New No. 5 Aga has done everything but make a Slam semi.

By Matt Cronin

After a terrific last seven months that includes four WTA Premier titles, there is not much more to say about Aga Radwanska except that it time for her to display the same form at a Slam that she did at San Diego, Tokyo, Beijing and last week, in Dubai. She’s a delightful player to watch with how quick and creative she can be, but it’s important to note that her only three losses this season have come to the woman whom she trashed last week for allegedly exaggerating injuries, Victoria Azarenka. Certainly, Azarenka overpowered her times during those wins, but Radwanska has beaten the Belarusian’s before and did not serve confidently well or clock her forehand with enough depth in any of those contests. Given that Azarenka has been on fire, Radwanska will be hard pressed to beat her if she doesn’t continue to push herself forward.

Goerges did best Caroline Wozniacki for the third time, who simply panicked on the big points in Dubai. Now No. 4 Wozniacki will head to Indian Wells to try and defend her title with in her current form, which will be a huge ask. She is fortunate that Kim Clijsters in skipping the tournament, as is Serena Williams for the 11th straight year. Venus Williams, who has also skipped Indian Wells for the same period, pulled out of Kuala Lumpur this week. She’s hoping to return in Miami but that’s no sure thing….

As it stands today, Venus is going to have a very hard time qualifying for the Olympics…

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Milos found magic again in San Jose.

By Matt Cronin

FROM THE SAP OPEN IN SAN JOSE – Milos Raonic joined some pretty good company on Sunday after scoring a routine 7-6 (4), 6-2 victory over Denis Istomin in the final.

With the win, Raonic defended his title and became the seventh player to do so in the Open Era.  Of the six other men when have accomplished the feat – Stan Smith, John McEnroe, Pete Sampras, Mark Philippoussis, Andy Roddick and Andy Murray – four have won Slam titles, and the other two, Philippoussis and Murray, have reached Slam finals. That’s a darn good indicator for the Canadian.

Raonic came into the tournament only ranked No. 29, but he’s no veteran at the age of 21 and clearly has an enormous upside: he owns one of the game’s biggest and most varied first serves; he can rip winners off both wings off the ground; he moves well for a man 6-feet-5;  and he can put away balls at the net.  He is by no means a perfect player, but he seems to be gradually improving and he’s already very good.

“It’s different than last year,” said Raonic who only lost four points on his serve during the match. I was a little more unaware of what going on this year. This year I have a little higher expectations and know how to prepare and deal with things. I’m a much better player than last year, when I was playing higher than my potential. This year I came in here a much better player and I’m playing well.”

Perhaps the biggest question that surrounds the lanky “Avatar” is his health. If he’s going to make a strong run at the top 5, he has to get his body right. After surging through much of the first half of 2011, he slipped and badly injured his hip at Wimbledon. which ruined the rest off the summer. But with a handful of matches in the fall, and a sound off season training regimen, he opened the year by taking Chennai with wins over Nicolas Almagro and Janko Tipsarevic. He then admittedly didn’t play his best in a third round loss to Lleyton Hewitt at the Aussie Open, but few young players could have beaten Hewitt in his own sandbox on that evening.

His nation raised the flag for him at home in Vancouver against France in the Davis Cup and he won his first match over Julien Benneteau, lost the doubles with Daniel Nestor, and then had a misdiagnoses of his knee injury, which he says forced him to pull the plug against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

He found out upon arriving in the SF Bay Area that his knee  injury was not career threatening and that he could play on. His knee is not 100 percent yet, but in San Jose he did score solid wins over Kevin Anderson, Ryan Harrison and a very decent player in Istomin. Of course San Jose is an ATP 250 tournament and he didn’t have to beat any members of the Big 4 to win the title – let alone anyone in the top 35 – but it is never easy to defend a title and that he was able to come off of last weekend’s chaos in Vancouver shows that he can focus when called upon.

“Being able to come here and get the good news was big sigh of relief. I was told I would be out for a month,” he said. “I felt like I played really well in the first match in Davis Cup and I really wanted the second opportunity, but unfortunately I was not able to play. To come here and feel like it didn’t take me off the right track is amazing.”

