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SHE'S NOW
NO. 1 ON THE WTA CHARTS
Davenport will give '05 a go
Venus avenges Sprem defeat; Andre
moves on in model Madrid
By Matthew Cronin,
TennisReporters.net
 Ron
Cioffi/TR.net |
| Top spot inspires Lindsay to keep on playing
in 2005. |
It's tough to let go, especially
after you've just grabbed the No. 1 ranking again. That's what
28-year-old Lindsay Davenport discovered in the past few weeks
when considering whether she should retire. Back in the summer,
she was almost positive she would call it quits at the year-end
WTA Championships in LA. Now she says she'll give a fourth Slam
title another go at the '05 Aussie Open.
Moreover, she believes that with a smart and aggressive training
regimen she can put off another knee surgery, which would surely
signal the end of her career. "I play for is the opportunity
and the chance to win Grand Slams," she said. "And I
felt like this year I had two great opportunities at Wimbledon
and the U.S. Open and wasn't able to do it. I'm looking forward
to going to Australia and trying to win again. That's definitely
the way I'm headed right now."
At Wimbledon, eventual champ Maria Sharapova came back on Davenport
in three sets. Then after sweeping through four US Open warm-ups,
Davenport was injured in practice before her semifinal against
Svetlana Kuznetsova at the Open and could barely move in the last
two sets of her loss. "I was pretty disappointed after the
US Open," Davenport said. "I finally feel after a couple
of years that I've gotten my game back and maybe more importantly,
a lot of confidence back. I feel like I've trained pretty hard
this year, not just to play well for a few months, but to give
myself the opportunity to maybe do it for a little longer. Obviously
Australia with the surface there, if I can be ready to go physically,
I'd like to try and get an opportunity to win another one."
After she injured her knee at Roland Garros, doctors told Davenport
she was headed toward another surgery. But she's now traveling
with a full-time trainer, Laura Eby, who she says has made a huge
difference. Now the Laguna Beach, Calif. resident believes she
can get through a Slam without a significant injury.
 Ron
Cioffi/TR.net |
| She's smiling now. |
"I definitely think that's
possible," she said. "That's one of the reasons why
I think I've been able to be so successful this year and so consistent
and get to No. 1 is that I've had some little injuries here and
there, but for the most part, I've been able to play tournaments
and stay pretty healthy. … The question with my knee is
that there's definitely some degenerating cartilage in there.
It held up all summer. I had to make some adjustments and some
modifications to my training and [find out] exactly what I could
do with my right knee. It could be like they said – a couple
of years, it could be a few months. And so that was a little bit
in the back of my mind after the French when I found that out.
Hopefully it holds up for as long as my body will allow it to."
Davenport has won seven titles this year and sports a 61-8 match
record, and should she properly recover from the flu bug she just
caught, will be the favorite going into the WTA Championships.
Unlike compatriots Jennifer Capriati and Serena Williams, Davenport
made the trip to Europe this fall, winning Filderstadt before
falling to Anastasia Myskina in the Moscow semis. She's guaranteed
a spot in the Championships along with the now injured Amelie
Mauresmo, Anastasia Myskina, Kuznetsova and Elena Dementieva.
Serena, Maria Sharapova, Capriati, Venus Williams and Vera Zvonareva
will fight it out for the last three spots.
"It's a tough year and it's kind of worn on everybody,"
Davenport said. "I mean, poor Justine (Henin-Hardenne) and
Kim (Clijsters) had such a great year last year and they haven't
really competed hardly at all this year. It was definitely tough
for me to get up to go to Europe for two weeks. I was hoping to
get through three and physically and I just couldn't do it. Jennifer's
played a number of years. Serena has been struggling with her
knee and I think that they are pretty close to making the [Championships].
They are taking chances, but I think that they feel that they
need to do that for their bodies and hopefully it works out if
they place early or get in anyway."
Venus avenges Sprem defeat; Andre moves
on in model Madrid
Venus took a huge mental step toward qualifying
on Tuesday by avenging her loss at this year's Wimbledon to Karolina
Sprem with a 6-2, 6-2 victory over the Croat on Tuesday at the Swisscom
Challenge. "You can't compare this match to Wimbledon,"
Williams said. "That was such a long time ago. I don't think
she played as well today, and I played much, much better. I wanted
to show her that she shouldn't get used to expecting that kind of
result from me." Williams will take on the winner of Wednesday's
match between two qualifiers, Tatiana Golovin or Ana Ivanovic. No.8
seed Nadia Petrova has an outside shot at the Championships and
scored a nice 6-4, 6-3 win over Lisa Raymond. She will face Nathalie
Dechy.
