Serena's level of play in the Azarenka match reminded me of how she played Sharapova in the 2007 Australian Open final. Serena played both of those matches like she was mad at someone or mad at herself. I love it when she plays like that! When Serena is in that kind of mood, no one can beat her.

My only concern is that it can be difficult to play at that level for an extended period of time or in more than one match. Serena had a let down at the beginning of the second set against Azarenka and I hope she doesn't have a let down against Dementieva in the semifinal and or the final against Venus or Safina.

Once again, it is the Williams sisters against Russia. I've said it before and I will say it again, if it weren't for the Williams sisters, the Russians would dominate women's tennis.

I didn't read that. I saw her quoted as saying she was dizzy, "white-faced," and that she was having "female problems. That could have meant anything... But yeah, I've never heard a woman say something so "earthy," and I don't think it was necesary at all!

Wow. Impressive first set from Dementieva. She's serving better than I've ever seen herl and played an excellent tiebreak. Serena is not playing like she was in the quarters, but Elena's been able to get into rallies and is really pushing Serena hard.

Brava.
Brava!
Brava!

OMY!!! All I can see is the final score of the match. Please NBC--get smart real quick and broadcast the match, even if it isn't live!

Believe me they will. I think they have five hours of coverage slated for the women's semis and for once they are going to need it.

The most dramatic high quality woman's match in years.

My heart just about breaks for Dementieva. Just when you give up hope on her she tricks you into wishing victory for her.

Serena's ace count was just stellar. (Dementieva's serving wasn't bad either.). If Serena wins the tournament it'll be because of her serving.

Again, huge credit to those two, it's a match for the ages.

I give Safina 1% chance of winning her match. And that 1% is for Venus to have to retire. (yikes, sorry to even suggest it). But I sense Venus really putting it in gear. A redo of last year's final awaits.

Serena rocks!!!

What a horrble contrast between the 2 semis! Almost a nonmatch in the 2nd one.

I had a feeling Venus was going to steamroll Safina in their match. Dinara was lucky to win that game, Venus didn't move and gave her a few points there. Dinara brought a butter knife in a gunshow.
I still go with Venus winning, her play has been more solid than Serena's from their matches. She's moving and playing out points so well right now.
Serena has casually dumped errors left and right from previous rounds and Elena really exposed that.
Serena's fighting spirit is tough though, it was so daring for her to go to the net at match point! after having missed every net point beforehand.

and even after the match, Venus is still on the attack ... this time against the reporters:

http://www.wimbledon.org/en_GB/news/interv...6532798281.html

Q. This isn't your fault obviously because you played really well, but it's embarrassing for women's tennis to see the No. 1 destroyed in that way, isn't it?

VENUS WILLIAMS: Why do you put it like that?


Q. You played very well.

VENUS WILLIAMS: Are you trying to be down on women's tennis?


Q. I'm trying to be down on the way that Safina is the world No. 1 representing women's tennis.

VENUS WILLIAMS: So you're trying to be down basically.


Q. Not on women's tennis, no.

VENUS WILLIAMS: Okay, because I don't deal with down at all.


Q. It's not down.

VENUS WILLIAMS: I'm just making sure you're not trying to be down, because I respect Dinara Safina immensely, and I think you should, too.


Q. I do.

VENUS WILLIAMS: Thanks.


Q. When you see the No. 1 losing 1 and O, it doesn't look great for women's tennis, does it?

VENUS WILLIAMS: I think women's tennis is fantastic.

Well it's nice of Venus to defend Safina and women's tennis in general but there is something inherently wrong with the fact that there have been women who get the top ranking without winning a Slam. It isn't Safina's or Jankovic's fault but they need to look at it. And Safina being seeded #1 here was a joke.

Here's a question: why was it not embarrassing for men's tennis when the world #1 was crushed in the 2008 French Open final? What would have happened if Pete Sampras had faced Thomas Muster in the semifinals of Wimbledon the year Muster entered Wimbledon as #1 (Muster lost in the 1st round, thereby sparing himself the embarrassment)?

The reality is Venus is by far the best grass-court player of this era and Safina is better on slower surfaces. Venus was playing exceptionally well, making only 1 unforced error. I didn't see the match and I'm assuming Dinara failed to get a lot of balls back to make Venus work for it, but despite her #1 ranking everybody knew she was a heavy underdog here. I was hoping she'd make more of a match of it than that, but it's not that shocking that it was one-sided.

Regardless of seeding or ranking, it's a really poor result for someone who has been effectively the #1 in the world in 2009. But how does it reflect poorly on women's tennis in general given how competitive and well-played the previous match was, and given how well Venus evidently played?

Sometimes you just have to tip your hat to greatness.

Well put.

That applies to both sides of the draw this year.

I've often felt Venus's achievements at Wimbledon get overshadowed by Federer's, even though they're comparable. There's a complicated bounty of reasons why that happens, some legit, some not at all.

I'm thrilled to see her mowing through the field this year with an authority that (thus far at least) matches his. Especially since he has been far from triflin'.

One other thing: when it comes to interviews, Venus does not play, even when she's being playful.

