Meant to post this earlier this week! Ah well, better late than never :)

I love the bit about Marion wanting to go to the ball!!


Star quality is no match for Venus

By Sue Mott

This was the equality Wimbledon. The women achieved equal prize-money with the men, the weather was like that on Uist and the ladies' singles finalists arrived on Centre Court with identical bouquets.

Thereafter the similarities were less marked. One, it turned out, was four years younger, seven inches shorter, a good deal dumpier, $15 million poorer, six years less experienced and the owner of nil grand slam singles titles while her rival has five. It was the sort of equality a patient has with the dentist while he's holding the drill.

So Venus Williams, in one hour and 30 minutes, made it six grand slam titles, though it was not as one-sided as you might think. Although Marion Bartoli, of France, the most unexpected women's Wimbledon finalist in years, was eventually overwhelmed, subsumed, by Williams' power, she made a good old fight of it. The Centre Court crowd, bathed in astonishing sunlight, another unexpected event, applauded and cheered her every point. She may not have been a match for Williams' brutal physicality but she shared a crucial ingredient: spirit.

So after all the rain, hail, wind, injuries and moaning Russians, we had a women's final to savour. The equal prize-money issue faded away because, quite simply, Venus can out-serve half the men. As Bartoli ruefully commented afterwards: "She served 120mph on first serve. Sometimes was hurting my wrist so bad because the ball was coming so fast to me. I can't say a player can beat her when she play like this on grass. I mean, it's not possible to beat her. She's just too good."

At no point, however, did Bartoli hang her head. Having shamelessly enlisted the support of a Hollywood actor she spotted in the crowd during her extraordinary defeat of world No 1, Justine Henin, the day before, we understood her to be a feisty character.

Pierce Brosnan duly supplied a bouquet and a note to the ladies' locker-room before the final. Despite that inspiration she went 0-3 down in the first set to sympathetic silence and everyone was thinking: "Uh-oh, we'll be in the Pimm's tent in half an hour." Bartoli's thoughts, however, were more positive.

Despite Venus having the reach of a condor and the ferocity of Alistair Campbell spotting an off-message Labour MP, Bartoli levelled the scores, then saved a set point and took a reasonable six games off the champion in the end. She cried a little when it was over. Her father, a doctor and her devoted coach, cried a great deal more. He had to be consoled in the players' box by Richard Williams, who squashed him into a bear hug. This may have made him cry even more, in sheer rib-busting pain.

Bartoli explained later that these were not tears of relief or release. She was miserable because she lost. "I want this title so bad. I want it so much. For me to hold this trophy in your hands, this is the best reward you can ever imagine. To be able to go to the ball and wear the dress and be with the men's champion, I want it so bad, and I lost." She sounded like Cinderella. She so wanted to go to the ball.

Perhaps she will in future, when Venus is off on one of her interplanetary missions or retired, because Bartoli does have star quality. During one long interruption when both players were treated for injury - the Frenchwoman due to a blister and Venus for a thigh strain - Bartoli came back to the court first and joined in a Mexican wave. Of these little moments are life-long favourites made.

Perhaps her shape also struck a chord with the crowd. More Friar Tuck than Maid Marion, she was unusually rounded for a top-class athlete. The American journalists, ineffably polite, were trying to find an acceptable way to describe her to their audience. They arrived at "normal-looking". The horrid English just said she was a bit tubby. But it made her intelligent use of angles all the more transparent and it was just her immense hard luck that Venus can chase from side to side like a cheetah on the run.

The wonderful thing for Bartoli is that no one saw her coming. Seeded 18th, she had lost 10 tournaments this year in the first or second round. She had never reached beyond the fourth round in any grand slam tournament. She was more a surprise finalist than her compatriot, Nathalie Tauziat, the 16th seed, who lost to Jana Novotna in 1998.

The 2007 final could have been a terrible non-event. The men's semi-finals were already disappointing because Roger Federer simply cruised past Richard Gasquet and Novak Djokovic had to retire injured against Rafael Nadal. Bartoli went quite a way to restoring the wonder of Wimbledon, damaged as it has been by rooflessness and rain.

She sounded a little overwhelmed by the end. "Everything start to become a little too much," she admitted. "But tomorrow I'll be back at home. We'll be in a much quieter place. I won't have the Centre Court in my house or be playing in the final of Wimbledon. I'll be in my garden with my cat and everything will come back as usual. I think it's very good stuff to put you back to earth."

The perfect expression. Miss Bartoli at Wimbledon has been very good stuff indeed.