Not Ready for Prime Time: Safina Gags Aussie Open Final to Serena

Good God. How is it possible to have such an extraordinary Men’s semi-final and such an appauling Women’s final?

Women’s tennis is the pits. Take the prize money back off them or split the tour properly and let them see if they can “make it”.

January 31st, 2009 at 8:12 am

Hello Tennis-X: I was wondering whether Tennis-X or Mr. Randall or Mr. Martin or Mr. Vach could comment on big surprises and lessons from this year’s Australian Open. I think there is a lot to say about Andy Roddick (I for one think his quest for improvement is an excellent one – he does not feel sorry for himself AND he makes it to a round of the grand slam that few expected him to be in, even if he met an identical result to year’s past. Can Tennis-X answer the question of Andy Roddick’s relevance, for the tour? Does fighting and scrapping matter in men’s tennis, and even if Roddick fails in his quest for one more slam, is his effort something to cheer about? Is he a good example for other U.S. players on the men’s tour or player’s on the women’s tour, for that matter? It would also be interesting to know what good things Tennis-X has seen from the transformation in Fernando Verdasco. (I thought he would only be the poster boy for “talent without meaning”, but I got to hand it to him – since the moment he got to Argentina for Davis Cup, the player has truly given every thing he has got out there, and risen to a level I thought his talent should put him at, and where his efforts now put him at. He was an underachiever; now he is meeting potential). What to say of Djokovic? And, most of all, is it worth comparing Monica Seles to Serena Williams? I see so much Seles in Serena Williams while Serena plays (not when she speaks, but when she is actually on the court), meaning at their best they are ferocious.

Thank you for considering my questions!

January 31st, 2009 at 8:26 am

Ohmygod that final was so embarrassing. How can anyone get to a grand slam final and not be able to serve?

January 31st, 2009 at 9:52 am

Women’s tennis has been riding on the coat tails of the men players forever. How can they justify paying these players the same. Serene was on the court less than 1 hour. It’s time to split the tournaments and let the women stand on their own. It simply is not fair.

January 31st, 2009 at 10:53 am

My God, that Safina is crap. They were using adjectives to describe the whipping she was taking…horrible, embarrassing,…!
JJ played Serena better at USO at least making it a match having set points.
59 minutes today. Huge humiliation. She deserved to lose. Waste of time.

January 31st, 2009 at 1:20 pm

Well I watched the first few games and Serena came out COOKING. Safina tried to hang with her but wasn’t able. One thing Serena has that SO MANY – TOO MANY other women’s tennis players is a SERVE?

The WTA needs to hire a full time SERVING COACH for all of the female players – except maybe the Williamses and Sveta is not bad either.

But definitely too many of them cannot serve.

Safina has some powerful groundstrokes, she’s very fit, etc. But in order to make it a contest, yes and well-contested, she needs to be able to HOLD!

Jane O-U-T. Rant over. But SHEESH!

January 31st, 2009 at 2:31 pm

Women’s tennis; Pat Cash said it best: Two sets of rubbish that lasts about a half hour!

January 31st, 2009 at 6:05 pm

Jane, I agree. SERVING is the big problem for these girls. They need to learn the correct technics. Safina seem to get lucky when the serve go in. but when you look at her during a serving action is like you see the double fault coming. Why?? she is the big tall girl, it should be easy for her to serve

Very dissapointing. She should watch serena’s tape and copy her. safina toss is too long etc etc

If she carry on like this she will never win a grand slam, she was lucky to get opponents that were not aggressive enough towards her serve on her half of the draw but boy….

January 31st, 2009 at 6:05 pm

Don’t put down Safina so ruthlessly. Her semifinal was a very fine (for women) display of power hitting. The difference in the final was, Serena would not play to Safina’s strengths, like Zvonareva did. Serena took away Safina’s game by imposing her own. We should be celebrating Serena’s ability to demolish top players on a big stage and not condemning Dinara. After all this is not the first time Serena dismantled a great opponent. Her last AO final was every bit as dominant- over none other than multiple slam winner Sharapova. The one before she bagelled Davenport. So, leave WTA be. The drubbing of Roddick at the hands of Roger Federer was equally embarrassing for a top 5 player.
What if Roger wins in 3 easy sets tomorrow? Will you all agree that both tours can have their good and bad moments?

