Sports Then and Now

All of the women's top seeds will be action on Monday in the Round of 16 at Wimbledon.

If you have any plans for Monday, put them aside because the ladies at Wimbledon have set a most appetizing table to lure you to their courts, away from the normal more masculine fare.  To call it “Blockbuster Monday,” is to minimize its significance.

The match-ups are staggering, some significant enough to rate as “finals” in most years.  The ladies round of sixteen at Wimbledon, unfortunately, will be blended with the gentlemen’s.  As is too often the case, the ladies will no doubt be overshadowed by their male counterparts since the media selects what will be covered.  This is not meant to discount the men, but the scope of the ladies’ matches is beyond comprehension.

Here are the matches you need to witness front and center:

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The Tennis Channel as well as ESPN and NBC offer coverage of the 2010 French Open

In case you have not been paying close attention, the French Open is underway at Stade Roland Garros in Paris. This event, like most tennis majors, is best seen live—which only goes to prove that you must have money to follow tennis as a dedicated and deserving fan.

The predictable patter emanating from broadcast booths follows a familiar pattern, filling the airwaves with online personalities making their typical forecasts and touting the usual analysis replete with the most probable winners.  We watch on our tiny screens as the same top-seeded players go through their paces, generally walloping their lower seeded opponents in the early rounds.

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María José Martinez Sanchez, that is, the new women’s champion of Rome. And yes, she also happens to be Spanish,  just like the male champion last week.

It’s another of those heart-warming stories that has pervaded the tennis tour in 2010.

It’s up there with Ivan Ljubicic winning his first Masters event at 31.

Or Andy Roddick reaching back-to-back Masters finals on home soil, and winning one of them, Miami, for the first time at 27.

Or Justine Henin taking the Premier title in Stuttgart just four months after her return from retirement.

Or Juan Carlos Ferrero, aged 30, reaching three consecutive finals and his highest ranking since 2004.

For the lovely Martinez Sanchez is now 27, and has just won is her first singles Premier title.

Although she had won two titles before this, both on clay, they were at International level—Bogota and Bastad in 2009. So Rome is a truly break-through moment for her. Read the rest of this entry →

Roger Federer and Serena Williams bestride their respective tennis worlds rather as Everest and K2 dominate the Himalayas.

They may be just two amongst many world-beating champions, yet they remain the standard against which those others are measured.

They can be conquered by the fittest, most ambitious, most determined of individuals, just as those two mighty mountains can, but they remain head and shoulders above the rest. The rankings say it all.

Williams has topped the women’s tour since November 2009 and is currently more than 1,500 points clear of the field. Federer has topped the ATP rankings since Wimbledon 2009 and currently towers over the chasing pack by more than 3,000 points.

This is all the more striking because the two No.1s of tennis have been notable by their absence since they both reasserted their superiority over the competition on the Grand Slam stage of the Australian Open.

Take Williams. Though she is clear of the chasing pack in the rankings, she has played eight fewer tournaments in the last 12 months than the second placed Caroline Wozniacki: just 16 events. In fact only one other player in the top 20 has played fewer than Williams, and that is Kim Clijsters, who only rejoined the tour last August.

Even more remarkable, though, is that Williams has played just two tournaments this year, reaching the finals in Sydney and winning in the Australian Open. That’s just 11 matches, ten of them wins. She did add some court time to her year by playing—and winning—the doubles in Melbourne as well. But since then, she has been laid low by a knee injury, so has not played a single match since the end of January.

Then last week, Williams pulled out of the Premier event in Charleston. She was not scheduled to play at Rome either, but the good news is that she just announced she has taken a wild-card entry for the Italian Open after all.

The return will be intriguing. How will her fitness be after three months with no match-play? Will she be prepared for the sudden transition to clay after her intensive fortnight in Melbourne brought the curtain down on her hard court season? Read the rest of this entry →

Two Grand Slam champions: two former world No. 1s: two of the most likeable women on the WTA tour. And both Kim Clijsters and Venus Williams will be hoping to reclaim the Sony Ericsson Open title. It should be a blockbuster.

The stats alone make the mouth water.

They have both won dozens of titles: Williams 43 and Clijsters 36.

This will be their 12th meeting in nine years, and Williams leads Clijsters by just six wins to five.

Four of those match-ups have been in finals, and in those they share the honors at two apiece.

Both women, too, are enjoying something of a renaissance.

The Clijsters story, leaving tennis to marry and become a mother, only to return as an unranked player and win the 2009 U.S. Open, is the stuff of Hollywood.

She has not played in the Miami event since 2007, and has not won it since 2005. On that occasion, too, she was making a comeback from injury. She was unseeded, beat four of the top six seeds, and did not lose a set on her way to the title.

Williams has won the Miami title three times before, but this would be her first in nine years. What’s more, it would mark her third consecutive title of 2010, following victories in Dubai and Acapulco. By reaching the final, Williams has achieved a match-winning streak to 15, and the last time she did that was in 2004.

So the stage is set for a real crowd-pleaser of a final, which also raises the small question of just who the record-breaking numbers of fans will support on Saturday. Read the rest of this entry →

Maria Sharapova loses to Zheng Jie of China at Indian Wells tournament.

Justine Henin goes down to defeat in straight sets in her second round match! Top-seeded Svetlana Kuznetsova loses her opening salvo!  Feisty Chinese player Jie Zheng clobbers favored Maria Sharapova!

Kim Clijsters is sent packing by Alisa Kleybanova in a 3rd round thriller!  Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez ousts the No. 3 seed Victoria Azarenka!

It is like watching the air burst from a balloon, allowing the deflating latex to spiral around the room once in a final spurt of glory before coming to land limp and lifeless on the turf.

So go the WTA’s top seeds as well as those “come-back” players expected to win at the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells.

To set the proper mood for this much-anticipated Masters Series event, top-ranked Serena and Venus Williams boycotted the tournament for the ninth consecutive year. Dinara Safina pulled out early with a persistent back injury.  That propelled world No. 3 Svetlana Kuznetsova into the top spot as the No. 1 seed as action got underway.

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