Even though models doubling as ball women are dominating the headlines,
there's some pretty fine tennis being played at TMS Madrid. Andre
Agassi badly needs a few good wins to qualify for Houston and returned
his way past Max Mirnyi 7-6(5), 6-3. But Mardy Fish lost a war to
No. 9 Andrei Pavel 6-1, 3-6, 7-6(2). Other notable wins were scored
by No. 4 David Nalbandian, who took out Robin Soderling 7-6(5),
6-3. The ATP is touting Tommy Haas as its "Comeback Player
of the Year" and the German responded well, beating Xavier
Malisse 6-4, 6-1.
Indoor lover Taylor Dent plastered Mikael Youzhny 6-3, 6-2, while
Ivan Ljubicic stopped promising Czech teen Tomas Berdych 6-4, 6-4.
Agassi was asked who will be favored in the US-Spain Davis Cup final
in Sevilla. Without him, the answer is pretty obvious, but here's
his answer anyway: "The home team always has the advantage.
There's very good players on the Spanish team, they know the surface,
but there can also be surprises. The fact that we didn't beat Spain
four years ago has nothing to do with anything. In this point of
my career, I am where I am." Agassi also says he will vote
for John Kerry.
Do we have weight in on whether models should be used as ball women
at TMS-Madrid? Of course our answer is no for all the obvious reasons.
But it's not that big of a deal. We turn to a comment from our contributor
Kamakshi Tandon on Court Coverage: "Anyway, it turns out that
organizers have only partly lost their minds. While wire stories
last week carelessly gave the impression that this was to be a wholesale
invasion, the models are in fact only Trojan clothes-horses, working
only one evening match for Spanish television. Which meant, probably,
a whole lot of nonplussed viewers in other time zones today. It
also meant that local reaction was pretty much the only reaction
to be had."
 Siggi
Bucher |
| Andre Agassi will compete in Australia in
2005 but not in '04 Davis Cup final. |
Interesting
quotes from Reuters: "Left-wing Madrid politician
Ines Sabanes said employing the women, who wear skirts and tight
tops emblazoned with the name of a sponsor, was sexist and frivolous.
Parents of the teenagers they ousted felt it was a heartless move.
"This kills the children's dreams of sharing a court with
their idols," said a 50-year-old mother.
One 14-year-old said:, "We think its very, very bad, because
in a game of tennis the center of attention should be the player.
It's sport, not a catwalk." We guess no one checked with
Serena.
The boys at www.Tennis-X.com (are there actually working women
there who are not models just fetching them brews?) says we are
wrong defending the WTA for running lower Tier tournaments concurrently
with its Tier Is. No, we weren't. The WTA is not the ATP and no
Tier I women's tournaments have been hurt by having lower-ranked
players competing the same week elsewhere. You didn't see Myskina
opting to play Uzbekistan instead of Moscow, did you?
But Tennis-X does make a good point saying that the WTA needs
to make sure that all the best players play the Tier 1s. One way
to insure participation of the top players and make sure that
enough good players have enough opportunities to play is to expand
all WTA Tier One draws to 64 and hold 32-draw qualifying. That
should take care of almost everyone worthy if you throw in a few
wild cards.
It's not the Tier Is that are getting hurt by the Tier III and
IVs , it's the Tier IIs like Fillderstadt, where the TD must have
been scratching his eyes out watching Wimbly champ Sharapova packing
them in at a Tier IV in Tokyo.
We do think Tennis-X is often funny and on the mark and at least
they take positions on issues, rather than running scared and
trying to kiss every significant player's butt, like some publications
and other sites we know. But we also believe that in general,
they are much harder on the WTA than they are on the ATP. Again
guys, you want to confuse fans and lull them into apathy, come
up with three ATP draws like we saw last week in Moscow, Vienna
and Metz. Zzzzzzz. And at least at the Tier I Zurich this week,
they are not trotting out Chippendales linesmen. See, they never
listen to Martina Hingis in Switzerland.
BTW: No personal
offense was meant in criticizing the fans who wrote in the Agassi
Davis Cup issue. There's no question that Andre has given a ton
back to his sport, perhaps more than any male player in history.
But Davis Cup needs him and his career needs another Davis Cup final-round
win. Hence, the criticism of the much beloved one from these quarters.
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