Category Archives: WTA Tournaments

Ana and Jelena Square Off in Los Angeles

Ana Ivanovic and Jelena Jankovic have opposing styles both on the court and off.

We got a double dose of the Serbian women today here at the East West Bank Classic just south of Los Angeles. One after the other. First Ana Ivanovic defeated Maria Kirilenko, 6-4, 6-4, and then Jelena Jankovic defeated Victoria Azarenka, 6-4, 6-7(5), 6-2. They’ll meet in the semifinals tomorrow but the contrast in their personalities is as fascinating as any match they’ll play.

Ana has model good looks in that baby-face way that made Anna Kournikova so deliciously appealing. It’s that combination of openness and sensuality that literally pulls you in. She’s very affable and eager to cooperate. Ask her about her match and she’ll spill out a summary that could end up in tomorrow’s sports pages without any further editing. For example:

I was 5-2 up with a double break and she played an unbelievable game on my serve. She was just going for her shots and I was mostly running and defending in that game and then she served well. On a break at 5-4 I was trying to focus on what I have to do and just realizing that I have still to be aggressive and not wait for her to miss because she was on a run. Yes, I served very well that game and I was really happy I closed the match.

And then there is Jelena. She has exotic looks with a long, distinctive face instead of that round baby face. Rather than being eager to please, she says whatever comes to her mind and doesn’t care what you think. And she won’t hesitate to call you out if you’re wrong. For example, when someone asked her how she felt about playing Ana tomorrow she said:

It’s just like any other match for me …it’s just another girl on the other side of the net.

Is that a bit of antipathy on Jelena’s part towards her countrywoman? No it’s not and if you think that, you can blame the media:

The media, most of the time, you guys, you make some kind of, like when we get off the court we kind of hate each other for no reason. Nothing really happened between us…I think that’s wrong.

When one of us accursed media suggested that people were just interested in a rivalry she said the following:

I don’t want to look behind me, you know, I want to look in front of me. I am the number three player in the world and I’m looking at number two and number one.

Ana is ranked number five by the way. Can you really blame the media?

They’re playing style is different too. Ana depends on a big serve and forehand and she likes to end points quickly. If Jelena can get her into long rallies tomorrow, she could beat her with her speed.

They don’t even agree on their first meeting. Ana says they met at that famous swimming pool when Jelena was 10 and Ana was 8. There weren’t many tennis facilities in war-torn Serbia so a swimming pool was emptied and converted into a few tennis courts. Ana says that Jelena beat her easily.

Jelena says that is completely wrong because she didn’t even start playing until she was 9 ½ years old and was still only a beginner at 10 years old. She did play in the swimming pool, though, and she won a tournament there. Instead of a trophy she received a watermelon.

As Jelena left the media room, she picked up a deflated oversized rubber tennis ball in the shape of a watermelon and asked if anyone wanted an autograph.

Not yet, we’ll just keep watching the rivalry. That’s more fun.

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To read more about Sania, Martina and Marion, check these out:
Sania Mirza’s Fiery Forehand
Hingis Compares Herself to Chakvetadze
Bartoli is Out of Sorts in Los Angeles
Los Angeles, Montreal, Lego Man and Bud Collins

Los Angeles, Montreal, Lego Man and Bud Collins

Is Sania Mirza a belly dancer? Can anyone win in Montreal? Who is the Lego man? And where did Bud Collins end up?

The big news here at the East West Bank Classic just south of Los Angeles is the flu. Jelena Jankovic just finished taking antibiotics last night but dispensed with Peng Shuai rather easily. Eleni Daniilidou has been sick for four days herself. She battled back from a break to get to a first set tiebreaker with Maria Sharapova then got up 3-0 in the tiebreaker before making a few errors and losing it 7-5. By the time she was down 1-3 in the second set, she was done, she couldn’t breathe any more.

Daniilidiou’s short media session was heartbreaking. She could barely answer the questions through her tears. She didn’t have to come to a media session; I think she just wanted us to know how badly she wanted to play Sharapova:

We are working for this kind of match, to play with top players and to play in such a good atmosphere. …I wanted to step on court and give my best.

I often complain about players reneging on commitments to tournaments at the last moment but this the other end of the spectrum. I have nothing but admiration for Daniilidou’s desire and her pride.

