The Washington Kastles won their fourth straight World Team Tennis title over the weekend when they defeated the Springfield Lasers 25-13 in the WTT final, which was held in Springfield, Missouri. Martina Hingis was named the final's Most Valuable Player. The Kastles won all five events--women's singles, men's singles, women's doubles, men's doubles, and mixed doubles.
San Diego Aviators player Daniela Hantuchova won the Female MVP award for the season, and Texas Wild's Anabel Medina Garrigues won the Female Rookie of the Year award.
An especially interesting WTT score is Townsend-1, Huber-0. Because it isn't a match until someone hits Liezel Huber in the face, in the head, or down to the ground. Townsend doesn't have the scary firepower in her forehand to knock down Huber the way Sania Mirza did, but she did manage to hit her partner in the head.
It was an odd series of events. Townsend hadn't planned to play on the WTT tour this year, but she stepped in to play for the Philadelphia Freedoms when Vicky Duval had to withdraw. Last Thursday, Townsend and Huber played doubles against Martina Hingis and Anastasia Rodionova of the Kastles. Townsend hit a crosscourt forehand that landed her racket on Huber's head and Huber had to stop playing.
So Townsend played on, but with no partner. And she wasn't allowed to return serve from what had been Huber's side of the court. This is a WTT rule. If this had happened to anyone, it would have been funny in a bizarre kind of way, but there's something about having it happen to Townsend that especially cracked me up. I think it's because she looks so deadpan about the whole thing.
4 comments:
Sabine: 131mph serve against Ana in the first round. Breaks Venus' record 129mph serve in 2007. Wow.
Also breaks Brenda S-M's 130 mph serve in 2006, which didn't get counted because she hit it during a qualifying match.
Great that you gave props to Brenda Schultz-McCarthy!!!
Thanks, Doug. Her serving accomplishment has been made even less rhan an asterisk :(
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