40 posts categorized "October 2009"
by Bobby Chintapalli, TW Contributing Editor
Doha, which winds up with the knockout semifinals and final this weekend, has had everything – blood, sweat, tears, match-points saved, the Number 1 question answered, injuries, retirements. . .and lots of drama. Everything, it seemed, but joy. Don’t tennis players smile anymore?
Some women played as if they had to choose between winning and grinning, hoarding smiles like they were Hawk-Eye challenges. Were they hot (with one 't")? Maybe – Jelena Jankovic kept wringing sweat out of her ponytail, and Elena Dementieva stopped serving to do the same with her wristbands. Were they tired? Probably – it’s the end of the year, and each one had played at least 16 tournaments on a tour of several continents. Were they injured? Definitely – Dinara Safina retired barely 10 minutes into her first match because of scary-sounding back issues, and soon left the court in tears. You know it’s bad when the alternate (Vera Zvonareva) gets KO'd and needs a further alternate (Agnieszka Radwanska).
And then, of course, there’s Caroline Wozniacki.
Still, one of the few things you could count on in the deserts of Doha was that Wozniacki, who played many more tournaments this year than the others - but who’s also the youngest - would find a reason to smile. The other sure thing was that Serena would find a way to win. (She saved a match point against her big sister, Venus).
* STUFF *
Serena, along with Venus, Elena Dementieva and Svetlana Kuznetsova, ended up in the maroon group, while Wozniacki, Dinara Safina, Victoria Azarenka and Jelena Jankovic, ended up in the white group.
The white group had all the chaos (what with Jankovic, joined by Safina, Wozniacki,and Azarenka). The maroon group had all the Grand Slam singles winners, all the Olympic gold medalists, and a whole lot of the moolah. That may be partly because the maroon group had most of the tour grannies. You have to admire these veterans. I use the term with admiration and affection – these veterans can hustle, they sure can hit, and they know how to play Last Woman Standing tennis. The average age of the maroon group, which included the three oldest players, was fully five years (a virtual career) more than that of the white group. Check out the numbers:
- Average age: 27 (maroon) to 22
- Grand Slam titles (singles, total): 20 (maroon) to 0
- Olympic gold medals (singles and doubles): 6 (maroon) to 0
- Prize money (singles, this year): $10.5 million (maroon) to $8.3 million (25 percent more)
Once round-robin play began, the ace-count heightened the contrast between the two groups. Maroon group players served 75 aces, while white group players served just 14. There’s no denying a Williams sister will skew just about any serve-related statistic you can think up. But note that even the maroon player with the fewest number of aces (yes, Dementieva) had more than any white-group player. Still, Maroon 4 coughed up a towering player - Serena. She was the only one in Doha to win all her round robin matches, and her performance here ensures she’ll end the year as Number 1.
* FLUFF *
AUDIENCE: It was amusing to see coaches and players watching as their semifinal fates were determined by other players. Venus’s hitting partner, David Witt, texted as he watched Kuznetsova get Venus to the semis. Wozniacki chatted and danced (and iced her left leg) as she watched Radwanska get her to the semis. After the match Radwanska said. “Caroline and I are best friends. I think I just gave her a great present.” The best audience moment? Definitely the Radwanska sisters singing and dancing to ‘Poker Face’.
COMMENTATORS: Tennis Channel’s Corina Morariu has a real player’s knowledge of the game, but she doesn’t shove it down your throat. She doesn’t talk too much, too little, too soft or too loud, and she doesn’t talk about women’s tennis or the players condescendingly, as some do with such obvious glee. Leif Shiras, while he sometimes doesn’t seem as focused on the on-court action, knows how to dole out information with dollops of humor. Of Jankovic he said, “She wants to turn matches into track meets.”
 DIFFERENT STROKES: Was Dementieva trying to out-Venus Venus (with some success) by coming way inside the court on Venus’s second serve? That’s new. Speaking of new, Venus hit an awful lot of nice-looking inside-out forehands for winners. It was big fun to see a between-the-legs volley from Kuznetsova in her match against Dementieva. But the latter is no slouch in the athletic department, either; she ended up winning that point.
