Here's the latest from roving TENNIS Magazine intern Troy Venechanos. This week he's in Madrid watching the WTA Championships.
Hi Steve,
Thursday at the Sony Ericsson WTA Championships seemed to be a day of new beginnings. Not only new beginnings for the players, but even for the tournament itself.
Serena Williams' withdrawal made headlines throughout global tennis community. But from the look of things in Madrid, you would have never known she was here in the first place. Every poster they could remove of her, they did. The banner of her that greeted you upon entering is gone. There's little more than a blurb about her in the daily bulletin. It seems like they've done everything but photoshopped Bartoli's face on Serena's body in the official promo shot.
It seems rather late in the tournament for organizers to start fresh and focus any last-minute publicity off of Serena. You'd think they would try to get as much attention as they could onto their event, but Madrid tried to quietly sweep her exit under the rug.
After a disappointing year for Maria Sharapova, she is trying to end on a good note. She looked impressive in her three-set win over World No. 2 Svetlana Kuznetsova. In typical Maria style, she looked unshaken after dropping the first set and went on to take the next two relatively easily. It was great to see Maria playing well again. She seemed fresh and uninhibited by her shoulder injury. Her ever-present fan base couldn't have hurt either. If Rafa is the Madrid Master's star, Maria would be his female equivalent at the
Championships. The usual "Maria, you're the one" and "will you marry me?" signs decorated the Madrid Arena during her match as cat calls and whistles filled the air.
As positive as Maria usually is, she's prone to slight diva moments. After her match she was asked to described Justine Henin in one word. She snapped, "Are you going to ask me about all the players
too? I could never describe one person in one word, not even myself. Can you describe yourself in one word?"
The subject quickly changed and eventually the topic of on-court coaching during changeovers was brought up. Considering her previous on-court coaching debacles (banana, anyone?), I thought her comments
were interesting: "The cool thing about tennis is that you always have to think by yourself out there and it kind of takes it away a little bit, so I was never really in favor of it and I'm still not...All in all, I don't really think it's that great," she said.
Justine Henin kept up the momentum of her amazing year in a 6-0, 6-0 routing of Marion Bartoli. Playing as a replacement for Williams, Bartoli too was looking for a new beginning. Her results have steadily declined since her breakout Wimbledon, where her last victim was Henin.
Henin later admitted she did have Wimbledon at the back of her mind during the match but as always, she just wanted to win. "[It was] maybe a bit about little bit about Wimbledon. The fact is that I love to win, I love to compete, that's my job, that's my passion so every time I walk on the court I try to do my best and win," said the Belgian.
The last match pitted two semifinal hopefuls Anna Chakvetadze and Jelena Jankovic against one another. The match that I thought would be an exciting baseline battle turned out to be a dull sequence of unreturned serves and unforced errors. The quality of play was less than Championship quality to say the least. Like her entire season, Jankovic seemed to have complete control of the match at one point and seemed dead at others. From the beginning of the second set through the beginning of the third, she won seven straight games. Then after a few tough rallies the momentum went back to the Russian.
Jelena admitted afterwards she was out of shape and suffering from a cold. Anna also said that the quality of the tennis was not great. After a season that has seen them both play more than ever, these two
overachievers on tour both looked like they could use a vacation.
Troy