Freelance writer *Wendy M. Grossman* will be blogging from the Eastbourne International during the early part of this week. Here's her first dispatch:
Pre-Wimbledon, the men have Queen's, the women have Eastbourne. Set on the south coast in East Sussex, Eastbourne (population 90,000) is kind of Florida in the sense that it's theoretically warmer than the rest of England and people retire here.
This tournament, probably the oldest on the WTA calendar, has shrunk: in 1989 almost every top player entered the 56-draw; this year, the original top two seeds, Ana Ivanovic and Maria Sharapova, both pulled out leaving Svetlana Kuznetsova in charge of a 28-draw in which, weirdly, the only two former Wimbledon champions, Lindsay Davenport and Amelie Mauresmo, are both unseeded.
The year Mauresmo won Wimbledon she lost here in the first round. Last year, she was the Eastbourne finalist – only to lose to Nicole Vaidisova in the Wimbledon fourth round. So although she says she wants the matches and wins to improve her confidence, the omens are uncertain. Today, she fought her way through the kind of match that has happened to her too often lately: cruised the first set, eased off so her opponent, talented up-and-comer Alizé Cornet, took the second, and finally righted herself late in the third set to win 6-1,4-6,7-5.
Afterwards, she said she loved being back on the grass, playing the "old natural game of grass". That was the key to the first set and to ultimately winning the match; in between, she said, she retreated to the baseline, playing right into Cornet's hands. Like so many of the young players, Cornet may not know much about the traditional grass court game, but knows what to do against baseliners.
At Queen's last week, all the players talked about adapting to grass. Changing their movement was the key, but Nadal, Djokovic, and Roddick talked about their serves, their sliced backhands, their need to come to net more. The women, by contrast, Svetlana Kuznetsova observed today, seem to want to play the same game on all surfaces, and the coaches around them seem to give this same limited advice. To be sure, no one's going to make major changes for a surface they only play on three weeks a year. But they could, she said, "adapt some things". For example, she says, she finds she needs to abandon her favored topspin forehand to hit flat and long from the baseline. But she finds the change refreshing and motivating. "You have to do something else sometimes." Every year, she says, she gets more experience and enjoys grass more.
Agniezka Radwanska, the first Polish player ever to reach the top 30, could almost be a textbook example of what Kuznetsova is talking about. Although she says Wimbledon is "my favorite Grand Slam" and notes that she did well there the three times she played it in the juniors, she says there's nothing specific she does differently on grass and she doesn't really change her game for it. Her big goal now: to make the top ten.
This being early in the tournament, there are British players, Katie O'Brien and Mel South. O'Brien couldn't do much against Sam Stosur's serve (but then, who can?) in their first round match on Court 1. But she showed the effects of a very notable change in British tennis: she looked fit. Last year, the British women were easy to spot because they all looked like they'd just gotten out of school. This year, the LTA's new fitness program is beginning to pay off. Even though O'Brien lost, she's one of several women inside the top 200, and Britain has a woman, Anne Keothavong, inside the top 100 for the first time since Sam Smith in 1999.
Australia's Sam Stosur is just happy to be back playing in full health. Shortly after Wimbledon last year, she got sick. She didn't know what she had, but she was, she says, "extremely ill". From the sounds of it, what she went through over the following four months was pretty much like the experience of patients on the TV show House. On top of the extreme fatigue she was already experiencing, she got viral meningitis which came with terrible headaches. Finally, in September she got a diagnosis – Lyme disease – and could start getting treatment. In total, she was out for nine months. She finally started training again with 15-minute walks in February, and made her tournament comeback at Rome in May. Her special ranking got her into Eastbourne, and Wimbledon has awarded her a wild card. Against O'Brien, her serve occasionally misfired but she never looked like losing. Mauresmo, next, will be a tougher test. Stosur is also in the doubles with Lisa Raymond, hoping to resume the successful partnership that took them to the #1 doubles ranking two years ago.
In the last match of the day, Victoria Azarenka requested her coach on court at 1-4 down to Aravane Rezai in the first set. This is the first year on-court coaching has been allowed at Eastbourne, and even professional coaches could be heard grumbling about it. Not sure how much it helped: she held serve the next game, but trailing 2-4,30-40 with Rezai serving she called for the trainer to work on her right hand – what looked like a blister between her third and fourth fingers. At 2-5 down, she requested the trainer again, this time to strap her left knee. Limping slightly, she went out to serve to save the set, lost her serve, and retired.