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Showing posts from January, 2018

Women’s AO Final Wozniacki v Halep

What a great Australian Open Women’s Final! I love Navratilova’s tweet where she said both Wozniacki and Halep were champions. It’s important to remember the contribution the loser makes to a match. Indeed, Halep played incredible tennis. The total points won in the match showed only a two point lead for Wozniacki! This shows how small the gap can be between winner and loser. So, Halep has nothing to feel badly about, especially because in many ways her game was stronger. For instance 1 , on 1 st serve percentage; aces, where Halep served 6 aces to Wozniacki’s 1; accuracy by only double-faulting once to Wozniacki’s 6 double faults; break points won (42-36) and she had a considerably greater number of winners (40-25)! Although Halep also has a terrific forehand producing many winners, she also suffered unforced errors on her groundstrokes, forehand and backhand. Whereas, Wozniacki played the tighter game. She had less winners but less unforced errors. If there was a slight weakness i...

The Grunting Debate

I’m going to wade into this grunting debate which frankly is a boring topic, detracting from the real important issue of appreciating the tennis being played. Pre-Australian Open, Federer himself put it well when he said that tennis players are working hard so grunting is par for the course. Venus good humouredly said tennis players grunt that’s what they do. If you are a tennis player you grunt. However, grunting once again became a controversial issue when the Australian crowd started picking on Aryna Sabalenka’s grunting during her 1 st round match against the Australian player, Ashleigh Barty 1 . Firstly, it’s never OK for a crowd to pick on a player and be nasty to them. The umpire did make announcements to calm the spectators down but that’s clearly not enough as a procedure in itself. The spectators carried on and became worse, taking the rise out of Sabalenka’s grunting noises as she was trying to serve. At that point, I think the match should have been stopped until they...

It takes two….

….winners and losers. Now the Australian Open (AO) is underway one hears about who won a match and who lost their match as if that’s all there is to sport. It started me thinking. Although I have played other sports, namely, golf, table tennis and badminton they have all been a good way to improve my tennis game. All my energies have gone into tennis and much as it is about winning your matches this is not an easy task at the beginning when you first start playing professionally especially if, like me, you haven’t played juniors. Everyone is new to you. You have never played them before. Tournaments, courts, match play are all new and it takes time to adjust and get used to all of this. Although this is not a problem any of the players have in the main draw there can be some similarities. A top player may meet a lower ranked player they have never heard of much less played and, sometimes, this can advantage the lesser known player who has no pressure on them to win the match.   I...

How I started tennis and what does it take to be an athlete?

Huge disappointment that neither Serena Williams nor Victoria Azarenka will be at the Australian Open (AO). Hope they return to the tour soon! Looking forward to the AO next week. Serena pulling out of the AO got me thinking about what it takes to be an athlete. What it takes to be competition ready. I started tennis at the age of three. I still remember walking onto the vibrant red clay court in my favourite park in Wimbledon. I stood at the net on one side, my mother on the other and she threw the ball directly at the racquet head as I stood there with my racquet ready for a volley. All I had to do was tap the ball with my racquet over the net, which wasn’t difficult because my mother is a very accurate thrower so I just had to stand still. The thrill of getting it over the net was amazing! This was usually achieved by holding the racquet high enough above the net and standing very close to the net. Volleying remains my favourite shot! I still love playing on clay, the colour...

Serena Williams and Jelena Ostapenko in the Mubadala World Tennis Championship in Abu Dhabi

Everyone has been eagerly anticipating Serena Williams’s return to the game and she didn’t disappoint. In this blog post I want to chat about the exhibition match between Serena Williams and Jelena Ostapenko in the Mubadala World Tennis Championship in Abu Dhabi. It was an intelligently played, tricky match where both players looked to prevent the other from getting into a hard-hitting rhythm in a variety of ways. Their shots were well disguised, often making their opponent guess and run the wrong way, creating winners for both of them. They both placed their shots very awkwardly for each other, meaning neither could hit the other off the court. Serena remained competitive making Jelena run for awkwardly placed, well angled balls. Meanwhile, Jelena was also making Serena either, run and stretch for out-wide shots or having to return into-the-body shots, leaving her no room to get a full swing at the ball to try to dominate the point. These match-play tactics, combined with an abov...