Tennis: Serena Puts a Lid on the Passion

For virtually the whole of last year women's tennis at grand slam level was in a state of flux, the one constant being the steady rise of the Russians who between them won three of the four slam titles.

This lack of individual continuity or dominance was reflected at the beginning of the Australian Open. The two top seeds were California's Lindsay Davenport, who had not won a major title for five years and was teetering on the brink of retirement, and Amélie Mauresmo of France, who had never won a slam and appeared in her one and only final here six years ago.

At least Davenport fulfilled her seeding, yet throughout the fortnight, including much of the final, she gave the impression of wanting to be anywhere but on a tennis court.

It would have been better for the tournament by far if she had lost to Australia's Alicia Molik in the quarter-finals, which she might have done but for one of the many indifferent line calls throughout this fortnight.

Rightly or wrongly, it seems inevitable that technology will be called upon to arbitrate over controversial calls in the near future, although the current system remains imperfect, principally because more cameras are needed to track the flight of the ball, and that is costly.

Nevertheless Paul McNamee, the Australian Open chief executive, believes a system will be in use, presumably on the show courts alone, by next year. "I think it should be used for point-ending challenges, otherwise you would have machines calling the lines and that is not where the sport wants to go."

Geoff Pollard, president of Tennis Australia and chairman of the International Tennis Federation's rules committee, remains concerned about the implementation of technology. "From what we have seen we are pretty confident they will meet the standards of accuracy required. The problem is deciding how to use them.

"You might have a situation where a player is allowed to challenge one call per set. But then you have to decide whether the player might lose a point if he is wrong. There are all sorts of things open to negotiation." Two systems, Hawkeye and Auto-Ref, are currently being tested by the ITF. Whether tennis will thereby become a better game is arguable.

Just as the phrase "feeling a bit under the weather" signifies a general personal malaise, so "feeling a bit under the roof" might be best used as a description of Saturday's mediocre final, won by Serena Williams 2-6, 6-3, 6-0.

On this occasion it was not the extreme heat but rain which caused the organisers to close the roof and turn this into an indoor final, as happened two years ago when Serena Williams beat her sister Venus. Another technological triumph, but it ruins the atmosphere. Confronted by questions concerning her commitment to the sport she dominated in 2002-03, winning five of the eight slam titles over those two years, including four in succession, Serena only spasmodically approached the level of her best tennis, most noticeably against Russia's Maria Sharapova in the semi-finals.

And yet she was still good enough to beat three of the top four seeds in succession and reclaim the title she won two years ago, the culmination of the so-called "Serena Slam". The WTA, the women's ruling body which has only recently landed an $88m (£46.6m) global sponsorship with Sony Ericsson, continues to stress the "strength in depth" of its game, but there were many times over the past fortnight when it looked more like a levelling off.