The Dance Cards Are Public

by Savannah



Invites to the Big Dance have been sent. Some are still banging on the doors trying to get in. But those who were guaranteed admittance know who their partners will be.

The Women's Draw

Victoria Azarenka BLR (1) vs Alberta Brianti ITA

Caroline Garcia FRA vs Unknown

Unknown vs Aleksandra Wozniak CAN

Alize Cornet FRA vs Jie Zheng CHN (31)

Lucie Safarova CZE (20) vs Anastasiya Yakimova BLR

Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez ESP vs Unknown

Vania King USA vs Galina Voskoboeva KAZ

Kristina Mladenovic FRA vs Dominika Cibulkova SVK (15)

Sabine Lisicki GER (12) vs Bethanie Mattek-Sands USA

Ekaterina Makarova RUS vs Sloane Stephens USA

Mathilde Johansson FRA vs Anastasia Rodionova AUS

Simona Halep ROU vs Petra Cetkovska CZE (24)

Nadia Petrova RUS (27) vs Iveta Benesova CZE

Laura Pous-Tio ESP vs Chanelle Scheepers RSA

Irina Falconi USA vs Edina Gallovits-Hall ROU

Elena Baltacha GBR vs Samantha Stosur AUS (6)

Agnieszka Radwanska POL (3) vs Bojana Jovanovski SRB

Venus Williams USA vs Paula Ormaechea ARG

Unknown vs Kateryna Bondarenko UKR

Mirjana Lucic CRO vs Svetlana Kuznetsova RUS (26)

Sara Errani ITA (21) vs Casey Dellacqua AUS

Melanie Oudin USA vs Johanna Larsson SWE

Stephanie Dubois CAN vs Shahar Peer ISR

Unknown vs Ana Ivanovic SRB (13)

Angelique Kerber GER (10) vs Unknown

Romina Oprandi SUI vs Olga Govortsova BLR

Anna Tatishvili GEO vs Unknown

Su-Wei Hsieh TPE vs Flavia Pennetta ITA (18)

A. Medina Garrigues ESP (29) vs Silvia Soler-Espinosa ESP

Kai-Chen Chang TPE vs Irena Pavlovic FRA

Petra Martic CRO vs Michaella Krajicek NED

Unknown vs Marion Bartoli FRA (8)

Na Li CHN (7) vs Sorana Cirstea ROU

Barbora Zahlavova Strycova CZE vs Stephanie Foretz Gacon FRA

Christina McHale USA vs Unknown

Unknown vs Mona Barthel GER (30)

Roberta Vinci ITA (17) vs Sofia Arvidsson SWE

Unknown vs Mandy Minella LUX

Tamarine Tanasugarn THA vs Carla Suarez Navarro ESP

Timea Babos HUN vs Vera Zvonareva RUS (11)

Francesca Schiavone ITA (14) vs Kimiko Date-Krumm JPN

Tsvetana Pironkova BUL vs Yanina Wickmayer BEL

Varvara Lepchenko USA vs Ksenia Pervak KAZ

Patricia Mayr-Achleitner AUT vs Jelena Jankovic SRB (19)

Monica Niculescu ROU (32) vs Nina Bratchikova RUS

Vera Dushevina RUS vs Claire Feuerstein FRA

Pauline Parmentier FRA vs Urszula Radwanska POL

Ashleigh Barty AUS vs Petra Kvitova CZE (4)

Serena Williams USA (5) vs Virginie Razzano FRA

Arantxa Rus NED vs Jamie Hampton USA

Elena Vesnina RUS vs Qualifier

Lucie Hradecka CZE vs Julia Goerges GER (25)

Kaia Kanepi EST (23) vs Alexandra Panova RUS

Irina-Camelia Begu ROU vs Aravane Rezai FRA

Jarmila Gajdosova AUS vs Magdalena Rybarikova SVK

Eleni Daniilidou GRE vs Caroline Wozniacki DEN (9)

Maria Kirilenko RUS (16) vs Victoria Larriere FRA

Klara Zakopalova CZE vs Lesia Tsurenko UKR

Anne Keothavong GBR vs Melinda Czink HUN

Greta Arn HUN vs Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova RUS (22)

Shuai Peng CHN (28) vs Tamira Paszek AUT

Marina Erakovic NZL vs Lourdes Dominguez Lino ESP

Polona Hercog SLO vs Ayumi Morita JPN

Alexandra Cadantu ROU vs Maria Sharapova RUS (2)

Remember when the big fight was over whether Venus Williams and Serena Williams would be put on the same side of the draw? Seems like ages ago doesn't it?

