Dent’s Long Comeback Isn’t Over
“That will be the match of the tournament,” said Bud Collins, the tennis pundit and historian who, at age 80, has seen enough tournaments to know.
Whatever weird and wondrous things happen from here at Flushing Meadows, Taylor Dent’s Five-Set, 4-hour-12-minute journey to victory on the Grandstand Court against the Spaniard Ivan Navarro certainly seemed like the match of the tournament so far.
It was a treat on many levels.
There was deep human interest: Not long ago, Dent was bedridden with a debilitating back problem that had stopped his career — apparently for good — and would eventually require three surgeries.
There was a now-exotic style of play: Both men, including Navarro, served and volleyed for much of the match, bringing arcane tactics like the chip-and-charge back to life.
There were quirks: Navarro used different rackets for service games and return games. Dent broke the buckle on the net with one of his monster serves and then helped consult on the repair job.
There was suspense: Dent saved a match point in the fifth-set tie breaker and needed four of his own to finally finish off Navarro with a chipped backhand return winner down the line to win, 6-4, 5-7, 6-7 (1), 7-5, 7-6 (9).
Above all, for the Open buzz seeker, there was raw, hard-earned emotion. Dent was shouting with a mixture of delight and release before his crisply struck final shot had even landed, and he was soon grabbing the chair umpire’s microphone — a potential postmatch first for a player — and letting the rowdy crowd know the depth of his feelings: “You guys are unbelievable! I love you!”
The television interview done, Dent jogged around the perimeter of the court, slapping hands with his public, which never filled the Grandstand but certainly filled it with sound.
“They never stopped being kind of my third leg out on the court,” Dent said. “They were just with me the whole time. When I started to turn it around, I mean, the emotions just boil over here. The U.S. Open is such a unique experience for a tennis player. It’s really unbelievable that I have the privilege to experience it.”
Players ranked 196th in the world don’t often get the chance to do so, but Dent has taken his wild card from the United States Tennis Association and transformed it into an unlikely spot in the third round against No. 2 seed Andy Murray.
Bring on the night. Bring on Ashe Stadium. Bring on all the things that Dent, the son of the former Australian Star Phil Dent, understandably believed were gone for good when his muscular body betrayed him at a time when he should have been reaching his tennis peak.
“When I kind of bit the bullet and decided to go with the fusion surgery, I didn’t do it to play tennis,” he said of his second operation, in March 2007. “The doctors told me that I would not be playing tennis if I did that surgery. So at that stage, it was just kind of like, ‘O.K., well these are the cards I’m dealt. Let’s not mope and whine about it. I have to have this surgery to lead an active lifestyle. No problem.’
“First one didn’t go well. Second one ended up going well. The doctors said, ‘It healed up very well. You should try to hit some balls.’ I got too excited. I definitely got too excited. My eyes lit up. I got out on the court later that day. That was probably the toughest moment for me, just to see how far I had lost, how much I’d lost.
“I sat down after two minutes of hitting, and I’m just like, ‘Phew.’ That’s kind of when I had the talk with myself. ‘Do I even want to do this? I have lost everything. I’m getting winded after 30 seconds of hitting balls up and down the court. I’m hitting the ball terrible. I have no confidence. I haven’t even hit serves yet, which is the biggest part of my game.’”
A year and a half later, Dent is winning four-hour marathons and preparing to face one of the game’s biggest stars with a spot in the second week at United States Open a possibility, however unlikely.
“I honestly don’t know how I’m going to fare against Murray, but I will guarantee everybody this,” Dent said. “If I lose, 6-0, 6-0, 6-0, I’m going to die fighting for every point.
“My execution isn’t at the level that I would like to go into a match playing Andy Murray, so I’m going to make up for that with just pure grit and toughness.”
A few more serves in the 140-mile-per-hour range wouldn’t hurt either, and Dent was slamming in plenty of them down the stretch against Navarro: a flashy 27-year-old Spanish journeyman who had managed to weather the huge serve of the 6-foot-10 Croatian Ivo Karlovic in the first round only to come up against more of the same on Friday.
The problem, from Dent’s perspective, was that though Navarro’s first serve was not nearly so intimidating, Navarro wasn’t missing many: putting a remarkable 81 percent of his first serves into play and very rarely missing a volley he didn’t have a good reason for missing.
“I felt like kicking him on the changeovers,” joked Dent.
But in the end, the only one kicking Navarro was himself. At age 27, with a ranking of 119 and an outmoded style, you don’t get too many chances to get into the third round of a Grand Slam tournament for the first time.
He was one point away at 9-8 in the final tie breaker, but Dent put a first serve into play and then knocked a forehand volley for a winner. At 9-9, they changed ends again with the crowd on its feet chanting “Dent!”
An ace up the middle for the Californian made it 10-9, and then came another first serve from Navarro and one of the sweeter moments of Dent’s 28-year existence as his backhand slice floated beyond the Spaniard’s reach.
“Match of the tournament,” Collins reminded Dent.
Dent grinned, which was nothing unusual at this stage. “You’ll see a better one in two days, Bud,” he said.
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