Whew!

Few would have predicted before Venus played Jelena Jankovic that Jankovic would be the player who seemed to have the much greater wingspan.
But time and time again tonight, Jankovic was getting ball after ball back. It seemed like she almost had magic extendo hands on some shots and those splits were straight out of the circus.
Jerry Seinfeld was in the crowd and Jankovic had more smiles on the court than a stand-up comic. It is hard to pull against Jankovic. She's likeable and has good instincts, telling the obnoxiously partisan fans from her country to stop heckling Venus during Venus' serve. Jankovic at one moment actually was holding up a hand to keep them quiet. And keeping loose and jovial surprisingly didn't seem to be Jankovic's undoing just before she held serve leading up to the tiebreak. Part of me was thinking, shoulldn't she be taking this more seriously?
On the other side of the net, professional and gracious as ever, Venus was hardly cracking a smile. Her game face was on and that look said it all--there wasn't anything funny about being down much of the third set.
Despite how likeable Jankovic is and her easy breezy manner reminiscent of Guga Kuerten and Natasha Zvereva, I couldn't help cheering every point Venus won. It was her second win in a third-set tiebreaker, the first coming near the start of her career against Irina Spirlea 10 years ago. It's tough to think about Venus having a limited window of time left to win more U.S. Opens, but it's a shorter window of time than a surface that fits her game as perfectly as Wimbledon's grass does.
Venus seemed to lose her footing periodically. And Venus was fiddling with her shorts more than Nadal typically does. As for her game, Venus looked uncertain from time to time, but then suddenly toward the end of the third set seemed to have this look of OK, I know what to do and I'm going to do it. And then she did.
Venus finally, finally stopped hitting balls long and in the net or wide and brought the A game that she displayed in the second set to the third set tiebreaker, apart from a few loose shots here and there. Her inside out forehand and cross-court forehand started paying dividends.
There will be more chips on the table for Venus very soon. It has been four years since Venus has played Justine Henin. Venus' record is dominant: 7-1. But she will need her A game from start to finish in that match if she wants to seize the opportunity before her and be holding the championship trophy high three nights from now.