January 31st, 2009 at 6:24 pm

Congratz to Serena on her tenth slam win! Sorry Dinara could not mentally show up for it but that has been the sad story of women’s tennis for a few years now hasn’t it? Mentally this is the weakest generation ever and it is a shame for women’s sports and for tennis as a whole.

Andrew Miller, it’s a known fact that Tennis-X hates Andy Roddick (and most of the other Americans even though this is a U.S. website so go figure!) so they will never write any unbiased thought-provoking discussion about Roddick’s career unless they can tear him to pieces and dismiss his accomplishments.

January 31st, 2009 at 6:37 pm

a one hour final vs 5 hours and 15 minutes semi final? we know who got their money’s worth.

too bad. after the 3-0 start we turned it off and went to bed. i thought safina would bring more to the table. maybe next time. can hardly wait for the match tonight….

January 31st, 2009 at 7:17 pm

If anyone is intersted, the Tennis Channel will be showing the doubles and mixed doubles starting at 10 tonight.

“Gags” funny, Staff.

January 31st, 2009 at 7:36 pm

I’d agree that this Aussie Open wasn’t great for the women with the big exception of Jelena Dokic’s matches (especially the one against Kleybanova) and I also enjoyed seeing Carla Suarez Navarro’s game.

Dinara shouldn’t blame anything on nerves anymore – that only works the first time you’re in a major.

The Williams sisters are the best thing going right now on the women’s tour – dominating in majors both in singles and doubles. The other women really need to step it up, otherwise the WTA should just become the Williams Tennis Association, featuring the two of them duking it out against each other every Sunday.

January 31st, 2009 at 8:51 pm

TD(Tam):

Well, we won 3 out of 4. Venus and Serena in the women’s doubles; Bob and Mike in the Men’s doubles, and Serena in the women’s singles.

What a pity our guy couldn’t make it a sweep for us, but SF is still a great result.

So true about Andy and those articles that strip him of his accomplishments. Oh, but wait a minute, he does liven up the threads and is always a good draw, isn’t he?. With friends like those who needs enemies.

January 31st, 2009 at 10:54 pm

My hat is off to Andy Roddick, Fernando Verdasco, Jelena Dokic, Serena Williams, Safina and Monica Seles. That’s right – the inventor of the power game enhancement. Serena williams is not like Steffi: she’s Monica version 2009 with better serving and superior movement. I think that Steffi would have competed well against Serena, but she would have faced a tough time against that serve. As it was, they went 1-1 (one win a piece) and both matches went the distance, but Serena was on her way up, and Steffi, on her way out of the game. We know the rest of the story: Graf wins the French Open, and makes the final at wimbledon, and then exits the game.

February 1st, 2009 at 12:48 am

Andrew;

You left out Bob and Mike Bryan. I’m happy for all of them.

February 1st, 2009 at 12:52 am

Serena makes $565 a second – then serves up a speech that seems longer than the final

Richard Hinds
February 2, 2009

AT THE Academy Awards, if the female actor has not already thanked her agent, cried and demanded the withdrawal of Chinese troops from Tibet before the strict one-minute limit, the music will rise and she will have to blurt out her words faster than the track announcer at the Angle Park dogs if she wants to get her message across.

Near the end of her acceptance speech after another blink-or-miss-it Australian Open women’s final, Serena Williams hummed her own music pretending that, despite having provided more entertainment with the microphone than the racquet, she was about to be given the hook.

She need not have worried. This was a rare occasion when no one harboured the vaguest thought the younger Williams should shut up. In fact, had she individually thanked every ball kid and dressing-room attendant, the tournament organisers – not to mention the broadcasters who were left with hectares of prime time to fill – would have been pitifully grateful.

As it was, after the 6-0, 6-3 humiliation of Dinara Safina in 59 minutes, the extra time could instead be used to re-open the tedious equal prizemoney debate. Except that, at this Australian Open, the argument against parity had already been made redundant. By a single figure. The peak audience of 3.242 million that watched Jelena Dokic lose to Safina in the quarter-finals. That exceeded the corresponding figure for the brilliant Rafael Nadal-Fernando Verdasco epic by more than 1.3 million.

Television ratings mean money. And, although much in her life has changed, last time we checked, Dokic was still a woman.

End of story. Except one bit. The far more justifiable equal-ticket-price debate.

