Now, the potential finalist out of the bottom is likely to be, well, nobody - or Sventlana Kuznetsova, which is pretty much the same thing these days.
Radwanska embraced that truth with a vengeance yesterday, and she had a lot of help from a troublesome wind. Sharapova rallied from a slow start to win eight games in row, but they were in the middle of the match, not in the more critical beginning or most critical end. It was an odd match, to be sure, but isn't that what the WTA is all about these days?
But in all fairness, one of the overlooked aspects of the absurd draw here is that as soon as it was made, Radswanska, Chakvetadze, Vaidisova and others must have started doing cartwheels in their hotel rooms, knowing they were just one Big Win (and now, none) away from a place in the final. Because, really, can you now name a match in the lower half that, going either way, would surprise you?
So let's get back to this Polish girl, Agnieszka. In the presser, she was excitable, charming and funny. She was also frank and, in some counter-intuitive and hilarious way, blase. A Polish reporter asked this question: Twenty minutes ago your father told me that your victory today is for him like winning one hundred million dollars in lottery. What value has that victory for you?
Radwanska replied: "I think the same. . . I mean yesterday, I spoke with my sister - if I will beat her (Sharapova), we will buy two Louis Vuitton bag, because is so expensive. And she was okay. If you do it, okay. And then she will come to locker room and (say) Okay, now we're going to Louis Vuitton and buy two bags. I have to buy now because I said that.
Follow-up: How much are the bags, did you see them?
Radwanska (glumly): For sure a few hundreds for the one bag. . .
As a Polish pro, Radwanska is an anomaly; and she knows this. She grew up playing at a club in Gronau, Germany, where her father, Robert, was a club pro. Yet unlike the great westward migration that swept out of the Czech Republic, Serbia and Russia, Radwanska traveled east to put the finishing touches on her game. She is based in Krakow and seems perfectly content with that. She is a very fit player, probably because she practices four hours a day when she is in Poland ("No academy for me," she says).
Radwanska takes her unique status among her countrymen lightly:
The national tradition and blood lines might be obscure, but there's nothing flukey about this disciplined young woman who keeps a low center-of-gravity and hits precise groundstrokes. She won Roland Garros and Wimbledon as a junior, and showed no trepidation about taking two titles after Wimbledon - she gave up just two games to Vera Dushevina in winning Stockholm. Okay, the record is still a little thin compared to that of her two role models, Steffi Graf and Pete Sampras, but it's nice to know she decided to set the bar high.
Radswanska's 16-year old sister, sometimes doubles partner, and BFF Urszula (the one who was jonesing for the Vuitton bag) won both the girls' titles (singles and doubles) at Wimbledon this year, so it's probably safe to assume that wherever that danged dog of Agnieszka's bit Urszula - twice - it wasn't on her racket hand - which, come to think of it, is probably the same one that will be clutching that handsome Vuitton bag out her at the USTABJKNTC tomorrow.
Of course, this raised the potential issue of the Radwanska gals going totally Paris Hilton and traipsing around with their pets peering out of the mouths of those Vuitton bags, but we were assured that the two rodents are kicking back in Krakow with whatever Mickey and Minnie are in Polish. But some of those jaded veteran scribes still found the rat-thing a little out there.
Q: They're rats, right?
A: Yeah.
Q: How long do rats live actually? (who's this dude covering for, I wondered, The Discovery Channel?).
A: I don't know. I think around five years.
Q: So you've had these two how long?
A: Just few months, yeah.
Q: You let them out of the cage to run around a little bit?
A: No. No. They're dangerous I think. They're aggressive.
Q: Why do you have rats? Why don't you have a dog or a cat?
A: I'm sorry, I don't discuss my personal life in interviews! (Okay, I'm just kidding. She really said: I had a dog but it was not so nice dog because it was very danger dog.)
A: What kind of dog? (By now, I am about to scream, Will somebody please kill me!)
A: Bulldog.
Q: Did he bite people?
A: Yeah, my sister. Twice. So that's why no dog anymore. And I don't like cats. . .
The most appropriate ending to this dialog might have been, And rats rhymes with cats, so here we are! But Radwanska just let her voice trail off and that was it.
I have a funny feeling, though,that if these girls decided to keep a fish bowl, they would be stock it with Siamese Fighting Fish. There's some kind of an aggression thing going on here, and that was also on display on the court, where Radwanska basically taunted Sharapova by creeping far into the court when she was looking at a second serve, a ploy that appeared to unnerve the defending champ. Although she had a respectable 66 per cent first serve percentage, she hit only two aces and an even dozen double faults - although she clocked most of them in the middle set, which she dominated.
There's a fine example of a useless statistic for you!
But more importantly, Radwanska said, "Yeah. I knew that she (Sharapova) doesn't like it if somebody is moving (around) when she serving. She was also nervous with this, so I was trying to do something like this. . . Yeah, I have to do it because she's playing very strong like every shot, so I have to do it. I have to do it before her, so, yeah, I was trying playing everything."
In her own presser later, Sharapova replied to this boast with a glowering, "It will be interesting to see if she does it again the next time I play her."
