Playing graceful, clever tennis (which, sadly, is now considered "special" and "unique") from all parts of the court, Agnieszka Radwanska showed today why some of us would be content to watch her for hours on end. The 2010 Mercury Insurance Open (formerly "San Diego," now "Carlsbad") runner-up defeated top seed Vera Zvonareva 6-3, 6-4 to win the 2011 championship.
Radwanska's serve has often failed her. Lately, her first serve has improved, though, and that has made her more competitive. Today, she seemed to be everywhere, finding keen angles and slivers of space, and vollying, slicing and hitting into them to perfection, over and over. It helped that Zvonareva was making too many unforced errors. From the outset, though, Radwanska controlled the match by serving well and by using her deft hands and quickness to create some highly entertaining points. The 3rd seed ended with first and second serve win percentages of 74 and 75. It was a polished performance in every way.
This is the first title Radwanska has won since she won Eastbourne in 2008, and it was long overdue. She sustained a shoulder nerve injury during the tournament, but continued to play. The injury did not appear to trouble her at all today. It should also be noted that Radwanska's father was not part of the picture today, and I have little doubt the coaching change made her more relaxed.
Top seeds Kveta Peschke and Katarina Srebotnik won the doubles title, defeating Raquel Kops-Jones and Abigail Spears 6-0, 6-2. Peschke and Srebotnik, the 2011 Wimbledon champions, are ranked number 1 in the world.
5 comments:
It was a master class performance. One of my tennis buddies retweeted a tweet that Matt Cronin had tweeted earlier. He said he had no idea why ARad was playing when her shoulder was hurt in her match against Hantuchova as she was not going to win the tournament. I am glad he got a chance to eat his words. ARad has been looking very good since the FO and I love the fact that as soon as she separated from her dad she won a title. I was very happy today
Pam Shriver said she thought a shot-making DVD could be made of Radwanska's performance. It was one of the best of the season, in my opinion.
We had no pictures for the entire first set. Violent storms in the Washington area disrupted the satellite feed across the Atlantic. Apparently the same thing happened on Friday ! Poor Vera, searching for her customary metronomic game had 'no two shots the same' coming at her. Some brilliant play from Radwanska.
I tried to watch it on Tennis TV while I had the ATP Washington match on actual TV at the same time. Never easy (another of my favorite shot-makers won that one). The signal blew out on Tennis TV, after freezing and breaking up a lot (what is going on with TT, anyway?--I'm already unhappy that they've stopped offering separate ATP/WTA packages, and now this).
Luckily, it was on ESPN3, which I watched until ESPN switched to it on television.
At least you got to see one set. The storms here have been really bad, too. One blew our cable TV out about a week ago.
Hey, there's a lot of effective info here!
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