Freelance writer *Wendy M. Grossman* is blogging from the Eastbourne International this week. Here's her fourth and final dispatch:
Eastbourne: Where you can get sunburn, windburn, and frostbite all at once. Today the wind picked up even more. On days like this you might as well be playing on the deck of a ship in full sail. You cannot afford the slightest slip in concentration, and you have to practice self-forgiveness: You are going to make shots that look like horribly embarrassing mistakes.
Sam Stosur handled it by volleying on almost every point. In this kind of wind, if you can land the serve—the ball changes angle during the toss—it's a big advantage, since the receiver can never be sure when a backhand will turn into a forehand. Volleying helps take out some variables, too, and, as Wozniacki admitted, she's not used to opponents who play this type of game. Stosur won 7-6, 6-4 and should now go back into the Top 100.
Stosur was happy with the win. "When you think that two months ago I was in the semis of a $75k and now I'm in the semis at Eastbourne…" She still has a long way to go: she hit No. 27 before getting lyme disease.
So when Radwanska and Razzano resumed their match today at set-all the conditions were entirely different than when they started last night, after the wind dropped. Radwanska handled the changed conditions better and took the final set 6-4.
Petrova had some unstable moments as she always does , but simply had too much game for Makarova and won 6-4,6-3 using some of those shot sequences I saw her practicing yesterday. (She speculated afterwards that it might help her to loosen up on court and entertain a little more the way she does in practice.) Like Stosur, she began attacking the net to shorten the points – it's safer in the wind, because it's hard, she said, to hit good passing shots, especially against a volleyer who can slice the ball very low – "unless you have perfect hands, like Nadal". Asked who has the best hands in women's tennis she named: Henin, Mauresmo, and Radwanska.
Funny she should say that: Radwanska won her quarterfinal 7-5, 7-5, hitting a beautiful stop volley at a key point at 4-4. Dulko made some nice angles in their quarter-final but never quite had a chance despite getting her coach out on court twice.
This "inconsequential" (see yesterday's comments) tournament is where surprise late-stage Wimbledon contenders come from. Last year, Marion Bartoli learned from her Eastbourne semifinal loss to Justine Henin and turned the tables on her to reach the Wimbledon final. This kind of unpredictability really is good practice for Wimbledon.
No one was expecting much from Bartoli this year, though, between the wrist injury and a string of first-round losses. Still, she's had the easiest passage through the draw of anyone, and today beat the last qualifier, big-serving Kleybanova, 6-3,6-3. Kleybanova saved her best stuff for the ends of both sets, but couldn't come back far enough. Bartoli has now defended her points from last year, and just in time: 34 percent of her total is last year's Wimbledon final.
Kuznetsova filled in some time by playing an exhibition match on Court 1 against Britain's frequently injured Elena Baltacha. The final score: 6-4, 6-7, 6-4 to Kuznetsova. Happy organizers, grass court practice for both players.
In the battle of former No. 1 doubles team Raymond and Stosur versus the No. 2 seeds, Peschke and Stubbs, it wasn't even close: 6-2, 6-1 to Peschke and Stubbs. Stosur said she'd been focusing on reviving her singles career and it's taking time to gel with her partner again.
This is my last day at Eastbourne. Next year it will be completely different: the LTA is moving the men from Nottingham to make Eastbourne a joint event. No one's sure how it will work out, but the women all seem pretty positive about the change. The only concern anyone mentioned was having to fight the men for the practice courts.
Some follow-ups:
—Tennis photographer Mick McCarran points out, snickering at my American geographical confusion, that Paris is closer than the Atlantic: that water two blocks away is the English Channel.
—I'd have more sympathy with Sharapova's complaints about the WTA forcing the top players to enter tournaments if she hadn't also complained about the Rome photo shoot. Making millions from a game means helping market it. Actually, I have a new theory about why she pulled out of Eastbourne: she was afraid she'd be outshrieked by the Tony Soprano seagulls they have here (just try eating a piece of fried fish in front of one, I dare you).
I think the bigger issue and the underlying cause of the increasing injury rate is the current rankings system, which counts wins and ignores losses. The WTA keeps tinkering to try to get the top players to play more, but as a veteran player said to me here last year, "They will never play more." Instead, the middle-range players play more, frantically chasing ranking points. Bringing back quality points(abolished in 2006) would help, since those reward you for who you beat. Even better, as Daily Tennis statistician Robert B. Waltz has said, would be going back to the averaging system in use before 2000, which meant that if you couldn't make up for eight first-round losses by playing 30 events. The present design ensures anomalies where the best players aren't necessarily the top players in the rankings. The non-star players are not just cannon fodder; they are what give the game richness and texture.