Indian Wells Round Up

Vera Zvonareva won the ninth and biggest title of her career last Sunday in the Indian Wells BNP Paribas Open, beating Ana Ivanovic in the final 7-6 (5) 6-2.

The final was a wildly patchy affair due to the extremely windy conditions. Neither player could get into any sort of rhythm, and the rallies became comical with balls being blown in all sorts of directions. These kind of conditions don't suit anyone, but Ivanovic's more aggressive style would usually cope better in these situations. Ivanovic has enough firepower to hit though such windy conditions, and she displayed an urgency to move into the net as much as possible in order to shorten up the rallies. Zvonareva's game relies much more on accuracy of shot, and she put alot more topspin on the ball than Ivanovic, leaving the wind alot much chance to go into action.

What this win about Zvonareva highlighted was just how resourceful and adaptable she is. On numerous occasions, floating junk from Ivanovic would be made a million times trickier than it would normally be, yet Zvonareva had the skillful hands and necessary footwork to be able to deal with all manner of junk and send it back equally as tricky to deal with. Another thing to note was that Zvonareva managed to keep as many of her defensive moonballs as deep as possible. Only late or mid-way through the first set did she start to lose her depth on the ball and allowed Ivanovic to move up the court, run around to hit a forehand and with that the point was over.

Usually, Zvonareva's defense isin't something which wins her matches against balbashers like Ivanovic. Despite her quick movement and footspeed, and her good agility, Zvonareva's defensive skills usually just prolong the inevitable in the point, ather than allowing her to turn defensive positions in offensive ones. In this match though, her defensive moonballs were helped by the wind and most landed deep, neutralising the point again.

Zvonareva was much more economic in her serving patterns. She opted for a high percentage if first serves, rather than Ivanovic who tried to throw in as many big ones down the T as she could. This tactic was ultimately reckless and showed that Ivanovic never believed she could win this match from solely rallying alone in such conditions.

So, I feel that Zvonareva's excellent resourcefulness was the telling factor in such a wind assisted match. It would have been interesting to see the result without the win. Also, these windy conditions truly highlighted how god-awful Ivanovic's backhand technique really is. Several backhand drives which she framed were so badly struck that they bounced before the net. Yikes! Win or no wind, your technique should still prevent botches of such regularity.

Last game of the final:



Other notable things from Indian Wells included the slow, but sure rise of Azarenka. How high she will go is questionable, since who knows how low the competitiveness of the WTA will sink in the coming years? If one thing is for certain though it's that she is able to take some of the most crushing knocks as if they were nothing. Case in point was the Australian Open this year. After playing one of the best sets of tennis in her career in the fourth round against the eventual champion Serena Williams, she goes on in the second set to collapse on court, eventually having default the match, trailing 2-4 in the set. Lesser players might never have recovered from such a misfortune; especially considering the whole host of other setbacks which she has faced. But, no. In her next event, Memphis, she goes on to win the title, thrashing fellow youngster Wozniacki in the final.

Azarenka, who is usually commonly mis-labelled a brainless ballbasher, play a game more similar to Zvonareva rather than her "gruntsake" Sharapova. She doesn't possess enough firepower to be an elite ballbasher. She certainly wouldn't be able to outhit the likes of Serena Williams or Ivanovic from the back of the court. While she is certainly less resourceful than Zvonareva, and isin't as agile, she arguably strikes a cleaner ball and slightly more accurate. Their semi-final match in Indian Wells was certainly a disappointment. Azarenka might just have psyched herself out. She knows well that when she plays Vera, it's going to be a case of who can out manoeuvre who from the baseline and since she doesn't possess the same defensive skills as Zvonareva, she is forced to take more risks in rallies in order to stay on the offense. When they played however, I believe she took all these factors to their logical extreme. She went for way too many low percentage winners. Very few worked because her footwork, which is usually quite sharp, was fairly lackadaisical especially on her backhand side, where on several occasions, she lunged without moving her legs for wide backhands.

Zvonareva didn't play particularly well in this match either, but whenever Azarenka had a chance, she either came up with a big serve, or a frivolous unforced error was thrown in from the opposition. Azarenka obviously still doesn't have faith in herself that she can outlast Zvonareva in rallies, and this shows in their head-to-head, four meetings and zero sets dropped from Zvonareva.

Azarenka beat soon-to-be number one in the quarter-finals, notching up her biggest win the date. Arguably the best match of a drab tournament.

Following on from the last post, Vaidisova watch is now in action. It's baby steps for the former serial tanker. In a match which undoubtedly featured two of the most successful useless returners of serve in game, possibly ever (?), she beat Krajicek in straight sets. After another (semi-shock) win over the seeded, elder Bondarenko sister Alona, she bowed out in two sets to the ancient veteran Jill Craybas. I saw the win over Bondarenko was a semi-shock because Alona doesn't play the type of game which bothers Nicole all that much. Alona is content to play solid, sensible defense from the baseline at all time and likely rarely tried to exploit Nicole's glaring weaknesses and the former was free to dictate the match from the baseline without having to play too much outside her comfort zone. Analysing the match statistics (hugely informed, of course), Nicole's problem so far in this mini-comeback is her first serve percentage. In her matches against Bondarenko and Craybas, the percentage stayed mainly between 50 percent and 40% throughout the entire match. While her second serve is reliable and effective, a percentage like this wasn't going to work against Craybas who has a decent return-of-serve, combined with a passable power game which sees her taking the ball very early from inside the baseline as much as possible.