Now the argument rightly centers on who fell where in the draw and how they'll fare.

There were some surprises for me. For one I didn't realize Vera Zvonareva was still ranked high enough to get the 11th seed. I don't slavishly pour over rankings so this was big news for me.

Other news on the women's draw:

Someone up there really, really likes Ana Ivanovic.
Unless something drastic happens Samantha Stosur should also be lighting candles to the draw gods. So should Victoria Azarenka.
Michaella Krajicek is coming off of knee surgery.
Aga Radwanska has a nice quarter even if Venus is in there. Venus looked a little worse for wear during her last outing and while she's had time to rest clay is not her favorite surface and this clay may demand more than she can give. Not that she won't fight mind you. I just don't think she'll be able to play hard court tennis on what should be a heavier court.

Now let's look at the seeds in the bottom half of the draw.

Defending Champion [7] Li Na has [30] Mona Barthel in her section.
[17] Roberta Vinci and [11] Vera Zvonareva are in the same section.
Former Champion [14] Francesca Schiavone and [19] Jelena Jankovic are in the same quarter.
[32] Monica Niculescu ROU is seeded with [4] Petra Kvitova
[5] Serena Williams has [25] Julia Goerges in her quarter
[23] Kaia Kanepi EST is seeded with former WTA #1 [9] Caroline Wozniacki
[16] Maria Kirilenko has [22] Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova
[28] Peng Shuai is in [2] Maria Sharapova's section.

Off the top I expect absolutely nothing from Francesca Schiavone. I was embarrassed for her during her last match. I don't know if Fran is back partying or if she's okay with having one Slam under her belt. She did not show the focus or drive to go far in Paris. As for Petra Kvitova I don't know what's going on in her head. She would alternate between good play and play so mind bogglingly bad all you could do was shake your head. I've read on fanboards that Wozniacki's father is making noise about her winning the French. Parental support is good. Toss a coin between Pavs and MaKiri. If good MaKiri shows up she can make it interesting. Peng Shuai seems to have lost her way.
I didn't forget Serena. She played well on that stuff in Madrid and many see her as the favorite to win this event. We'll see. If the weather is dry she stands a good chance. If the weather is damp the entire story line changes.
As for Li Na all I have to say is 6-4, 4-0 and losing to Pova. Some are saying after Serena Sharapova may be in the best form. If your opponent is up by the score Li was and gifts you the match we're talking about accepting the gift that falls into your lap. Li was up when she made Sharapova move. When she stopped doing that Sharapova began to feast.

Why didn't I break down the seeds in the top half? Because people are saying the bottom half is stronger and more competitive than the top half. I really don't see much difference to be honest. Sure there are out and out gift sections in the top half but I don't see a clear cut favorite on any side of the draw. The WTA part of the tournament is up for grabs in my opinion. The French is known as the oddball Slam. Whoever hoists the women's trophy could come as a complete surprise.

As usual I won't go into detail about the men's draw except to say Andy Murray and Richard Gasquet must have been very, very good boys.