I've read complaints about how canned or evasive her answers can be, but if you ever see or hear an interview with her, even when she's giving the questioner next to nothing (which can be often -- and for a reason), she does it in a manner that is damn smart. She wields words with ace precision.

I didn't see Venus today, but it sounds like she put on an awesome display. I hope I can not blink and catch it later.

Still reeling from Serena's performance today. I'm sorry but she is like a f---ing superhero sometimes. Today was one of them.

I'm just emotionally spent from Serena's match today.

Do they keep track of the most matches won while overcoming match points down? I feel like Serena might be the all-time leader. I speculate, because I feel like all the greats of the past faced such little competition that they would never find themselves having to fight off match points down.

Because Federer quit at 3-all in the 2nd set. He might as well have packed up his racket bag and stormed off the court. It was embarrassing for Federer, but not for men's tennis.
In days of yore (in tennis, that means the mid-90's), the differences between surfaces were more extreme. Grass was incredibly slick and quick (remember the Pete/Goran match in which the longest rally was SIX shots?) whereas the clay seemed far slower than it is today. Because there were far more surface specialists back then, a hypothetical between a fast-court specialist like Sampras and a slow-court specialist like Muster doesn't work. Yet despite the unfairness of the comparison, I can't imagine Muster would have won a paltry one or two games. Muster had a decent lefty serve, and Pete always had a tough time against lefties. The comparison also falls apart because Sampras was the King of the One-Break Set. After getting the necessary break on the slick & quick grass, he would've focused on holding his own serve, which would have allowed Muster some easy holds.

I'm just so tired of the endless bullsh*t propaganda from the WTA. For decades it was the baldest lie in all of sports, "DEPTH in women's tennis." Yeah, and Mark Sanford's gonna head up the South Carolina branch of Promise Keepers. And then it was the hew and cry over Richard Krajicek's comment that 75% of WTA players are fat, lazy pigs. Good thing he got the chance to correct himself because 80% was closer to the truth.

Dinara Safina is a mental midget. Spin it all you want, it is a pathetic state of affairs that a mental midget is the number one player in the WTA rankings. I will grant you that Venus's handling of the question was brilliant; a whole cadre of PR experts couldn't have done it better. But the awful truth remains.

Okay, but you have to admit that NOW the women's game is considerably deeper than the men's game. Right now, there are 2 players capable of winning a major, and those 2 have won the last 5 and 16 of the past 17 majors. Meanwhile, 4 different women have won the last 5 majors, and 8 different women have won the past 17 majors.

In fact, if you look at the the first 2 majors of the year, the men had a total of ZERO unseeded players make the quarters, while the women had 4.

I agree that the rankings are flawed, and should reflect more the players' performances at majors. But that doesn't mean the state of the women's game is abysmal. Sure, Serena is indeed the real world #1. But it's not like Safina can't beat Venus - she beat her a few months ago in fact. She is a mental midget, but she's also achieved quite a bit and had some stunning comebacks in her career (see 2008 Roland Garros). It's not like her brother is a mental giant - although he did hold it together twice in his career.

I hear what you're saying and agree that the WTA hasn't done enough to address its problems - particularly regarding early retirements and the competitiveness level of major finals. They also aren't lucky enough to have Roger and Rafa, and amazing rivalry for the ages. But they *do* have Venus and Serena, who have given us plenty of impressive tennis and whom we should all be thankful we've been able to watch as their careers continue to flourish.

But face it - as amazing as they've been, they still haven't won as many majors as Roger & Rafa combined.

As far as "fat lazy pigs" goes, it's definitely over the line. Fat I can deal with, lazy fine. But pigs? That's really awful.

Serena and Elena both played AMAZING! Even Elena was serving out of her body. That was some awesome tennis from both ladies. Too bad there could only be one winner as it was so close. Serena just steadied herself enough to one up her in the end.

Oh God, Venus and Dinara playing in an empty stadium. Everyone was hungry and exhausted after the Serena match. They needed a long break and knew it would be a blow out. After they saw 5-0, they said, forget it, let's just go...

Well, who is your pick? Serena or Venus. God, its tough. I dont think I've ever seen them playing better from start to finish....I guess I'll go with Venus this time. Even though Serena seemed awfully pissed off last year.

Right, so the #1 being a quitter reflects only on Roger, but the #1 being a mental midget reflects on the entire tour. Somehow I bet that if Federer wallops a top player while hitting 16 times as many winners as errors that it will be attributed to Federer's genius rather than his opponent's incompetence.

It's interesting too how guys like Gaston Gaudio and Thomas Johansson wining slams in men's tennis demonstrates its depth, and Roger Feder/Nadal's dominance only reflects on their greatness. But Venus & Serena appearing in a bunch of slams in a row means there's no depth in women's tennis but Kuznetsova winning slams means there's no good players.

It's interesting you should bring up surface specialists because yesterday the commentators were noting that the surface actually seems to matter more in the WTA than the ATP these days. You can make a pretty good case for there being surface specialists when you look at the Wimbledon records of Safina and Kuznetsova and the French Open records of the Williams Sisters. Is Venus really any more of a force on clay than Sampras was? Yes, I realize Serena won once--seven years ago. She hasn't been to the semis of any clay court tournament in five years, however.