Sania the Belly Dancer

Yesterday was pretty exciting too. Maria Kirilenko beat number six seed Marion Bartoli and Sania Mirza beat number seven seed Martina Hingis.

I remember Hingis from her first swing around the tennis world when she won five slams before she took three years off to recover from foot problems. The early version of Martina was brash, brazen and, frankly, obnoxious. Her mouth was legendary.

After Amelie Mauresmo came out as a lesbian at the 1999 Australian Open, Hingis called her half a man. In 1998 she dissed Steffi Graf with the following: “She is old now. Her time has passed.” That was the year before Graf beat her in the final of the French Open.

Today, though, Hingis is one of the elders and she’s been absolutely delightful and engaging throughout this entire event. After Mirza beat her last night, Hingis walked up to the net and asked her how she hits such sharp angles with her strokes. In the media session afterwards, she jokingly theorized that Mirza must have studied belly dancing and developed those angles from the exotic wrist curls associated with the form.

Belly dancing has roots in India among other cultures and speaking of India, when I was at the ATP Los Angeles event, I interviewed Vijay Amitraj and asked him about the explosion of tennis in his home country. India now has two WTA and two ATP events and Bangalore recently bid on the WTA Championships.

Amritraj said the recent growth in the Indian economy was responsible for the tennis explosion. When I asked Mirza the same question, she had a slightly different answer.

I like to think I play a little part in that….I think if a girl from Hyderabad – where tennis is not the sport to be playing – comes up from there and is playing against the likes of Hingis and the Williamses and the Sharapovas, I think people start believing that they can do it as well.

Mr. Amritraj thinks it’s the economy and Sania thinks she plays a part in it. It’s the economy because big prize money is luring tournaments to Eastern Europe and Asia and now India. Countries around the world outsource call centers and software engineering to India and the country is developing a larger affluent class.

But Sania is part of it too. Last year when I visited the country for a few weeks, even the smallest villages had images of her in ads for the telephone company. And when more female tennis players from India come along, she can take more than a little part of the credit.

Those Montreal Picks

One word: atrocious. We all expected upsets at the ATP Masters Series event in Montreal because it’s the first hard court event after the clay court season for most European players and those players are dropping like flies. Gone already: Tomas Berdych, Andy Murray, Richard Gasquet, Tommy Robredo and Jarkko Nieminen, Europeans every one. Fernando Gonzalez lost too and James Blake is out with an abdominal muscle strain.

The U.S. Open Series has become an opportunity for the lower ranked U.S. players to fatten up on hard court events then watch as the Europeans turn up and take over the Masters events and the U.S. Open.

Instead of two Masters events in a row – the Cincinnati Masters follows next week – isn’t it time to move one of those events a few weeks earlier and establish some significance to the U.S. Open Series? That way those early losers in Montreal will drop in at Washington or Indianapolis or Los Angeles and play a few rounds.

By the way, I’ll go full bore on Cincinnati next week once the WTA event in Los Angeles is finished.

The Search for Lego Man

Last week I stopped off at Legoland on the way home from the Acura Classic. I was the only single adult I could see and now I’m wondering when U.S. entertainment conglomerates will start building theme parks for the elderly. Aren’t we this country’s fastest growing population and don’t we deserve some fun too?

This morning I see that an eight foot high Lego man washed up onto the shore at Zandvoort in Holland. The big guy has that gas can head, those c-clamp hands and the words “NO REAL THAN YOU ARE” etched on his belly. Unless mutant fish species are spawning Lego characters in the bottom of the North Sea, I think this might be an artist’s installation and I translate those awkward words to mean that Lego man is no more real, nor less, than you and I.

Bud Collins and ESPN

Bud Collins was unceremoniously fired by NBC at the end of Wimbledon after 35 years of loyal service. ESPN has been nice enough to hire him and that’s a smart thing. A lot of younger viewers don’t like Collins’ shtick, it looks a bit too much like country club silliness with his funny pants and quirky bits, but Collins brings tennis history with him and sports fans love to argue about who’s the best player of all time and figure out who was the last player to win Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in the same year four times in a row.*

Collins will cover the Australian Open, the French Open and Wimbledon for ESPN2 and report tennis for SportsCenter and ESPN radio. I was on mvn.com’s daily live radio show talking about tennis gambling last week and the wonderful host, Brandon Rosage, said this in his introduction: “We’re going to talk – yes! – tennis and I’ll explain why,” as if there needed to be an explanation. I, for one, will be happy to hear more tennis on radio. Welcome back Bud.

