Everyone knows who they are: They are the talented women who should be ranked higher than they are, but who lose when they should win. I'm inclined to say that 100% of the cause is mental, but I'm open to hearing that it is only 98%.
As everyone who reads this blog knows, my favorite under-achiever is the great Patty Schnyder, who should have won at least half of those Tier I and Tier finals in which she appeared, and who should have gotten farther in several majors. Being a Schnyder fan is very frustrating and heart-breaking, but what can you do? I once heard Patty say, in an interview, that the problem was "my emotions, my feelings."
Right up there with Patty is Daniela Hantuchova, who possesses one of the most elegant games on the tour, but who seems to look for ways to lose at important moments. It can also be very frustrating to watch Hantuchova.
Other under-achievers, in my opinion, are: Gisela Dulko, Maria Kirilenko, Nadia Petrova, Anna Chakvetadze, Michaella Krajicek, Marion Bartoli, Alona Bondarenko, and Marta Domachowska. These players range from the good to the very good, but they all share the under-achieving problem.
What other under-achievers are there? How will they do in 2009? If she stays healthy, I see Petrova doing better, and I don't really know about any of the others.
2 comments:
I'm not sure if I'd call her an "underachiever," per se (I've always called her underrated, actually), but since this is part of my current favorite stat I'll mention it. If Anabel Medina-Garrigues wins two more tour singles titles, but doesn't reach a slam QF, it would make her only the second player in WTA history with ten or more singles titles, but nary one QF-or-better slam result in her career. The only other woman in that category is Anna Smashnova.
Obviously, you have to be a "good" player to win double-digit titles, but I've previously dubbed Smashnova the "worst good player" in WTA history... and I'm afraid I'm going to have to make it a twosome before long. :(
I wish AMG would reach a slam QF to avoid the dubious achievement.
I wish you she would, too. That's not a very nice stat. Anabel is a player I like, and she probably does under-achieve a little. I'm thinking especially of the time I saw her play Venus in Charleston, and she kept setting up these great shots, but when the time would come to execute her clever strategy, she would just do something stupid instead.
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