And as far as mental midgets go--bad as Dinara was today, the nature of the men's game makes a lot of matches look closer on paper than they are. For example, Karlovic won 43.1% of the points in his match against Federer and had not a single break point (something even Dinara managed) but the game score is close. In contrast, Francesca Schiavone got blown out 6-2,6-2 while doing nearly as well (41.2% of the points) and even breaking serve once.

So, yeah Muster might have won a few more games against Sampras, but even over 3 sets I doubt he would have managed eight points against Sampras' serve and certainly wouldn't have a break point. Muster struggled against serve & volleyers even on clay.

The dominance of the server also makes the men look stronger mentally. Of course the top players hang on to leads better on the men's side--they hardly ever lose serve, regardless of whether they're behind or ahead. I'm sure Ivo Karlovic hangs on to leads better than Elena Dementieva, but I don't think it has less to do with mental strength than that he wins 91% of his service games. Elena at one point had a 6-0 record in third set tiebreaks--a curious record for someone regularly described as mentally frail. The serve was never much of a factor in Dementieva matches, so it was far easier for her to win or lose five games in a row than for any male player.

One other quick comment--economics dictates that the athletes in the WTA should be better than the ones in the ATP (relative to other women of course). The WTA has no serious competition for the best women athletes in the world. Venus would almost certainly be in the NBA if she were a man. Kuznetsova would probably be on the Russian soccer team. Others might be major league baseball players, since the skill set for tennis and baseball (running, precise hand-eye coordination and throwing/serving) are very similar.

While I see part of your point, it isn't a good comparison, comparing the Fed's Rafa-administered-bitchslapping at the FO last year to Safina's current woes. While the Fed had a rough FO then, his other slam finals and slam semis have been quite competitive, and well, with him winning many of them. You can't say the same about Safina. In three finals and one big semi, she has played quite poorly, losing all of them. And just look at her year ending championship results from last year. Abysmal on all the big stages, yet this is the player who keeps the #1 ranking.

The same goes with Jankovic. She hasn't won a slam yet and the only thing keeping her from this kind of abuse was the fact that she had a relatively competitive USO final when she finally got there. But for someone to hold the #1 ranking and not even win a slam, and only make one slam final isn't the best commentary for the women's game, either.

And I shouldn't say "the women's game", because if matches like today's semi between Serena and Elena are somehow saying "the women's game sucks"....then let it suck! That was some amazingly high quality stuff. The women's rankings system sucks, if anything. Venus and Serena and Elena and other players are doing more than enough to make sure plenty of good tennis is on display for the women's game.

Federer's quitting in the 2008 Roland Garros final was an aberration. Since it was the one and only time he (or any other #1 ATPer) quit in a Slam final, it's no reflection on the ATP Tour as a whole. In Roger's defense (I can't believe I'm saying that), he does have FOURTEEN Slam victories on the other side of the ledger. On the other hand, Dinara has played well below her ranking in the 3 Slam finals she's contested, and the latest at Roland Garros, where she didn't even play like the number one HUNDRED and one in the world, was ghastly. Yet she's ranked number one for most of 2009? There's no other word for it ... PATHETIC.

Sorry if I'm not hopping on the WTA Rah-Rah Bandwagon. I HATE bend-over-backward political correctness and have zero tolerance for shameless propaganda. The decades-long propaganda campaign of "DEPTH in women's tennis" insulted the intelligence of even the dimmest mouth-breather. Chris and Martina were great. Steffi and Monica were great. The rest of the tour, by and large, SUCKED. Yet the WTA apparatchniks kept spouting the same steaming pile of cowplop year in, year out. Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?!? And then there's my hero Richard Krajicek, who had the unmitigated gall to speak the awful truth about the general lack of fitness on the WTA Tour. Martina blazed the trail, Chrissie eventually followed, but it took far too long for the rest of the women's tour to get into the gym and work themselves into top condition.

bridgeportjake, I do agree with you on a couple of points. Now, there is indeed depth in women's tennis, plenty of it. "Fat" and "lazy" were both accurate, and therefore acceptable, but "pigs" does go over the line. Maybe a daintier term like "sows" ??

There is a problem with the WTA ranking system if players as horribly weak as Dinara and Jelena are reaching (and in Dinara's case, staying at) #1. Don't insult my intelligence with political correctness and propaganda. Just admit that there's a problem and say that you're reviewing the system. The ATP modified its ranking system to give even more points for winning a Slam or Masters Series as opposed to making the final or semis. That and other tweaks may not necessarily solve the problem because Venus's and Serena's records outside of the Slams are kinda iffy, but at least such tinkering would be honest. Shooting down a journalist who's asking an honest question, a question on the minds of many tennis fans, is the kind of thing that makes feminists cum without touching themselves, but it's absolute BULLSH*T.

I always wondered who Karjicek was referring to when he made that famous "fat and lazy pigs" statement.

Who were said pigs back then?

Can somebody please explain to me what significant difference exists between the WTA and ATP ranking systems? There is practically no difference. The only difference is that the players who win the slams in the ATP also happen to win most of the masters events.

