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Aga fought through the pain & Hantuchova
FROM THE MERCURY INSURANCE OPEN – After four days of largely up and down play, it was terrific to see two Friday afternoon quarterfinal matches go past two hours and contain more than a fair amount of drama. Moreover, both Agnieszka Radwanska 0-6 6-4 6-4 victory over Daniela Hantuchova ,and Vera Zvonareva
Petkovic will take on Stephens
FROM THE MERCURY INSURANCE OPEN – The disabled list has begun to grow longer with each passing day. In San Diego, Virginie Razzano and Tamira Paszek retired from their matches, the Frenchwoman against Andrea Petkovic down 6-2 3-0 with a shoulder troubles. and the Austrian with an abdominal injury. The day before, Maria Kirilenko and Alla Kudryavtseva went down and now 2010 finalist Aga Radwanska is playing with a taped right shoulder, which she says is painful. She had few problems in waxing Christian McHale 6-1, 6-0, but she didn’t have to serve hard in the third set.
Radwanska echoed what Sania Mirza said yesterday, which was that seven months into the season with a pretty compacted schedule, injuries are going to start popping up, especially when you consider the pretty quick transition from clay to grass to hardcourt (and in the case of some men still playing in Europe, clay to grass to clay to hard courts). It’s not that easy on the body to change surfaces, as its not like a player’s legs naturally know to stop sliding and to plant. Mirza has a left knee injury she sustained when she jerked a ligament at Wimbledon that still hurts on certain movements, Radwanska has been serving too much, and Paszek has been whacking to many groundstrokes. Then there’s Dominica Cibulkova who pulled out o her Stanford semi and then SD with an ab injury, as well as Kim Clijsters, Petra Kvitova and Venus Williams, who haven’t even begin their summer hardcourt season yet.
On the men’s side, Andy Roddick is still hurting, asare Robin Soderling and Jurgen Melzer. Just imagine what is going to occur next year when the Olympics super condense everything.
Let’s hope the bleeding stop soon because the last thin the tours want is another version of the “Slam of the Walking Dead’ when New York rolls around.
Only one American teen survived in SD and that was Stephens after Paszek gave up. She’ll face the talkative and smart Petkovic, who will crack the top 10 next week, beating fellow Germans Julia Goerges and Sabine Lisicki to the punch. Of the three, I’m not sure whose game I like better yet, but none of them back off the ball. Stephens is going to have really raise her level to reach the semis, but she sure is spunky.
Peng Shuai survived Sara Errani 4-6 6-2 7-6(7) and will the pleasure of facing Ana Ivanovic in the night match, who beat Alberta Brianti 6-1 6-2. Ivanovic joked that her confidence is clearly higher than it was when she started the event on a down, but she absolutely is not counting on big results this early in her coaching transition. Peng can bang with her and is a terrific return of server, so the Serbian must serve very well.
Once again, Daniela Hantuchova won a marathon three setter, this time over Zheng Jie 6-2 4-6 6-4. She’ll face her dubs partner, Radwanska and will certainly be favored with Aga’s woes. And by the way, as much as I’ve enjoyed watching McHale make a move this year, she is not showing enough bravado against the likes of Radwanska and really fell apart mentally. She did not commit to the grind enough and lacked in execution.
In the last match of the day, Sabine Lisicki bested CoCo Vandeweghe 6-4 6-3 in terribly boring affair. I realize they are both big servers, but maybe three rallies over five balls would have been nice. There were some impressive serves, forehands and returns, but unforced errors and less heady play dominated the match. Lisicki is going to have to play way better to beat top seed Vera Zvonareva, who beat Vera Dushevina 6-3 6-0.
McHale leads a trio of ambitious US teens.
FROM THE MERCURY INSURANCE OPEN IN SAN DIEGO – Thursday at the La Costa resort is going to be big day in the development of US women’s tennis. Not the largest one we have seen in the past couple of decades, maybe not even the most critical one in the past year, but it will certainly be worth paying attention to when teens CoCo Vandeweghe, Christina McHale and Sloane Stephens take the court in third round matches.
It is certainly the first time this year that three American teens have reached the third round of a WTA Premier level event and it would take a fair amount of digging to find out the last time that happened. All scored wins on Wednesday with McHale advancing when Alla Kudryavtseva retired down 6-2, 3-1, Vandeweghe playing sloppy but tough to overcome Olga Savchuk 6-7, 6-4, 6-3, and the enthusiastic Stephens knocking out the slumping world No. 20 Julia Goerges 6-3, 7-5.
