Passing shots

Svetlana Kuznetsova has split with her coach, Carlos Cuadrado. When it comes to Kuznetsova and Ivanovic, I need to have a "________ has split with _________" template on the ready.

Petra Kvitova and Vera Zvonareva are skipping the tournament in Rome. Kvitova will play in a $100k challenger in Prague.

Lisa Raymond recently had brunch with Billie Jean King and Ilana Kloss in New York City. Raymond calls King a "ball of positive energy."

Piotr Wozniacki has taken a page from the Walter Bartoli playbook, and--during the clay season--is requiring Caroline to do three-hour workouts every day, including the days she plays matches.

Here is a video peek of Maria Sharapova's Eiffel Tower-inspired French Open dress.

2011 World Team Tennis finals to be held in Charleston

The 2011 World Team Tennis finals will be held in Charleston, South Carolina July 22-24 at the Family Circle Tennis Center, it was announced today. This is the first time the event has ever been held in Charleston, and only the second time that it has been held outside of a franchise city.

In making the announcement, WTT CEO/Commissioner Ilana Kloss said: "Charleston has such a rich tennis history, and it's a market that we have wanted to bring World Team Tennis to for a long time." WTT Co-founder Billie Jean King was also on hand to make the announcement, and she recalled the early days of the Family Circle Cup and the historical importance of the tournament. "Great tennis always finds a home in Charleston," King said.

King's vision, which became World Team Tennis, was to create a team atmosphere for the sport so that men and women could learn cooperation and leadership skills together. World Team Tennis also gives fans a chance to see both younger players who are on the rise and favorite players who have retired from the two professional tours. 2011 marks the 36th season of World Team Tennis. Players who have signed up to play this year include Martina Hingis, Anna Kournikova, Kim Clijsters, Melanie Oudin, Lisa Raymond, Venus Williams, Serena Williams, Kveta Peschke, Lindsay Davenport, and Liezel Huber.

World Team Tennis consists of an eastern conference and a western conference. Each team plays fourteen matches--seven at home, and seven away. The top two teams from each conference will compete during the finals. The Eastern Conference Championships will be held at 7 p.m. on Friday, July 22, the Western Conference Champtionships will be held at 5 p.m. on Saturday, July 23, and the WTT finals take place at 5 p.m. on Sunday, July 24. All matches will be played in the Family Circle Magazine Stadium, where a hard court will be laid over the regular green clay court.

Last year, Charleston was named America's Best Tennis Town, and the Family Circle Cup, a premier WTA event, is the only women's clay tournament played in the U.S. The Family Circle Cup was the first WTA tournament to be televised, and the first to offer $100,000 in prize money. It is also the only WTA tournament to enjoy the support of the same major sponsor (Meredith Corporation) continuously throughout its history.

The idea to host the WTT finals came about when Family Circle Tennis Center general manager Bob Moran and some of his staff traveled to Washington, DC last July to see the Washington Kastles play. Moran then met with Kloss and King, both of whom were enthusiastic about the idea of bring World Team Tennis to Charleston.

Tickets for the WTT Finals Weekend presented by GEICO go on sale April 4 at 10 a.m. EDT. Weekend packages range from $50 to $150, and single session tickets range from $15 to $55. Tickets can be purchases through Ticketmaster, the Family Circle Cup website, or by calling the Family Circle Tennis Center box office (800-677-2293).

Family Circle Cup qualifying begins on April 2, and main draw play begins on April 4.

Passing shots

The Virginia Slims series began 40 years ago today. The first women to break away and sign up for the series were ostracized by many male players they thought were their friends. Women getting paid real money to play tennis?! One of my favorite stories about this difficult period is told by Billie Jean King: Tennis umpires would not have anything to do with the series at first, so the women hired baseball umpires, who--when they called faults--would yell "foul ball!"

Maria Sharapova has turned down a wild card to play in Sydney. The wild cards have been given to Anastasia Rodionova and Jelena Dokic.

The Hong Kong Classic is in progress. So far, Aravane Rezai defeated Zhang Shuai, Maria Kirilenko defeated Melanie Oudin, Vera Zvonareva defeated Venus Williams, and Caroline Wozniacki defeated Li Na.

Caroline Wozniacki is not the only Sunshine on a cloudy day.

Simon Reed says that Elena Baltacha can break into the top 50 this year, and--if she stays injury-free--may break into the top 40.

Serbia is into the Hopman Cup final, but lost 1-2 to Belgium in the last rubber.

Kim Clijsters, who has repeatedly said that 2011 will probably be her last full season, now says she may play another four years. How long she stays, in my opinion, will probably have to do more with her injury status than anything else.

