Voodoo Dolls for all Life’s Disappointments

 

1) WTA rebranded

 

 

Meh. It looks a little too Samsung-like if you ask me. Or like a regional broadband provider.

 

The old sonyericssonwtatour.com url – the one which you might comfortably fit all of Aesops fables in -- has gone too.

 

I take it Sony Ericsson are about to jump ship?

 

2) Federer d. Mayer 6-4 6-3 to win the ‘If Stockholm Open’

 

 

I’m no pimply nosed DC Comics enthusiast. BUT  I KNEW I’D SEEN THAT TROPHY SOMEWHERE BEFORE.

 

To date this year, Fed’s won a Slam, a Masters-1000 and, now,  a 250 event. Should he win the 500 event in Basel, the box set will be complete.

 

The last time he did that was back in 2006 – when it wasn’t presumably “all about the Slams”. And now, if you don’t mind, Superman wants his career memorabilia back.

 

3) Troicki d. Baghdatis 3-6 6-4 6-3 to win his maiden ATP title at the Kremlin Cup.

 

 

Viktor’s too good a player not to have a single title to his name. A handy reminder that even in this rarefied year of Career Slam excellence there’s an entire zombie-eyed subculture willing and waiting to get their name engraved on just one of these things – however proletarian it might seem in the grand scheme of things.

 

Moscow is the only event I’ve seen where players get to accessorize quite so freely: winning here earns you not one but two trophies, an expensive watch, a flower bouquet and a $170K cheque in prize money.

 

Not only that, but had Viktor won doubles with Janko later on in the day (they fell 7-6(8) 6-3 to Dimitrov/Kunitsyn), he’d have two of every one of those.

 

4) Also in Moscow, Azarenka d. MariaKiri 6-3 6-4

 

 

Happy to see Vika winning again.

 

Though, to be honest, I’d settle for a semi/quarter if it meant a guarantee she’d not come out flat in Doha next week.

 

I had her down for a breakthrough before Caz – which she sort of made good on by winning Miami last year (even if it was against a limping mummified Serena).

 

And were it not for Serena, she may even have made more of an impact at the Slams (she has been especially unlucky in this respect).

 

Still, it’s been pretty meagre since then by her standards. Next week’s a chance to put all that right. With not a Williams in sight.

 

5) So according to Tennis Magazine, “the biggest disappointment of 2010” is…

 

Dinara Safina.

 

Never mind that her back complaint meant she spent the better part of the year either severely compromised or out of action altogether.

 

It’s also wholly at odds with the type of press Ivanovic got during her little fall from grace – which was all about “what she must now do” to reassume what media-lovey-doves presumably thought of as her rightful place at the top of the game.

 

Newsflash: Ana played fantastically well, but still only won a Slam because Henin had retired that very month and because the Williams, quite frankly, haven’t been a factor at RG for a long time.

 

It’s a credit to her that she managed to do what neither Dinara or JJ were able to by taking advantage of that window of opportunity, but only the most feral of AnaKads will try and make much more of it.

 

And if you really want to talk disappointments, then how about  Marin Cilic? Who’s been practically extinct since winning Zagreb back in Feb this year. He has, in fact, made only one Masters QF in the last 12 months – and that was in Paris last year.

 

But he’s won Zagreb right? So that’s ok.

 

6) Roberta Vinci d. Julia Georges to win her 3rd WTA title in Luxembourg.

 

 

Voodoo dolls trump alien eggs any day of the week in these ‘ere parts.

 

Quite simply the most grotesque artefact ever awarded to anyone, anywhere. 

 

What exactly were they thinking?

 

Quite apart from anything else, it’s the sort of “thing” (what would you call it?) that might have been used as a prop in “The Wicker Man”.

 

I wouldn’t want to play Roberta now either. You might lose a limb. Or a family member.

Why on court coaching is a BAD idea, exhibit B

(AP Photo/Itsuo Inouye)

Caz-Woz retiring hurt at 7-5, 5-0 up against Anne Kremer in Luxembourg. Old news, right?

"I went onto the court and said to her: 'Caro, it does not matter whether it's going to be 5-0, 4-1 or 3-2. You can not play the next round, so you shouldn't take the risk," Piotr Wozniacki said Thursday on Danish radio. "I'm very proud of Caroline, because she stopped the fight and gave her opponent a chance."

The father's comments during the match led to a surge in online bets for Kremer to win.

