 After beating Caroline Wozniacki in the Dubai semifinals, Julia Goerges said that, yes, of course, her previous wins against Wozniacki gave her confidence. “On her I can see that she doesn’t really like my game,” said Goerges. “That’s pretty important for me to see.” Perhaps that was the challenge for Goerges today. She couldn’t see anything on Agnieszka Radwanska’s on-court face. Who can? If anything it was the other way around, considering Radwanska “killed” Goerges at the Australian Open (as Goerges put it yesterday).
It wasn’t as easy today, but world No. 6 Radwanska again beat No. 19 Goerges—“the thinker” and “the power merchant,” as TennisTV commentators called them—in a close but up-and-down match that lasted 104 minutes and ended 7-5, 6-4.
Radwanska, already playing on a career-high ranking, will overtake Sam Stosur to break into the Top 5 come Monday. It’s good news for Radwanska and, considering 24-year-old Maria Sharapova will be the oldest player in the Top 5, it’s further proof that the new guard is here.
Goerges dominated much of the middle of the first set, but the beginning and—most importantly—the end went Radwanska’s way. But despite that middle, filled with the expected forehand blasts from Goerges, you suspected from the get-go that things might eventually work out for Radwanska. How could you not, when Goerges’s specialties are her serve and forehand, but it’s Radwanska who started with a break after a forehand winner? (From a semi-defensive position, naturally.) Then in the next game Radwanska held—with an ace on match point.
Goerges looked great starting around 2-4. She shook off the nerves, pulled out the big serves and more first serves, and started swinging away in her effortless way. By 4-4, TennisTV commentators felt this was turning into the final we hoped for, between players with such contrasting styles. The challenge for big hitters like Goerges, or Petra Kvitova, is to maintain their concentration and that level. Today Goerges couldn’t.
In the first set that was most evident at 5-5. The longest game of the match, it went to five deuces and lasted more than seven minutes. Goerges played well, until she didn’t. She ended the game with two sloppy errors to give Radwanska the break. Then she made four errors in the next game, allowing Radwanska to easily serve out the set.
The first set felt as close as the score, the second set not so much. Finally on Radwanska’s second match point, Goerges hit a backhand return just long, and it was over.
It wasn’t all about Goerges. Radwanska knows how to force errors, but she can hit winners too. In this final she hit 17 winners against 12 errors. She lacks power but moves efficiently, hits balls deep, constructs points well, and keeps her cool. “She just doesn’t look like she plays the scoreline—she just plays each point on its merits like that’s not her business,” said a commentator, and that composure especially helps against players like Goerges, who can hit a whopping 43 winners, like she did today, but also 54 errors, like she also did today.
After the match, Radwanska said Goerges’ “bombs” were “very dangerous.” She said she was just trying to “focus and stay calm and just fight to the end.” We may be seeing a slightly different side of Radwanska off court these days, but on court she's always been this way. And her new ranking suggests that it works, and that you don't need bombs to win.
—Bobby Chintapalli
 Sprinting in desperate pursuit of another Julia Goerges blast, Caroline Wozniacki was so far off the court she could have picked a flower from the potted plants along the front row. The 19th-ranked German turned the stadium court into an obstacle course for Wozniacki, who nearly ran herself up the wall in chase but couldn't close the gap, as Goerges defeated the defending champion, 7-6 (3), 7-5, to power into the Dubai final.
This was a match of relentless offense overwhelming determined defense. The power disparity between the pair was so striking that watching some of their forehand exchanges was like watching a duel with one combatant swinging a sword and the other wielding a whiffle ball bat. Goerges struck 39 more winners than Wozniacki (47 to 8), 20 on the forehand side (24 to 4). With her white Nike headband and brown pony tail, Goerges bears a bit of a resemblance to the young Mary Joe Fernandez, but plays aggressive tennis.
When Goerges turned her hips into a vicious down-the-line forehand to break for 3-1, Wozniacki cast a wide-eyed look to father and coach Piotr. The former No. 1 lacks depth on her forehand, but she's seldom short of scrappiness and leveled at 3-3. Georges teed off on an inside-out forehand winner to break for 5-3, but stumbled trying to serve it out. A stubborn Wozniacki saved a set point snapping a backhand down the line—her first winner of the match—then hit two stunning, running passes down the line, and eventually converted her seventh break point to cap a 12-minute game. Wozniacki held at love for 5-5.