Fed Cup miscellany

Players are so tired at the end of the season, they probably appreciate any gesture that will lessen their workload. Usually, a player (or players) helps with the draw, but in San Diego, the job was given to Clyde the sea lion. The draw ceremony was held at SeaWorld, and Clyde selected the tennis ball which had Coco Vandeweghe's name on it, giving the young USA team member the first match against Francesca Schiavone, and setting up the weekend schedule. Schiavone's photo with Clyde is priceless.

Schiavone, by the way, is the final player to win a 2010 Fed Cup Heart Award.

For those unable to watch the final on television: You should know that Bethanie Mattek-Sands is wearing solid red knee socks this weekend.

Tomorrow, Billie Jean King will be given the 2010 Fed Cup Award of Excellence.

Spain's six top players have called off their boycott of the 2011 Fed Cup competition after reaching an agreement with their country's tennis federation that--according to Spain's sports minister, Jaime Lissavetzky--meets "the vast majority of the players' demands." "The objective," Lisavetsky said, "is to re-launch women's tennis in Spain over the short and medium term. The Spanish players who brought about the changes are Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez, Anabel Medina Garrigues, Arantxa Parra Santonja, Carla Suarez Navarro, Nuria Llagostera Vives, and Lourdes Dominguez Lino.

Quotes of the day

"I challenge that theory."

 Chris Evert, commenting on John McEnroe's remarks about the tour

"I just think it's rubbish."

Billie Jean King

Evert aside, Billie Jean's "Homecoming" is a good one

"I came in on the cusp of this women's liberation thing. All I saw on TV were angry women burning their bras."

Speaking via video on ESPN's "Homecoming" show, which honored Billie Jean King today, the best Evert could come up with was a dismissive "women's liberation thing" and the repetition of one of the biggest cultural myths ever: There was no bra-burning during the Second Wave; the news media invented the phenomenon, and people who couldn't be bothered to know what was really happening (we still have hundreds of thousands of those)--people like Evert--are still spreading the false word (not, by the way, that there's anything wrong with burning bras).

Evert is probably my favorite player of all time, but every year, it becomes harder for me to separate my admiration for her as a player from my disappointment in her as a publisher and spokeswoman.

The rest of the show was pretty enjoyable. Maria Sharapova, Zina Garrison and Tracy Austin were in the audience, and during a segment on wooden racquets, King demonstrated what she thought Sharapova would look and sound like if she had to hit with one. She revealed that Muhammad Ali used to whisper in her ear "Billie Jean, you're the queen!" And when she did the "lightning round" of questions with host Rick Reilly, and was asked  "What would you most like to steal from Maria Sharapova?" she immediately answered "Money."

Miscellany

Serena Williams is the winner of the BET Sportswoman of the Year award.

Note to some members of the Wimbledon crowd at Court 2: Imitating the crowd at the French Open is not a positive step. If five-time champion Venus Williams is late for her arrival on court, there's a good reason for it--and you know it.

Jamie Hampton of the USA won the $50k ITF tournament in Boston last week.

Kaia Kanepi is probably the only tour player whose website main page features an illustration of her rather than a photo.

ESPN's "Homecoming with Rick Reilly" will feature Billie Jean King on the July 3 show at 7 p.m. Eastern time. The show will air again on July 9 at 7:30 p.m. The program tells the life stories of famous athletes in front of family members and friends they have known throughout their lives. Tracy Austin and Maria Sharapova will be featured, with Chris Evert making an appearance via satellite.

WTA tour to keep Sony Ericsson, but lose the name

Earlier today, a reader turned me on to the latest development in the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour sponsorship negotiations. Given the problems that Sony Ericcson is having, I assumed the company would drop the tour at the end of its contract, but instead, a creative solution has been reached.

The final ten months of the current contract has been voided, and a new three-year contract has been written. Under the terms of this contract, the annual fee has been cut by about 40%; in fact, the $16 million currently owed to the tour has been decreased to $10 million. Also under the terms of the new contract, the name "Sony Ericsson" will be dropped from both the name of the tour and from the year-end championships.

In order to make the deal more equitable, Sony Ericsson has dropped some its requirements, including the number of tickets it gets for tour events. The company has also dropped its requirement that former players attend certain tour events, so the tour will no longer have to pay those players appearance fees.

The name "Sony Ericsson" will still appear on netposts, and players will still be required to wear Sony Ericsson patches.

Apparently, the key negotiation meeting was held in October. In attendance from the tour were communications executive Andrew Walker, WTA founder Billie Jean King, Venus Williams, and Melanie Oudin.

Miscellany

Jelena Jankovic is reported to have parted ways with coach Ricardo Sanchez. She apparently intends to play without a coach, at least for now. Of course, we've heard, "I'm firing Sanchez" before....

Alize Cornet said she was "petrified by the stress" of playing in Fed Cup. The Frenchwoman, who has never won a Fed Cup match, also said "The more I play, the more I lose."

