Hmmm, was the I-just-can't-get-myself-up-for-this "virus" that Agnieszka Radwanska brought with her to Istanbul contagious? First, Vika Azarenka began to suffer from the same malady. Then, today, Serena Williams did, as well.
Spooky, or just a coincidence?
(in a whisper: "ahhh... Radwanska!")
Here's a recap of today's semifinals:
(4) Li/CHN d. (5) Kvitova/CZE 6-4/6-2
...Kvitova owes Li a beat down. At some point. After all, many of the reasons that the Czech rose to only as high as #2 in the rankings after she won Wimbledon in 2011, rather than becoming #1, can be traced directly back to the Chinese vet. In the 2011 year-end rankings, Kvitova finished just 115 points behind #1 Victoria Azarenka, meaning she actually ended up one slam match win short of finishing in the top spot... and she'd led Li in their Round of 16 encounter at Roland Garros by a 3-0 score in the 3rd set, only to lose. The following January, Kvitova played Li in the Sydney semifinals, and that time she led by a 6-1/3-1 score. If she'd won she'd played for the #1 ranking in the final, but Li came back to snatch the victory -- and any shot the Czech ultimately had at #1 -- from Kvitova's grasp.
Considering both players' propensity to lose and regain focus, sometimes more than once, during their matches, the chances of this one turning into a rollercoaster affair were great. Those sort of momentum swings did occur in the match, often multiple times within a single game, but Li never let things get too far away from her.
The trend began right from the jump, as Li broke Kvitova in Game #1 (courtesy of an error), then managed to hold despite two double-faults of her own one game later. Game #3 was, in microcosm, a good example of how these two often go about their business:
Kvitova served and held game point, but committed an error and then a hit a double-fault to go down break point. After saving it, on her second game point, she double-faulted again. On #3, it was an error that held her back. Li's beautiful back-to-back volleys on another Kvitova game point kept the rally alive, and Kvitova made an error on her third passing attempt. Another double-fault gave Li her second break point, but she missed on her return. A forehand error from Kvitova gave Li BP #3, and when the Czech netted a forehand -- her thirteenth error in the first three games -- Li took a 3-0 lead.
Of course, back-to-back Li errors gave the break back a game later and, after the Chinese missed on four straight returns Kvitova easily held for 3-2. At 4-3, Li led 40/15 on serve, but Kvitova got back on serve when she converted on her third break attempt of the game. One game later, Kvitova held a game point, but ultimately double-faulted on break point. Li then served out the 1st at 6-4, as the two women combined for 32 unforced errors in the set.
The 2nd set began with three straight breaks of serve, but the most important turned out to be the fourth of the set, when Li broke Kvitova for 3-2, then saved a break point on her own serve to take a 4-2 advantage that she would never relinquish. After Kvitova double-faulted on a game point, she followed that with a wild error to give Li a BP. On her second attempt, Li took the game and served for the match at 5-2. After double-faulting on her first match point, Li ended things on her second. With the win, Li advances to her first career WTA Championship final (another "Chinese first" for Na, who Tennis Channel's Brett Haber has often this week called the "pied piper" of tennis in her nation) and will move to #3 in the rankings next week, a new career high. Lindsay Davenport called this Li's "best" and "most solid" win of the season. Though it was a fairly nice one, I suppose, I'm not sure I'd agree with that... but, then again, I think Lindsay may currently have a bit of a minor "glitch" in her thinking. But more on that in moment.
(1) S.Williams/USA d. (7) Jankovic/SRB 6-4/2-6/6-4
...these two have shared some odd moments in the past, the most recent of which being the minor "verbal altercation" they engaged in in the Charleston final this spring when the subject of pace of play came up in, umm, the middle of a game. At the time, Jankovic had just won the 1st set and was looking very good. From that point in, Serena, quite possibly piqued, won twelve of the final fourteen games.
While Serena entered on a 16-match winning streak, including a 3-0 mark in round robin play in Istanbul, Jankovic was just the fourth woman to advance to the Championships semifinals with a 1-2 record for the week. But "moments" seem to follow these two around, and another happened -- or nearly did, at any rate -- today, too. Almost from the beginning, Serena was sporting the sort of "hangdog," barely lifting her feet, serving at three-quarter speed form that often is a prelude to one of those losses that boggle the mind and are never officially "explained." With her second serve a shadow of its usual self, as she lost seven of her first eight points on it, Williams was broken for 3-1. Of course, JJ, with the great help of a double-fault, promptly gave the break back a game later. Still, at 3-2, Williams spent more than a minute, unmoving, with her face buried in a towel during the changeover. Oh, no... now what? With her service speed routinely cut by about 20 mph, there was an open question about a potential back injury, something which had nagged Serena for a while earlier this season. Still, even while in less-than-fine form, Williams got a break to take a 4-3 lead, then served out the set at 6-4. Then things got even worse.
Jankovic again got a break for 3-1 in the 2nd, but this time she followed it up with a hold of serve for 4-1. Williams was lackadaisical and often didn't even run after some balls. After going down 5-1, she even heard some whistles from the stands in Istanbul. Perhaps as a response, she DID up her game a bit in Game #7, getting a break, but then she gave it back to drop the set at 6-2 a game later. If things didn't change soon, it looked like Serena's best season was going to have a rather ignominious ending.