Wozniacki excels playing off of pace, but is not nearly as proficient creating it. When Goerges sprinkled in some shoulder-high loopers, the tactic not only made her ferocious forehand drive appear even faster, it unsettled Wozniacki, who was so badly befuddled that a few of her forehand replies barely made the net. Wozniacki netted a forehand to fall behind 2-5 in a tiebreaker before slapping a fairly routine smash into the bottom of the net, bringing the breaker to a timid end.
The 23-year-old Goerges is a power player, but not a mindless basher of the ball. Though she hits big and bold enough to go for one-shot winners, Goerges can set up points with her kick serve and heavy topspin before stepping into the court. But she pulled the trigger prematurely at times and went on a walkabout midway through the second set. Coach Sascha Nensel impressed urgency on a Goerges, who spaced out as Wozniacki reeled off 10 straight points in transforming a 1-2 second-set deficit into a 4-2 lead. Then Goerges regained her range, crushed an inside-out forehand winner and danced to her seat after breaking for a 6-5 lead. A forehand on the line brought her to match point as she closed in two hours and 26 minutes.
Final opponent Agnieszka Radwanska thrashed Goerges, 6-1, 6-1, at last month's Australian Open, but Goerges sounds ready for the rematch.
"It's almost a similar game (to Wozniacki). I got killed by (Radwanska) in Australia, it's time for revenge. It's gonna be a tough one."
—Richard Pagliaro
 “I don’t want to call Agnieszka Radwanska a tortoise,” the TennisTV announcer said in the middle of the third set, “but often the tortoise wins in the end.”
It was steady versus streaky in the first semifinal in Dubai today. Steady, as always, was Radwanska: She won the first set 6-2, lost the second by the same score, and then blanked her opponent 6-0 in the third, all while maintaining the same generally high level of play. Streaky was her opponent, Jelena Jankovic: After a passive first set, JJ broke loose in the second with 16 winners, only to see all of her sweet shots turn sour in the third. To give you an idea of how drastically her fortunes changed, at one stage of the second set, Jankovic won 11 of 12 points; at one stage of the third, she lost three straight games at love.
On the surface, you might think that Radwanska just waited Jankovic out, that the match was all on JJ’s racquet. But that wasn’t exactly the case; Radwanska gave this roller-coaster a subtle but definite nudge down the track. Up 1-0 at the start of the third set but down 40-15 on Jankovic’s serve, Aga took hold of a midcourt forehand and won the point with it. That may not sound like a big deal, but it was the first time in nearly eight games that Radwanska had done anything proactive—she had been in full retrieval mode for at least half an hour.
That forehand had an immediate effect on both players. At 40-30, Radwanska tracked down a JJ volley and hit her best shot of the match, a stinging crosscourt backhand pass while running the other way. Jankovic slumped at the net; the wind, we would soon find out, was out of her sails. She double-faulted on the next two points to be broken. She wouldn’t win another game.
This was the Radwanska we saw during her Asian tour de force last fall, making balls and subtly dictating when needed. In fact, she made so many balls early that she helped play her opponent into a groove. Too bad for JJ, the hare in this story: Her 16 winners might have been enough to win an entire match against another player; all it got her against Radwanska was a set. She played well enough in the second, particularly with her vintage down the backhand, to remind us of her when she was at her best a few years ago. In the third, though, Jankovic couldn’t find any more openings; Aga had closed them all down. The commentator today was right, you can’t call Radwanska a tortoise. She’s steady, but she certainly isn’t slow.
—Steve Tignor
 If you’re one of those who believes that tennis has become too brutal, grinding, and lengthy, this was the match for you. Julia Goerges and Daniela Hantuchova had never played each other before, but they wasted no time settling their rallies in Dubai today. Points were over quickly, as each player looked to finish them with their forehands at the first opportunity. Goerges, using the inside-out version of hers effectively, ended them more often with winners, racking up 49 on her way to a 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 quarterfinal victory.
As you might expect, the attacks and counter-attacks made for streaky tennis. There were four breaks of serve in the first five games, and yet when Goerges did manage to hold in that set, she twice did it at love. But it was Hantuchova, after winning a long rally at 4-4, 30-30 on Goerges’s serve, who went on to break and win the set with a short flurry of winners.
