The Current State Of Women’s Tennis

Kim Clijsters face says it all about the state of women's tennis.

Quick, name me a viable contender for the women’s French Open title… give up? I don’t blame you because I can’t either.

The current number one is Caroline Wozniacki, who by the way has never won a grand slam championship, she lost yesterday. Number two is Kim Clijsters, who’s comeback story is one made for dreams, she lost yesterday. The Williams sisters are both absent due to injury, one-time wunderkind Ana Ivonavic and Dinara Safina are AWOL and Maria Sharapova is playing herself back into shape.

So what you’re left with is the possibility of Li Na, Victoria Azarenka or last year’s surprise winner Francesca Schiavone competing for the crown at Roland Garros.

Yep, this is the state of Women’s tennis.

This is reminiscent of the early 2000’s on the ATP tour when Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras and the other greats of the previous generation were on the decline and we tried to buy into Lleyton Hewitt, Andy Roddick and Marat Safin as the leaders of the new school. For three years until the emergence of Roger Federer, men’s tennis was a virtual crapshoot for number one and whoever got it didn’t do much with it.

Fast forward to 2011 and we’re at that same place in time with the women’s game.

Both Venus and Serena are declining in skill, Sharapova can’t stay healthy and Kim Clijsters has only proven to be a dominant hard court player and has been a non-factor elsewhere. There is not one big name in the sport that has, or can for that matter, take the game by the throat and make it their own in the way that Martina Hingis, the Williams Sisters, Steffi Graf or any of the other greats in the sports history.

In short, women’s tennis is falling into a state of mediocrity. After not even one full week at the French Open we’re witnessing it firsthand.

Wozniacki’s fall to one-time starlet Daniela Hantuchova is another setback in the talented yet frustrating career for Wozniacki. Right now she should have at least two slams under her belt, yet she doesn’t seem to have the same fight in her that other former number ones have had. Wozniacki just folds under pressure. Once the shots don’t fall her way her whole game falls apart. There’s no way that the number one player in the world should have only won 4 games against a player who has never made it past the fourth round of the French Open in her career.

Caroline Wozniacki looks the part of number one, but isn't playing it well.

Yet Wozniacki continues to disappoint. Fortunately or unfortunately, whatever your stance may be, she will still be number one for two more weeks because Clijsters lost earlier in the day to 20 year-old Arantxa Rus.

(Wait, 20 years old, two-handed power player, same first name as 90’s great Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario? I’m buying into her already. I need hope man, just saying.)

As much as I love Clijsters she just can’t get it done on any surface other than the hard-court. She made two French finals in 2001 and 03 and made the semis at Wimbledon, but hasn’t come near those performances in recent years. She’s a one surface player and that can only get you so far in the rankings at this point in her career.

Maybe I should buy into Vera Zvonereva, who’s never won a slam either, or Azarenka who is young and talented, but hasn’t made it past a quarterfinal of any slam, or maybe Schiavone, Sam Stosur or Na except all of them are pushing 30 and that’s where tennis players normally lose all of the points of their game.

By the way, those are your top 6 players in the world. Yikes.

The only player left in the French Open with any viable star power is Sharapova, and her career has been disappointing at best. Sure she’s won three Grand Slam events but you feel like she’s been more glamour than game. At age 24 she has more than enough time to attempt to regain the number one ranking like she has a few times in her career. However, she’s missed so much time due to injury that you wonder if her body can keep up with her over the next few years.

Unlike the men’s game from years ago I don’t think that the women’s game is becoming unwatchable. If Sharapova continues to win in France or Azarenka climbs closer to the championship match then maybe it will spark some interest for the game heading into Wimbledon.

That’s only hope right now though. The women’s game is suffering and if someone doesn’t step up quickly and take control of it then we’ll be sitting here waiting for the female Federer to come along. We all remember how long and painful that process was right?

Wozniacki Shows How Tough She Is Down Under

Caroline Wozniacki is proving she's worthy of her number one ranking.

Say what you want about Caroline Wozniacki. That she shouldn’t be number one without a grand slam title, that she doesn’t hit the ball with as much force as she should or that she’s not ready to compete with the top tier of women’s tennis players. The fact of the matter is that Wozniacki is a tough competitor who is more than worthy of her number one ranking as evident by her tough three set win over Italy’s Francesca Schiavone on Tuesday 3-6, 6-3, 6-3.

 

Schiavone, coming off of a 4 hour and 40 minute fourth round win against Svetlana Kuznetsova looked a lot fresher than the 20 year-old Dane who had blown by her first four opponents in a combined 5 hours and 30 minutes. Schiavone broke the world’s number one player twice in the first set and held a 3-1 in the second set and was set to cruise to a semifinals match.

 

Then Wozniacki woke up.

 

Wozniacki followed up with three second set breaks during a stretch where she took the last five games in the set and tied the match at one set apiece. She began to force Schiavone into bad shots with her finesse play and great passing shots as Schiavone finished with 46 unforced errors, 31 more than Wozniacki.

 

In the third set her serve finally came to life after being lackluster in the first two sets. Even though she was broken once in the set Wozniacki looked a lot more comfortable as she won more of her points than in the first two sets and Schiavone looked as if the amount of tennis that she had played in the last two days had finally begun taken its toll on her.

 

In the end Wozniacki’s grit and toughness paid off as she finished of her Italian counterpart by breaking her three more times in the set and ended the two and a half hour match in her favor.

 

After the match she greeted the media in boxing gloves and with a giant inflatable kangaroo in reference to a little white lie she told about how a fight with a kangaroo caused a cut on her shin.

 

This fight gave her more than just a great story.

 

The toughness she showed in battling back from the slow start should quiet a lot of the critics who complain that she isn’t worthy of the world’s top ranking.

 

Without a healthy Serena or Venus Williams and with a few players that haven’t lived up to their billing (hi Dinara Safina and Ana Ivonovic) the women’s circuit has been as topsy-turvy as the BCS rankings. No woman has stepped up to grab the number one spot for themselves and Wozniacki just so happened to be latest player to be in the right place at the right time.

 

To most spectators she’s a boring player with a boring game and personality that doesn’t offer the spark that women’s tennis needs.

 

However, ever since she touched down in Australia Wozniacki has been on a mission on or off of the court to change that perception.

 

She’s been more playful and open to reporters as seen with her tall kangaroo tale and had been dominant in the earlier rounds by not dropping a set.

 

Yet this win in this situation shows her worth as number one more than anything because she fell behind early but showed the heart of a champion in clawing back and eventually regaining her dominance in third.

 

It’s a match that she can use to build confidence off of for the rest of this tournament and down the road as she continues to defend her ranking when the Williams come back healthy and as Maria Sharapova, Justine Henin and Kim Clijsters try to regain their championship form after long layoffs.

 

For now her main focus is on the semifinals and Li Na who is playing the best tennis of her career. After that a possible date in the finals against two-time slam champion Clijsters. None of this should faze Wozniacki who is starting to prove that she has the right to make a claim that she’s the best women’s tennis player right now and has the ability to go toe-to-toe with any competitor in women’s tennis.

 

She proved how much fight she has and she won’t back down from any competitor. That goes for tennis foes and kangaroos.