year-old woman with eight Grand Slam titles and marvelous jewelry ... nobody’s idea of an underdog ...

She crumpled surreally to the grass, wailed in pain from a screaming left calf, embodied vulnerability and dredged pity from her audience. When play resumed, she looked static and feeble, returning serves as witnesses shouted her name in encouragement.

When rain soon restarted, people cheered; they knew it might help her.

That’s right.

Some people cheered a rain delay at Wimbledon, because they thought it might help Serena Williams.

The circumstances would qualify as singular. Two sisters with champion guts would qualify for the quarterfinals (Serena Williams) and the fourth round (Venus Williams). First, Venus Williams clambered back from a 5-3, third-set deficit, then Serena Williams strained back from being sprawled out on Centre Court, yowling enough to make even spectators wince.

That would qualify as a shouting day, even in the busy Williams lore.

“Honestly, I was literally saved by the rain,” Serena Williams said.

She’d led 6-2, 5-5 against Daniela Hantuchova, the world’s 12th-ranked player. She’d just fought back from 2-5. She’d just watched a Hantuchova forehand winner go up the line and right on by to give the Slovakian a 30-15 lead in a Hantuchova service game. Williams had just pivoted.

Then she’d faltered to the grass with either a cramp or a monster spasm. The crowd went from wishing for a third set for its pricey British pounds to a gasp and a murmur.

Spectator Venus Williams, in a green sweat jacket, intermittently covered her eyes, then buried her head so you could see just the top of her white baseball cap. Richard Williams, their father, bolted upright to look and then bolted out of the tunnel. For nine minutes she lay there letting out frightful sounds, joined by a trainer, by chair umpire Kader Nouni, a bag of ice and, close by for a moment, Hantuchova.

“I’ve never dealt with such pain,” Williams said.

After the trainer helped her on the halting path to upright, she played as if propped up. She didn’t budge toward a Hantuchova ace up the middle for 40-15, trudged to the deuce court and flicked so meekly at Hantuchova’s next serve that the crowd sighed sympathy.

By the time Nouni called, “Time,” after the changeover, Williams returned in a big, white bandage not included in her clothing contracts.

She held serve.

Really.

Two service winners that fetched long returns, one gimpy backhand drop volley, one 110-mph ace on game point, and one happy scream.

Then they drifted into a second-set tiebreaker, Williams conducting pronounced stretching exercises just before every point, double-faulting once and going down 4-0. She halved that deficit but still looked wooden in drizzle as she held two balls, preparing to serve, when the drizzle thickened, and some cheered, and Nouni suspended play, and Williams hobbled out holding only her racket and the two balls, leaving her tennis bag back at the chair.

When the players returned about 100 minutes later, scattered voices in the crowd shouted, “Serena!” but Hantuchova picked up three quick points and clinched the set on an ace that smacked the doubles line, its returner static.

The Williams family day had gone full cringe.

As play began Monday, Venus Williams led Akiko Morigami of Japan, 6-2, 1-4, in a leftover from Saturday. Morigami held out for the second set, 6-3, then led 2-6, 6-3, 5-3, when Williams pushed a second serve just long on break point for her 14th double fault.

“What happened?” Williams said. “What happened was I got down 3-5 and had to correct it quickly, so I made the correction.”

As if remembering who she was, she won eight of the next nine points to bolt back to 5-5, then saved two game points in the next game and two break points in the next with a fine barrage suggestive of the year 2001 for a 6-2, 3-6, 7-5 win. Ten of her last 12 first serves darted in, including her last four.

“Obviously she’s a champion,” said Morigami, who also said of Williams, “She was really long. I mean, everything long. Long arm, long legs. Everything for her is maybe three steps and me, I have to move maybe 10 more steps than her. I was like, gosh, she’s so long.”

Williams, in turn, credited Morigami for most of her difficulty, then Richard Williams, in turn, did not credit Venus with much chance to win Wimbledon if she continues in such passive mode. Then they and mother Oracene Price turned up at Serena Williams’ match as if they’d not had enough melodrama.

Hantuchova presumed Williams renewed. “I don’t think there can be too much wrong when you serve 120 miles an hour,” she said. Williams said it would’ve “felt weird if I hadn’t tried,” and that scans had shown no damage. Her fluidity did resume steadily, and she held forth in a 12-shot rally, two nine-shot rallies and an eight-shot rally, among others.

The third set went to 2-2 in a festival of truncated points. In that fourth game, Hantuchova fashioned a drop shot that really irked Williams even though she admitted she’d have done it herself. Some spectators treated Williams as an underdog, hollering such reinforcement as, “One break, Serena!”

Then this epic had nothing else, except a sky that darkened from gray toward black as the clock passed 8.

“I just kept saying to myself, ‘One more game, one more game,’ until finally there were no more games left,” she said. She hoarded the last four games, the last three from deuces, for a 6-2, 6-7 (2-7), 6-2 win. Her every point brought her father to his feet.

And when an I-mean-business Williams backhand, cross-court return coaxed a netted backhand from Hantuchova, Venus Williams bounded up alongside her father, a case of one champion applauding another, leaving only Serena’s answer to a question of how she’d feel if she’d lost to a hobbling opponent.

She said, “If she was Serena Williams, I wouldn’t feel that bad.”

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