Silly Little Country

The WTA - Short Analysis from Angus

He has it spot on.

People, women's tennis is in bad bad shape. The number one player, Dinara Safina, is a head case who has never won a slam.
Venus Williams is toast. She is done.
Somehow Serena Williams wins half of the grand slam events with no training program and no effort in any of the other events the rest of the year.
Things are so bad that Kim Clisters came back from a 3 year layoff and dominated the tour this summer.

Particularly regarding Serena I love some comments from my squash/tennis club tennis pro:

Is there anybody out there who questions Serena’s desire to be the best tennis player ever?
Yes, I do!
Serena loves her life outside of tennis and who can blame her. She is a celebrity with money to burn. She
can ride off into the sunset and never hit another tennis ball as long as she lives! But is this the road she should
take? Serena has never talked about retiring – but in my mind she is only a part-time player!
Should we be happy for her and let her continue on this path of mediocrity? She loves the glamour life and
really has nobody close to her in terms of talent so there is no need to really dedicate herself to her sport.
...
With a reduction in glut, a little less butt and a smidgen more guts, Serena Williams would easily be the
most recognized female athlete ever. Yes, she is that good. There are no weaknesses except for a frame that is
40 pounds overweight. Today’s top athletes are in prime physical condition – Tiger Woods, Roger Federer,
Rafael Nadal, Sidney Crosby, and Lance Armstrong. It just proves how good Serena Williams really is because
she is winning major championships with a handicap – she is chunky!
Serena can’t play her best tennis week-in-and-week-out because her physical condition is poor. A major
championship consists of 7 grueling matches over a 14 day period – with many rain delays in New York, Paris,
Melbourne and London this often means playing back-to-back matches with no recovery time – and this has
often been too much for Serena to conquer with her poor fitness!
...Martina Navratilova was in a similar position in the 70s and 80s – then she got her act together, lost 30 pounds
and totally dominated women’s tennis for 10 years. Weight is a major issue for these super-star athletes and if
you want to be considered the best in your sport for many moons you must look the part and right now Serena’s
shape is more like a pear than an hour-glass.
She'd rather eat; half-ass her way through non-major tournaments and complain she's not getting the respect
her 11-major-championships résumé demands.
...
And it's my right to rip her for choosing to be a celebrity tennis player rather than a single-minded
tennis assassin.
If she chose the latter, it would be front-page news every time she lost a tournament. She'd complete the
Serena Slam — winning all four majors — every other year. She'd be the most popular and powerful female
athlete of all time.
Think about it. At 5-foot-9, 145 pounds, Serena would be unstoppable on the court, on the cover of every
magazine still in circulation and downloaded on the Internet three times more often than Anna Kournikova.

Yikes, Michael, why can't you just tell us what you think?
He is right - her shape is ridiculous for a top athlete, other than in Poker after Dark. And I have already commented that she does not try in anything other than a major. If she did not whine about how the non-majors actually count in ranking, it would make sense; but that whining demeans the secondary tournaments and the fans who pay to go to them.
And though Angus is right about the state of women's tennis (men's is SO much more attractive now), I confess I will likely have more interest in attendance at the women's events than at the men's.
And, by the way, Michael's comments say a lot regarding why I so much like watching Sharapova, and don;t much like watching Serena. It's not race, it's not cuteness, it is Sharapova's indomitable will to win, no matter how awful things get.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 1:06 PM