Freelance writer *Wendy M. Grossman* will be blogging from the Eastbourne International during the early part of this week. Here's her first dispatch:
The big news on Tuesday is that Lindsay Davenport has pulled out of Eastbourne with a knee injury sustained in practice on Saturday. She's been replaced in the draw by Estonian Lucky Loser Kaia Kanepi, who, less luckily, lost to France's Virginie Razzano 6-3,6-4, but at least she got to play on the Centre Court.
A journalist here from L'Equipe is naturally pleased, and tells me there's more to it than nationality: Razzano is one of life's courageous survivors, and as a result she is an extraordinarily kind person. She seems to be righting herself after a bad loss at the French Open.
Besides the main draw singles and doubles, Eastbourne also hosts several other events to fill up the courts and give players practice. This part of the event is rather fun, because you can wander the outside courts at will, listening to parents and coaches issue streams of meant-to-be-encouraging commentary and getting close enough to the action to really understand the spins. Today's junior matches featured a number of young British players alongside a smattering of players from abroad, presumably preparing for junior Wimbledon. Watching them, I learned one thing about the future of tennis. We are going to need wider scoreboards. Can you say Noppawan Lertcheewarkarn?
On Centre at more or less the same moment, British main-draw player Mel South, a semifinalist last week in Birmingham, had problems with Alisa Kleybanova's serve. South is a scrappy fighter, and toward the end of the second set she kept finding her way back into games she looked like losing, but the match never really got close.
Afterwards, South said, "I was always under pressure." She thought she had the right game plan, but "My serve let me down." South, like all the British players, hopes for greater consistency to take her high enough in the rankings to qualify directly for the Wimbledon main draw next year. How much she believes she can do is uncertain. It's easy to make fun of—or despair about, if you're British—this, but given the lack of young American players we may be writing these stories about Americans in a few years.
There is no other way to put it: Nicole Vaidisova has had an increasingly miserable year. Toward the end of her 6-2, 6-4 loss to Olga Govortsova at Eastbourne, she looked lost as ball after ball went out of reach, behind her, or anywhere but onto her racquet and back into court.
Afterward, Vaidisova, looking thinner than I remember her, described her performance as "disappointing". "I felt good last week, so I was expecting more of myself." Everything, she said, felt flat, her serve wasn't working, and her opponent did a good job of taking her chances. "It wasn't my day."
Vaidisova referred elliptically to changes in her team that she believes will set things right now that she's had time to adjust, if she's patient and works hard. Beyond that she declined to elaborate, but it's public record that in April she replaced her long-time coach, her stepfather, Ales Kodat, with former Tim Henman coach David Felgate.
"I think I'm doing it right for the first time in a couple of months," she said. It will be hard for outsiders to judge: she sets herself, at least publicly, no goals. About Wimbledon, where she has good memories from 2007 and her big serve, power strokes, and all-court ability ought to do well for her, she says, "I'll just work hard and do my thing."
The latest-running singles match of the day was that of Nadia Petrova versus Li Na. Petrova ought to do well on grass: she is athletic, with a big serve and a respectable all-court game. But her best showing was at Wimbledon in 2005, when she lost in the quarterfinals to Sharapova. Petrova played today with her left leg strapped up. She hasn't been having the best of years, and it showed in the scoreline: She took the first set routinely, 6-2, but let Li back in the second, losing the tiebreak by only two points.
Also today: doubles! Britain loves doubles – it's the game most people play in the space-challenged clubs, and it's popular with audiences. Last week at Queen's people in the stands were even grumbling because the night before the BBC had opted to cover football instead of showing the Queen's Club doubles. Here, in the interests of getting more grass-court practice, Svetlana Kuznetsova and Amelie Mauresmo have teamed up and taken a wild card. Their first-round match is a tough one, against second-seeded team Czech Kveta Peschke and Australian Rennae Stubbs. Peschke (formerly Hrdlickova) is a notoriously hard hitter; Stubbs, at 37 probably the oldest active player (unless Navratilova re-unretires) has three Grand Slam doubles and two mixed titles to her name.
The match showed what a really well-oiled team can do against two singles players out to have a good time and get some practice, but whose games haven't meshed. Kuznetsova had a bad day serving (three double-faults to lose a crucial game in the second set). It's safe to say the best pure doubles is yet to come. But it's worth saying a word against the matchus interruptus effect of the no-ad scoring that the WTA uses in doubles these days:
Ick.