McHale has been making fine progress all year, while fellow 19-year-old Vandeweghe has largely been running in place, and Stephens has been up and down. No analyst or coach of note will say that any of them are surefire top-20 players, but I would venture to say that in good health and with stable mindsets that they all have at least top 50 potential, which isn’t a figure that most US fans will get too excited about, but one that will put them in the WTA mix week in and week out for the next decade. McHale is already ranked No. 66 and is almost assured to crack the top 60 by next week so she’s a near lock. The athletic Vandeweghe is No. 102 and ambitious, and the also athletic and bold Stephens is No. 131. No other country at the tour’s sole WTA event this week can claim to have three teens in the round of 16, so at least on Thursday, the USTA will have something to crow about. In fact, McHale is the youngest member of the top 70 and Stephens is the youngest player in the top 135 and soon to be in the top 120. I am sure there are some folks out there who like the upside of the next highest ranked 18-year-old, No. 160 Caroline Garcia of France, more than Stephens, but consider this: the talented Garcia actually lost to Maria Sharapova at Roland Garros, while Stephens actually beat Georges in San Diego. That’s what some folks call “scoreboard” and winning matches – not just showing flashes of brilliance – still means a whole hell of a lot in pro tennis.
With that said, all three American youngsters will be underdogs on Thursday: McHale against the crafty Aga Radwanska, Stephens against Tamira Paszek and Vandeweghe against Sabine Lisicki. Radwanska and Lisicki are major steps up from the foes that McHale and Vandeweghe faced on Wednesday and Paszek has been playing very well of late and can crush the ball. Interestingly, all those players are around the ages of 20-21. All broke out fairly early, slid a bit due to variety of factors (although Radwanska has been fairly steady) and now are decent sized factors everywhere they go. The US teens cannot say that yet, but who is to say that one of them could not pull off an upset on Thursday and make a bigger name for herself and sometimes in the next two years, that they won’t be the favorites against another group of teens? I’m not ready to cast them off as a bound-to-be mediocre group yet.
If I was to pick one of them to get through I would have to go with McHale because she is patient, can grind and hopefully will be told not to try and hit through Radwanska quickly, who is very crafty but is still struggling in closing out matches. Stephens will have to be spot on the ball because Paszek can rock the yellow pill. San Diego’s CoCo will play the night match against the streaking Lisicki and unless the German has an off serving day its hard to see how the American is going break her more than twice — if that.
Outside of the US circles, there are also some potential bang up matches with Virginie Razzano playing Andrea Petkovic, Daniela Hantuchova against Jie Zheng, Shuai Peng against Sara Errani and Alberta Brianti against Ana Ivanovic, who said after she came back from 0-5 in the second set to beat Ayumi Morita 6-1 7-6 (5) that she is trying to stop chasing her service toss, but won’t catch bad tosses because she feels it is unsportsmanlike….Elena Vesnina has an injured hand and retired from the doubles with Sania Mirza. India’s top player told me that she’s playing straight through the US Open and that she and Vesnina are going to try very hard to qualify for the year-end WTA Championships AND despite reports in India that her husband, Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik, is now beating her in mini or regular tennis, thatss simply not the case. He’s been kidding her about the one when they played three points in mini tennis and he won two, but that was the extent of it. Fun stuff for the cross-border celebrity newlyweds. Mirza also says that she believes she played 161 matches between Birmingham of last year and this tournament, which may be a record. Recall that she played both the Asian and Commonwealth Games. I can’t even imagine after reading that anyone will ever say that she does not put a huge effort into her tennis…Maria Kirilenko also pulled out with an injury. My the ailments are starting to pile up. ..Speaking of players who are going to attempt to play through the US Open, count Melanie Oudin in. The struggling teenager is thinking that this time when she arrives in New York, the pressure will be less on her because she’s not defending quarterfinal points like she did in 2010. Here’s hoping she pulls herself out of her slump because she really is a terrific competitor when she’s confident.
Some of you have cracked me for not covering the men over the past 10 days but frankly, when I’m at WTA tournaments and have zero chance to watch the men or talk to the men, there is no reason for me to get deeply into issues and matches I do not have a good handle on. It’s a much better use of my energy and your reading time to focus on people I can actually talk to in person and matches I can see. After San Diego ends, I’ll laser in on the men in Montreal and Cincy. And I do promise to call and write up something on the newly turned pro Jack Sock in the next two days or so.
Washington does have some interesting players though and on Wednesday, Donald Young, Fernando Verdasco, Nikolay Davydenko, Mike Russell and Radek Stepanek scored wins.
Ivanovic going deep would help ticket sales
FROM THE MERCURY INSURANCE OPEN – Despite the reduction in the calendar, it is becoming increasingly unlikely that we will ever see a player such as Lindsay Davenport in 1998 win the three straight Premier level events and the US Open again. It is becoming increasingly rare for top players to even compete three consecutive weeks, which was not the case with Davenport, Kim Clijsters and Venus Williams earlier in her career.
Now, when star players such as Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova make their schedules, if they choose to play Stanford, which is played three weeks after Wimbledon, there is almost no way that they are going to play the Mercury Insurance Open in San Diego and then Canada and Cincinnati. They do not have to play both Premier 5 level events in Canada and Cincinnati, but they have to play four of the five and since they would rather play those events in North America, they are going to make sure to get it down during the summer.
So consequently, San Diego, which is Premier level event the size of Stanford (neither of which are Premier 5s) is struggling to attract the cream of the top and was crushed when the super popular Kim Clijsters, young Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova and defending champion pulled out. It
