Serena Williams is out for another month with a cut on her foot. Justine Henin is out until October with an elbow injury that ended her run at Wimbledon. This leaves all the focus, and possibly too much pressure, on the defending champion Kim Clijsters.
Last year, Clijsters was playing slightly under the radar, not expected to go that far, and so had almost no pressure, helping her mentally in overcoming the rest of the field and winning her second Slam. This year, minus Serena, everyone is looking at Kim and expecting great things. This could be a problem, since mentally tightening up was always Kim's biggest issues on tennis's biggest stages, and she is now the biggest female star on tennis's largest stage. Also, she is carrying a possible hip injury, that clearly affected her game last week, when she played a horrible match to lose to Vera Zvonareva for the second straight time. While Zvonareva is a mentally inconsistent player who can be brilliant, Clijsters should have won these matches. The fact that she didn't, along with her mysterious hip problem, worries me for Clijsters' chances to repeat as champion.
However, I am still going with Clijsters as my safe bet for potential winner at Flushing Meadows. She plays a great hard court game and she does it with much more consistency than anyone else currently in the field. She could have an early round challenge with either Ana Ivanovic or Marion Bartoli in the fourth round, but, if she overcomes either of them, she has a good draw.
Coming in a close second, Maria Sharapova has finally been looking good on a regular basis again. Stymied by a shoulder injury and then wracked with double faults and unforced errors, Sharapova has dropped out of the top ten, but has recently started rising again. She tightened up during a rain delay of her recent loss to Clijsters, and seemed to surrender in a straight set loss to Victoria Azarenka, but she has been looking much better throughout a whole match within the last few weeks. She also has experience winning the big ones, and has a stubborn tenacity when it comes to winning.
But, she still insists on going for too much on second serves (in my opinion, anyway, it did work for a set and half against Clijsters), and when the errors creep in she starts to look like a different player. She also has a bad draw, possibly meeting top-seeded Caroline Wozniacki in the fourth round. Since Wozniacki is my third choice, I'll move on to her.
The Great Dane, Caroline (nicknamed "Sunshine" due to her sunny disposition) Wozniacki succeeds through others' failures. She has a good ground game, plays a wide variety of shots, and has a great defense. She's also successfully been more aggressive this season, and has continued to remain mentally strong despite dropping in the ranks due to an ankle injury early in the season. Wozniacki still lacks a power shot to make her threat to the power players (like Sharapova), but in a tournament plagued by injuries and where even the top players might just implode at any moment, an opponent who just returns more balls than you expect and refuses to go away could go all the way.
As for the rest of field, I don't even know where to begin. There are so many potentially dangerous players among the lower seeds, and so many potential upsets brewing from top seeds, it's impossible to cover them all. Here's a sample: Ana Ivanovic has some of her big forehand/ big serve game back, but was injured two weeks ago and has a hard draw; Venus Williams has an easy draw, but hasn't played since her horrible loss at Wimbledon, and is as inconsistent as much of the rest of the field; Svetlana Kuznetsova has been looking better, but she has a history of bailing out when it matters most; Victoria Avarenka (Brad Gilbert's choice to win it all) has power but not always control, and little experience, though she's still so young that she might not think about it too much, which could be the decider when the going gets tight.
On that last note, early upsets are likely to run rampant among the women, which is why it would not be all that shocking to see some young/ no name/ where the hell did she come from? player going deep into the tournament, and potentially shocking everyone by winning it all, while we all still struggle with correctly pronouncing her name. And if she's young, and doesn't know any better, and no one's looking her way until she's suddenly in the semis, it increases her chances of just floating in under the radar while the bigger names suffer under expectations and physical problems from playing a long hard season.
So this could be a very interesting U.S. Open. Or it could be filled with horrible play and matches between two players who played good to make it that far only to crumble when they started feeling the pressure.
This is Women's Tennis, welcome to it.
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You also hit on the main reason it is so hard to watch women's tennis today...because you literally have no idea what kind of match you area going to get, no matter the stage of the tournament. All of the top players are so inexperienced on a big stage (which may explain why Serena keeps winning majors, because she has the experience so many other players lack, and thus isn't rattled on the big stage) that you have no clue when they are going to tighten up. And when the both tighten up (which happened in the French Open championship, to an extent) you are in for a very badly played match. So all the unpredictablity of the draw should make for an exciting tourney (much like the last NCAA basketball tourney which was a thrill a minute because there were only good teams, no great ones) but instead leads to too much bad tennis, and thus a complete turn off for most viewers. But maybe, if we are lucky, we can end up with a tourney like golf's PGA championship, which just concluded two weeks ago. Yes there were no big names on the leaderboard at the end and a bunch of players vieing for a title that had never been on a big stage like that, but you still had a lot of exciting golf played and a really good (and controverisal) finish. So hopefully, like in the golf, all the young guns in women's tennis serve notice that they are prepared for the big stage, and ready to take over from Serena/Henin/Clijsters generation, and we should all be excited about the future coming soon. But I fear we will end up with sloppy tennis, and either Clijsters or Sharapova beating a youngster who completely implodes on the big stage (see, Diana Safina in the French Open final of last year). That would put the fear that this generation may never be ready for the big stage, and has to worry the powers that be in women's tennis also. But besides all of that, are you going to break down the men's draw also and who is your pick there?
ReplyDeletePGA Tourney: Yeah, controversial, bunker my ass, guys! Like your friend said on facebook, if that was a bunker why were they letting people stand in it? Hey, let's go to Augusta during their next tourney and set up a chooler on the 18th green. Apparently it's OK.
ReplyDeleteThere was no real tightening in this years French final, though it did happen throughout the tourney, and will happen throughout this one. Altough, as you said, it would be great if an Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova or other youngster stepped up and proved they had what it took and deserved to be among the top names. It doesn't seem likely, but we don't see a Justine Henin coming until they've arrived, do we?
And Clijsters and Sharapova are on opposite sides of the draw and might potentially meet in the final. That could be good, at least there would be a chance of both players showing up for the last match. Of course, they both have to make it there and stay consistent for the final.
Ah, the joys of women's tennis.