Mornin'. Like many others in the northeastern U.S., I'm gazing out this morning at meadows and mountain ridges covered in eight inches of. . . snow. The nor'easter went through yesterday as predicted. It was a bracing, exciting experience - the way Big Weather always is, until you realize you actually might freeze (drown, get blown off a cliff, have a massive oak fall on your head, etc. . . .). This is still October, but I was able to take cowboy Luke snowspeeding behind the ATV already.
But I know that's not what you're interested in right now. Soon Petra Kvitova and Victoria Azarenka will square off for the WTA Championships title - the winning of which is always a good omen. Just check how the first-time winners of the championships (which is what either young lady playing today will be) did the year after they triumphed.
I'm liking Kvitova's chances. While I think Azarenka could hit her way to a Grand Slam title (or two, or three), her game really is one-dimensional, and a really first-rate player can really get grooved against her. Is there a player out here whose game cries out for greater. . .variety? But then, those lapses of Kvitova's are troubling. You take your foot off the neck of a really good player after having planted it there and you're really asking for trouble. That begs the question; are the main contenders this week in Istanbul really blue-chip players, or just very good ones exploiting the atypial WTA vacuum at the top?
Whatever happens today, this WTA Championships leaves me feeling Istanbullish. It has been an enormous success and a great advertisement for women's tennis - at least as far as fan interest and ambiance goes. The Turkish fans are, from what I saw in the semis yesterday, an astute, agreeable audience. I look forward to reading Doug Robson's thoughts on all this later on the home page. Watching the matches, you would have thought this was one of the small handful of really well-established WTA events (a la Brisbane, Indian Wells, Miami, Rome, etc.)
Anyway, enjoy the final. I'll be back tomorrow.
-- Pete