JJ STYLE: In the past we discussed whether, in terms of number of matches played, Caroline Wozniacki is the new Jelena Jankovic. Let’s get off the court this time and talk about how, in terms of post-match comments, Jelena Jankovic is the new Serena Williams. After her loss to Azarenka, Jankovic said, “I basically gave her everything. I beat myself.” Of course a journalist mentioned this to Azarenka (you have to love journalists), who said, “I'm glad she gave me the match and she was not in the mood. It worked out pretty well for me.”
Vera Zvonareva has game, but admit it – Doha wouldn’t have been as much fun if JJ didn’t qualify.
INJURIES: The big injuries were in the white group, though it had younger players. The only one of the four who didn’t retire or fall to the court in tears at some point is the oldest in the white group - and the one the most notorious when it comes to bailing out (just ask Maria Sharapova), Jankovic.
What's going on here, battle fatigue? After all, the white-group women played nearly 20 percent more matches this year than their maroon counterparts. Or perhaps they have less experience in training for the long term, or in ways that minimize injuries and maximize stamina? Perhaps they just haven't mastered that trick of the veteran athlete: listening to her body. Whatever the case, it was difficult to watch such young women crying, bleeding, cramping, falling and otherwise openly suffering.
The only thing harder than watching was not watching.
By Jackie Roe, TW Social Director Good evening, TWibe! I'm auto-posting this as I'm headed to Washington, D.C. for the weekend; my concert pianist sister is performing there, where we also have family, so I couldn't resist making the trip. I wasn't around last Friday either because of that illness (I'm all recovered, thank goodness), so it's starting to look like I've deserted y'all! I promise I haven't, and my schedule should be back to normal next week.
Of course, I can't continue without mentioning baseball. Again. But I'm allowed - it's World Series time! Who do we see taking the championship, the Yankees or the Phillies? I'm rooting for the Yankees, of course, but this Phillies team is playing extremely well. After watching the NLCS, I was less than convinced that the Yanks would run away with the series as so many predicted, and these first two games have proven me right.
I haven't forgotten about tennis, though. How could I with the best of the WTA duking it out in the season-ending championships in Doha this week? (Incidentally, I'm a little confused as to why the ladies' season is coming to a close so much earlier than the men's.) You had the chance to comment on the SEC last week in Bobby Chintapalli's superb tournament preview, but I'm wondering if any of you have had a change of heart now that the event's underway. Who were you expecting to win originally and who's your pick now? And what - or who - has been the biggest surprise?
It's hard for me to make a prediction, having not watched any of the tournament (that pesky job getting in the way again). Still, it's tough to bet against Serena at a major event ... so I won't.
But since the Deuce Club is our off-topic spot, maybe we should spend more time discussing the fashion from the draw ceremony instead of the tennis! Check out the headline photo: Who gets the award for best dressed? Best hair? Best overall look? I think I have to go with Elena for all of the above. She pulls off glamour so effortlessly - and flawlessly.
Speaking of getting dressed up, Halloween has arrived! What are y'all doing to celebrate? Since I'll be in D.C., I'll miss out on all of the festivities - not that I mind terribly. Halloween is one of those holidays I could do without, for reasons I detailed in last year's Halloween DC. But I still enjoy seeing all of the costumes, particularly the creative/fun ones. An ex-coworker of mine and her buddy are dressing up as Wayne and Garth from Wayne's World. Now that's my kind of costume!
I got to thinking more about the costume thing, and naturally, tennis popped into my head. I considered asking y'all what tennis player you'd want to be for Halloween ... but then I reasoned that such a costume would be difficult to pull off, since players don't often wear outfits that distinguish them from one another (Aravane Rezai, Bethanie Mattek-Sands, and Dominik Hrbaty are among the exceptions). So unless you resemble a player as is or don't mind dressing as a nondescript one, this probably isn't the best costume idea.
