Wimbledon, England
Twenty-three years ago on Centre Court, a 22-year-old Martinez left 39-year-old Martina Navratilova a sighing runner-up in a blaze of passing shots almost shocking in their totality.
On Saturday, Martinez paid closeup witness to a blaze of blaze. A fellow Spaniard she has helped here, Garbine Muguruza, reiterated her deep seriousness about her tiptop caliber. By flashing her power in a powerful match with 37-year-old Venus Williams, especially during a ferocious late stage of the first set, Muguruza won her second Grand Slam title, 7-5, 6-0, and left Williams a sighing runner-up.
As Muguruza upped her record in Wimbledon finals to 1-1, the process began hotly and ended strangely, when Muguruza challenged a line call on a Williams backhand to the baseline on match point and got to fall to the grass only after the Hawk-Eye video screen proved her accurate.
While she remained on her knees with her face in her hands, Williams walked steadily to the net to await their hug. The scene, and the 6-0 score that precipitated it, would have seemed impossible minutes before.
“Well-done today, beautiful,” Williams said on court afterward to Muguruza, the first Spanish female champion here since Martinez.
Her bid to become the oldest Wimbledon champion in 109 years did seem on pace through much of the first set. When she held serve for a 5-4 lead, she had faced only one break point in the final and had held serve in 43 out of her last 45 games since the third round. When she held two set points on Muguruza’s serve at 5-4 and 15-40, she had reached a stage she might remember with winces for a while.
Right then, the will of the 23-year-old revealed its towering size. There came a dazzling 20-shot rally of bangs and grunts, the thwacking sound of the ball ringing through Centre Court with its roof closed in a London drizzle. After so many well-struck shots, it ended with Williams shipping a forehand from the middle of the baseline to the net.
When Muguruza placed a 98-mph serve beautifully up the middle and Williams lunged to shove it long, Muguruza had held onto her half of the set, and her driving forehands from there helped her win middle-length rallies.
The next game seemed to sap the starch from her. It ended on a stirring 15-shot rally full of intent when Williams sent a forehand long. Muguruza knelt slightly with a fist pump, and she was on her way to standing as the winner and directing messages toward Williams and her absent coach, Sam Sumyk.
Of Williams, she said, “She’s such an incredible player. I grew up watching her play.” When the audience laughed, she added, “Sorry,” as Williams smiled.
And when the BBC’s Sue Barker asked Muguruza if she had a message for Sumyk, who is awaiting the birth of a child, Muguruza held up the Venus Rosewater dish that goes to the winner and said, “Here it is.”