No one on the tour can break a racquet quite like Vera Zvonareva, and when she cracked her Prince today during the second set of the Charleston final, it seemed as though everyone in the stands was experiencing a catharsis along with her. Zvonareva, who was the finalist in 2008, acknowledged earlier this week that she is still not as fit as she was before she tore two ligaments in her ankle last year (also in Charleston), but it looked as though no degree of fitness could have helped her today.Sam Stosur, the tournament's 4th seed, walked onto the court and immediately began serving a series of unreturnable balls. And when Zvonareva did return them, Stosur found the lines over and over, completely dominating Zvonareva, and taking the first set 6-0, dropping only five points.
Stosur, not even breaking a sweat, quickly went up 3-0 in the second set. After Zvonareva double-faulted, she smacked her racquet on the court three times and headed toward the Charleston-style sofa provided by the tournament for each player. She received a racquet abuse violation warning from chair umpire Lynn Welch, then smashed the racquet again on the court near her seat. Zvonareva looked at the crumpled racquet, and then gave it few solid kicks for good measure. She returned to the court to loud cheers of encouragement from the crowd, and held serve for the first time.Zvonareva then broke Stosur, and it wasn't unreasonable to think there would be a momentum change in the match. But for Stosur, that was just a brief interim in a performance of almost total domination. She got the break back, and went on to win the second set 6-3, holding at love in her final service game. The 52-minute match was the shortest in Family Circle Cup history.
Stosur served only three aces, but her first and second serve win percentages were a whopping 86 and 69, and her first and second return percentages were 63 and 73. This was only her second tour singles title, but there is every reason to believe there will be more.
When she received her runner-up trophy, Zvonareva, recovered and good-humored enough to deliver a one-liner, said, "I would like to thank my team...for supporting me this week, even though I think they did a terrible job today." Later, when told that she didn't seem to have an answer for Stosur's power, a more serious Zvonareva said "No, I think there were answers. I think I just didn't make the right decisions at the right time...."
Zvonareva also gets credit for the best line of the tournament: "...you got to try to change something up, you know, maybe just change even like emotionally, try to maybe relax more and, you know, just relax and enjoy the game, just maybe break a racquet, forget about what was happening for the past half an hour and start all over again."
5 comments:
I was trying to think of when I saw such dominance before as I saw from Stosur today. I mean it wasn't as if Zvonareva was just playing horribly or double faulting 20 times. Stosur won the game on winners. So clean. That is WINNING! When a player wins instead of her opponent losing. Stosur has had somewhat of a bad reputation in finals until Osaka. But after today I think she will know how to close matches out. She could have let Vera in after Vera broke her but she managed to keep her cool and close it out.
Not to take anything away from Stosur but when you have to remind yourself to have attitude and composure in order to play well, hmm that really does say a lot about you as a player. That being said that was a dominating display of tennis that I have ever seen. As you say it was not as if Vera was playing bad, she was just not allowed to play. The last time I saw dominance like this was at this year's AO when Serena blitzed Stosur, even though Stosur was playing really well.
I imagine most players--in their own ways--have a ritual of reminding themselves to stay calm and steady before a big match. Especially players, like Stosur, who aren't accustomed to winning championships. However she did it, the shift in her mentality has been impressive.
Diane, did you catch the blurb in "The Daily Slice" that the FCC folks are asking to move the tournament to the week prior for 2011? I guess they would like to be before Ponte Vedra Beach again...
I missed that. That's interesting. FCC, after all it's been through, should probably get what it requests.
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