Novak Djokovic SRB (1) vs Potito Starace ITA

Blaz Kavcic SLO vs Lleyton Hewitt AUS

Qualifier vs Qualifier

Qualifier vs Jurgen Melzer AUT (30)

Andreas Seppi ITA (22) vs Nikolay Davydenko RUS

Mikhail Kukushkin KAZ vs Ernests Gulbis LAT

Qualifier vs Gilles Muller LUX

Steve Darcis BEL vs Fernando Verdasco ESP (14)

Gilles Simon FRA (11) vs Ryan Harrison USA

Xavier Malisse BEL vs Brian Baker USA

Pablo Andujar ESP vs Victor Hanescu ROU

Flavio Cipolla ITA vs Stanislas Wawrinka SUI (18)

Viktor Troicki SRB (28) vs Thomaz Bellucci BRA

Fabio Fognini ITA vs Adrian Mannarino FRA

Cedrik-Marcel Stebe GER vs Joao Souza BRA

Qualifier vs Jo-Wilfried Tsonga FRA (5)

Roger Federer SUI (3) vs Tobias Kamke GER

Adrian Ungur ROU vs David Nalbandian ARG

Frank Dancevic CAN vs Martin Klizan SVK

Nicolas Mahut FRA vs Andy Roddick USA (26)

Radek Stepanek CZE (23) vs Qualifier

Arnaud Clement FRA vs Alex Bogomolov Jr. RUS

Karol Beck SVK vs Lukasz Kubot POL

Qualifier vs Feliciano Lopez ESP (15)

Juan Martin Del Potro ARG (9) vs Albert Montanes ESP

Edouard Roger-Vasselin FRA vs Vasek Pospisil CAN

Juan Carlos Ferrero ESP vs Jonathan Dasnieres De Veigy FRA

Qualifier vs Marin Cilic CRO (21)

Kevin Anderson RSA (31) vs Rui Machado POR

Eric Prodon FRA vs Qualifier

Michael Llodra FRA vs Guillermo Garcia-Lopez ESP

Dudi Sela ISR vs Tomas Berdych CZE (7)

David Ferrer ESP (6) vs Lukas Lacko SVK

Benoit Paire FRA vs Albert Ramos ESP

Ivan Dodig CRO vs Robin Haase NED

James Blake USA vs Mikhail Youzhny RUS (27)

Marcel Granollers ESP (20) vs Qualifier

Malek Jaziri TUN vs Philipp Petzschner GER

Paul-Henri Mathieu FRA vs Bjorn Phau GER

Qualifier vs John Isner USA (10)

Alexandr Dolgopolov UKR (16) vs Sergiy Stakhovsky UKR

Filippo Volandri ITA vs Qualifier

Donald Young USA vs Grigor DiMitrov BUL

Qualifier vs Richard Gasquet FRA (17)

Bernard Tomic AUS (25) vs Qualifier

Santiago Giraldo COL vs Alejandro Falla COL

Jarkko Nieminen FIN vs Igor Andreev RUS

Tatsuma Ito JPN vs Andy Murray GBR (4)

Janko Tipsarevic SRB (8) vs Sam Querrey USA

Jeremy Chardy FRA vs Yen-Hsun Lu TPE

Dmitry Tursunov RUS vs Go Soeda JPN

Qualifier vs Julien Benneteau FRA (29)

Philipp Kohlschreiber GER (24) vs Matthew Ebden AUS

Olivier Rochus BEL vs Leonardo Mayer ARG

Juan Ignacio Chela ARG vs Marcos Baghdatis CYP

Paolo Lorenzi ITA vs Nicolas Almagro ESP (12)

Juan Monaco ARG (13) vs Guillaume Rufin FRA

Lukas Rosol CZE vs Carlos Berlocq ARG

Qualifier vs Benjamin Becker GER

Ruben Ramirez Hidalgo ESP vs Milos Raonic CAN (19)

Florian Mayer GER (32) vs Daniel Gimeno-Traver ESP

Qualifier vs Ivo Karlovic CRO

Igor Kunitsyn RUS vs Denis Istomin UZB

Simone Bolelli ITA vs Rafael Nadal ESP (2)

Being Weenies

by Savannah

"Women are way tougher than men. That's why we have the babies, you guys could never handle kids," Williams said after thumping top seed Victoria Azarenka 6-1 6-3 to win the Madrid title on Sunday.

"We ladies don't complain we just do our best. On the WTA (tour) we are real performers, we are not about going out there and being weenies."

