WTA Championships: 10 Post-Istanbul Thoughts

1) A Slam, A Premier-Mandatory, A Premier, A couple of International titles and, of course, the WTA Championships.




That’s a win at every level, and on every surface. Look even closer and you’ll see she also snuck in a straight sets win over Kim Clijsters back in February.

No Premier-5 though – I say she’s not trying hard enough.

You might have pronounced Petra ‘player of the year’ last week even if she hadn’t won Istanbul. You’d be a fool not to now.  Caro? Stosur? Li? Kim? No one even comes close.

2) Her play wasn’t always as stellar as it was, say, at Wimbledon (where she only dropped one set – also to Azarenka).

But in terms of finding that elusive middle ground, that ability to win matches without recourse to her thermonuclear A-Game, it was arguably more impressive. More impressive and more beneficial, I’d say, than blitzing any number of top-tenners in straights.

3) Petra saved 4 BPs in the opening game of the final set. Vika was well into her stride by then.



In the ‘What If?’ scenario that sees Vika convert one of those BPs, it’s not a stretch to conceive of her going on to win the title. The 6-3  scoreline doesn’t do justice to how close that final set sometimes got.

4) Number one ranking?

Petra has to defend Brisbane (280 pts), an Aussie Open QF (500 pts) and Paris (470)….and all of that’s just by the first week of February.

For all the “Caro’s days are numbered” jibes, dislodging her might prove harder than you think.

There may only be 115 pts in it, Petra may be a better player than Caro, she may even be the “enSlammed” #1 we’ve been waiting for – and Lord knows we’ve put in the miles – even so, defending points is a whole different dynamic, and not one I’m especially confident Petra’s suited to.

Besides, you know who else knows how to put in the miles? Caro. It’s what she does. Give her that, if nothing else.

5) Vika may have more flair (and more tongue) than Caro, but she suffers from exactly the same problem vis-à-vis the big hitters, which, of course, includes Petra. 

That’ll probably continue to be a problem, certainly in respect of Serena.

Even so, her second set against Serena at the USO (the one after she got breadsticked) was probably the best you’ll see all year; and no one that saw the final last week will dispute there were even times against Petra where she seemed to give as good as she got. 

That might, you know, come in handy next year.

6) If you’re going to rip on Caro for not performing at the Slams then you must, by the same token, have something to say on those that are unable to perform outside of them. Quid pro quo.

I’ve done my share of defending the WTA from unnecessary flak, but Li and Stosur’s top ten ranking comes with air quotes until further notice.


The only reason Sam didn’t receive more censure for her epic meltdown against Vika (group stages)  is that it was eclipsed by Li’s more cataclysmic one only a day later.

Not to be unkind but, with Pova’s injury, Stosur making the semis was more coincidental than anything else – heaven knows how she might (or might not) have fared against Bartoli.

7) Bepa’s opener against Caro was the single best set of tennis in the entire championships – her final set against Aga was the single most monumental choke.

The dramedy of blowing 3 match points over 3 masochistic sets is always to be preferred over the economy of a straight sets win. Bepanomics.

8) The Petra-dactyl squawk (and Pojd) is here to stay. Deal with it.


Asking someone their thoughts on fistpumping on UFEs is akin to asking about abortion or the death penalty.

My view? People are getting way too precious over this. It’s out of control – more out of control, dare I say it, than either the fistpumping or grunting itself.

Is it really that difficult to make an intellectual distinction between something the players do, almost reflexively, to keep mentally anchored in that “winning place” and a crude, malicious form of gamesmanship?

Needless to say Vika, and I suspect most every other player, couldn’t care less:

"Oh, yeah, it's pretty loud, but it's okay. [But] I don't care about that. You know, whatever helps players to be better. That's her own way. I have to respect that. I just think that every player, as every person who is spectator or whatever, has to respect the players for what they do on the court. I don't think she does it to piss somebody off. It's just her own way to pump herself up. You know, somebody has to jump around, somebody have [sic] to say bad words or whatever. It's their own way."

-- Azarenka

Is it loud? Poor form? Yes, and I would prefer that neither Petra nor Ana did it.

But then neither is it on quite the same order as Global Warming or the Credit Crunch. It’s not even a “hindrance” which is something we can take action against.

And you know what’s far more troubling? The quite appalling double standards that continue to exist around the issue.

How some quite merrily hand a free pass to players they obviously like (whether that’s Ana, Petra or anyone else) but feel obliged to whip themselves up into a state of hysteria over those they don’t – witness the amount of quite hideous invective Domi receives from otherwise sensible people for doing exactly the same thing. No, wait…that’s not quite right - others get a free pass for even deliberate gamesmanship.

9) Marion came and Marion went….and Marion left her own indelible mark on proceedings the way she always does.

As always, we expected nothing less.

10) Aside from that little post-Marion episode that saw Vika booed off court (only to be rehabilitated just 48 hours later), the Istanbul crowd seemed courteous, fair, appreciative and not at all given over to applauding UFEs from anyone.