So is this the start of her rise back up?

It was the other half of the Radwanska clan which was making all he noise in Indian Wells. Urszula Radwanska beating wannabe teen phenom Michelle Larcher de Brito in three-sets in the first round, beafore beating the sixth seed Kuznetsova in three sets. She suffers from the same problem as most other youngsters around he age; tries to punch above her weight. She hits an effective ball of both sides because she has the ability to keep it deep and rarely drops it short. She can keep the ball deep, and neither of her wings are loopy or wholly ineffective. Her problem is a lack of a big weapon. She obviously has yet to realise what the strengths and weaknesses in her game are at this point. She goes for winners which she isin't really capable of hitting. She obviously doesn't possess enough firepower to hit anyone who isin't a complete hack off the court, so why on earth would she try against a top 20 player?

The technique on her forehand looks quite funky. It is a short swing, with alot of wrist action before the point of impact, which makes it hard to read. A bit like Chakvetadze's in that sense. The swing on her backhand was similarly short, yet looked alot more textbook. While she clearly doesn't have the same sort of touch that her sister does, she tried an abundance of dropshots with a 50/50 success rate. I honestly don't think she has figured out yet what type of a player she is, so how can I? Also she isin't well built for tennis. Her frame is long and slight and in the tough heat of Indian Wells, she was visibly struggling in the latter stages of the second set against Wozniacki. That is something she is going to have to look at developing.

As for Wozniacki, she still plays the same as she always has done, and her problems are very much still the same. Her technique is so rudimentary that she really would be incapable of being a ballbasher. Instead, she plays a high-percentage counter punching game, keeping an immaculate length mixed in with a bit of junk here and there. She reads the game well, along with good anticipation and excellent reflexes, she maximises what she can do, which in some ways is commendable. On the other hand, her game is just downright boring. It is argued that her game is clever and full of dimensions, but it isin't really. Her dimensions include: baseline grinding, counter punching, baseline grinding, baseline grinding, random bit of junk, random shift in direction, counter punching, baseline grinding, baseline grinding...........

It's not a case of her choosing just to moonball, junkball and stand so far behind the baseline in general because she lacks confidence or something of this notion. Her technique simply isin't good enough to execute an effective, consistent power game. Players don't just decide not to ballbash because they believe it's beneath their intelligence or something. They probably just don't have the ability.

Just because she's incapable of hitting outright winners from the baseline against even scrubs and needs about 55675656531 extra shots to finish points off, doesn't mean her game is full of "dimensions".

A "pusher" may be a slight dramatisation, but usually against lower ranked scrubs, she plays extremely passively, rarely looks to dictate and wins mainly on her ability to to keep the ball deep and eventually outlast her less consistent opponents in rallies. She doesn't possess any great dimensions to her game, despite the popular mis-informed belief. She can't volley to save her life, and her little random junky shots that are thrown in from time to time are a side-effect of her ugly technique, rather that any tactical prowess.

Another thing to note is that is her mid-court game is useless.

I refer to her a "La Borz", and that is how it shall remain from now on in this blog.

The plethora of early casualties wasn't all that surprising. The BYE's which the top seeds get often leave them cold against opponents who could possibly have several matches under their belts. Dementieva's loss to Cetkovska is still perplexing, however. Cetkovska has absolutely no weapons, and she does nothing at all better than Dementieva (save for maybe tactical awareness, but well who doesn't have that over Dementieva?). While this result may be what Dementieva calls a tank-job, it's still worrying that her career goals are still so randomly deluded. Last season she organised her whole year around winning an Olympic medal, which nobody gave a damn about but her, and before that she was dead set on giving her life to win the Fed Cup. While her new current goal, becoming number one, doesn't seem as bizarre, the means by which she seems to want to achieve this are just plain stupid. Instead of winning a slam, and becoming the number one player naturally and unquestionably, she has opted to just hog as much as possible and reach the summit by default almost.

Jankovic now seems content on being the new highly ranked punchbag of the tour. Her lack of interest in her game continues.

Last but not least, Pavlyuchenkova had her breakthrough event in Indian Wells, making the semi-final before losing to Ivanovic. She looked like a complete world beater against Jankovic in the second round, but at this point, Jankovic would make any competant ballstriker look like a potential number one. Again, when facing another puffballer, A. Radwanska in the quarter-finals, some of her shotmaking looked bigger than it actually is. She hits a clean, deep ball off both sides. Her backhand is much steadier than her forehand. Decent first serve, but her second serve seems unreliable in tight situations. Her movement was her biggest ailment. Against Ivanovic, one big forehand and that was it. Her defensive game is mediocre at best. I guess much hard work will have to be put in on that front. I'd say future top 20, but not much more.