So my thoughts then turned to tennis players themselves dressing up for Halloween. The images had me in stitches - remember how silly they looked even wearing a Santa hat? - and I figured it'd be fun for us to assign costumes to players. Who should dress up as what? Most people view Halloween as the opportunity to exhibit qualities that are markedly different from their own (scandalous, powerful, dangerous, etc.) or to show off a side of themselves that they usually keep under wraps. So keep that in mind and consider costume choices that seem the most diametrically opposed to players' characters/appearances. Below is a list of popular Halloween costumes. After each one, indicate which player you'd like to see wearing it. And by all means, feel free to move away from the list and come up with some costumes of your own!
- Vampire (are folks still Twilight-crazed?)
- Pirate
- Devil
- Angel
- Ninja
- Priest
- Witch
- Cowardly Lion (snuck that in there as I figured you guys would have fun with that)
- Little Red Riding Hood
- Cleopatra
- Lady Gaga (I have a feeling it'll be all the rage this year)
Happy Halloween and happy weekend, TWibe!
 Does anyone remember the Jim Rome sports talk show by that name? It was on Fox Sports Net for many years, and before the proliferation of athletic chatterboxes on TV (almost all of which are unwatchable), "The Last Word" was one of the more entertaining programs on cable.
Two other reasons for this title:
1. Pete has returned from Montana, the fourth largest state in the U.S.A. He'll be stopping by this afternoon; I'll revert to background music/wallpaper on TENNIS.com.
2. Today's last slate of round-robin matches will determine the four semifinalists. Per the WTA's website, only Serena Williams has clinched a spot in the Qatar quartet. Today's outcomes will give us the other three. I've included the players' match records (first) and their sets won/lost (second) next to their names below -- sets won is the first tiebreaker, I believe. FYI, Venus Williams' record in the tournament is 1-2; 4-5.
White Group
- Caroline Wozniacki (2-0; 4-2) vs. Jelena Jankovic (1-1; 2-2)
- Agnieszka Radwanska (0-0; 0-0) vs. Victoria Azarenka (1-1; 3-2)
Maroon Group
- Svetlana Kuznetsova (0-2; 1-4) vs. Elena Dementieva (1-1; 2-3)
This is your place to chat about today's matches and anything else tennis.
-- Ed McGrogan, TW Contributing Editor
 A long, drawn-out tennis match can be dramatic -- often, they go hand-in-hand -- but sometimes, it can just seem like overkill. In the case of Tuesday's three-setters in Doha (both near three hours in length), I'm going with the latter.
At face value, the scores seem intriguing (Wozniacki over Azarenka 1-6, 6-4, 7-5; Serena over Venus 5-7, 6-4, 7-6), but they didn't reflect the quality of the tennis that was played: not very good. The reason for this, as we've been wont to discuss this year, was poor serving. I recall reading that there were eight consecutive breaks of serve in the final set of the Woz/Aza match; in Will v. Will, there were six service breaks in the last stanza, during which Serena blew a double-break advantage.
Of course, this is all irrelevant for Wozniacki and Serena, who earned important round-robin wins Wednesday. As they, and the Buffalo Bills, will tell you, a win is a win. I just thought that I had put the Bills/Jets gaffe-fest behind me a couple of weeks ago. Hopefully the fans are treated to some better matches today.
White Group
- Vera Zvonareva vs. Caroline Wozniacki
Maroon Group
- Serena Williams vs. Elena Dementieva
- Svetlana Kuznetsova vs. Venus Williams
This is your place to chat about today's matches and anything else tennis.
-- Ed McGrogan, TW Contributing Editor
 A few days ago over at ESPN, Pete wrote a blog entry about what these season-ending championships mean for the beleaguered world No. 1, Dinara Safina. I agree with our chieftain that if she won Doha, it would provide some relief, joy, and vindication after such an emotionally stressful year. But wouldn't it also put additional pressure on her heading into the 2010 Australian Open? Clearly, that's the last thing she needs. But a solid performance this week almost ensures that Safina arrives in Melbourne as the top seed, and with that comes the monotonous questions and stories penned about her well-documented troubles of the past. I can almost see the tears now.