In 2002, the ATP was one match away (if Nalbandian had beaten Hewitt in the Wimbledon final) from having no player in the top 8 who had won a major). Suppose that had happened. Would you guys really have wanted the #1 to go to one of four guys (Johansson, Costa, Nalbandian and Sampras) who had done practically nothing the rest of the year rather than Hewitt?

As far as who the fat and lazy pigs were...well, we know who Marcelo Rios was thinking of when he asked someone to "move their fat ass". Monica would have been one of them. Maybe Mary Pierce and Lindsay Davenport? I can't think of any other top players who could conceivably have been labeled overweight.

Venus. Not much doubt in my mind. Serena said over and over in the interview that the match today did not wear her down at all and that her fitness is so top notch. That says to me that she is not admitting the truth. It was a hard match and she has to be a little bit tired from it. Maybe not totally worn down, but not super fresh. Even if she wasn't overweight, anyone would be a little tired from that match.
Venus couldn't be fresher and more confident. She's had the practice, while barely having to do more than play a few excellent sets. She has the desire too. I love seeing her win Wimbledon.



How gracious and smart, despite being backed into a corner and almost being tricked into stating the obvious--just so they could quote her. Go Venus!

Rudy, I don't know if you are as sore about Djokovic's loss as VM obviously seems to be about Nadal not playing, but we got your point the first time around. And a lot of us, some of whom probably follow or watch women's tennis more than you, don't agree with it.

Pigs, sows, heifers, you name it. Pat yourself on the back for common unwitty rudeness. And give me a break while you're at it. Nalbandian and Almagro, to name two, are as out of shape if not more so than the heavyweight chicks in the WTA. I look at the top WTA's top 50-100 or so, and I see Serena, who is god-given bodacious. I see chubette Bartoli, who has lost weight this year and is no heavier a type than Donut Dave. I see Kleybanova, a big bull of a woman of the old school Eastern bloc Olympic athlete variety. (JC's comments about WTA in relation to other women's sports is a great one, especially since many of these so-called fatsos, like muscular Kuznetsova or chunky Petrova, come from athletic/Olympic familial stock.) Are women athletes supposed to be dainty and skinny? Like Dani Hantuchova? Is Monica Seles a disgrace as a player and athlete because she was pudgy and liked butter on her fries?

I watched Dementieva today and marveled to myself: This woman is as fit and ripped as anyone on the damn men's tour. As much as -- maybe more than! -- Verdasco and Nadal. You could see the outlines of a 6-pack beneath her dainty dress, and I don't mean beer. Did it win her the match?

The problem with the WTA is lack of competitive matches in the final rounds, and way too much ugly tennis in those late stages. The thing is, this kind of stuff happened endemically during the Evert and Navratilova era. It happened during the Graf era, too - does a certain French Open final spring to mind? For sure, it happens way more with women than with men. But just this spring, Soderling went from losing 0 and 1 to Nadal to beating him less than a month later on the same surface. The Safina-Venus Rome match in Italy, if you saw it, was pretty damn good.

Safina just has an ugly labored game. It works on clay, on hard courts it has flaws, and on grass, uh uh. WTA currently has #1s who can't win slams. ATP has a #1 who can't play or defend the biggest slam. News flash to both tours: if there were fewer tournaments, these problems wouldn't be endemic.

For sure: these beatdowns from Serena and Venus reaffirm that the new and younger crop of players just aren't as talented. It doesn't have to do with female inferiority, because Serena and Venus (and Sharapova and Henin at their recent best) show what women can do on the court. But too many players on the tour are raised to play a big babe game that they can't control or maintain. It's like they are encouraged to hit beyond their means, and not develop nuance. There are others, like Radwanska, who play enjoyably intelligent tennis, but they're just mincemeat the minute they step on the court with Venus and Serena.

I think it's hilarious that one of the best women's matches in the last 5 years happened today and all we're hearing is bitching. I ended up missing the Venus-Safina match, but it obviously wasn't just about Safina's godawfulness -- Venus's stats were probably the best stats on either side, men's or women's at Wimbledon this year.

I miss the days when Venus and Serena had a handful of quality opponents to contend with. It isn't the case now, it doesn't look like anyone great is coming up, and the stupid WTA leadership and Bollettieri-style mechanical academy training is to blame. Virginia Wade decried the brainless tennis on the women's side right now, and she's right. But the fact is, Venus and Serena -- unlike many players on both sides, including the likes of Hingis -- are working to IMPROVE their games now even if they aren't the same young or perfectly fit players they once were.

Federer kept the #1 and #2 ranking for a good 18 months while having a pot belly and perhaps sweating out some malady. Does that make the men's game pathetic? Plenty of people think the ATP is filled with chickenhearted braindead mugs whose losses to the top 1-2 are a given, and there are times I'd agree.

