Every year at Wimbledon there is a pre tournament players party and this year is no different. We came across a great picture of Ana Ivanovic with Virgin boss Richard Branson. Im wondering if Branson actually knows who she is or just another tactical publicity stunt.
The AELTC has released the seedings for the 2009 Championships. They follow the ranking almost exactly, except Maria Sharapova has been seeded #24 despite her current ranking of 59. There is no disputing Sharapova’s grass court prowess, having won the title in 2004 and made the Semifinals on other occasions, and the All England Club clearly wanted to reward her for her past success. Why then, was the same criteria not applied to other players?
Venus Williams has won the Wimbledon title 5 times, and Serena Williams has won it 2 times, and yet they were not elevated and are both seeded behind Dinara Safina, who has never been past the third round at Wimbledon in 6 attempts. And what of Amelie Mauresmo? She has nearly identical grass court credentials to Sharapova, having won the title herself in 2006, but her seeding was not elevated from #17.
Personally, I don’t think that rankings should be changed at all for seedings. Players earn a ranking over the course of 52 weeks, which should not be able to be changed on a whim. At the same time, if they are going to alter seedings, then they should apply the same criteria to all players. They should not pick and choose which players they want to reward. This will certainly be a major topic of contention as the Championships get underway this Monday.
Full seedings may be found here: http://aeltc2009.wimbledon.org/en_GB/about/pdf/2009_seeding.pdf
The All England Lawn Tennis Club have partnered with IBM to release the official Wimledon iPhone and iPod Touch application. Wimbledon runs from the 22nd June to the 5th July 2009, and this application makes it easy to keep up on what is happening from anywhere in the world.
The application features all the latest news, draws, videos, scores and more. Its a free download so make sure you head here and download it now.
Ivanovic, answering press questions after her first-round loss to Petrova
It says a lot about what’s happened to Ana Ivanovic’s ranking that she is the player featured on all the posters here but after the loss of most of her 2008 French Open points is ranked too low (13) to be seeded. Instead, Elena Dementieva is the top seed and Nadia Petrova, ranked 10, is seeded 7. In the first set, Ivanovic simply couldn’t get the ball back into court, while Petrova used her powerful serve and chip returns to good effect to take the set 6-1. In the second, Ivanovic used the advice her new coach gave her during the set break: don’t go for the big shots so early in the rallies. Doing that helped her get her rhythm back, and that was enough to win her the second set 6-4. And level they stayed up until 4-4 in the third set, at which point Ivanovic’s game left again.
“She was hitting the ball better, and I felt I should go for more,” Ivanovic said afterwards. “It was a mistake.” It was: the same errors that plagued her in the first set cost her the last two games and the match, 6-4. Even so, as Ivanovic says, the last two years she hasn’t played any warm-up events before Wimbledon and still managed to make the semis in 2007. I suppose every player always has to think positively, especially when talking to the press, but last year’s Wimbledon is where Ivanovic’s slump started. This year, she’s going in having just fired her coach of three months (the veteran Craig Kardon, who coached Navratilova to her ninth Wimbledon title) and convinced she wants a full-time coach but unsure whom to pick. She will have more match practice, though: she’ll be playing doubles tomorrow.
Of course, there’s no shame in losing to Petrova on grass. Twice a quarterfinalist at Wimbledon and last year’s beaten Eastbourne finalist, Petrova was determined not to lose this match. “It would have been very hard to be out in the first round.” Petrova is also playing doubles here, with Mattek-Sands, who will also be her partner at Wimbledon. “We’re having a good time,” Petrova said. She’s not letting Mattek-Sands pick her clothes, though.
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Always perfectly balanced
If you have never seen Fabrice Santoro, aka “the Magician” play tennis, run, do not walk, to anywhere you can find him because he’s retiring soon. Eastbourne is one of the oldest women’s events and always attracts a top-class field, and this year the LTA has moved the much lower-profile men’s event from Nottingham down to join it. Andreev is the top seed. The chance to see Santoro play in an intimate setting is the hidden gem. Today, he was playing the US’s Robert Kendrick, one of those beanpoles that come out of the woodwork with the switch from clay to grass. And there’s Santoro with every characteristic you don’t expect to add up to a good player on grass: relatively short (5 foot 10), two-handed on both sides, a spin artist. Kendrick’s grass credentials aren’t bad. He reached the quarter-final at Newport in 2005, the same year he had a two-set lead at Wimbledon over eventual finalist Nadal – then lost the third set tie-break before losing 6-7 3-6 7-6 7-5 6-4. Santoro, who like Navratilova is perfectly balanced no matter where he is on court or what position he’s had to adopt to hit the ball, proceeded to carve him up like a nice Sunday roast in some of the most entertaining play you’ll ever see anywhere. Final score: Tomorrow, Santoro plays Ginepri – more of the same kind of classic match-up you used to get in the old days.
And so both Serbian “sisters” go out in the first round. But while there was nothing particularly shocking about Ivanovic’s loss – since it came to Petrova, last year’s finalist and possessor of the kind of power serve you expect to be successful on grass – Jankovic’s loss is pretty shocking. Although Chakvetadze is a former top-five player (in 2007, her best year, she reached the US Open semifinal and won several titles) she has barely won a match all year and her ranking is down to 31. Jankovic finished last year number one, and has dropped to 6 after an overtraining left her muscle-bound in the first part of the year.
Jankovic returns a shot from Chakvetadze on her way to a first-round loss
Jankovic, who said yesterday she’s been working to improve her serve, learn to volley, and shorten the points on grass, nonetheless looked uncomfortable in the first set, starting with a string of errors while Chakvetadze barely put a foot wrong for six games. Until 5-1, when Chakvetadze was serving for the set and stopped being able to find her first serve. Five games later, Chakvetadze had to serve to save the set, succeeded, and then dropped a tightly-fought tiebreak.
At that point, it seemed obvious that Chakvetadze was going to melt down further and Jankovic would win in straight sets. Still, the pair stayed level until 3-3, when Chakvetadze saved five break points to go 4-3, then broke Jankovic for 5-3, and served out to love.
In the third set, Jankovic set afterwards, her legs gave out from the strain of having to bend so low to get back all those deep, skidding shots. Her quads started to hurt, and her legs were tired, and she didn’t have the ernergy to keep running.
When you have two slujmping players playing each other, one of them has to lose. Surprising that the one who lost was Jankovic. But Chakvetadze does have a long history of playing on grass – the first time I saw her was at Wimbledon in the juniors, playing Michaela Krajicek probably ten years ago.
Jankovic herself admits that grass is her weakest surface – she’s made the semis of all the other Slams but never been past the fourth round at Wimbledon.
Tennis ads have become a lot of fun lately and this one from Nike is no different.
Roger Federer press conference after the French Open win with CNN.
As the Official Ball of the U.S. Open, Wilson is once again giving tennis fans a chance to go to the Open and win some great Wilson tennis equipment.
Look for specially marked 3-packs of US Open Wilson tennis balls for details or simply go to Wilson’s 2009 US Open Sweepstakes site to register to win. The promotion runs now through August 7, 2009.
Today we can reveal the outfit that Ana Ivanovic will be wearing during her matches at the All England Club for the Wimbledon Championships.