Note to Agence France-Presse: Melanie Oudin and Bethanie Mattek-Sands are not "Williams sisters stand-ins." For future reference, we call them "USA Fed Cup team members."

Ana Ivanovic, serving in her capacity as a UNICEF National Ambassador, did more than speech-making when she visited the Municipality of New Belgrade Ceremony Hall to induct fifteen additional schools into the School Without Violence program. Ivanovic observed a role-play exercise among students, guided the students in understanding why they behaved as they did in the exercise, and then took on the role of "victim" in the next role-play. Ivanovic is a strong supporter of the program, and has made several personal donations to support it.

The second Billie Jean King Cup event will be played in Madison Square Garden on March 1. Serena Williams, Venus Williams, Kim Clijsters, and Svetlana Kuznetsova will participate in the one-night, single elimination BNP Paribas Showdown for the Cup.

Billie Jean King to have surgery

WTA founder, WTT founder, and all-around grand champion of tennis Billie Jean King is scheduled to have double double knee-joint replacement February 10. King, who is 66, says she is having the surgery so she can continue to play tennis.

Miscellany

Alicia Molik is planning to return to the Sony Ericsson WTA tour to play doubles only. She retired last year.

Spectators will see a different person in the Jankovic box for a while. Jelena's mother, Snezana, is recovering from stomach surgery, so Jelena's father is traveling with her.

Ana Ivanovic will have to get a new fitness trainer. Scott Byrnes has decided to stay home (Australia) for a while.

Billie Jean King will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom next month.

Tennis Live Radio is finally back.

How things have changed

Those who saw the 1976 World Invitational Tennis Classic match between Chris Evert and Evonne Goolagong on Tennis Channel last night got more than tennis. Billie Jean King (in a Pam Shriver afro) was one of the commentators, and the interview and analysis style was dramatically different from what we hear today. It was, in fact, a breath of fresh air.

After Goolagong threw away the first set, King sat down with her on her bench and said--in so many words--"you really made a mess of that one." She had. Halfway through the set, it occurred to Goolagong that she was using her husband's racquet, an absent-minded act that only added to her reputation as being someone who wasn't focused enough on what she was doing.

For her part, Evert put on a tennis clinic. Before Navratilova came into her own, it was Goolagong's volleying that drove Evert mad, and the two were rivals. But at the Sea Pines Resort in Hilton Head that day, it was all about Evert.

The interviews after the match were especially revealing. King reminded Goolagong that her critics say she does not care enough, and that she wouldn't worry adequately about the 6-1, 6-1 score of the match she just played. "I wish I could worry more," said Goolagong.

When King asked for Evert and father Jimmy Evert to come over for an interview, she didn't say word one to the winner, but spoke instead to her father. Jimmy Evert insisted he didn't try to tell Chris what to do, that they just had "casual conversations." Chris Evert was standing between them, and the look on her face was priceless; she stopped just short of rolling her eyes for the camera.

The Sea Pines Resort, by the way, is where the Family Circle Cup used to be held.

Wimbledon and other miscellany

Laura Robson is keeping a very low profile these days. Virginia Wade and Martina Navratilova think that she and her family are handling her career nicely.

A recent study shows that--surprise!--sports reporters have problems writing or speaking positively about gay athletes and Title IX. The problem with Title IX, of course, is that the great majority--I'd say 90%--of "experts" who write about it do not have a clue about what is included in the legislation. It has to be the most misinterpreted piece of legislation ever. But writers and television reporters, like so many other people, refuse to let facts get in the way of their prejudices.

All week long, Tennis Channel has shown the 1973 Wimbledon final between Billie Jean King and Chris Evert. King won the first set 6-0, and the second set 7-5. It's an interesting match to watch, and it was just Evert's second Wimbledon (she got to the semifinals in her first Wimbledon); she would win the tournament in 1974.

A reader was kind enough to direct me to this feature in the New York Times.

The Telegraph has listed the top 10 "grunters." The problem is that only two of them--Kournikova and Clijsters--grunted. You could actually stretch that to three because Seles did something that was not really a grunt but certainly not a scream. It seems that no one can get this rather significant distinction right.

Laura Golarsa was the first woman to win what used to be called the DFS Classic in Birmingham. But she is probably better known for being two points shy of taking Chris Evert out of the 1989 Wimbledon quarterfinals. Here's a look at a bit of that match--take note of Evert's three consecutive passing shots!

Billie Jean King Cup--could the promotion be worse?

HBO is broadcasting the Billie Jean King Cup live on Monday, March 2 at 7:30 p.m. EST. The photo on the HBO site looks more like a "want to be a model"? reality show ad than an ad promoting some of the world's leading athletes. God forbid we should ever promote female athletes as athletes. And the HBO promotional video itself is about as cheesy as they come. This is HBO!--ccouldn't they have done better?