However, Safina might not have to worry about this -- if that's a good thing. I'm not expecting much from her in these championships; maybe a semifinal berth, but I anticipate this being Elena's or Serena's event. You have to admire what those two accomplished in Day 1.
Here's today's three matches:
White Group
- Caroline Wozniacki vs. Victoria Azarenka
- Dinara Safina vs. Jelena Jankovic
Maroon Group
- Serena Williams vs. Venus Williams
This is your place to chat about today's matches and anything else tennis.
-- Ed McGrogan, TW Contributing Editor
 The women's season-ending championships begin today in Doha, with three matches on slate:
White Group
- Victoria Azarenka vs. Jelena Jankovic
Maroon Group
- Serena Williams vs. Svetlana Kuznetsova
- Venus Williams vs. Elena Dementieva
You can watch the matches on Tennis Channel live from 10:00 am - 4:30 pm, and later tonight on replay from 8:00 pm - 2:00 am. There's also online coverage on TennisTV.com.
The 2009 season was hardly one to remember for the women, with the Safina ranking controversy and the Serena tirade at Flushing Meadows, but in ending the season before November (what a concept!), this year could turn out to be quite influential down the road. Hopefully the ATP follows suit and condenses their schedule in similar fashion.
This is your place to chat about today's matches and anything else tennis.
-- Ed McGrogan, TW Contributing Editor
 The tennis season is long, but rarely boring, even during the endless autumn. Take this past week's tournaments in Moscow, Stockholm and Luxembourg. These are hardly revered locales (the Kremlin Cup is one the sports' best trophy names, however), but they produced some fascinating champions Sunday. Let's go from the smallest nation's winner to the largest:
Luxembourg: Timea Bacsinszky -- The 20-year-old Swiss' victory might be the biggest surprise of the week. Unseeded, Bacsinszky won five matches, including those over the suddenly-potent Yanina Wickmayer and hard-hitting Sabine Lisicki, to claim her first career WTA title. Doubly impressive: Bacsinszky won her quarterfinal (against Katarina Srebotnik) and semifinal (against Wickmayer) after dropping the first set.
I've never seen Bacsinszky play, but I've seen her out on the town. She was in attendance for a player party at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills during last year's August tournament, and turned heads with a loud, snazzy outfit. Really, it's one of the few reasons that I knew who she was after that. Good to see her make some noise on the court.
Stockholm: Marcos Baghdatis -- Steve Tignor devoted some e-ink to the Cypriot earlier this week; maybe he knew something we didn't? The 2006 Australian Open finalist has been off the main tennis radar for months, mixing ATP-level matches with ventures into the Challenger circuit, where he's won three tournaments this year (Vancouver, St. Remy and, last week, Tashkent).
Baghdatis earned the last direct acceptance into Stockholm, and the fan favorite made good on his good fortune with an impressive title run, winning all eight sets played. It's true that Baghdatis avoided the biggest land mine, Robin Soderling, when the Swede withdrew from his semifinal due to injury. But for someone who started the month ranked outside the Top 100 -- Baghdatis is now 41 -- you take what you can get.
Moscow: Francesca Schiavone -- The Kremlin Cup was supposed to be the stage for Jelena Jankovic and Vera Zvonareva -- only five rankings points apart in the WTA standings, in positions 8 and 9, respectively -- to determine who would get the final spot in the year-end championships. Being the tournament's top two seeds, there was also the possibility of them meeting in the final, just to heighten the drama. But after Zvonareva lost a second-rounder to Tsvetana Pironkova, the luster was gone; Jankovic herself was eliminated just a round later.
Schiavone emerged from the rubble and cruised to her second career WTA title. Aside from a three-set first-round win over doubles specialist Nuria Llagostera Vives, Schiavone rolled through the draw largely unharmed; her closest match thereafter was a 6-2, 7-5 decision over Monica Niculescu in round two. Did you know: Schiavone was 1-10 in WTA tour finals, heading into the Moscow final. Olga Govortsova, herself the beneficiary of a cushy draw, was just the tonic Schiavone needed (the Italian won 6-3, 6-0).
