Samantha Stosur ran all the way to the French Open semifinals before finally falling to Svetlana Kuznetsova so now I guess I\u2019d better start finding out who she is.<\/b><\/p>\n
Samantha Stosur<\/b><\/p>\n
Of course I know the name Samantha Stosur<\/b>. She\u2019s a great doubles player with 22 doubles titles \u2013 including two slams \u2013 and was once ranked number one in doubles. And I vaguely associate her with Alicia Molik<\/b>, another very good Aussie player whose career was dismantled in some way or another by illness and\/or injury.<\/p>\n
In Sam Stosur\u2019s case the illness was Lyme Disease, a potentially dangerous illness which is contracted from tick bites. Stosur got up to number 27 in singles before getting ill in 2007 and missed almost a year. She\u2019s what I\u2019d call an average player in singles mainly because of her size. She\u2019s a tick under 5ft8in (173cm) and weighs in at 143lbs (65kg). Svetlana Kuznetsova<\/b> doesn\u2019t have the skinny tall build of many of the Eastern Europeans \u2013 she\u2019s only slightly taller than Stosur \u2013 but she\u2019s got a good 15 more pounds (7kg) of power and that\u2019s what sunk Stosur in today\u2019s semifinal.<\/p>\n
Admittedly I\u2019m not a big follower of the women\u2019s game but you can\u2019t exactly blame me for not knowing much about Stosur. This is the first time she\u2019s been past the fourth round at a slam in singles and her career record on clay is barely above .500. And she has no singles titles.<\/p>\n
Stosur seemed to be thinking the same thing because she looked a bit spooked in the first set. She\u2019s got an excellent service motion but she wasn\u2019t going for first serves until she was already down a set and even then she got down 4-1 in the second set tiebreaker before uncorking a hammer of an inside out forehand and coming back to win the tiebreaker 7-5.<\/p>\n
Kuzy countered by taking a protracted bathroom break after the second set and then, possibly concerned about a blister on her foot and a slight ankle sprain from her quarterfinal win over Serena Williams<\/b>, she started playing more aggressively to end points and get her butt off the court as soon as possible. Of course that means more errors and Stosur got a break point at 2-2 in the third set. But Stosur missed two straight returns and, in the next game, made two more consecutive errors to go down a break.<\/p>\n
Kuzy held on to her nerve and found her way in to the final against Dinara Safina<\/b>. Commentator Martina Navratilova<\/b>, see below, thinks that Stosur has enough stuff to win a slam some day. She\u2019ll be up to a career high ranking of 18 after today and she got some guns on those arms of hers, but I think a lot of the top players can overpower her and it would be unusual to see someone make their way into the top ten all of a sudden in her mid-twenties.<\/p>\n
If Stosur does something special at Wimbledon, a surface her game is better suited to, then likely I\u2019m wrong.<\/p>\n
Martina Navratilova<\/b><\/p>\n
Martina, bless her heart, is in trouble again. She\u2019s always been outspoken and thankfully that hasn\u2019t changed. At the Paris ceremony to receive the Philippe Chatrier award from the International Tennis Federation this week, Martina offered ten changes to improve today\u2019s game.<\/p>\n
Some ITF people thought Martina should have chosen a different platform to express her views – especially as the ceremony took place in the middle of the French Open and the award is named after a former French tennis player and journalist who was president of the ITF for 20 years.<\/p>\n