It's the lowly quality of play and squandered potential in the younger side of the WTA that is dispiriting. No one is stepping up to even come close to Venus and Serena's or even Elena's footsteps. I agree with Carillo -- Azarenka is about the only younger player who truly seems to believe in herself.

thank you, two-hander, I think I will give myself a big ol' back pat. Did you read what I actually wrote? Or were you so rushed to throw yourself into politically correct high dudgeon (which is what you liberals love to pat yourselves on the back for) that you didn't bother?? Richard Krajicek's notorious remark was back in 1992, and I was referring to how long it took the women to embrace the off-court fitness training that Martina trailblazed (note: "but it took far too long for the rest of the women's tour to get into the gym and work themselves into top condition"). When Ivan Lendl remade himself as a player, becoming a dominant #1 in large part because of his rigorous nutrition and fitness regimens, the rest of the men followed suit almost immediately (with the notable exceptions of McEnroe and Connors, and look how many Slams they won after Lendl got into shape). But the women lagged badly. I remember flying to Paris in 1987 (coach, of course) and a WTAer ranked about 40 (name escapes me now) was on the same flight (first, of course) to play Roland Garros. I was shocked by how horrendously out of shape this woman was (a lot of excess fat, absolutely no muscle tone). From that point on, I started noticing how out of shape a lot of WTAers were. I remember how Mary Jo Fernandez eschewed weight training for fear of becoming too muscular (uh, sweetie, nobody was going to mistake you for Chyna, trust me). I admire Richard Krajicek for saying what he did because I admire anyone who f*cks political correctness and speaks the awful truth (even if 75 or 80% was probably a wee high). I actually agree with you, that today's WTAers are for the most part in fantastic shape. But it definitely took them longer to come around.

I'll admit to unfamiliarity with the nitty-gritty details of the WTA ranking system, unlike the ATP's, which I could almost recite verbatim. But I wonder if there isn't too much reward in the WTA system for quantity of play. Venus, Two-hander, and any other Great Defender of Political Correctness can try to shoot me down all they like, I'm still gonna say that it makes the women's tour look like sh*t that such a weak player sits atop their rankings.

By the way, I like Dinara. She obviously works very hard and is in terrific shape. She has that Safin(a) family charisma that's undeniable. A big plus for me as one who also lived in Spain for a stretch, she speaks castellano quite well (it's about as good as her English). She's still young and has plenty of time to get her head together.

Mariaan de Swardt was one of them.

Once again, I think I need to correct myself. I should have said "the rankings systems suck"...not just the women's.

Martina Navratilova harps on it almost every chance she gets. It does reward quantity, as she, and many others, like to say. But she seemed the most vocal about it when Hingis remained at #1 for so long (more than 2 years) without winning a slam, while Venus, Serena (and to a much lesser extent, Jenny and Lindsay) were taking home almost all of the big trophies. It just doesn't seem as glaring as what's going on now, because she had won 5 slams before that drought (which lead to retirement) occurred, and many of the semis or finals she lost after those 5 were still competitive. Can't come even remotely close to saying the same for Safina and JJ.

While the men play more often more consistently, this problem could absolutely exist on the men's side. In fact, a lot of people not familiar with how rankings work (in other words, lots of average Joes) were saying "Geeeeze....what does Rafa have to do to finally become #1 ?!??!!!?" when the Fed hadn't won a slam (or many tournaments, for that matter) throughout most of 2008, and Rafa had won almost everything after the AO, including finally breaking through at Wimbledon and winning the Olympic gold medal. While not really analogous since Rafa and the Fed ain't no Dinara nor JJ on the big stages, the same exceptions (which seem to be becoming the norm, for the women) are entirely possible on the men's tour.

Damn liberals! With your hippy music and PC oppression! Why in my day, weren't nothing wrong with callin a faggot a faggot! And don't get me started on that Obama fella... Wait what? This is a tennis board? I'm so confused.

what a classy woman Venus is. Brava!

*SIGH* I am so sick of this WTA rankings nonsense. "You shouldn't be #1 unless you've won a major!" Fine, then we'll give away all the points during the majors, and THEY'LL BE NO INCENTIVE FOR ANYONE TO PLAY ANY OTHER TOURNAMENTS.

That'll work.

Snicks, you've got it exactly right. Yes, the system on both tours rewards playing quantity--the men's possibly slightly more because it allows them to count one more tournament. It's done deliberately. They want to encourage players to play more. They also don't want players to skip tournaments because they're not played on their favorite surface.

Even if you wanted to develop a ranking system which accurately reflected the quality of play (and that's really not their only priority), it's not easy to do. How much do you weight recent tournaments vs. ones played months ago? How do you figure in the impact of surface? Besides, if the ranking system is SO terrible, why is it that the top 4 players all made the semifinals?

I've yet to hear any of you belly-achers come up with a concrete suggestion to improve it.

Venus is on a roll with her pressers (this after today's semifinal match):


Q. Is this the last time the two of you will speak to each other for the next 24 hours?

VENUS WILLIAMS: Please. Humor us with something a little more creative.

Q. Do you have anything you would like to ask one another as you've thought about the press conferences each of you has held during this fortnight on different days and seen each one play? What question do you have for one another at this point?

SERENA WILLIAMS: Are you ready to get out of here (laughter)?

VENUS WILLIAMS: Ditto (smiling).

Q. Of all the meetings, can you say which match you think produced the finest tennis between the two of you?

VENUS WILLIAMS: I'm sure for each of us, we probably thought the finest was when we won respectively. So I was very happy the times I won, and I think she feels the same, so yes.