As it has been so many times in the past, Hantuchova’s run of easy brilliance, and her ability to hold a lead, were short-lived. She quickly ceded control in the second set to Goerges, who used her body serve well and broke out to a 4-0 lead. While that streak also came to an end in the middle of the set, the German toughed out a final service hold at 5-3 after double-faulting to go down 0-30. Earlier in that game, with a break point to get back on serve, Hantuchova made an easy error. Moments later, at set point, Goerges closed it out by manufacturing a point with a short volley winner.
Goerges began to roll again in the third . . . until she didn’t. She went up 3-0, but this time it was her turn to let Hantuchova back into the match. At game point for 4-0 and then break point for 4-1, she tightened up and made errors. Serving at 3-2, Goerges tried a brain-cramp drop shot that landed in front of the net on her side. But that botch seemed to jolt her. She came right back with a forehand winner, held for 4-2, and closed out the match with an impressively nerveless love service hold.
Goerges began a strong spring run around this time last year, and she did it by beating her next opponent, Caroline Wozniacki. Still, watching today, it was hard not to mourn Daniela Hantuchova and the nerves that have kept her from playing her best tennis over the years. The winners she hit to hold for the first set were as effortless as anyone in the game can hit them—they almost looked brushed into the corner of the court. Earlier today, we saw the game’s most famous example of anxiety trumping talent, Ana Ivanovic, also lose in straight sets. But Hantuchova’s case may be even more frustrating. Call her the anti-Federer: Her elegance has brought her too little.
—Steve Tignor
 Elbow room was limited in the Dubai photo pit for today's showdown between two photogenic, former No. 1s. While Ana Ivanovic showed flashes of the form she displayed in winning the 2008 French Open—along with nine double faults, caused mostly by chasing stray service tosses—Caroline Wozniacki was a picture of consistent focus.
The defending champion withstood a barrage of blistering forehands to reach the semifinals with a 6-3, 7-5 victory that offered some startling winners and a share of mind-numbing misses from Ivanovic, who committed more than twice as many unforced errors (51 to 22) as the quick-footed counterpuncher on the other side of net.
This was territorial tennis, with both women trying to impose their preferred pattern of play. Wozniacki, whose two-handed backhand is her best shot, targeted Ivanovic's two-hander, while the Serb, who can dictate play and dominate points with her flat forehand, tried to break down Wozniacki's weaker forehand wing, a tactic her coach, Nigel Sears, summed up with his "drill the forehand" declarative during a coaching consultation five games into the match.
The third-seeded Dane, who netted successive forehands to blow a break point in the second game, managed that side more effectively in breaking for a 4-2 lead, then fought off four break points in the seventh game to dig out of an 0-40 deficit and hold for 5-2. Two games later, a tame Ivanovic drop shot sat up as if placed on a tee, and Wozniacki sprinted forward to blast a backhand winner, seizing the opening set in 39 minutes.
There's a vulnerability beneath the visor Ivanovic wears that can creep to the surface and sabotage her serve. She slammed an ace down the middle for an emphatic hold to start the second set, only to dump two double faults and donate a break two games later. Ivanovic can lose the plot quickly when things go wrong—her toss goes awry, and the uncertainty unsettled her, only to bounce back with a streak of winners.
Wozniacki held for 3-1 before Ivanovic, whos angst was apparent in a rigid right arm, started to shake off the constraints and swing more smoothly to break back for 3-3. That started a run of six straight service breaks, as Ivanovic beat Wozniacki to the punch with her forehand, but Caro would not beat herself. She continued to track down balls and strike with her backhand, whipping a backhand winner down the line to break for 6-5. Wozniacki won 23 of 31 points played on Ivanovic's second serve.
Serving for the match, Wozniacki opened with an ace. On her second match point, the pair produced a high-quality, 24-shot, running rally that concluded with Ivanovic poking a backhand long.
"I just tried to hold pressure on the backhand and tried to move her on the forehand," said Wozniacki, who will face Julia Goerges or Daniela Hantuchova for a spot in the final. "She may have one of the strongest forehands in the women's game so you don't want to keep her over there too long."
—Richard Pagliaro
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