No biggie, but also not something we see often enough from crowds at, say, the Grand Slam hosting nations.
Read More...

WTA Championships: Pre-Finals Catchup

12 RR matches and 2 SFs later we have our finalists.

And, truth be told, it’s exactly who we thought it would and should be. 



Vika’s start went swimmingly. Hardly surprising, what with Pova being injured and Li and Stosur playing at being Li and Stosur [not to be unkind, but both their top ten rankings come with air-quotes until further notice]

But whatever you might say about those last two (and believe me I’m holding back), Vika came through those matches playing as well as we know she can – the remaining “dead” RR match merely a formality, yes? No. 

Nothing’s ever quite that simple with Marion (1st alternate) is it? Win or lose, you just know some volatile sh*t will ensue – and there won’t be anything “merely” about it.

My feeling was, not only that she would make a point of sullying Vika’s unbeaten record, but also that she would do so in straights. Mostly because this would be a most Marion-like thing to do. But, really, with it being a dead RR match, and with no less than $115K at stake, what else was gonna happen?

We all saw what happened. And it didn’t end well for Vika.

You can generally glean all you want to know about someone by their attitude to a) fistpumping and b) tanking.

I know how much controversy this “tanking” thing generated on Twitter – heck, Vika got booed off court by a crowd that (up to that point) had been appreciative, respectful, fair, and not at all given over to applauding UFEs from anyone.

But really, what else would you have her do? She might perhaps have looked a little less irritable (and committed earlier to either winning or losing more economically), but expecting her to thrash it out late into the night in a dead match before a potentially career-defining SF is  hopelessly naive.




Petra’s story, like her matches, is far less complicated.

Her A-Game beats everyone – without it, she loses to most anyone.  If you’re bored of hearing that, it’s because it’s true. There’s practically Cliff Notes to that effect.

Petra mostly brought that A-game – her one and only blip in the group stages coming against Agnieszka, a match she still went on to win in straights. And today’s semi against Sam saw her drop her first set of the week.

Yet it wasn’t with recourse to the A-game without which her critics insist she is hopelessly vulnerable that she got through either of those two matches. Not for the most part. And maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

Blitzing opponents in straights is fun but its no substitute for exactly the kind of matchplay Petra needs – winning without your A-game, winning ugly, winning ugly-on-the-inside, whatever you want to call it.

Read More...

WTA Championships: Emotional Whiplash

 

 

Was I the only one that thought Kim was spectacularly under par in Doha?

 

And I don’t just mean the double faults, entertaining though they were.

 

There was simply no continuity to this final however you choose to spin it.

 

The most frightening demonstration of this was in the way Woz was allowed to claw her way back into the match from a set and 4-1 down – credit to Woz for seeing it through, but it’s something that should never have been allowed to happen.

 

All the same, kinda difficult to complain when the best player in the world right now (please note the bold font before excommunicating me from your rss reader) caps off the year without playing her best tennis -  in a way which, to my mind, puts an end to the question of who the ‘player of the year’ is (see below).

 

 

Fact: Caz hit 35 winners in the final – only one less than Kim Clijsters.

 

Fact: The day before in the semis, she came out all guns blazing.

 

Fact: Caz hit forehand winners throughout the week.

 

(In other news, Yvgeny-Unicorn won a pot of gold in a Challenger event held at the other end of the rainbow. Delegates from Mars and Lilliput expressed an interest in hosting similar events in their home nations.)

 

It wasn’t always pretty, it didn’t always work – but it’s yet more evidence of the growth in her game. And of the awareness of the need for such growth.

 

Belly-Flop of of the Week.

 

Bepa’s second set bagel against Caz. I’m almost not in favour of the “keeping-the-emotions-in-check” approach anymore– which, to be fair, got her to where she is today, but has now, one feels, run its course.

 

Not that she should return to being ‘Crazy-Bepa’.

 

But I really can’t see there being that much wrong with breaking a racquet or two occasionally (and to then move on, rather than letting it fester in the way she used to before), if that’s what it takes to avert these horrendous beatdowns we still occasionally get.

 

Some people just aren’t built to “button it up” – and it’s as wrong to expect them to do that, as it is for them to fly off the handle once too often.

 

Weaka-Vika

 

I really hope I’m wrong about this, but it seems to me that Vika joins a growing line of upcoming Slam contenders upended by breathing problems, heat and fatigue.

 

More Demmie.

 

Not over it. :((

 

There’s a small chance I may have shed non-virtual tears over this one. ACTUALLY THEY WERE GREAT BIG “MAN” TEARS.

 

It would probably have been the same for any player (even one I wasn’t as emotionally invested in) if they went so abruptly.

 

You have to be a very special, well-loved player to warrant and to then carry off a farewell tour – which is why I’m not, in general, a fan of them.

 

On the other hand, I’m pretty sure I’m not a fan of the emotional whiplash I’ve suffered over the past few days – a direct consequence of being forced to go ‘cold turkey’.