But that isn't as bad as one of the other promotional videos floating about, in which Billie Jean King mispronounces Jelena Jankovic's name. (Almost all Americans mispronounce Jankovic's first name, but King mangaes to mispronounce, a la Justin Gimelstob, her last name.)

Miscellany

Fans of the great Chris Evert (and those who want to know why so many of us are fans) will enjoy watching the 16-year-old Evert display nerves of steel in the midst of staving off six match points in the third round of the 1971 U.S. Open. This was Evert's U.S. Open debut, and here, she is playing Mary Ann Eisel, who is also impressive.

This time, Billie Jean King talks about being gay on the tour, but she just had to find a way to tell us--one more time, in case we didn't hear it the first ten times--that she really wasn't trying to help women when she became a sudden feminist hero. Really, she wasn't...

During the Dubai final, a Tennis TV commentator described Venus Williams as "sort of an octopus--you can't get around her reach."

Dubai organizers say that for Andy Ram, security will be no problem.

Tracy Austin has been appointed to the position of player development consultant for the USTA, and will report to Patrick McEnroe, who is the general manager of player development. Austin will help coach the players who are training in Carson, California, including: Sloane Stephens, Nicole Gibbs, Asia Muhammad, and Coco Vandewegh. (Thanks to Zoo Tennis for this link.)

I saw a transcript of an interview with Daniela Hantuchova, in which she makes it clear that--if Roger Federer were to ask her to be his mixed doubles partner, she would accept. Just to get this straight: Hantuchova has to sit and wait for Federer to ask her. After all, it's not like she holds a career Grand Slam in mixed doubles...

It's February...

...The forced hyacinths are blooming, the rose industry is rubbing its collective hands...and it's once again time to argue about the Williams sisters and Indian Wells. Billie Jean King is trying to persuade Venus and Serena to call off their boycott of the tournament, which is now called the BNP Paribas Open. Serena does not sound too interested; Venus is very close to King, however, and I suspect she is the one who will get the most words from the tour's major founder.

Some people say that engaging in the boycott makes the sisters poor role models because they are breaking tour rules. I say that standing up to bigotry always makes you a good role model. I remember when the teachers in my state went on strike, and dozens of parents were screaming about what bad role models they were, and about how much class their children were missing. But the thing is--those children learned more from seeing adults standing up for a cause--and for themselves--for a day than they could learn from a month of spelling and geography drills.

If the Williams sisters decide to break their boycott and play at Indian Wells--fine. But if they decide to stay away, I support that decision. Those who think it's time for the sisters to "get over it" need to spend some time in a large arena, listening to their countrypeople call them vile names because of their skin color.

It isn't the Williams sisters who need to change.

Miscellany

The U.S. Fed Cup team for the U.S.-Argentina contest next month has been announced. Captain Mary Joe Fernandez has selected Jill Craybas, Bethanie Mattek (who lives half an hour from the tournament site in Arizona), Melanie Oudin, and Liezel Huber. The Argentine team will be led by the talented but underachieving Gisela Dulko.

Melbourne Park is going to undergo a redevelopment that will costs hundreds of millions of dollars. Proposals for the project include putting a roof on the Margaret Court arena, and building a new Tennis Australia headquarters, better player facilities, better media facilities, and improved practice courts.

Billie Jean King would like for the WTA and the ATP to combine. That's her dream, nor mine, though I do appreciate the reasoning behind such a wish. King, by the way, is now going out of her way to correct what she implies is a faulty perception that her activism focuses on women's issues. God forbid.

Serena Williams recently revealed that, as a Jehovah's Witness, she has been spending some time going door-to-door on behalf of her religion. Can you imagine opening your door and seeing Serena standing there with The Watchtower in her hand?

On Monday, Wendy Turnbull was inducted into the Australian Tennis Hall of Fame. A bronze statue of Turnbull will be placed in Garden Square at Melbourne Park.

Williams sisters and Serbian stars to play in New York

World number 1 Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic, Venus Williams, and Serena Williams will play in a one-night elimination event on March 2 at Madison Square Garden. The event, the “BNP Paribas Showdown for the Billie Jean King Cup," will honor Billie Jean King, the major founder of the WTA. It will be broadcast live on HBO.

King appointed Global Mentor for Gender Equality

Billie Jean King, co-founder of the WTA, has been named a Global Mentor for Gender Equality by UNESCO and the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour.

I think the tour communicates double messages about gender equality, but the appointment of King is something I can stand behind.

Women's Sports Foundation honors tour

The Sony Ericsson WTA Tour received the Billie Jean King Contribution Award Tuesday at the Women's Sports Foundation's annual awards ceremony. The award is given for making significant contributions to the development and advancement of women's sports.