Next week, he’ll head to Memphis to defend 300 final round points against a slightly improved field that includes John Isner (who doesn’t want to see Isner v Raonic ace–fest indoors). Then the big outdoors Masters Series tournaments will arrive at Indian Wells and Miami, where he only has 55 points to defend, so he could make a top-20 push. However, given that he still has a lot of work to do before he becomes a great player — like improving has return of serve, court positioning and shot selection – he cannot be expected to put together a four title run through Miami. But he has far better chance of going deep in 2012 than he did in 2011.

“Last year, I would go through the match just hitting the ball and if was hitting well, I was winning,” he said. “Now I know what to do on each point, I understand my game better and my opponents’ games better, when I need to go for a bit more and when I need to back off and make ‘em play. I’m a better technically, mentally and I think I am a better ‘tennis’ player.”

Raonic and his coach, Galo Blanco, and trainer Juan Ozo will head to Los Angles for 10 days after Memphis for rest, rehab and practice. He feels like that after three straight weeks of play he cannot perform at an optimum level.

The question for Raonic and all the rest of the young guns (Bernard Tomic, Alex Dolgopolov, Ryan Harrison, Grigor Dimitrov et al) is whether they can actually compete with tennis’ Big 4, who have totally dominated the big events over the past few years. It’s one thing to say it possible to best them, but with Novak Djokovic is winning everything in sight, Rafa Nadal and Roger Federer are scooping up armfuls of other titles (Federer won the Rotterdam title today) and Andy Murray is reaching five straight Grand Slam semis, at this rate, it’s purely speculative to say that the kids have enough gumption to actually push past them in the near future.

“The chances are there but the question is can you capitalize? Raonic said. “I feel like we can come close but it’s just a matter of whether you can really do that on the big points. That’s where they really standout. I feel like if I’m serving well, I can get really close to them. What I have done here this week is play great tiebreakers and I stayed really solid in them. If I’m going to beat them I need a few points on their serve and if I don’t convert there, I feel pretty good I can push things to tiebreakers consistently and when I comes to that it’s just a matter of a few points. I don’t think there’s a big gap, but it’s learning how to deal with those moments. For us, improvement is going to be a big part of that and if we get better. it’s that much easier to deal with those moments.”

* No. 1 Victoria Azarenka won her 11th WTA title by crushing Samantha Stosur 61 62 in Doha. She’s 17-0 on the year and is now 6-0 all-time against Stosur. She got hurt in the semis, which made her win all the more impressive.

* At the  Brazil Open, Nicolas Almagro won his 11th title overall by taking down Fillippo  Volandri 6-3 4-6 6-4. Almgaro has now won six career titles during the Latin Amercian clay court swing.

* Spain’s Lara Arruabarrena-Vecino bested Alexandra Panova 6-2, 7-5  to win the Copa Colsanitas in Bogota At No. 174, the 19-year-old Arrubarrena-Vecino is the lowest ranked player to win a WTA singles title since 2009, when No. 201 Alexandra Dulgheru won the Warsaw Open. She is small but scrappy.

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Sock and Kudla are both promising 19 year olds. MAL TAAM PHOTO

By Matt Cronin

FROM THE SAP OPEN IN SAN JOSE – Jack Sock and Denis Kudla revived their 2012 US Open junior final on Tuesday afternoon on Ladies Day at the tournament, so even though the both of them are only 19 year olds, they were subject to some cat calls by some members of Cougar Town in the audience.

The two know each other well, having played each other two times in Futures since Sock bested Kudla in Flushing, both victories for the taller and thinner native of Nebraska. Then there was Kudal outlasting Sock last December in the USTA Australian Open Wild Card Playoff. Overall, Sock leads their head to head 4-3 going back to their first match in the 16s, a win for Kudla. They have known each other since the 12 and unders, and are friendly off court, but on court seem to be pretty fierce rivals.

“I like to take credit and got him his first 50 gold balls,” Kudla said with a laugh of his junior doubles success with Sock.

There are no chuckles or exchanges of  high-fives in what was tense match, when the aggressive baseliner Kudla mixed up his attack, went hard at his foe’s backhand and defended off enough heavily topspun forehands from Sock to jump out to a set and a 5-2 lead in the second set tiebreaker . Then he began to get nervous, threw in a few unforced errors, saw Sock nail a 121-mph ace to go up 7-6 and then got a bad bounce and missed a backhand.

One deep breath later, he was into a third set.

Sock broke Kudla early, but then he broke him right back. Sock received treatment for an abdominal injury late in the set, as Kudla yanked him around and pounded him with quick fisted two handed backhands. When it came time to close, ths time his knees didn’t shake and he held at love and won 6-4, 6-7(6), 6-3.