*The answer is no one. Roger Federer was the first to do it three times in a row.

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Bartoli is Out of Sorts in Los Angeles

Marion Bartoli loses early in Los Angeles and doesn’t feel so good about it.

It’s not just Marion Bartoli’s forehand and backhand that are funky – they’re both two-handed so which is which? – it’s the serve too. It’s a Rube Goldberg contraption with a funny wrist bend followed by toe tips and it stays that way. Honest, she puts both feet together, gets up on her toes and stays there. I’ve never seen that before and as I write this, she just served her second double fault in the first game of the first set here at the East West Bank Classic just south of Los Angeles.

Everything tells you that serve will never work and you wonder why no one ever corrected it until you learn that Bartoli’s father is her coach. I doubt he ever worked as a coach with the French Tennis Association.

On top of all that, Bartoli is a perpetual motion machine. When she’s serving she bounces, kicks and stutter steps between points and when she’s receiving, it’s bounce, bounce, forehand swing, backhand swing, another stutter step and only then does she turn back to the court to receive a serve from her impatient opponent.

Then there was this from a media session at Wimbledon after Bartoli had just beaten Justine Henin. She’d lost the first set 6-1 before coming back to win the match.

Q. 1-6 in the first set to the No. 1 player in the world. How did you come back?

MARION BARTOLI: Well, to tell you the truth, as I said on BBC a few minutes ago, I saw Pierce Brosnan in the crowd, which is one of my favorite actor[s]. I love his movies. I said to myself, it’s not possible I play so bad in front of him. Because he watch me and I play so bad it was unbelievable. So I try to feel it a bit more the ball, play more smartly. I saw he was cheering for me, so I said, Oh, maybe it’s good. I kept going and I won, so maybe a little bit for Pierce Brosnan.

Q. TV personalities like Cliff Richard in the earlier match, does it not distract you having celebrities in the crowd?

MARION BARTOLI: Well, I was focusing on Pierce Brosnan because he is so beautiful. I was just watching him. He was the only one.

Either she’s an instinctive, quirky player or she’s joking with us and she’s very funny. Right?

When I turned up at the open media session on Monday, I found neither. She’s a rather serious person with a monotone, almost deadpan delivery. She’s heartfelt, absolutely, and talks openly about herself but not at all what I expected.

About that that Wimbledon, by the way. Bartoli got all the way to the final by beating Henin before losing to Venus Williams and she’d reached the semifinals in the two previous grass tournaments she’d.

I couldn’t figure out how she’d done all that from looking at her game today. Her serve went over 100 mph (161 km/h) exactly once by my count and she had a few second serves in the seventies. She is French and the French burned up the grass this summer but those players had a volley while Bartoli has a swinging volley and that is, of course, two handed off both sides.

One thing she does have is an excellent return of serve and there’s not that much windup on either of her strokes – how could there be with two hands? – so her game is well suited to picking up those low skidding balls on grass.

Since Wimbledon, Bartoli’s road has been much tougher. She shot up from a ranking of 19 to 11 and that gave her a seed in all three of her tournaments since then. On the plus side, that gave her a bye in the first round. The problem is that her first match is her opponent’s second match and that’s why she played Maria Kirilenko – who’s currently ranked number 35 – today instead of some stiff in the 100’s or a qualifier.

Bartoli isn’t quirky or fidgety or a jokester and, like most every other player on the tour, she gets her confidence from winning a few matches and when she’s not winning, she finds something to blame.

Of course I was not as comfortable as on grass, for example, when I have ten victories in a row and I know what I’m doing out there. And you are changing cities every single week and the surface, even if it looks the same it’s not the same …and everything is changing. It’s not like on clay or on grass courts where it’s the same clay or the same grass every week. Here on hard court it’s not the same tournament.

She’s blaming the variation in hard court surfaces but that’s a complaint of someone who is out of sorts. She played in a different city every week when she played well on grass too. Luckily, her mother is turning up next week and that will make her feel better about herself:

Whereas Bartoli’s father is so indispensable that she refuses to play Fed Cup for France unless he can be on the coaching staff, her mother isn’t a tennis fan and doesn’t really get the significance of having reached a Wimbledon final. Her father introduced her to tennis when she was six years old and gave up his job as a doctor to coach her after she won the junior US Open title, while her mother, well, her mother just loves her. It works for them.

