Twisting Rainbow Leads To Gold in Los Angeles

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The New York Sun

When an out-of-shape Serena Williams won the Australian Open back in January, fending off three match points against Maria Sharapova in the semifinals, we should have guessed this would be a strange year in women’s tennis.


Witness the rest of the Grand Slams: Justine Henin-Hardenne saved a match point on her way to a victory in Paris, and Venus Williams, surprising everyone, did the same against Lindsay Davenport in the Wimbledon final. Then Kim Clijsters, injured for most of 2004, won her first Grand Slam title at the U.S. Open over Mary Pierce, who made two appearances in Grand Slam finals in 2005 at age 30. Clijsters’s win marked the seventh straight Grand Slam title won by a different woman, tying an Open era record set from 1977 to 1978.


If all that is not unpredictable enough for you, consider that three of this year’s Grand Slam winners – the Williams sisters and Henin-Hardenne – will not appear in Los Angeles this week at the Tour Championships, the season finale to which the world’s top eight players are invited. Stranger still, two of them (the Williams sisters) had such inconsistent seasons that they failed to qualify for the event. Serena finished the year with a 21-7 record, the least number of matches she has played in a season since 1997, when she was 16. (Henin-Hardenne did qualify, but withdrew to nurse her never-ending hamstring injury.)


The year-end event begins Tuesday with an initial round-robin format and then a single elimination tournament among the four women with the best records. Davenport, who has returned to no. 1 in the world, will try to prevent Clijsters from taking over the top spot to end the season. Sharapova, no. 1 for a week before the U.S. Open and six weeks afterward, now has no shot at finishing on top, though she will be looking to defend her title here from last year. Amelie Mauresmo, fresh off her third straight victory in Philadelphia, rounds out the top four, with Pierce, Nadia Petrova, Patty Schnyder, and Elena Dementieva filling out the field.


While all eyes will be on Davenport and Clijsters, Dementieva is the best story of the tournament.


After losing in the semifinals of the U.S. Open to Pierce in a match marred by Pierce’s inexcusably long injury timeout, the 24-year-old Russian seemed a long shot for a berth in the year-end championships. But Dementieva earned her spot in Los Angeles with a little luck (Henin-Hardenne’s hamstring and Venus Williams’s knee) and by playing every chance she got. Since the Fed Cup finals – in which Dementieva downed Pierce for Russia’s first-ever title – she has entered five tournaments, slowly piling up points. After reaching the semifinals in Philadelphia last week, she knocked the idle Venus – sidelined by another of her mysteriously long-lasting injuries for all but two matches since the U.S. Open – out of contention for the final eight.


While the tournament this week surely will suffer without the magnetismof the Williams sisters, one can only hope Dementieva makes a run and wins a few more fans along the way. What’s not to like about a woman who manages to win despite a stiff-armed, 60-mph second serve that often finds the net?


At times, Dementieva seems incapable of winning an important match (she has played terribly in two Grand Slam final losses). Other times, she thrives under pressure, as her 5-1 Fed Cup record this year confirms. In this most unpredictable season in what has traditionally been one of the world’s most predictable sports, Dementieva is a determined and fitting year-end champion. Could this strange season end any other way?


***


Three weeks after injuring his ankle in practice, world no. 1 Roger Federer is back on the court and preparing for next week’s Tennis Masters Cup in Shanghai. Federer will enter the tournament with a 77-3 record and 11 tournament victories. If he wins all five of his matches, he will tie John McEnroe for the best single-season record in tennis history at 82-3 (McEnroe set the mark in 1984, when he won 13 titles).


Andy Roddick, right now the third seed in Shanghai, may not have a chance to keep Federer from the historic mark. Roddick lost in the semifinals of the Paris Masters this week to Ivan Ljubicic after struggling with injuries to his lower back and left shoulder. He said he is not sure if he will make the trip to China. If he withdraws, Andre Agassi will be the lone American among the final eight men. The others are Rafael Nadal, Lleyton Hewitt, Guillermo Coria, Nickolay Davydenko, and Ljubicic.



tperrotta@nysun.com


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