Battle of the Russians
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I missed the battle of the (leggy) blondes. But I caught the match between Nadia Petrova and Maria Sharapova at the Australian Open. What a damp squib! The tennis was almost laughable. And yet I watched till the end. There was definitely a lot of tension in the air and finally Sharapova scraped through. . . big relief writ on her lovely face.
Petrova, the world’s seventh best player, had come into the match having lost the least number of games (15) of any player in this tournament. But she was not favored to win against the world no. 4 Sharapova, glamour girl extraordinaire, who had tougher matches till now. This was a game full of unforced errors and very few winners. Petrova lost so many chances at crucial points that it was painful to watch. Both had an unimaginable number of double faults. Such bad tennis at this stage of the tournament in a grand slam! Sad. Well, at least we can be grateful the current crop of Russian superwomen is not just all looks.
After a series of really bad matches in the women’s side, Justine Henin-Hardenne just beat Sharapova in a brilliant match. Both women played extraordinarily well and it was a delight to watch. This is how tennis should be played!
I watched the first half of the match and had to head to bed when Henin-Hardenne was really powering through the second set. That woman is amazing because she is built so slight but yet generates these amazing powerful shots. Looks like she’s back where she belongs again after being down with injury last year.
Frank Deford had a nice piece bemoaning the preeminence of power in all of sports. In his opinion even ‘ersatz’ sports such as figure skating are now more about power and not about grace or skill.
Indeed. The same can be said about her compatriot Clijsters. The match between the latter and Mauresmo was also a delight to watch and was quite even until Clijsters twisted her ankle (it was painful to watch on slowmo).
I don’t know about figure skating but I don’t mind it being that way in sports like tennis. If the game and fitness level has to be raised to a different level, why not? Navratilova did that to Evert; Graf to her contempories; and of course the Williams sisters to the current lot. Some of these women don’t look as physically fit as the Williamses but still they have the power somewhere in them.
My favorite now is Amelie Mauresmo. It’s time she wins a slam. And she is looking fitter than ever. She reminds me of how Hilary Swank looked in “Million Dollar Baby.” Besides, Henin-Hardenne has already won this tournament before (and three other slams). You should have seen Mauresmo’s backhands. They were of the rare one-handed type which we rarely see anymore and are sure any coach’s delight. The commentators were comparing her backhand to that of Federer.
I remember when Graf was totally decimating her opponents with her power play in the late 80s and early 90s, one of her frustrated contemporaries (I think it was Mary Joe Fernandez) said that Graf ought to be playing on the men’s side of the draw. In my books, Steffi Graf is the greatest women tennis player of all time because she won everything on every surface and has a very balanced collection of Grand Slam wins.
Henin-Hardenne is not slacking in her backhand shots either … watching some of her backhand winners was brilliant because she has got such a beautiful, textbook follow-through. It is very elegant to watch and appreciate.
It would be tough (and foolish) to argue otherwise. Speaking of Graf, the ever enterprising bookies in England are already taking bets for her children winning Wimbledon some day.
I didn’t think it was that textbook. She sometimes tended to lean back too much during her backhands and the feet were not in their textbook locations. But winners they were, nonetheless.
I don’t really watch much of sports any more, but I remember the time when I got sick of watching men’s Wimbeldon because all it seemed to be was one ace after the other. Don’t know if the game has become significantly better to watch.
If anything, it has become even more of a power game on both mens and womens tennis, especially on the fast surfaces like at Wimbledon. I’ve always liked the pace of women’s tennis at Wimbledon because the speed there does not kill the fun of watching a good rally. The French Open is my second favorite tennis grand slam event after Wimbledon because the rallies there can be entertaining and are not over in 2 or 3 strokes.
Some of the matches I watched at the Australian Open had powerful rallies in which both players would pass the ball over the net at such high speeds and run all over the court doing this. The last couple of matches of the wunderkind Baghdatis and the ridiculously long match between Grosjean and Keifer come to mind. And both the women’s semifinals also produced periods of such intensity. The court here is much slower than Wimbledon of course.
Maria Sharapova to reporters after being asked to talk about her disappointment: “Talk about the disappointment? Yeah, it’s disappointing. Look, guys, I think, I mean, I know you are reporters and I know this is your job, but you know, take your notepads, take your pencils down, take your grunt-o-meters down, the fashion police, put everything away and just watch the match, you know, from just the fans’ perspective. I seriously think that the quality of the match today was great.”
She makes a good point.
This makes what Monica Seles did to Graf all the more stunning.
I was in Australia during most of the tournament (though not in Melbourne) and all the talk among my friends was about Amelie Mauresmo who has finally won a grand slam. Kudos to her. The egomaniacal Martina Hingis once called her ‘half a man’. Probably because she came out of the closet in 1999 when she lost to Hingis in the final here. She did look so fit and muscular. I am really glad she won.
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