Bartoli and Kirilenko broke each other eight times in their match. Kirilenko won the first set in the tiebreaker and got a crucial break to go up 4-3 in the second set. When it counted, Kirilenko served well and won the match, 7-5(3), 6-3.

Bartoli will move on to Toronto with her mother and father and see if she can get herself back on track:

I will try to take my courage with the two hands and come back with the hard work and hopefully it will go my way next time.

I don’t know whether “taking courage with the two hands” is a French saying or a comment on her two-sided two-handedness – perhaps our reader Maria can fill me in – but either way I hope she gets herself sorted out.

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Hingis Compares Herself to Chavetadze

A conversation with Martina Hingis and which has more parity, the men’s game or the women’s game?

Hingis and Chakvetadze

I left the Acura Classic Saturday and stopped off at Legoland on the way home. I wandered through a Lego brick version of Las Vegas – a model of a model you could say – and sailed past a Lego brick model of the Taj Mahal. I’m sure I was the only single adult there and that’s too bad because there were lots of things I couldn’t do because I had no kid in tow. Anyone have a kid I can borrow?

The revelation at the Acura Classic was Anna Chakvetadze who outlasted Venus Williams in a knock-down, drag-out three set battle in the quarterfinals. People compare Chakvetadze to Martina Hingis and not just because they are the same height and weight. They both have cerebral games instead of power games.

Today is the first day of the East West Bank Classic just south of Los Angeles so I asked Hingis if the comparison was accurate:

She’s very smart around the court and she has good vision. You don’t see anything specific that she’s winning matches [with] so I definitely see some similarities.

This last statement is interesting because Hingis is describing both her game and Chakvetadze’s game. You don’t see anything specific such as a huge serve or a big backhand or blinding speed yet they both win a lot of matches and, in Hingis’ case, 43 titles and five slams.

They also have a negative similarity. Both of them have weak second serves. Chakvetadze hit a 64 mph(103 km/h) second serve against Venus but, being the smart cookie she is, it was an ace that sliced wide and out of Venus’ reach. Chakvetadze did have a few problems with nerves. She served six double faults after going up 5-2 in the first set. I asked Hingis if she suffered from nerves early in her career.

Obviously, everyone knows that my serve was never a weapon. It was good enough and I had a high percentage on my first serves just to get me into play and that’s the most important thing.

Will a high percentage of first serves and cerebral play get Chakvetadze five slams in today’s game? Let’s see how she does against the current power players who’ve won slams. She’s 1-2 against Venus, 0-2 against Svetlana Kuznetsova, and 1-5 against Maria Sharapova (and that win was a walkover). Chakvetadze is also 0-2 against Justine Henin and 0-3 against Amelie Mauresmo, two slightly less powerful slam winners.

By that measure, it doesn’t look so good for Chakvetadze so I’m not willing to project five slams any time soon. What do you think?

Politics and the WTA

This year I’ve been watching the WTA auction off the year-end championship. They recently signed a $42 million deal to send the championship to Doha starting next year for three years. Istanbul signed the same size deal to get it for the following three years.

I had planned to ask Hingis if she felt comfortable having such an important women’s event take place in Muslim countries but we never got that far because when I asked her if the players had much input into the decision, she didn’t even know the event was going to Turkey. Clearly they don’t have much input.

Someone asked her if she wanted to be more involved in WTA decisions and she said she tried to be influential after her return to the tour last year but it was like “knocking on the wall and you’re not getting through.”

She said that language is also a problem:

When we had the board meetings at the grand slams, half of the people don’t even understand what we talk about, then it’s very hard to have an influence.

The WTA now provides translation at the meetings – no doubt Russian is one of the languages offered – but you get the idea that Hingis is old-guard in more ways than one. The WTA was founded by the players but these days they’re too busy with their careers and entourages. They travel like separate satellites that touch down next to each other during a match but go their separate ways as soon as the match is over.

The result is that there is no cohesive player input into the WTA’s decisions and that’s too bad. Lindsay Davenport is returning to the tour this fall – she plans to play singles in Bali in September. The more old-guard the better I say, let’s get Martina some help.