…

"So, people bet on my matches. Some win, others lose. I just know that I am clean. It is most important to me," Wozniacki said. "And if anyone is in doubt about my injury, I can both produce scan from the hospital and a report from the tournament physiotherapist."

Although it appears unlikely that Wozniacki conspired to fix the match, she could still be fined for "lack of effort" according to International Tennis Federation statutes.

(ESPN)

I think I understand the fine, but you have to love the image of Caz Woz “conspiring” to fix matches amidst a team of heavies in a disused warehouse.

Russian Love…

It hasn’t been the most ‘happening’ of tennis weeks for a while, despite there being events underway in Moscow, Luxembourg and the wonderfully named ‘If…Stockholm’.

Most of the action appears centred around Moscow. And Marat.

I don’t know if it’s me, but the WTA Kremlin Cup seemed a whole lot more entertaining last year, when Jelena bagged a hat trick of post-Flushing hard court titles, and with it, a much maligned position atop the rankings.

This year, with most of the top ten evidently saving themselves for Doha, it seems to have been reduced to a two-woman shootout between Vera and Jelena both of whom had an opportunity of qualifying for Doha, and both of whom turned in less than inspiring performances.

Jelena eventually made the cut by … wait for it … all of 5 race points, before promptly going out to Kleybanova earlier today.

(NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA/AFP/Getty Images)

Mission complete, though just by the skin of her teeth.

Vera fizzled and spittled her way out of the event with a 6-0, 6-2 loss to Tsevtana Pironkova.

"She is a good player and I knew that," Zvonareva said. "It's very difficult to play against her. She moves perfectly on the court, can hit the ball hard and can vary her tempo.

"I'm not in my best shape now and to beat her today I should have played more attentively.

"Maybe I'm even happy. Finally I will have time to restore my health and start the new season in full strength."

(Sky Sports)

I sincerely hope for her sake, that that’s true. Winning only two games against a player that rarely breaks the three-digit barrier on her first serve suggests more than just a want of ‘attention’. For our sakes, it’s probably best she didn’t qualify in this form.

(AP)

This time last year, Marat reached the final of the men’s event in Moscow before promptly going down in flames to Igor Kunitsyn, This year I don’t think he even expected to get half as far – and as it turned out, didn’t.

He did manage to score an interesting, if not entirely unexpected three set win over Davydenko, which of course, resulted in a hazy blaze of Russian brotherly love.

I thought it would be a little bit slightly different, all these feelings toward the tournaments. It's a little bit different, different from what I thought—it's difficult to explain. The feeling that I thought I would get from coming back for the last time to the tournaments, I don't get this particular feeling that I was hoping to get. But of course it's nice, it's nice to know that it's over—last time [at the U.S. Open], last time in L.A., last time in Cincinnati—just enjoy it. I don't want to have any more stress.

(tennis.com)

It doesn’t get any more candid than that.

In fact, with his thoughts on the calendar, A-Rod’s short term memory, and Tomas’s manhood, it rather seems, these remaining few weeks are turning out to be more about candid reflections than anything else.

I’m not sure what I expected, and maybe Marat’s not that well suited to teary farewells, but I think Tennis Magazine did themselves a disservice with this month’s feature on his so called ‘misery tour’. The content is exclusive to the magazine and to my knowledge appears nowhere on their site, but if you’ve read the latest edition, you’ll know the one I mean.

An odd assortment of some of the more cruder Maratisms, with a front page shot of him sporting those two black eyes he turned up to Hopman Cup this year with.

It’s not that I don’t think Marat is any, or all of those things, the essence of which the article is so keen to capture. It just seems an unnecessarily skewed assessment of a player that managed to be charming, blunt, tortured and twinkly-eyed all at the same time.

This article from September, and recent interview do a much better job.

Only one more event before all the pain goes away.

And only three more weeks before I get to say “We’ll always have Paris…”

***

Meanwhile Big Rob has made the last four in If…Stockholm.

The other three sharing the table are Olivier Rochus, Thomas Belluci, and Marcos Baghdatis. Marcos I have some sympathy with. His recent troubles with form resulted in a dip that saw him drop outside of the top 100. Seeing him at #66 comes therefore, as light relief.

But I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one keen to see Big Rob qualify for London.

Davydenko’s presence is as essential to the event as furniture and subtitles are to a cosy art house flick.

But Big Rob is capable of getting into the faces of most everyone not named Federer, and as such seems to have a pivotal role to play before the curtain goes down on this curious year.