Serena Williams



Let's start this off right. I am a big fan of Serena Williams. I've been a fan since she and her sister took the main tour by storm. I've been a fan long enough to see tennis media go from treating Venus Williams, Serena Williams, and their father Richard Williams as a novelty act to now treating them with the respect they deserve.

I've supported both women in their boycott of Indian Wells after some very shabby treatment by the fans and tournament organizers. I've defended both women when their injuries were said to be fake and that they were wrong in developing interests outside of tennis. I've been around since cat suits and now through shiny sparkly see through thingies they've opted to wear on court.

So it goes without saying that the above statement by Serena distressed and annoyed me to no end. It took away from Serena's beat down of the woman ranked WTA #1 Victoria Azarenka and in my opinion further diminished the women's tour and American tennis.

Why? The article I linked to gives the following definition of "weenie" taken from Dictionary.com. "an insignificant, disliked person" or "a stupid and inept male". Serena's comments say to me that the women players care nothing about their on court safety. It says to me that it's okay to go out on a surface that can vaguely be called clay since it started out as the same red brick that is found on clay court tennis's hallowed ground of Roland Garros but has ended up being too slippery to play defensive based tennis and so powdery that whatever Madrid has become it can't be called a clay court tournament. In fact it needs to be moved to sometime leading up to the summer hard court season in the States. It's perfectly suited for big servers and players who can't play on the dirt, who have no concept of point construction or turning defense into offense. Sound like a tournament custom made for Americans? Is this what Ion Tiriac and the ATP and WTA have in mind? Will this tournament lure hard court players to Spain and give them a "level playing field", an ATP Master's 1000 to call their own during the run up to Paris?

By putting a tournament on this surface in the middle of the spring European clay court season what else are the tours saying to it's players? If no traction can be gained on a surface it's not clay. If the players can't turn and run down balls, get red clay in every orifice known to God and man and know they've been in a war waged on both the mental and physical levels then what good is it in the road to Paris?

The American tennis media had been spinning the idea that all of the talk of boycotts and that the surface is dangerous is just whining, that the ATP players were just upset at the color change. I think they began to see that they couldn't keep that line of bullshit running when Richard Gasquet, beloved of many in the tennis media, looked like a bull on ice and had trouble holding his balance during a match. Then Juan Martin del Potro had trouble on the surface. By the time Novak Djokovic finished slipping and sliding and Rafael Nadal lost to Fernando Verdasco the tide had begun to turn. Of course there were those who said that the eventual champion on the men's side, by staying above the fray and adapting to the conditions by playing serve and volley - on "clay" mind you - had shown the way to the other men who were talking boycotts of next year's Madrid Masters unless the surface was changed back to red clay.

They could run this line by ignoring the fact that Rafael Nadal had made it clear that he disliked Madrid due to the altitude long before that blue stuff was put on the ground. The altitude made for competition that didn't hone a players clay court skills and required a method of play that was at the least disruptive for those who take Roland Garros seriously.

In the end it seemed like Andy Murray was the smartest of them all. Citing back problems he took himself to Rome where he spent the week he was supposed to be in Madrid.

By the day of the Final's though the tune had changed. All of a sudden the commentators were saying that the surface was untested in real world conditions, that no players had been invited in to test the surface and give tournament officials their assessment. The lab where the stuff was created said it would play like red clay and the powers that be took them at their word. There was also a discussion of how they'd had to "compact" the stuff so that it would be less slippery and that the grounds crews had spent long nights trying to make the surface more playable. Really? What happened to all the whiners and wusses who had said the surface was unplayable?

To emphasize how bad the tournament was during the trophy presentations for both the WTA and ATP Manolo Santana, the man whose name graces the Center Court, and Tournament Director Ion Tiriac were roundly booed by the fans. It wasn't scattered booing. It was loud and concentrated and pointedly directed at the two men who are the public face of the tournament. It was worse during the men's presentation when the actor Will Smith and Roger Federer's twin daughters were brought out to try and change the fan's mood. It didn't work. No disrespect was shown to either Smith or the twins by the fans. They made it clear who they blamed for the fiasco that was Madrid 2012.

