Are bigger ground strokes coming off the racket of Marion Bartoli?
Bartoli Smartens Up
Fed Cup talk seems more prevalent during its off weeks than during its
on weeks. That's why I wasn’t surprised when I stepped into France’s
Marion Bartoli's press conference yesterday, she was complaining
to my French colleagues about the competition for a good 10 minutes.
Make that three series of complaints now from the American, Russian
and French players against their respective captains. After Bartoli was
done in French, I joked with her in English that “I won’t
ask you about Fed Cup.” But, if you read the transcript, the translator
got it wrong. Bartoli got right into anyway, saying, “I'm
not doing the selection, first of all. The captain is doing it, and
he has not done it already, so I have no idea if I'm going to be in
the team or not. We have the Fed Cup after Wimbledon, but he has not
done already the selection, so I cannot tell you if I'm inside the
team or not inside the team.”
Bartoli said two amazing things yesterday about how why she’s
been playing so well as of late: one, because she's fitter, and, two,
because she’s hitting the ball harder. She still looks a good
20 pounds overweight to me and she always smacked the ball, so I wasn’t
sure where those assessments were coming from.
“I think the quality of my game from the baseline has improved
a lot as well as my serve, so I think everything is coming together
and I'm a more complete player all around,” said the ultra-aggressive
baseliner, who hits with two hands off both sides and reached the fourth
round of a Slam for the first time at Roland Garros. “To play
on Centre Court in the French Open, and to beat [Elena] Dementieva
in the second biggest stadium in France gave me a lot of confidence.
So of course now I'm not scared to play against the big players on the
big courts. But first of all you have to beat them on some other courts
not to be afraid about their game and then go on and compete at your
best, and for that you need some experience and you need to beat them
somehow. To beat some girls like Dementieva, [Daniela] Hantuchova,
gave me a lot of confidence.”
Ranked No. 19, Bartoli is now Frances’s No. 2 player. Like her
French peer, Tatiana Golovin, she’s short of stature but has a
naturally strong build and can pound her ground strokes deep and hard.
But if she’s
going to crack the Top 10, she must play smarter and develop more tools,
which she believes she’s doing.
“I read the game more than my opponent, and I find, of course,
more the key from the baseline. But again, you find more keys when you're
[playing] fast,” said Bartoli, who will face Jelena Jankovic in
the next round.
“When you play slow you don't find any keys, you're just running
after the ball. So to get in control of the round you need to play fast,
you need to play close to the baselines. That's the only way to control
the game, and then of course find most of the shots on the court. Because
my baseline has improved so much, I have more possibilities. I'm getting
more angles, and I'm able when the ball is coming fast to give it back
as fast as it's coming, and before usually when the ball was coming
fast I would just slow down the ball and get beat on the next shot.
I think my improvement now is when I'm on the run. I have the power
to be able to come back and play each shot with the same power.”
It's Scary for Schynder
Patty Schynder’s book, "The White Mile" (eerie drum roll, please)
, that she wrote with her husband, Rainier Hoffman, should be out in
German sometime this year. But, it won't be available in time for
her fourth-round clash with Justine Henin, who, she calls the “big
favorite." "The
book will chronicle some ups and downs we had, some tough times. But
also then the funny side of the tour. I mean, 12 years traveling, you
see many people, many funny stories, things happen. It takes you through
all the faces of tennis. We have been involved in some things that haven't
been nice and pretty scary. Yeah, very scary.”
Granville Gains Wins, Loses
Friends
Laura Granville has taken two decent sized scalps at the AELTC, Mary
Pierce in 2002 and Martina Hingis on Friday. She’s working with
her doubles partner, Jill Craybas’ coach, Raj Chaudhuri and he’s
helped her relax. For a shy and tightly-wound woman, that’s a
good thing. Her ground strokes are less predictable and more powerful. “My
coach would always say when I'm a junior, tight and smooth. Tight really
doesn't work nowadays in tennis. You really have to be loose and follow
through, have good racquet head speed. Also trying to get my contact
point a little bit farther out, not so close into me so I'm jammed.
Just also being more positive on the court mentally. Just taking it
one point at a time, doing different things that way.”
Here’s the downer for mid-20 something like Granville – a lack
of fun off court: "I see my friends, and they're able
to be in one place and meet a lot of new people. I think that's probably
the hardest thing, is just traveling so much. I'm losing contact with
friends, not able to have as much social life as some of my friends.
That's something that you have to give up.”
ATP Might Say Ole Madrid;
Istanbul to Release Plans
The word off the court is that the ATP Board of Directors held a vote
on something related to its 2009 calendar, but no comment is
the statement when it comes to what exactly occurred. But you can literally
bank on Madrid becoming a new Masters Series tournament in 2009, to
be combined with the women the week of May 11. With that decision,
TMS Hamburg will get pushed out somewhere, possibly to the fall. But
what of Monte Carlo, which was also on the chopping block in regards
to its TMS status due to the ATP’s decision to award TMS status
to a new fall tournament in Shanghai. The tournament and the tour are
negotiating some kind of compromise, maybe where Monte Carlo retains
its TMS status, but doesn’t
get the same mandatory player commitment that the other big boys do.
The ATP will not announce anything at Wimbledon, partly because they
don’t
want the players to squawk with so many journalists around, and partly
because it doesn’t have its calendar neatly tied up, but some
kind of announcement should arrive in July.
Quickly back to the Sony Ericsson WTA ‘s provisional 2009 calendar:
Istanbul essentially matched Doha’s winning bid for the 2008-2010
Championships, which was why it was given the option of hosting the Championships
from 2011-2013. However, organizers were only given a 12-hour window
to decide whether they wanted the next three-year swing, which is why
there was no big announcement from the Turkish group on Friday. They
may hold a press conference next week to discuss their plans. Bangalore,
India, which is also lost out, apparently put in a very strong bid, too,
but fell just short. Monterey, Mexico only bid about half of Doha’s
$14 million or so, which is why that bid went down.
But, if you look at any region of the world that the WTA has all
but ignored, it’s been Latin America, which embarrassingly, will
only host two tournaments – Bogotá and Acapulco – in
2009. There appears to be an open spot the week of March 2 for another
tournament there. Somebody, somewhere in Argentina or Chile should
host an event, or the tour should encourage Monterrey to take a spot.
The tour may have forgotten this, but part of growing the sport means
encouraging nations where the sport is actually popular (hint, not
Dubai) to host tournaments. The men also should look to upgrading a
couple South American tournaments.
