Rabbits, Blinkity

Yes, they're at it again. Ten times they've played, this will be the eleventh. A-Rad's won three, Azarenka's won seven. Almost half have been three setters, half have involved a set that went to 7. In short, it's almost always fun when they play. But you probably knew this already.

The really neat thing about this matchup is that at this point in their careers, neither player is really prone to blowing up randomly. Yes, Azarenka used to have, well, issues, and Radwanska still sometimes just plays badly, as it were, but you can be reasonably certain that neither will completely lose her head and implode. Neither will just start missing dozens of shots, or double faulting at every turn, or simply stop trying. It's simply less stressful to watch them than a Sharapova or a Wozniacki or a Stosur or Li Na. In my opinion. And at the same time, VikaNinja* aren't exactly boring, hit-it-between-the-lines types either.

Can Vika hit Radwanska off of the court? Again? Or will Sneaky McNinja hit three dozen dropshots and get away with far more of them than she has any real right to? Will Radwanska keep her obscene service record for this tournament alive, or will Vika do her usual returning job? On paper, Azarenka should win easily, but I've convinced it'll be fairly close. It's an enormous game of cat/mouse, where it's not exactly clear who's the cat and who's the mouse.

Most importantly, will A-Rad return and volley again? (I swear she…
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The fascinating thing about having A-Rad and Petko in a final is that both players are 'half' players, as it were. Radwanska is half of a counter-puncher, half aspiring all-courter, but not really succeeding at either until recently, when her trademark sneakiness came into full effect. She'd like to be a real shot-maker, but settles for being occasionally weird. Petkovic, on the other hand, wants to be a brainless ball basher extraordinaire, but lacks the instinctive skill to play in the Azarenka-Sharapova school. She tries to make up for it by working twice as hard as any other player, as a quick look at that picture of her abdominal muscles floating around the internet will tell you. It works some of the time, but hasn't made her into anything like an incredible player just yet.

All that's to say, skill-wise, they're just about equal.

Of course, Petkovic is arguably the most consistent player this year besides Wozniacki (about whom the less said the better, of course), and Radwanska has collected an impressive collection of titles. And they're both about equal in the pure mental focus department, especially in later stages of tournaments. Petko is prone to playing garbage-ball in first round matches, but that's neither here nor there. Petkovic did stomp Niculescu yesterday, ending the match with an uncharacteristic bagel, so she'll likely come out firing.

In the end, then, there's really no way of predicting anything about this match. Either one could implode, but it's more likely that they'll take …
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A few days ago, Aga Radwańska apparently said this:

I play tennis to look good, have a nice body. It is most profitable to play and win on the centre court as after match you can meet nice boys.
-- A. Radwańska in Polish press

Now, this could very well be spurious: it could have been a joke, mis-translated, out-of-context, et cetera. Not to mention, the source for this as far as I can see is this tennisforum post (warning: obnoxious paparazzi photos), which is hardly home of high-quality journalism. But for argument's sake, let's just take it at face value. Check out the responses. They fit these basic categories:

• "I respect her less now, how shallow."
• "Yeah, she's got a nice body, hur hur hur."
• "What a slut."

The last two are obviously sexist, but the first seemed reasonable to me for an instant. I mean, it trivializes women's tennis, and women's sports in general if she's only 'doing it for the boys', right?

Wrong.
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