Speaking of uncreative reporters, it amazes me that every single post-match interview with any Russian woman player still seems to have a question about why there are so many good Russian players. And they repeat the answers they've given 100 times before.

If it were me, I think I would say, "Well, inspired by the Russian botanist Lysenko's evolutionary theories, in the old Soviet Union there was a secret project in which they made pregnant women play tennis every day. We all learned how to play tennis in the womb".

Or maybe "We all drink a bottle of vodka before playing our matches."

JC, I agree with you and others about the absurdity of this rant against the WTA -- it verges on misogyny, especially the fat lazy pigs part. No one seems to use that label about male athletes. Shaq, for instance, could certainly be characterized as a fat lazy pig, and yet he has 4 championships. Turn on any MLB game, and watch guys who are 50 pounds overweight knocking them out of the park (some of that is probably steroid gut).

On the other hand, I'm not sure I agree with you about there being no serious competition for the best women athletes. I'd bet on Candace Parker over anyone in the WTA. Lisa Lesie and Sheryl Swoopes when they were younger (we'll see if either of the Williamses are still performing at near top level when they are 35). I don't really follow women's soccer, but I'd bet on Mia Hamm (in her prime) to match any WTA player. My point is really that we're just a little tennis-centric here.

I completely understand your point about economics, but if you don't pan out as one of the, say, best 20 women tennis players in the entire world, have you clearly chosen the right sport monetarily? I'm sure others can speak more intelligently to this, but when you factor in all the costs of travel, coach/hitting partner, equipment (if you don't have a sponsor) etc., those juicy earnings numbers may not end up being so rich in the end except for the truly top players.

Yeah, how's that working out, especially on the WTA? Frequently injured players, players retiring way too early, mental midgets (and even non-mental midgets like Hingis from 2000-2002) getting and holding on to the #1 ranking due to simply playing a lot...yeah, they got it right.

It could happen on the men's tour, too, and it would be just as incorrect. While not as blatant because he hasn't held the #1 ranking yet, but along the same problematic line, look at Simon's rise...in 16 slam appearances he has reached one QF and one 4th round, with the rest all being 1st, 2nd, and 3rd round losses... And this guy got to #6 in the world? (Sorry Simon lovers, I think he's a cutie, too, I'm just proving a point. )

It's not being exposed because there's no equivalent of the Williams sisters on the men's tour who focus on just the big events. And the irony overflows because of it. This great system you keep touting wants to reward players for playing a lot, and is effectively burning them out on the women's tour. The players it claims are the best, clearly are not, and the players it ranks lower for defending the big events, clearly are. And those lower ranked players, buck that system, stay in the game longer, and win even more of those big events, while more flash-in-the-pans-esque players (some with slams) and dilligent and industrious headcases (with no slams) continue to come and go...grab the holy grail #1 ranking, and then run themselves into the ground prematurely.




In this ONE slam tournament on the women's side. How often has it happened in recent slam history?



I think a few people have already made suggestions that the slams be weighted even more. That wasn't concrete?

You like this system that's cutting careers short and gives the Safinas and Jankovics (and the Mauresmos and Clijsters, pre-slam-wins) one of the WTA's highest honors, and keeps an absolutely amazing player like Venus Williams, with 7 slams (and hopefully counting...and 5 of them being in the most prestigious tournament of the year) as the second LOWEST ranked player of all time to have reached #1 (with an unbelievably low 11 weeks with the ranking).

Good for you, you think it's dandy. Many don't. I guess Martina Navratilova and all the other tennis analysts who disagree with you are bunch of bellyachers, too. Carry on with the name-calling.

They're already triple the points of the other tournaments. But like I said, let's do it you way, and good luck getting anyone in the top ten to play anywhere outside of the 4 majors.

And actually, by putting so much points emphasis on the majors, you'd just be forcing lesser ranked players to play even MORE of the other tournaments, in order to try to accumulate points to catch up. So you'd have even MORE injuries and burnouts.

Oh snicks, you're so cute when you try to talk with the grownups.

Who in the top 10 would possibly play outside the majors? Yup...no one. They'd stay match tough without other tournaments. Uh-huh. Yeah, that's how it works. You stay fit and match tough by playing just for two weeks in January, May, June-July, and Aug-September. The top 10 players are so good, they stay in the top 10 without any other matches during the year, only playing matches eight weeks of the year will keep them head and shoulders above the rest of the field playing more frequently.






Forcing them? You mean, the incentive wouldn't be there to do better in those majors? Um, OK...

And there are already only so many tournaments a year the players can play in a year. A lot of the point mongers are already playing most of them to satisfy this system...it's not as though they'd be physically able to play a whole lot more anyway, unless there's a plan that I don't know about to put more weeks into a calendar year, or for the ATP/WTA to extend the seasons into December.

Saying a system that doesn't reward quantity would burn out MORE players than one that clearly already does reward quanity, is well...very snicky.

Gee, now who does that sound like? Oh yeah, you just described ... THE WILLIAMS SISTERS.

