The WTA Championships does represent a lost opportunity. Its stands aren’t full and its players aren’t the ones we would ideally like to see. A few of them, namely Jelena Jankovic and Elena Dementieva, don’t even seem to want to be there themselves. But maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m a sucker for marketing design, but when I see the purple and green set-up with the usual logos around the court in Doha, I’m hooked.
I’ve kept my eye on that purple and green in the corner of my computer screen for much of the last two days. You have to: Blink and you’d have missed three or four of the matches entirely. But whatever the results or the quality of competition or the motivation of the players, the variety of points and plays and people in a tennis match will always give you something to think about, or, better, to see. Here are few of the things that I’ve thought about and seen this week.
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Caroline Wozniacki lost to Sam Stosur Wednesday. Maybe it was rust on Wozniacki's part, but it seemed more like great hitting from the Aussie—as much as we love to see craft in tennis, it’s pretty much helpless in the face of power. If you can only learn one, go with the latter.
Still, Wozniacki is proving to be a player—like, yeah, you know who, the ATP’s current No. 1—who bears repeated viewing. You see things in her game that you didn’t notice the first or second or third time around. Today, for me, it was her method of retrieving a drop shot. To run forward as fast as you can, get the ball over the net and down into the court, and avoid having it smacked back in your face by your opponent is an athletic maneuver of the first order. Wozniacki solved the problem on her forehand side by simply and smoothly rolling over the ball, the same way she does with all of her forehands. This brings the ball up and down and gives it a little forward-kicking spin in the process. Like everything else she does, it also has the virtue of being easily repeatable and not very risky (yes, that’s a virtue, not a vice). Looked at in the right way, the relaxed, automatic quality of Wozniacki’s game begins to seem hypnotic rather than dull.
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Jelena Jankovic made a bad error today when she had a break point against Kim Clijsters. The match was hardly over, but Jankovic and her mother looked at each other and started to laugh. JJ seems to have come to Doha to pick up a check and little else, but the fact doesn't have to be made quite that obvious.
Jelena made up for some of it, at least in my mind, a game or so later, when she lofted up a forehand moonball that landed near the sideline and just past the service line. Maybe it was because it was a change from a normal rally shot. Maybe it was because it was a night match and you could imagine the ball against the dark sky. Maybe seeing a ball make a long, high arc just appeals to something in us—watching them is one of the great appeals of golf. Whatever the reason, it was a beautiful thing to see. I have no idea whether she won the point.
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Most of the commenters here seem to be anti-coaching. You’re purists, I suppose. Like you, I appreciate how resourceful tennis forces a player to be. But I'm also in favor of coaching. I think it could make more matches more competitive. And, as someone who has been coached on a court and still lost, I also know that the purity of the game wouldn't be compromised as much as you might think: You still have to go out and do it yourself. Ask Victoria Azarenka. After getting a pep talk at 4-5 in the second set of her match with Vera Zvonareva Wednesday, she won the first point with a forceful backhand. She looked reenergized. Then she missed an easy forehand. She looked utterly deflated. Azarenka, who lost the game, had swung between these two poles for the whole match, and her coach—who, by the way, is already allowed to give her advice every minute of the day that she’s not playing a match—couldn’t help her with it.
I’ve read recently that seeing coaches run out to give the players advice on the changeovers makes the women look weak, especially since the coaches are almost always men. All I can say is that the thought never crossed my mind. Athletes have coaches.
One more thing on Azarenka: I confess that I smiled when I saw her try to slap herself in the face after an error today. Not because I want to see her beat herself up or emote, but just because in doing it she appeared to be acting out the words we all think so often—how could I do that?
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The old-timers, like myself, mourn lost arts like the lob and the slice, but I don’t hear much talk about how, in the last 20 years, we’ve gained the swing volley, especially on the women’s side. The shot is usually couched in negative terms—“no one knows how to hit a real volley anymore, so they just swing at it.” There’s some truth there, but that doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate the fantastic athleticism and timing that’s needed to run forward, get your body set and balanced, take the ball out of the air and above shoulder-height with a full cut, and drill it for a blatant and opponent-demoralizing winner. Have you ever tried to hit a swing volley? When I try, I’m not even sure how to begin.
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I caught Sam Stosur live in Paris this spring when she was at the height of her powers. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone make hitting a winning shot look more rudimentary, as if there was absolutely nothing to it. She didn’t even bother hitting the ball close to the lines. There’s been a little of that forcefulness in her two wins in Doha. What I liked most, though, was seeing her face go from being clouded with confusion during the first four games against Schiavone, to clear and purposeful—she was almost high-stepping around the court to collect the balls from the ball kids—by the end of her win over Wozniacki. Stosur's sunglass-less eyes said it all: Sometimes good things do happen.