In keeping with recent tradition, the women have kept a low profile so far this spring. While the rest of the world comes out to play tennis at this time of year, the WTA’s most famous players makes themselves scarce. Last month they ceded the final of the once-prestigious Charleston event to two upstarts, Sabine Lisicki and Caroline Wozniacki. And they’re threatening to do the same this week in Rome, where Serena Williams and Ana Ivanovic have already bit the Foro Italico dust. The highest-profile moment on the women’s tour in the past few weeks came when Serena claimed in Rome that she, rather than the top-ranked Dinara Safina, is the “real No. 1.” Then she lost in the opening round.
The WTA doesn’t go out of its way to show off its product, either. While the men were playing in Roman sunshine last week, the women began their preparations for Roland Garros in a dark echo chamber in Stuttgart floored with muddy-looking clay. It’s too bad the atmosphere wasn’t brighter, or at least a little more TV friendly, because this time two Top Tenners, Safina and her fellow Russian Svetlana Kuznetsova, faced off in the final.
They did not play a memorable match, but by the end I’d begun to think of it as at least a representative one. Like the women’s game as a whole at the moment, the Stuttgart final felt incomplete. You had Safina on one end, jutting her jaw forward with slit-eyed severity before she returned serve, and reinforcing each winning shot with a determined fist pump. On the other side, there was Kuznetsova, mysteriously placid as always, walking blankly from one point to the next.
From this description you might think that Safina would have ended up pulling out a gritty victory. She is, despite Williams’ protests, the No. 1 player in the world. But you would be wrong. From the start it was the No. 9 Kuznetsova who was the superior player. She slid more smoothly on the clay. She held her ground at the baseline. She hit her backhand early and as cleanly as I’ve ever seen it. And despite her usual slap-shot forehands that land 5 feet wide and her total inability to construct a point with anything remotely resembling patience—I’ve said before that she’s almost cursed by her athletic versatility—she held up through two sets to win her first title since 2007. Before Sunday, she had lost a ridiculous 10 of her last 11 finals.
Safina served well to start but still struggled to keep up with her flaky countrywoman. She hit her forehand late and couldn’t generate power with anywhere near the same ease. Worse, she was forced to camp out well behind the baseline; otherwise, she wouldn’t have had time to make it all the way through her long strokes. Safina is No. 1 in large part due to her perseverance, and it was on display even in defeat in Stuttgart. Still, I began to wonder how she had so much success on clay last year. She seemed too ungainly to move well enough on the surface.
I’m happy for Kuznetsova, and I hope she can take this win and run with it, though what are the chances, really? I’d like to see her use all that athleticism for good rather than for weird. Even more, I’d love to see her put together a few points that don't involve her going for broke as soon as possible—or as soon as impossible. But from wider vantage point, I came away from the Stuttgart final thinking that this was the women’s game today: The smooth talent and explosiveness was on one side, the grit and perseverance on the other. Can anyone give us both right now? Yes, there are the Williams sisters, but we know their ability to put everything together physically and mentally wanes during the routine weeks before waxing again at the majors. In other words, you can’t rely on them to carry the tour. Below them you have the slumping but steadfast Jankovic, the jittery Ivanovic, the ever-so-slowly, semi-rising Zvonareva, the fierce but still raw Azarenka, and the previously mentioned up-and-comers Wozniacki and Lisicki. For the upper echelon of a professional sport, does that list feel incomplete to you?
The logical next question: Are you starting to miss Maria Sharapova? I have to say I'm starting to miss her cold-blooded royal bearing, the strutting persona that she brought to the court with the express purpose of forcing her opponents to react to it. Whether or not we want to hear her, I’d say tennis fans could use the sight of her on court rather than in a photo shoot. She may not be in the running to be a real No. 1 anytime soon, but she would have made that echo chamber in Stuttgart a little brighter last week.
On another WTA note, check out this column by Tom Tebbutt on his blog. He says it’s time for the WTA coaching rule/gimmick to come to a merciful end. Unlike Tom, I think on-court coaching should be allowed, but he’s right that it’s in current form, where coaches are miked, the tour is pretty transparently caving into TV demands.