By now, you probably know (and if you don’t, click here) that Hingis took out Maria Sharapova this past week in Tokyo. This result didn’t surprise me, although the score certainly did. Wasn’t it just a few weeks ago that the Thought Police (tennis division) were all up in arms because Hingis dared to say that she was curious to see what Maria Sharapova brought to the table as a Grand Slam champ (The Sydney Morning Heraldnailed it here).
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not gloating about Sharapova’s loss, nor do I admire the blunt way that the trash-talking Firekitten phrased her feelings about her young rival. I did predict this result a long time ago, though.
All things being equal, there’s just no way that a player whose mobility is suspect and whose game consists mostly of set pieces and groundstroke combinations can keep pace with an opponent as nimble, creative, savvy and fearless as Hingis. Sharapova can recite poetry, but she can’t write it. It would be cruel to blame her for that. My feeling is that she’s this generation's Mary Pierce.
This raises an interesting issue. There has been any number of players over the years who are often cast as underachievers: players who just didn’t have enough of what it takes to win, big-time, with any consistency. The most prominent examples are Vitas Gerulaitis, Yannick Noah, Pam Shriver, Gabriela Sabatini, and Pierce. I think of this as the “glass half-empty” approach, while I take the “glass half-full” position. I admire these players for winning as much as they did, given their shortcomings and/or technical deficiencies.
Sharapova may be on track to join this group of players. Still, she works extremely hard and is completely professional; anybody who's ever bought a ticket to watch her got his money’s worth, simply because she always comes fully prepared and does her best. As a fan, you might hope and expect more, but you have no right to ask more.
Let's face it: hard work, desire and combative instincts are tennis’ equivalent to a poker hand of three-of-a-kind. Add talent and you have a four-of-a-kind. The latter is not just one incremental step above the former, it’s a quantum leap.
As it is in poker, so it is in tennis.
That Hingis ultimately lost to Elena Dementieva was mildly surprising; I half-expected Dementieva to choke, or at any rate be so shaky at the service line that her game would self-destruct.
The severity of the licking she laid on the Firekitten was telling. A baseliner with great athletic gifts (and Dementieva, more than anyone in the game, reminds me of Steffi Graf in that department) and serious power is likely to emerge as the nemesis for Hingis—as Kim Clijsters demonstrated at the Australian Open.
OK, Hingis was pretty much worn out by the final. Fine. If you want to advance justifications, you can also speculate that Sharapova could have been expected to choke when she first played Hingis, given the fact that she had nothing to lose and everything to gain in the match.
At the end of the day, though, only the scoreline counts. So another chapter has been written in the comeback saga of Martina Hingis. I think her game has Top 5 written all over it, but I also think it’s too early in the year to really predict that she’ll climb that high.
Hingis needs to meet all of her rivals—and a handful of gifted pretenders—two or three times before we can discount the novelty factor that presently works in her favor, and we need to see if she still has a real, consistent appetite for the day-to-day combat of tennis.
So far, this has been Martina’s Excellent Adventure; it's just too early to say that it's more than that, although every indication points that way.