NEW YORK -- Absurdly, after 947 tour matches, after 55 singles titles, after giving birth and coming back, after 18 long, competent years serving into that square on the other side of the net in tour events, Lindsay Davenport on Friday night ran across her first case of the serving yips.
Arthur Ashe Stadium seemed to squirm, and pretty soon the woman departing her comeback U.S. Open by throwing her racket to the concrete on her way to the handshake would be not some hothead but, of all people, Lindsay Davenport.
"I just never felt comfortable out there," she said.
Serving at 5-5 in her 6-1, 7-6 (3) loss to 13th-ranked Marion Bartoli of France, having just fended off a match point in the 5-3 game by striking a protesting ace, Davenport began by double-faulting for love-15. Then she double-faulted for love-30. Next, she double-faulted for love-40.
She walked around in a little circle, placed a hand on a hip. How could this be after all this time? And while she made a second serve and fought back to three deuces, she double-faulted again -- net, net -- to lose the game.
"I've never had what I guess they call the 'yips' on your serve," she said. "I don't know where it came from. Probably came from all my years making fun of people that had it. That was my karma coming back."
While she managed to break Bartoli's serve in the 12th game, the gutted confidence leaked into her groundstrokes, and soon in the tiebreaker she plunked a forehand into the net, threw the racket aside, touched hands with Bartoli, shook her head at a TV interview request, grabbed her large red bag, walked off and waved to an ovation just before the tunnel.
Her future? "All I know is I have doubles at 2:30 tomorrow," she said.
Without yips, she might've made a run through an ever-opening draw. With No. 1 Ana Ivanovic gone and No. 5 Maria Sharapova absent, the summer of haywire in the women's game persisted on Friday when No. 3-seeded Svetlana Kuznetsova fell to No. 28-seeded Katarina Srebotnik of Slovakia, 6-3, 6-7 (1), 6-3.
No. 2 Jelena Jankovic squeaked past 37th-ranked Wimbledon semifinalist Jie Zheng, 7-5, 7-5, closing by winning an 11-deuce game, and No. 6 Elena Dementieva sustained her chance to climb through the wreckage all the way to No. 1, reaching the fourth round with a 6-3, 6-4 win over Anne Keothavong of Great Britain.
