Ready and Not

After two days in Singapore, each of the elite eight women at the WTA Finals has played a match. So far, I’d divide them into two camps: The ready and the not.

For Flavia Pennetta, the Finals may have come a couple of months too late. She says this will be her last tournament, and she played like she had one foot in her next life during her quick loss to Simona Halep. On the other hand, Lucie Safarova’s loss to Garbiñe Muguruza looked as if it came a day or two too soon. The Czech hadn’t won a match since New Haven in August, and it took her a set and a half to shake off the rust.

As for Angelique Kerber vs. Petra Kvitova, neither appeared to be completely focused just yet. Kvitova had to be told by the chair umpire that she had lost the first set, while Kerber had to be reminded that she was in a tiebreaker at the end of the second.

But not everyone was quite as dazed. Here are a few quick notes on three of the winners in Singapore so far, and what has been most impressive about them.

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In making my semifinal picks for this event, I skipped over Maria Sharapova, mostly because I didn’t know what to expect from her after so much time away—she hadn’t played a full match since Wimbledon. I should have known what to expect. While she did lose the first set to Agnieszka Radwanska, Sharapova put her foot down in the second and never picked it up. She eventually won 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 in just under three hours.

There were shaky moments, especially at the end, when she nearly double-faulted her way out of a 5-2 lead. But Sharapova also reminded us of what we’ve been missing during her absence: A player who wins by outlasting her opponents both physically and mentally. Down multiple break points at 0-1 in the third, with the match poised to swing back toward Radwanska, Sharapova could easily have caved. It gets tiring serving point after point, and it takes a special kind of stubbornness to keep fending off break points, to keep forcing yourself to bring the game back to deuce and believing that you can eventually win it. Sharapova has that kind of stubbornness. That’s why her win over Radwanska improved her record to 20-5 against the opponents in her group.

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Did it seem odd that Garbiñe Muguruza was the second seed in Singapore, and is now ranked No. 3 in the world? Did you think it might be too much pressure for the 22-year-old? I suspected it, and so far I've been wrong. Muguruza and Kvitova each played on Monday, and while the 25-year-old Kvitova has won two majors and Muguruza has won none, it was the Spaniard who proved to be the cannier competitor.

I compare the two because both are streaky power hitters. And, true to form, both played streaky tennis on Monday. But it was Muguruza, rather than the more experienced Kvitova, who didn’t let a wobble turn into a fall. She was actually outplayed by her opponent, Safarova, in the second set, but she won that set anyway. She won it by using her serve to get her into a tiebreaker, and raising the rest of her game once she got there. That’s how a No. 2 seed plays.

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Kerber’s game is not normally associated with the word “variety.” We tend to save that term for players with one-handed backhands, who can impart different spins, and who can use that shot to approach the net. Kerber not only doesn’t have a one-hander, she often uses a brutally abbreviated two-handed chop from that side. At best, she's described as a scrambler and a retriever; at worst, as a pusher and a wallboard.

Yet the German has an amazingly varied arsenal of shots that seem improvised at first, but which she manages to repeat again and again. There’s the deep-knee-bend forehand. There the lunging, open-stance, backhand retrieval. There’s the flat backhand drop shot that crawls over the net. There’s the soft slice serve that keeps bending away from her opponent until it has turned into an ace. Best of all, there’s the down-the-forehand that she hits very flat, with a straight arm, and which, when it goes for a winner, she often punctuates with a fist-pump and a long yell of celebration.

Kerber, a straight-set winner over Kvitova, had her homemade repertoire ready today.