In the 3rd, the two traded off breaks in the first three game before Serena finally held for 3-1, then broke Jankovic to take a 4-1 lead as she began to "somewhat" resemble her usual self, but only barely. She served for the match at 5-2, holding a match point, only to falter and drop serve. She restrained from smashing her racket, then tried to win it again at 5-4. Williams would face another BP, which she erased with an ace. On match point #2, Serena put away an overhead to take the match and advance to her sixth career WTA Championship final (behind only Navratilova & Evert), despite a choppy and often disconcerting effort in this match. Afterward, Williams talked, much like A-Rad and Vika, of "hitting the wall" physically and emotionally, and said her "tank was empty," but hoped to have an adrenaline boost tomorrow.
We'll soon see whether she does, I guess.
As for JJ, while she went 1-3 in Istanbul, she still played in the Championships for the first time since 2010, reached the semis for the first time since '09, and earlier notched her first win over a Top 4 player (Azarenka) in over three years, ending what had been a 0-17 slide. Back in the Top 10, she's now joined the resurgent group of late twentysomethings (or older) who have shown such strength in recent seasons. Good for her. Let Chaos continue to reign.
...JJ STATS OF THE DAY: in a bit of odd figures, Jankovic's numbers from today showed why it's always a good idea to look at as many details from one of her matches as possible since there's always a chance something will make you shake your head. From today: JJ had 22 winners, and 22 errors. She had three aces, and three double faults. She won 14 games, and lost fourteen games. Heck, Serena even got into the act, with 40 winners and 40 errors for the day.
It's always something.
...MAYBE LINDSAY SHOULD STEAL ANNA'S TIME MACHINE... OR MAYBE THIS ISN'T THE REAL LINDSAY?: she's done it before on occasion this season during her TC commentary, and Davenport once again today maintained that the comments often made by Jankovic about putting on muscle prior to the 2009 season don't really make any sense to her. According to Davenport, because so many other players' games improve because of added strength training, Jankovic's game wasn't negatively impacted a few seasons ago. Plus, Davenport said that JJ "looked exactly the same" that season as she had the previous year.
Umm, no.
I think Davenport is just confused. As anyone who actually remembers watching JJ play in, especially, the first half of that season, she WAS noticeably more bulky in '09 than she had been in her #1-ranked season of '08. It really wasn't even debatable... it was quite clear that she was physically bigger and less streamlined than she'd been previously. And while Davenport maintains that added muscle couldn't have hurt Jankovic's game, it, too, was quite clear in '09 that the Serb's added weight had caused her to lose a bit of her court speed and maneuverability. And with a game that so depended on Jankovic defensively racing around the court to keep rallies going in order to set up an occasional winner of her own, or force an error from an opponent, that slight difference in speed made quite a difference. Anyone who watched JJ in 2008 and 2009 would know that, so I think Davenport might have been busy with other things at the time.
I'll grant Davenport is logically correct about players always improving when they get stronger. But, remember, this was Queen Chaos, still being coached by Ricardo Sanchez at the time. "Normal" meant absolutely nothing. Increased strength seemed like a good idea for JJ's game at the time, in order to better deal with power players, but the sort of training that the Serb undertook on her offseason trip to Mexico between the '08 and '09 seasons changed Jankovic's body in a way that wasn't conducive to helping her tennis game. That was one of the reasons why she fired her fitness trainer in the spring of '09, and Sanchez didn't last a whole lot longer, either.
...the doubles semifinals were also contested on Saturday, and while the Hordettes won't have their #1 doubles team next weekend in the Fed Cup final in Italy, Ekaterina Makarova & Elena Vesnina gave a sample of what Team Russia will be missing when they staged a come-from-behind victory against top-seeded Italians Sara Errani & Roberta Vinci, winning a deciding tie-break 3rd. They'll face off with #2-seeded Hsieh Su-Wei & Peng Shuai, who downed Nadia Petrova (who won the title last year w/ Maria Kirilenko) & Katarina Srebotnik in straight sets.
No Chinese woman has ever won a title at the WTA Championships, but with both Li and Peng still alive on Sunday there's a chance the nation could get a share of both titles this time out.
*RECENT WTA CHAMPIONSHIP FINALS*
[singles]
2009 Serena Williams/USA d. Venus Williams/USA
2010 Kim Clijsters/BEL d. Caroline Wozniacki/DEN
2011 Petra Kvitova/CZE d. Victoria Azarenka/BLR
2012 Serena Williams/USA d. Maria Sharapova/RUS
2013 Serena Williams/USA vs. Li Na/CHN
[doubles]
2009 Llagostera-Vives/Martinez-Sanchez (ESP/ESP) d. Black/Huber (ZIM/USA)
2010 Dulko/Pennetta (ARG/ITA) d. King/Shvedova (USA/KAZ)
2011 Huber/Raymond (USA/USA) d. Peschke/Srebotnik (CZE/SLO)
2012 Kirilenko/Petrova (RUS/RUS) d. Hlavackova/Hradecka (CZE/CZE)
2013 Hsieh/Peng (TPE/CHN) vs. Makarova/Vesnina (RUS/RUS)
*2013 WTA FINALS*
13...SERENA WILLIAMS (10-2)
6...Victoria Azarenka (3-3)
5...Simona Halep (5-0)
4...Agnieszka Radwanska (3-1)
4...Petra Kvitova (2-2)
4...Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova (2-2)
4...LI NA (1-2)
4...Sara Errani (1-3)
All for now. More after the weekend's action.