It should be mentioned at this point that the ATP tour members have been on the court safety tip since the 2011 US Open when players were expected to play on courts featuring pools of standing water. Andy Murray complained in Monte Carlo about the holes in the court there and if you had eyes you could see players avoid playing too far behind the baseline. During all of this turmoil not one peep has been heard from a WTA player. I'm a woman and I know women have opinions. I hate to say it but I'm sure that Serena Williams doesn't speak for all of her tour yet her comment has been featured in a lot of mainstream tennis media.

Maybe it's true though. Maybe the women don't care about safety. As Serena says they are strong enough to have babies and some slippery old court isn't going to stop them from playing their game(s). So what if you slip and injure yourself? You just get up and keep trying right? Right. If the WTA tour continues to pretend there are no court safety issues they will just further the view of many of the male players that the women are a bunch of out of shape mentally weak athletes in name only. I know this is not true but the opinion is rampant among the men's tour.

As for American tennis all you have to remember is the glass like court the United States employed against Spain a couple of years ago in Winston-Salem for a Davis Cup tie as well as the one they used in Austin which Spain protested. The thing with tennis though is that sometimes you have to move. You can't just stand in one spot and serve. That isn't tennis. Sure that's pretty much how Serena beat Azarenka but again that isn't really tennis in my opinion. It's too bad that one of the best women players ever chose to disparage the men working for what would be better conditions for all players, male and female, instead of conceding what anyone who has eyes and ears could see. The only losers are the women players and their tour. I don't think people's opinions of the American tennis establishment could sink any lower.

Playing In the Dirt

by Savannah

It's my favorite time of year. The tour has moved to Europe and the Spring European clay season is underway. No mindless ball bashing. No 100+ mph serves whizzing by - not many anyway - and strategy, point building, and physical stamina are all rewarded.

Both main tours are presently in Madrid and usually I wouldn't be writing anything about the tournament at this point but there is an issue about the tournament that stares you in the face whenever you tune in to watch play.



It's pretty isn't it? I'm not a stick in the mud. I like innovation as much as the next person. And hey, can't you see the ball better on television against the blue stuff than against the traditional red/orange brick color? I suppose. The ATP and Ion Tiriac got a lot of attention with the new blue clay court and more attention for tennis is what everyone, fan and player alike wants right?

There is just one problem. The people who actually have to play on it hate the stuff. Why? Apparently it's slippery. Slippery to the point that if you slide you're not sure you're going to stop. Well what the hell? I mean why would the powers that be approve a surface that apparently wasn't tested by players prior to it's approval. And we're not talking about debuting the blue clay at an ATP 250 or a WTA International. We're talking Madrid, the tournament that kicked venerable Hamburg to the status of backwater.

If you want a detailed explanation of how they turn red brick blue Martin Rogers talks about removing the iron oxide and dying the resulting brick blue. If you want first hand knowledge simply watch a match or two.

Yesterday I watched Richard Gasquet play like a bull on ice at one point pulling what looked like a muscle in his lower back in the process. He shook it off though. I'd say Gasquet is familiar with clay no?

Then you have the ATP top ranked player saying that players should be issued football shoes i.e. cleats. Emelio Sanchez revealed on Spanish language television that Rafael Nadal asked to be allowed to use grass court shoes for better grip. During Wednesday's Fernando Verdasco vs Alejandro Falla match during the changeover Verdasco said to chair ump Fergus Murphy that if they water the court too much it would get slippery. Murphy agreed saying that the surface appeared to be "thin". Confirmation came when I switched to the Ryan Harrison vs Jo-Wilfried Tsonga match Harrison narrowly avoided a nasty ankle injury when moving behind the baseline he slipped on what can only be called blue mud on an overwatered court. One of the comms said that Tsonga's movement sounded as if he were walking on bubble wrap.

To my eye the granules are finer than those of traditional red clay, more sandlike, and it has to be hard for the players to get any traction. That takes away the strength of clay court players doesn't it? I could go on and on about that being the underlying reason behind such a change but I'll wait and see what happens when the tournament is over since threats of boycotts are flying around. For now I just hope that all of the players move on to Rome without anyone getting a serious injury.