“I felt like I was controlling match. It was in my hands,” said Kudla, who is coached by the USTA’s Diego Moyano. “Last time I lost to him I played his game too much, I let him dictate to me and when you do that it’s pretty hard to win. I let him hit forehands all day and if you do that you are not going to win because his forehand is too good.”

Both fair-haired teens are the same age as Ryan Harrison, who has already cracked the top 75 (but is now ranked No. 95) . Kudla, who is a Lleyton Hewitt look-alike, has strengths that lie in his speed and wicked two-handed backhand. He can also crack serves at 125 mph. Sock is taller and can serve big and as Kudla said, can hammer forehands. Not really flat forehands, but ones with wicked spin. Both have significant potential, but both are still very much works n progress, as evidenced by Kudla’s No. 203 ranking and Sock at No. 308.

But Kudla, who was a workhorse on the Future and Challenger circuit last season, spent a lot of the off season buffing up and now looks more like a pro player. He qualified for the Australian Open before going to Tommy Haas and also qualifed for San Jose.

“I’m going in the right direction and will hopeful stay at this pace.”

Sock has also spent a fair amount  of time in the gym, and while he still needs to improve his fitness, he was  strong enough last week at the Dallas Challenger to be able spend an evening throwing up due to stomach, flu, get up and go to the hospital in the morning, have an IV put in his arm and then go straight to the court for a match where he somehow lasted until the third set.

“This year will be a test for me,” said Sock, who won the 2011 US Open mixed doubles with Melanie Oudin. “This year is about getting used to the traveling and play a lot of matches. The game has become very physical so the physicality of it plays a big part.”

It seems probable that both Andy Roddick and Milos Raonic will play their opening matches on Wednesday night at San Jose’s SAP Open. Both are coming off injuries.

Kudla will face  Roddick, who he was practiced with and has tremendous respect for, but believes he has a shot to beat.

Here’s what France’s Gael Monfils had to say about Raonic’s decision not to play his second singles match against France last weekend: “I think it was very wise on his part (to skip the Davis Cup match). Davis Cup is intense. It’s very easy to get hurt and then have to miss three or four weeks. He’s young, and he made a champion’s decision not to play and handicap his team.”

The word off court is the reason why Mardy Fish is not playing Sand Jose or Memphis is cause he’s getting around $300,000 to play Marseille and Dubai. At 29, he’s got to collect the cash when it’s still available.

BTW on Sock: he’ll begin to work with the USTA’s Jay Berger next week in Memphis.

Germans of the WTA

Just six weeks into the new season it appears like Germany could be the new Russia. Not since the late 1980s has that European giant had so many good women players. They have four players in the top 25: Andrea Petkovic, Sabine Lisicki and Julia Georges, and the dangerous lefty Angelique Kerber, who won the Paris Indoors over Marion Bartoli and rose from No.27 to No. 22.  She does look like a top 10 player to be. And how about Mona Barthel, who is up to No.39, 30 spots higher than where she started the year.

Here’s the rub when comparing this group to the late 1980s’ one: the 2012 collection does not have a dominant player yet, or even a top 5 player.  The 1988 group was lead by Steffi Graf, who won the Golden Slam that year. Then there was Claudia Kohde-Kilsch, who hung a round the top 10 for a long time, Sylvia Hanika, who hovered in the top 20 and  Bettina Bunge, who did crack the top 10.

Exactly who of the modern group will become a true Slam threat is up in the air. Possibly the late blooming Kerber, maybe the forehand firing Goerges on clay, or the service bombing Lisicki on grass, or the workhouse Petkovic on hard courts. But there is no Graf in the group (and there almost never is in any group as she’s the best singles player of the Open era). The new group could be a collection of former Australian Open finalist Anke Huber’s.

Here’s Maria Sharapova- who lost to Kerber in Paris – on the Germany’s new sensation

“She’s really starting to break through. And being a lefty gives her a bit of an edge – she has a great game for it, but she’s also someone who’s very aggressive, stays low, is very strong and runs well. She has many pluses.”

* Bartoli, who has played very well in France over the past year, left the court in tears after her three set loss to Kerber. She’s like nothing better than to win a significant title in France.

* I have no question in my mind that Daniela Hantuchova – who beat Maria Kirilenko to maintain her  again at the Pattaya Open title, will play well into her 30s. She just loves competing.

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