Parity in the Men’s and Women’s Game

There were a number of lopsided victories in the later rounds at the Acura Classic in San Diego so I decided to compare last week’s men’s event in Washington with San Diego to see if there was more parity in the men’s or the women’s game.

This is not a scientific sample as it only includes two tournaments and it’s also highly unfair because Washington was rockin’ last week. All five sets in the men’s semifinals ended in tiebreakers. Not only that but John Isner became the first player in the Open Era to win five straight matches with a third set tiebreaker. Think the serve is important to his game? I think so.

This also means that the Washington courts were faster than San Diego because it’s easier to hold serve on a fast court and that means more tiebreakers. And the serve isn’t as important in the women’s game as it is the men’s but let’s look at the results anyway since I took the time to compile them.

Bagel sets (sets with a score of 6-0) are a good indicator of lopsidedness and there were ten bagel sets in San Diego – including one in the final – and only two in Washington. Three set matches, on the other hand, are a sign of competitiveness. There were 15 three set matches in San Diego while there were 22 in Washington.

It’s even worse if you consider that San Diego had a 56 player draw while Washington had 48 players. That means Washington had eight fewer matches to come up with its numbers.

I hereby declare, unscientifically, that there is more parity in the men’s game.

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Dog Day Afternoon: Kirilenko upsets Jankovic

Maria Kirilenko upsets Jelena Jankovic and earns a dog.

Kim Clijsters is now happily married and pregnant but last year she was here at the Acura Classic attending a puppy auction. She bid $11,000 for a black Labrador puppy then immediately gave it to a woman whose black Lab had recently died. I’m getting teary eyed just telling the story. I’m like that.

There’s another puppy auction today and Maria Kirilenko noticed the puppy as she was preparing for her match with Jelena Jankovic because she’s mad for a dog herself. In fact, she wants a Labrador Retriever puppy. Her coach is no dummy so he told her he’d get her a dog if she beat Jankovic.

Those psychological tricks work. Kirilenko pulled off the upset of the tournament by beating a slightly under the weather Jankovic, 6-2, 3-6, 7-5.

I was trying to rid my computer of a nasty virus when I noticed that Kirilenko had gone up 3-1 in the first set. I snatched up my notebook and rushed over to the stadium. Kirilenko fought through a bunch of deuces to hold her serve just as I got to the court and then she broke Jankovic again to win the first set easily.

Jankovic started to get hot in the fifth game of the second set and she broke Kirilenko twice to take the second set. At the time I thought the match was over. I figured Kirilenko was one of those lower ranked players who win one set off a top ten player then proceed to crumble.

Not only was I wrong, but now I’m scratching my head. Kirilenko was ranked number 21 this time last year and she’s got a top twenty game so what is she doing down at number 44? She’s got a hard, flat backhand, she’s an excellent defensive player and she actually attacks the net.

A member of the media dropped down a few rows and had a conversation with Richard Williams, Venus and Serena’s father and coach. Williams, by the way, had a dog day too. He took Venus’s puppy to the vet because the dog has an ear infection. Anyway, Williams said the women don’t know how to play the game today. When an opponent hits a short ball, they’re supposed to get their butt to the net.

Generally I’d agree with him but Kirilenko got to the net plenty. She broke Jankovic to go up 3-2 and kept up the pressure. As aggressive as Kirilenko was, though, there was a dichotomy in her game. She mishit an overhead early in the third set and from then on, she let Jankovic drive her back to the baseline by letting lobs bounce instead of taking them on the fly.

She let two lobs bounce on one point in the sixth game and she passed up another overhead in the next game and failed to take advantage of three break points. Jankovic broke her when she served for the set at 5-4 and I thought Kirilenko had lost her chance.

Jankovic has a cold which explains her slow start and could well explain the ending. After the match she said “I was struggling the whole match. The chances were there but I didn’t do the right things.” Kirilenko broke her in the next game then Jankovic missed a sitter at the net and Kirilenko finally had her upset.

Kirilenko has lost in the first round in nine tournaments this year. She’s not injured so I assume it’s a problem with confidence because it’s certainly not a problem with her game.

Check out our new myspace page and add us to your friends network!Read about more Acura Classic action: Last Go Round for the Acura Classic. You can also read about the 2005 Acura Classic: Acura Classic Super Seniors Title