Chat here about this past weekend's winners -- Mikhail Youzhny, we haven't forgotten about you either (it's Halloween, how could we)? -- and other tennis talk throughout the day.
-- Ed McGrogan, TW Contributing Editor
 By Jackie Roe, TW Social Director
Evening, TWibe. So guess what: I'm sick. Again. You'll recall that I'd battled bronchitis a few weeks back but was finally starting to feel healthy once more ... then last weekend, I was walloped by a horrible case of the flu. And I thought the bronchitis was bad! High fever, chills, nausea, coughing - the works. I pray it's a long time before I see another illness like this again. I'm finally feeling like my old self again, but since I was down and out all week, I enlisted one of our TWibe regulars to pinch-hit for me as your Deuce Club host. (Obviously, I threw the baseball reference in there - and there's another one! - because the American League Championship Series is at the forefront of my thoughts. Who do we think will join the Phillies in the World Series? Feel free to use this space to discuss, as we have been all month long.)
Where were we? Ah yes, our guest host: The lovely jewell was generous enough to offer her services this week, and she's put together a fantastic DC for y'all. Thanks, jewell - don't know what we'd do without you! Well, it’s nearly the end of the tennis season (not to mention a long wedding season for me), and I’m already feeling in a bit of a holiday mood, planning places to go away to in the dull time after Christmas. I wish it would hurry up and get here in some ways, although there’s a fair bit to enjoy between now and then. So perhaps I shouldn’t wish the time away too much. It’s always fun planning holidays, before the realities of needing to limit travel time, face one’s phobia of flying, save money, etc. kick in. When you only have a week, do you go somewhere new, or do you go somewhere tried and tested where you know you’ll enjoy yourself? If you don’t like flying (and I don’t), it takes an awfully long time to get anywhere from this silly little island, and do I want to spend two days out of a week’s holiday sitting on a ferry or in a car driving to the Channel Tunnel? Hmm ... probably not!
I think my dream holiday would be more like retirement – a long wander through Europe (paying particular attention to the eastern end), Central Asia and into Russia, then a trip across to America for a few years drifting about the north and Canada. I’d want to poke my nose in to all the small and out-of-the-way places and avoid some of the bigger, more well-known cities. If anyone has any tips for this mythical future trip, please share!
And if we’re talking real dreams, I wouldn’t mind a time machine so I could spend a week in some of the best places in history – Tudor and Regency London, perhaps, Byzantium under Justinian and Theodora, then again when the empire was in decline, Reformation Geneva, classical Athens. I’d probably choose Regency London, if I had to only choose one; it just sounds like a city of the most enormous fun.
Anyway, in the interests of brightening up the long autumn drag, I’m curious to know about your dream holidays. If money or even time were no object, where would you go and why?
(Oh ... and where did I choose to go in real life? Wales. I think I must have a thing for wind and rain.)
 by Bobby Chintapalli, TW Special Correspondent
Before this year’s tennis season ends, before Venus Williams takes guitar lessons, before Dinara Safina eats a second piece of chocolate cake, before Jelena Jankovic hits the beach in some cute bikini, there’s Doha. With the year’s eight top women tennis players heading to the desert for the season-ending championships (SEC), which will be held from October 27 to November 1, it’s time to look back and do the numbers - as well as look ahead and make some guesses.
LOOKING BACK
It’s all about the Ws. Not the kind with swanky lobby bars in midtown Manhattan and downtown Chicago but the kind in Paris and London – or, heck, Portoroz and Tashkent – that move tennis players one round, one batch of ranking points, one event closer to their goals. Wins – that’s what it’s about for a tennis player.
The match-win percentages may surprise some of you, while for others it will only confirm what you believe: When it came to winning tennis matches this year, nobody did it better, nobody did it quite as good as Serena; clearly she’s the best. The real No. 2 - and a really close one at that - is Dinara Safina. Conspicuously at the bottom are Venus Williams and Jelena Jankovic.
