Any Hope for Vaidisova?

At the age of just 19, former teenage supernova, Nicole Vaidisova, has seen her ranking in the past 12 months drop from just outside the top 10, to just inside the top 70. Having only won one match this year thus far, and having gained a reputation as a serial tanker of matches, Vaidisova's career looks all but over, but where did it all go wrong?

At 15, Vaidisova won her first WTA tournament in Vancouver as a qualifier, winning eight matches in a row. Two years later at just 17, she reached the semi-finals of Roland Garros in Paris beating the then number one Amelie Mauresmo and Venus Williams back-to-back before losing in three-sets to Russian Svetlana Kuznetsova. Just months later she cracked the top 10 for the first time and looked destined for the top.

Vaidisova grew up training at the Nick Bollettieri Tenns Acadamy, in Florida alongside the likes of Jelena Jankovic and Maria Sharapova. From the very start of her career, she was dubbed Sharapova 2.0. Much of her early results infact did resemble those of Sharapova's with such notable Grand Slam success as a teenager, however Nicole just couldn't win that first "big" title. She couldn't get to that first "big" final even.

Both Nicole and current French Open Champion Ana Ivanovic were early rivals when they first burst onto the main tour. It was Vaidisova who looked set for greater things, achieving more Grand Slam success earlier than Ivanovic, however in 2007, after being diagnosed with glandular fever, Vaidisova's scheduling became much more sparse and Ivanovic had her breakthrough. With a final at Roland Garros, added to a semi-final appearance at Wimbledon (where she beat Vaidisova 7-5 in the 3rd set, saving 3 match points in the process), Ivanovic had surely eclipsed her fellow teen.

Now, Following a series of setbacks and disappointments, Vaidisova has seemingly given up on her tennis career. Was the pressure too much to handle after seeing Ivanovic reach such heady highs, and her own failure of living up to similar expectations too much to bear? Or was it the failure of living up to the Sharapova comparison the catalyst for such dramatic meltdown. A meltdown which has seen her win only three matches since Wimbledon last year.

If she really doesn't care about tennis anymore, then why is she still playing and throwing in the towel at any given moment? While staring into the abyss, she can't quite will herself into jumping down. She either never wanted this for herself from the beginning, or found out she didn't have the stomach to endure any more setbacks. she had already thrown away her own career, but was still reluctant to "burn the boats" so to speak, as she was afraid she might still regret it, and thus this protracted public suicide continued until she finally brought herself to make an irrevocable decision and move on with her life.


Another reason which goes some way in explaining the slump is that, Nicole has/had a flawed game. Her large ground stroke swings combined with mediocre footwork constantly provided her timing problems off both her backhand and forehand sides. This meant that even at her best, she needed to play a foot or two behind the baseline in order to accommodate this mix of footwork woes and large swings, leaving the effectiveness of her shots diminished to certain extend; she couldn't take the ball early and was constantly exposed to short cross-court angled shots which would often just whizz by her.

Her return of serve is dismal for a player with such stellar results. She could rarely thrash average, mid-ranked players because she'd often throw away too many cheap points with lazy return of serve errors. Added to this, her foot speed and lack of agility meant she was prone to being wrong-footed in baseline exchanges. In order to keep herself in control of rallies and to keep herself on the offensive in points as much as possible, she had to take alot of risks in her shot making.

Arguably, all these flaws finally frustrated her to the point of no return, having put in so much work yet wasn't seeing enough rewards for it. She wasn't willing to put the required amount of work in to try and smooth or her games kinks, so just gave up.

So, what next for Vaidisova? After pulling out of her last tournament in Dubai, reports have surfaced that Nicole is back working with her former coach and stepfather Alex Kodat with whom she had her best results with. At this point, she either makes a stirring comeback into the elite of the game, finally winning her "big breakthrough" event and living up to her early promise, or she continues on with this horrific slump, turning up at events for merely paychecks, eventually fading into retirement, never to be heard from again. Right now, the latter seems a much likelier outcome, however one feels that Vaidisova back to where she was two years ago would be a big boost for a game which seems to be in decline.


Final games of Nicole beating Venus Williams in the Quarter Finals of the French Open 2006, as a 17 year old. Will this forever remain her career highlight?