 

Can we agree on a more manageable, staged withdrawal strategy – a kind of halfway house – for when, say, Venus retires? The way Amelie cautiously signalled her intent a few months before making it official?

Player of the Year?

 

Has there ever been such intense speculation over this issue before? Probably not.

 

It’s easy to see why of course: never have such conflicting notions of consistency, quality, Slams and rankings points come to a head so acutely - nor grated against one another so viciously.

 

It’s as if Serena, Kim and Woz deliberately set out to demonstrate the three prevailing attitudes to the tour that may as well represent the Bolshy left, centre-right and far right of rankings system politics.

 

Woz is the young wannabe-opinion-maker eager to make a name for herself by being seen with all the right people at all the right parties – only one that hasn’t yet quite learnt the perils of overexposure.

 

Kim’s the former tree hugging liberal that has seen fit to drop her most provocative opinions as the demands (and comforts) of family life and the pragmatism of tennis-middle-age kick in.

 

Serena’s the eccentric aristocrat that expects the ‘National Trust’ to foot the bill for an extension to her country house; that is when she’s not shooting down ramblers exercising their right of way on her land.

 

Can you be player of the year having only made one Slam semi? I don’t think so.

 

Can you be player of the year having only played six events, all of which took place in it’s first half? Winning two Slams helps your cause as the best player in the world – but that’s not quite the same as ‘player of the year’.

 

Kim certainly wouldn’t be my centre-right WTA presidential candidate of choice in any other year – but she’s won a Slam, the WTA Championships, a premier mandatory (Miami), a premier 5 (Cincy) and an International event in Brisbane – that’s one event at every WTA tier.

 

If that doesn’t make you player of this (not especially representative) year, then I’m not sure what does.

 

Read More...

WTA Championships: “Badabing-Badaboom”

 

I’m not completely sure what to make of the WTA Championships so far.

 

Both JJ and Demmie stunk out the outermost districts of Doha with their openers: matches that lead to reports of JJ collapsing in the locker room and Demmie tweeting sombrely how she was  “going to learn from that and play a better match next round”.

 

 

They both managed to do just that (though JJ still went down in straights to Kim the way we all expected her to) - Demmie’s currently embroiled in the first three setter of the week with Stosur – easily the most competitive match we’ve seen (not that that’s saying very much).

 

Despite starting out thinking otherwise, I’m now questioning whether JJ should indeed concede her spot to the 1st alternate in the way many are calling for her to – she’s clearly not at her best this week, but why shouldn’t she continue to play if it’s at least as competitive as it was with Kim? She did earn it.

 

Bepa is, on the face of it, faring well (2/2 without dropping a set - yay) and the Williams’ absence presents other players I’d like to see do well (Vika, Franny, Stosur…) with a sizeable working opportunity to do some damage.

 

Also, Stosur just did for Caz – in straights – something that should (and does) fill me with glee….not because of any latent antagonism or Wozenfreude I might still entertain, but because she calmly and very cleanly hit through Woz – and in doing so, didn’t let her off the hook in the way all too many players have been willing to this year.

 

Then there’s this:

 

Caroline Wozniacki lost to Sam Stosur Wednesday. Maybe it was rust on Wozniacki's part, but it seemed more like great hitting from the Aussie—as much as we love to see craft in tennis, it’s pretty much helpless in the face of power. If you can only learn one, go with the latter.
Still, Wozniacki is proving to be a player—like, yeah, you know who, the ATP’s current No. 1—who bears repeated viewing. You see things in her game that you didn’t notice the first or second or third time around.

-- Steve Tignor, tennis.com

 

He goes on to ruminate at length on her retrieval skills, in particular the way she runs down the drop shot.

 

 

Nothing wrong with any of this….well actually there is: I object in the strongest of terms to the use of the word ‘craft’.

 

I’m sure it takes a certain amount craft to elicit an error from your opponent (which is mostly what Caz is about), but by equating the two, Tignor has surely committed one of journalism’s cardinal sins: using domain-specific language in a non-specific, fuzzy way.

 

The problem with the word ‘craft’ is that it has a very specific connotation in the minds of most denizens of the tennis world.

 

Like it or not, for most people, sanitised notions of ‘craft’  will always be inextricably linked to a rainbow-coloured, all-court fairyland of idealised nostalgia – featuring Justine Henin (1.0) , a panic-stricken Amelie Mauresmo struggling to close out matches and, to a lesser extent, the more genteel, “lady-like” net play of the 70s and 80s – which wasn’t nearly so pretty nor so crafty as most people like to think it was.

 

I haven’t much time for those who like to dismiss Woz as a “pusher” – but she’s about as crafty and nuanced as last years telephone directory.

 

If anything you would have thought that title belongs to Stosur with the way she used her eye-watering blend of slice, kick-serving and power-play from the back of the court to badabing-badaboom Woz off court.

 

 

Kim is certainly the best of the bunch, but as we saw yesterday with her double-fault-diarrhoea, has a worrisome propensity to be at her uber-stinking-worst when she’s not at her uber-glittery-best.

 

There’s still time Vika.

Read More...