FAIL!!!!

oh, and where are these grownups you're talking about?

If by "snicky" you mean "correct", then I agree. But it requires one to "think". It's a catch-22 (look up the meaning, i don't feel like explaining it to you). if rankings are determined by the majors (which is what a lot of you want), then obviously the goal is to get to the majors. but how do you get to the majors without those big ranking points ... from the majors? by playing more than your body probably should at the lesser tournaments.
Understand, hon?

This thread's gotten cattier than a Razzano-Bartoli match.

Wow, the Williams sisters only play 4 tournaments a year?!? Someone needs to let the WTA know as quickly as possible!! We've got some pretty good imposters playing all the other tournaments they've been in.




oh, snicks...you are entertaining when you flail. Who here said the rankings would only be dictated by the majors? Saying the majors would mean more doesn't mean they'd be the sole way of earning points, and no one here suggested it. And there are already players playing more than their bodies can take, because they're being rewarded by a system that promotes it. I guess you haven't noticed all the injuries and early retirments. Must be all the Federer-worship distracting you. Face it, you made a silly comment claiming players in the top ten would play only four tournaments a year if the slams had more weight, got called on it, and you got PWNED...is that language you can understand?

Sorry if I made your head hurt. You may now return to your X-Box and kissing your posters of Federer, dude.

OK, so just to be clear, when I saw Lilly Osterloh at the 2000 US Open and my jaw dropped at how overweight she was (if Andy Roddick "needed" to lose 15 pounds, then Lilly needed to lose 40), I'm not allowed to be shocked that someone carrying around that many excess pounds is somehow some way ranked #44 in the world?? And when I assumed that she was able to attain that ranking despite her lack of conditioning only because there were plenty of other WTAers who were just as out of shape, my assumption verges on misogyny?

This is the Cult of Victimhood at its very worst. If you say anything about women or blacks or (fill in the blank) that the painfully politically correct classes don't like, then you are a misogynist or a racist or a (fill in the blank). First of all, "pigs" does go over the line. Now that that's out of the way, let's discuss the other part of the statement, that WTAers at the time were "fat" and "lazy". Sure, they're harsh words, but if you're carrying around too much weight (in other words, fat) and can't be bothered to go to the gym (in other words, lazy), well, to be blunt, the truth hurts. Mind you, I don't have bodyfat percentages and stress EKG test results from all the women on tour in 1992, but from my observations (I LUV'd Steffi Graff, so I followed women's tennis very closely back then), fitness on the WTA tour was indeed an "issue" for quite a few players.

I made plenty of snarky comments in the past about David Nalbandian's weight also, but oddly enough, no one accused me of "common, unwitty rudeness." It was driving me nuckin' futs that the guy's level of play was sinking like an anvil dropped into Boston Harbor, yet not one single tennis commentator or writer mentioned his weight. Even my fave, Jon Wertheim, blamed Donut Dave's poor results on "wavering motivation." I'm supposed to buy that? In other words, who are you going to believe, me or your lyin' eyes?? But according to the Cult of Victimhood, since Nalbandian is Argentine, my comments about his 20-pound spare tire were born of racism and xenophobia.

I'm guessing you've never heard Gimelstob go off on Nalbandian. He's made fun of his weight a few times. Not that he's the bastion of class, or good commentary for that matter, but he's brought it up more than once, and in true Gimelstob fashion...i.e., third-grade humor.

I've heard some commentators call out Taylor Dent. He's been known to be heavy, too. These guys aren't going as un-noticed as you believe they are. Bud Collins (of all people) had a field day when Agassi was out of shape during the Brooke Shields years. He looked up "love handles" (poignes d'amour) in French to trash him every chance he got when Agassi was playing at the FO then.

To be honest, the Fed got away with a gut in the early months of this year and last year. I think people don't want to call someone who's won 14 slams heavy, but I think he's the only one who's been given a pass, but the Fed never got to Shields-Era-Agassi nor Donuts'N'Danish Dave proportions, either.

What's obvious for all of these players is that they're not winning when they're in that shape. The Fed didn't win the AO this year, nor the AO or FO last year when he was a little heavy. Dunkin' Nalbandian hasn't won a slam yet (closest has been a few semis) and Taylor Dent really hasn't ever been a huge threat on the big stages. And the Shields years were when Agassi was falling out of the top 100 before he made fitness practically a religion. When he got into amazing shape, he started winning slams again. Weird, huh?

The only really fat woman player I can remember is Magui Serna. She was quite large. Lindsay, like Andre, had some heavy years, her "dumptruck" (cruel WTA nickname from some) years. And like Agassi, when the weight went down, the ranking shot up. Serena's a big girl, but can win slams even when she's not at her best fitness level, but not as reliably as when she's in the great shape she's been in, recently.

I never thought of Capriati as fat, nor Mary Pierce, were there some nasty things said about them, too? Or was it Sanchez Vicario? I guess I don't remember that stuff, because they won their slams when they were in their best shape, too. Magui Serna was never going to win a slam anyway.

If Krajicek thought four or five heavy young women who hadn't won any slams yet constituted 75-85% of the WTA back then, it wasn't the brightest thing to say, PC or not. The "fat lazy pigs" just made it rude as well as stupid and inaccurate.

