* !103159585
*
by Pete Bodo
Howdy. Isn't in nice to have the Bank of the West Classic at Stanford to kick around, in a good way? It's always good news when the WTA produces a sub-major tournament with story lines that crackle and sizzle like a downed power line. Any number of interesting happenings are developing out there, and suddenly Stanford seems. . . important.
The main draw, down to the quarters, has some compelling match-ups, starting with Elena Dementieva vs. Maria Sharapova—a recently out-of-form Russian (Dementieva) vs. a recently healthy if not match-hardened one (Sharapova). We could do worse than have a Sharapova vs. Victoria Azarenka final—or a Slammin' Sammy Stosur vs. Dementieva match-up for all the marbles.
Comment worthy: Kimiko Date Krumm lost in the 16s to Dementieva in possible the least favorable match-up for the thirty-nine (let me write that again, 39!) year-old Japanese paragon. But Date Krumm gave the athletic, former Olympic singles gold medalist all she can handle.
Date Krumm consistently punches above her weight. She has evolved into something like the ultimate rec player, and I mean that in the best sense—that breed being notorious for competing and/or winning at a much higher level that anyone expects, usually because nothing about her game suggests the consistently high quality of tennis, and sheer number of wins, that she accumulates.
!103159560 Melanie Oudin has emerged from intensive training to test the waters as the U.S. Open, where she made such a big splash last year, bears down on us. The other day, she produced another signature warrior moment when she recovered from a set and 1-5 deficit against Alexandra Wozniak. Oudin won it, 6-3 in the third. Who says lightning doesn't strike the same place twice, three, four or six times? (And can you tell which girl is which, from these top two images?).
Oudin then lost to surging Victoria Azarenka, who's usually in a snit over something or other, unless she's busy being in turmoil, which appears to be the state in which Azarenka spends way-y-y-y- too much time.
Maybe I'm drinking the Kool-Aid here, because I'd surely love to see another young American of either sex punch through (do you know that, strictly speaking, "gender" is a noun used only in reference to the written word?), but I love Oudin's attitude. Azarenka won, 6-3, 6-1. That's a beatdown, right? A trip to the woodshed. A blow-out. A spanking.
But that isn't how Oudin chose to see it. That's no big deal, "DeNile" is a river that flows through Melbourne, London, Paris and New York—and numerous villages along the valley. What's important is how Oudin analyzed it. "I had a game point almost every single game," Oudin said. "I don't think she overwhelmed me."
Spank that!
Azarenka has now won eight of her last 10 matches. She said: "For me, it's important to play every single point the same, no matter what the score is." Azarenka has to avoid blowing up. Because sometimes it's like these wins, strung together, are the equivalent of a long fuse—and you know what happens when the fuse burns down to meet the powder. . .
Gosh but you have to feel for Ana Ivanovic, that is if you can slay the green-eyed monster that demands that Ivanovic be humiliated for being given so much, so soon, in no small part because she's such a wholesome and pretty girl. Asked about the decision of the Montreal tournament to deny her a wild card, the struggling former world No. 1 and French Open champion was so honest you almost wanted to look the other way when she said, "I do feel a little hurt and disappointed by their decision."
!103121779 Ivanovic was put out of Stanford by Marion Bartoli, 6-3, 6-4 the other day. It was Bartoli's first win in four meetings with Ivanovic, whose recent record dropped 3-6. Bartoli is riding high, having won 10 of her last 13 matches, and she's the the No. 4 seed at Stanford (she gets Azarenka today, and that promises to be a head-on collision of two trains hurtling down the same track). Thus, you can excuse a bit of strutting and crowing on Bartoli's part. But she said during her press conference, "When I played Ana before she was on the rise to becoming No. 1 in the world. Now, I finally passed her. Having a higher ranking helped me have confidence and gave me the mental strength to play the game."
Okay, Ivanovic is a big girl. And tennis stardom is always a here-today, gone-tomorrow proposition. Wild success and awful disaster are always separated by just a few swings of the racket. But somebody should pull that Bartoli aside and explain to her that while you should always strive to be honest, you should also always take into the account the impact that plain-speaking may have on the feelings of your subject. Part of being a grown-up is learning how to couch potentially hurtful things in a way that causes the least amount of damage—without withholding the truth. Bartoli might just as easily have said: "I'm a better player now than the previous times we played, and that gave me a lot of confidence and mental strength."
It isn't that I want to be a goody-two shoes here, folks. But let's remember that the opposite is also true: Ivanovic is a lesser player than she was those four times she beat Bartoli. So if she chose to be as tone-deaf as Bartoli, she might have said: "Yeah she beat me today, but I'm playing poorly and that kept me from feeling confident and mentally strong enough to beat her like I have so often in the past."
It's a game two can play, and it gets us nowhere.