Rabbits, Blinkity

I wasn't in a blogging mood during the WTA Championships, so here are my final thoughts for this year's tennis, a piece about Sharapova I'm working on excepted. And maybe one about grunting.

Aimless background: this was the first year I've ever really followed tennis closely. I'm mainly following women's tennis because, well, I only have so much time. And men's tennis already gets plenty of attention. (This leads to an interesting feedback loop, by the way. The more I know about women's tennis, the players and so forth, the harder it would be for me to match that knowledge on the men's side, and the less motivated I am to bother. Anyway...) I've got to say, I really love the sport. I don't know whether it appeals to the individualist in me, or whether I like the contact-less nature of it all, or whether it's some genetic thing caused by being largely Czech, but tennis rocks. Maybe it's just the drama - except I like playing it, too. It's something, I'm absolutely certain!

So without further ado: clichéd unqualified judgments!
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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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