That's weird, I saw Lilia Osterloh play twice in-person in the last three years (slim tennis pickings out West ) and mainly wished I was a toned as she was, especially her legs, which were strong as hell. And I've been a gym rat for much of my adult life, if slacking this summer.

Rudy you're the only one talking about WTAers of that Krajicek time, and can I be blamed for assuming you think it has some relevance to now? Otherwise, why in the hell are you doing it, it's boring. (The irony is that Krajicek worked with the tour's biggest mental case, Dementieva, on her serve -- and he wasn't the one who got results.) I take back my initial response to your obvious attempt to rile things up (which has succeeded), but not because I disagree with or regret the content of what I said. Gay men calling women pigs is so lame, it just spells out ISSUES, and I'm not talking politics. If you don't like hearing that or think it's PC, toughen up.

First of all "increasing the value of the majors" is in fact not very concrete--its quite vague and would not necessarily address the problem. In this particular case, yes, Serena would move past Safina, but Safina won more points than Venus at the last four majors (for that matter, so did Kuznetsova and even Dementieva). It's not difficult to envision a situation (e.g. Hewitt, 2002) where a player who did well at all four majors without winning would be ahead of all the players who won one.

You could increase the difference between winning and being runner up (currently 2000 pts vs 1400). To do it in the Hewitt situation, you would need to bulk up the winner's points a LOT--to about 5400 in the modern points system. This might work, but I'm seriously skeptical of the quality of a ranking system that would put either Albert Costa or David Nalbandian #1 in 2002 if Nalby had picked up that Wimbledon final.

And really if you're going to have nearly a 4:1 ration in winner vs runner up points in the majors, shouldn't you do it across the board? But the results of that are hard to predict; maybe Dinara would recoup the points other players get in the majors by winning a lot of tier 1's.

Although snicks has a point, the players in the lower rankings already tend to play as many tournaments as they can and contrary to your opinion, Dinara did not get where she is by playing a ton of tournaments--she played 19. Hingis never played an unusually large number either. What they did do was WIN a lot of Tier I and Tier II tourrnaments and make the semis of the majors consistently.

Personally, I'm not convinced overplaying is really the problem. The average woman's match only lasts a little over an hour....doing that three or four times a week doesn't sound that destructive to me. I've often felt that it may be all the time on the practice courts and the training room that leads to tendonitis and repetitive strain injuries--and just playing less matches may not address that. Actually, in the case of women, I really think there's a lot of the stress to their bodies is when they are teenagers and not fully grown. I think they actually tried to address that by limiting the number of WTA events younger players could play, but the junior tennis/ITF circuit may be just as grueling. And since the competition is weaker, they get more matches.

I was actually going to test whether tripling the value of points won at the majors would make the ranking system better or worse. The idea was to see whether ranking the players that way going in to wimbledon would do a better job or a poorer one at predicting the outcome of Wimbledon matches. As I started to assemble the data though, I realized it just wouldn't be worth the bother. In reality, Serena aside, most players do pretty much the same at the majors as they do the rest of the year. The only difference it made to the top 10 was that Safina and Serena reversed positions and Cibulkova moved up to #10, bumping out Petrova. Zheng moved up to #12. I'm guessing the differences in the revised ranking are too small. In the vast majority of matches, both methods will project the same winner. If you did it over a period of years at all the majors, you might see something, but that's too much work.

But as you noted, the problem really exists because of only two players on the WTA--really only one because Venus doesn't do well "at the majors", she does well at Wimbledon. Does it really make sense to change the rankings for two players? OK--it would have benefited Borg too, back in the day. But somehow I bet you weren't screaming at the awfulness of Connors being #1 back then.

You're just embarrassing yourself now. The majors already mean more ... a lot more. But as i've said before, you have to be willing to punch the clock on the WTA tour if you want to be #1. Safina does, and she's consistent, that's why she's #1. You and the rest of the "the only thing that matters is the majors" simpletons can't grasp that.
and your response was not very "grown-up" .... mr. doody-head

Which is exactly the kind of double standard that I'm talking about. Serena's weight got plenty of commentary, as did Monica Seles'. Well, if you're going to delve into obscure third tier players (Lilia Osterloh???) to find examples that prove that WTA players are fat and lazy, you could prove ATP players are fat and lazy by mentioning Irakli Labadze.

I'm pretty sure I know guys with the bodies of Roger Federer--I'm sure they don't have his otherworldly hand-eye coordination, but their height, weight, musculature, body fat, and quite possibly cardiovascular and stamina would be comparable. I am really, really stuck to think of women I know who resemble Venus Williams or Elena Dementieva. I don't doubt that the average WTA player has more body fat than the average ATP player. They also probably have larger breasts, less body hair, are shorter (though not by much), and have less upper body strength. News flash! They're women!

Interesting to note that if Fed loses tomorrow (umm could happen!), Nadal will remain #1 even though their major records are uneven in Fed's favor:

USO AO RG Wim
RF W F W F
RN S W 4th n/a!

Make of it what you will.

Hey, he got to a Wimbledon final in 2002!