The Last Word returns, and each weekday, starting on Monday, December 5, we'll give you our year-end thoughts about tennis' best players—this time focusing on the ATP and WTA Top 10. We'll alternate tours each day; here's who we've looked at so far.
Best of 2011
Azarenka returned to the scene of her 2009 breakthrough—Miami—and won the title for the second time in her career. She defeated a string of dangerous players starting in the third round with 2011 giant-killer Dominika Cibulkova and concluding with year-end No. 4 Maria Sharapova.
Worst of 2011
Fresh off a Wimbledon semifinal (l. to eventual champ Petra Kvitova) Azarenka returned to her comfort zone on the hard courts of Stanford, but she fell to No. 121 Marina Erakovic in the first round.
Year in Review
Azarenka was unlucky to run into players with a hot hand at all the Grand Slam events. In Australia, she lost in the fourth round to Li Na, who would give Kim Clijsters a good run in the final. Azarenka lost to Li again in the quarterfinals of the French Open, where the Chinese veteran would won the title. In the semis of Wimbledon, Azarenka pushed Kvitova to three sets, and at the U.S. Open she lost in the third round to the champ-in-exile Serena Williams.
Azarenka struggled with niggling injuries all year; she retired in four tournaments, including Indian Wells and Rome. She also yielded a walkover to Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in Beijing. That was a lot of rankings ground to give up, yet she still finished No. 3.
While the early portion of the year produced mixed results for Azarenka, she caught fire after she won Miami. She went 12-3 with a title and two finals going into the French Open, and bounced back from her loss to Li at Roland Garros with a solid Wimbledon.
Continuing the “tough draw” theme she established early on, Azarenka lost to Serena in her next two tournaments, Toronto and the U.S. Open. But Azarenka had one more win in her, and she took it at Luxembourg, although she didn’t beat a Top 20 player en route to the title (d. Monica Niculescu in final).
Azarenka finished strong at the WTA Championships, with wins over Li, Samantha Stosur and Vera Zvonareva. But Kvitova, by far the hottest WTA player in the fall, proved too much in the final—although Azarenka managed to push her to three sets.
See For Yourself
Azarenka’s formidable groundstrokes are on full display in these highlights from the Luxembourg final, but note how infrequently she changes the pace, and how rarely she takes advantage of even her most penetrating groundstrokes to attack. That one-dimensional approach has hurt her against players who won’t just sit back and exchange baseline blasts—or who can weather those big groundies and tease out the inevitable error to which any go-for-broke player like Azarenka is prone.