Serena Williams – 78.9%
Dinara Safina – 78.6%
Victoria Azarenka – 77.2%
Elena Dementieva – 77.1%
Caroline Wozniacki – 75.6%
Svetlana Kuznetsova – 75.0%
Venus Williams – 73.5%
Jelena Jankovic – 72.4%
You have to figure that the only thing better than match wins is how players are rewarded for them – prize money. How else can a girl splurge on, say, Pilates equipment (but how much more “core work” do you really need, Elena?) or Christian Louboutin stilettos (and you wonder why you need injury timeouts, Jelena?). And here too, Serena comes out on top - this time by a much larger margin. Let’s have some fun with this and calculate how much prize money each woman averaged in each match she played. On average, Miss S. Williams earned more than $70,000 per match. That’s more than triple the amount earned by the two players at the bottom of this list. Will this redefine the concept of "equal prize money"? Here are the details:
Serena Williams – $70,780
Svetlana Kuznetsova – $55,015
Dinara Safina – $50,019
Venus Williams – $33,893
Victoria Azarenka – $28,557
Elena Dementieva – $24,002
Caroline Wozniacki – $23,523
Jelena Jankovic – $20,127
 The most interesting figure that may surprise some is "number of singles titles won." Five players won three titles each, and a sixth, Jankovic, may be on her way in Moscow this week. The other two (hint: they’re related) won only two. In Serena’s case (yes, Serena, we are looking at your titles, as that provocative t-shirt asked), they both happen to be – surprise, surprise – Grand Slam triumphs. Regardless, when it comes to the Sisters W, do numbers matter? You don’t have to read the fine print to realize that any logical link between past and future performance for these two can't really be established. So much for the fine art of handicapping.
LOOKING AHEAD
The SECs are fun because players don’t start by playing Mynameis Somethingpova of Uzbekistan, and progress through series of more difficult and higher-ranked players. They start with the best and play them all week. That calls for a different mental approach and it churns up some interesting and unexpected results - especially in a round-robin format. Plus, it’s the end of the year – some players are in form, while others are, well, infirm. That skews the form chart even more dramatically.
Recent form suggests that the woman in best trim is Svetlana Kuznetsova, who won the Premier tournament in Beijing earlier this month. But the hottest hands at the last Grand Slam of the year belonged to Caroline Wozniacki, a finalist, and Serena, a semifinalist (and an especially YouTube-worthy one at that). And Serena’s already the bookmaker's favorite to win the next major, the 2010 Australian Open.
The infirm category includes just about everyone, from Caroline Wozniacki (thigh?) to Jelena Jankovic (wrist?) to Victoria Azarenka (shoulder?) and Venus Williams (knee?).
LOOKING ELSEWHERE
Of course, few of these limping woman warriors have a need for walkers or rocking chairs. One of the players, Baby Caroline, is still a teenager. This may be why, in terms of total matches played this year, Caroline Wozniacki is the new Jelena Jankovic; she played at least 25 percent more matches than all the others.
Speaking of the others, they’re twentysomethings, but several are close to thirtysomething, which is geriatric by tennis standards. Maybe that’s why the WTA website calls this year’s group “relatively mature.” (That’s a phrase to save for later use, isn’t it?) You have to love these women…if only for making the rest of us feel a bit younger.
If you were so inclined, you could group the players into three age categories:
The golden girls (28-29) – Venus, Serena, Elena
The green kangaroos (23-24) – Jelena, Svetlana, Dinara
The young ‘uns (19-20) – Victoria, Caroline
Will the golden girls use their experience and “relatively mature” tennis skills to show who’s boss? Will the green kangaroos step out of the long shadows cast by the Williams sisters, and step up in the manner of the hard-charging, grunting, Stella McCartney-modeling young ‘uns? We'll find out soon enough and hopefully see some good tennis in the process.
I am away on vacation until October 30th, but feel free to gather to talk tennis here in my absence. The Mod Squad will be monitoring the site, and if any of our regular contributors want to weigh-in on current events in tennis, they'll do it either here, or in a post directly below this one. This page will be refreshed on a rolling basis when the Comment load becomes onerous, so save any correspondence or details of value. I'm going off the grid now, adios!
-- Pete
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