It used to be that Indian Wells, boycotted for years by Venus and Serena Williams, served as a test run of the WTA’s potential future. Who would step into their sizable shoes once they were gone? Ivanovic? Jankovic? Pavlyuchenkova? Anybody at all? At this point, with a 30-year-old Venus in decline, Serena’s absence lengthening toward eternity, and Justine Henin done again, the tournament has finally caught up to that future. This is the WTA as it is currently constituted, all gathered for one of the season’s handful of mandatory events.
How should the tour be described? In flux? That is the case, though that always seems to be the case. Taking Serena out of the equation for the moment, it’s an odd time, one with an even more uncertain future than usual. The player poised to take over the tour is a mom and a 12-year veteran who has already retired once, and is unsure of how long she’ll play before she retires again.
So we’ll see: Indian Wells is the present, and it may also be the first tournament of the future of women’s tennis. Let’s take a look at what that future may hold.
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First Quarter
Caroline Wozniacki is one step ahead of Clijsters in the rankings, but she’s still trying to catch up to her on the tour totem pole. For most of 2011, she’s been gaining. The defending runner-up, if there is such a thing, has a moderately difficult draw. She could face a tricky opponent, Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez, who made her own strong run here last year, in her second match. Martinez Sanchez’s game, one of the few in history that’s based on the drop shot, can play havoc with any opponent, even one as unflappable as Wozniacki (can you be “flappable,” by the way?) If Wozniacki doesn’t flap there, she might meet the winner of Kleybanova, another IW success story in the past, and Pennetta, who has played some good tennis this year.
The bold-faced names on the other side of this section are Victoria Azarenka and Agnieszka Radwanska. I keep holding out for one of these two to win a tournament of this magnitude someday, but you never know what’s coming next from either of them—Azarenka is overdriven, Radwanska perhaps not driven enough. Put them together and you’d have . . . Wozniacki?
First-round match to watch: The future’s future, between Urszula Radwanska and Bojona Jovanovski.
Semifinalist: Wozniacki
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Second Quarter
Where did we leave Sam Stosur? Losing crucial tiebreakers to Kvitova in Melbourne and Jankovic in Dubai, right? The close ones have gotten away this year. While she’s the top seed in this quarter, I wouldn't make Stosur the favorite. Svetlana Kuznetsova, Li Na, and a 16th-seeded Maria Sharapova may all have an edge at the moment. At the same time, they all have their flaws. Sharapova’s serve catches up with her eventually. Ditto for Kuznetsova’s shot selection. And Li Na is prone to disappearing acts. But while Kuznetsova has sabotaged herself a few times this season, I still like the way she has been playing for most of it. Her form should—should—begin to hold for longer periods at some point.
Also here: Dinara Safina, Peng Shuai
Semifinalist: Kuznetsova
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Third Quarter
We like Francesca Schiavone, but do we trust her to live up to her No. 5 seeding and make the quarters? It always looks like an uphill battle for her. But her draw is good—Pironkova, Peer, and Pavlyuchenkova are in the vicinity; only the latter seems like a threat of her own to go deep in the tournament.
How about Vera Zvonareva, the top seed in this section? It might be hard to believe, but I think she can be considered reliable by now. She has had one of the slowest, most methodical climbs upward of any player that I can remember, but she seems to have reached a plane of solidity and confidence now that will make her a contender anywhere she plays. Her draw is similarly manageable—Kanepi, Wickmayer, Cibulkova. Zvonareva has won this one before, and you have to think she’s going to give herself a very good chance to do it again.
Semifinalist: Zvonareva
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Fourth Quarter
A lot of game, and drawing power, has sunk to the bottom of the draw: joining No. 2 seed Kim Clijsters are Jankovic, Ivanovic, Kvitova, Bartoli, Petkovic, and Jarmila Groth, a pretty fair mix of old and new contenders, of players making tentative surges that could become full blown over the next two weeks.
Jankovic is playing well enough to play a lot of matches again; it never seems to be too many for her. Ivanovic remains a work in progress, as they say—can you be a work in progress to become a work in progress? The fact that she was No. 1 in the world and remains the object of outsized attention everywhere she goes obviously heightens her nerves. Does it also make her too impatient with the progress that she has made over the last year or so? She’s changed her body and jettisoned a coach all in the last few months. Now, if she wins a match, Ivanovic might get the very talented and dangerous—and, naturally, highly unpredictable—Ms. Kvitova in the next round.
On the other side, with Clijsters, is Andrea Petkovic, the German hipster who had a nice run in Melbourne. Like Zvonareva, only at a lower level, she has risen methodically, to the point where we might begin to trust her as well. We’ll see; this is the type of tournament that she should go deep in now, though a fourth-round upset of Clijsters, who has won in Indian Wells before, remains a stretch. If anyone is going to do that, it will probably be Kvitova.
Also here: Kimiko Date-Krumm and young American wild-card Alison Riske
Semifinalist: Clijsters
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Semifinals: Kuznetsova d. Wozniacki; Zvonareva d. Clijsters
Final: Kuznetsova d. Zvonareva
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