Forget that Serena Williams earned $565 per second ($2m) on Saturday night. Instead, spare a thought for those who paid $289.90 (or $4.95 per minute) to watch. Unless there were a lot of nut jobs in the audience – as Jim Courier continually reminded viewers these past two weeks, the definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result – you assume it was a different 15,000 people than who paid to see the previous three women’s finals here (Amelie Mauresmo defeated Justine Henin 6-1, 2-0, Serena Williams defeated Maria Sharapova 6-1, 6-2 and Sharapova defeated Ana Ivanovic 7-5, 6-3).

At $4.95 per minute, the Nadal-Verdasco match would have cost $1541.74 per ticket. But such a comparison is ridiculous. Even at those prices, the Nadal match represented far better value for money than the women’s final.

The organisers might justify charging the same price for both the men and women’s finals by the fact the women’s finals program also includes the men’s doubles final. And marvellous entertainment it was. Mike and Bob Bryan beat Bill and Ben The Flowerpot Men in three enthralling sets.

Not sure of the peak rating. But The Flowerpot Men have almost certainly done better in their old mid-afternoon timeslot when toddlers could tune in.

A few more random observations from an entertaining fortnight in the Melbourne Park deep fryer.

– Given the orgy of cross-promotion on Channel Seven, can we expect one of the Desperate Housewives to turn to the camera and say: “Don’t forget. AFL on Seven. Swans v St Kilda. Should be a great match. After I’ve shagged the pool-cleaner!”

– The move from a 7.30 to 7 o’clock start for the night sessions advocated by former tournament director Paul McNamee makes perfect sense – particularly if the organisers are going to piggyback potentially long-running men’s matches on the back of the women’s singles. So don’t expect it to happen.

– Could the amateur meteorologist from The Times of London who wrote that it was too hot to play a grand slam event in Melbourne in January now please identify a month in England that is not too damp to play Wimbledon?

– At last it seems OK to say the c-word after Jim Courier observed Tomas Berdych was in the midst of a “major choke” against Roger Federer. That was hardly a secret given five doctors had climbed down from the grandstand and were performing the Heimlich manoeuvre on the spluttering Czech at the time. But still refreshingly candid.

February 1st, 2009 at 6:33 pm

Giner- that article is too funny. I never thought about the ticket prices in connection. There’s something about Serena I just love.

February 1st, 2009 at 6:45 pm

Is women’s tennis worth it?

Mark Stevens

February 02, 2009 12:00am

THERE has always been an underlying feeling at recent Australian Opens that the women’s game is flawed.

It’s just that the grunt of Maria Sharapova, the artistry of Justine Henin and brute force of Serena Williams was enough to keep everyone distracted from the problems bubbling beneath.

With Sharapova and Henin missing this year, the weakness was exposed for all to see.

Throughout the first 11 days of the tournament, those still delusional about the women having as much pulling power as the men must have come to their senses.

Yes, the Jelena Dokic story was gripping, but too many women’s matches were littered with unforced errors.

Then in the space of 24 hours, across Friday and Saturday, it all came to a head.

This was no ordinary wake-up call. It was like being slapped across both cheeks with a slimy mullet.

The gap between the quality of men’s and women’s game has never seemed wider.

Yet the gap in prizemoney has been closed. Both the men’s and women’s winners walk away with $2 million.

Equal prizemoney is a generous gesture, but it doesn’t add up.

Anybody who sat through the Fernando Verdasco-Rafael Nadal epic on Friday night and followed up by watching the Williams-Dinara Safina cakewalk on Saturday night would have to agree.

The men who have busted a gut, playing best of five sets and at times sending the crowds into a frenzy, have every right to feel short changed.

Verdasco picked up the same pay cheque for his semi-final heroics as Russian Vera Zvonareva, who bowed out in the semis a day earlier in a forgettable two-set encounter.

And the loser of last night’s marquee match walked away with the same as Safina, stoic throughout the early rounds but embarrassingly uncompetitive when it counted most in a 6-0 6-3 loss to Williams.

Safina’s capitulation was excruciating to watch. Double-faults; nervous missed forehands; desperate drop shots . . . you had to look away.

Safina made 21 unforced errors in 59 minutes. A night earlier, Nadal made just 25 in 5hr14min.

The was some pleasure in seeing Williams at the top of her game, but as a contest it was a prime-time stinker for Channel 7.

Full credit to tournament boss Craig Tiley for backing a night women’s final. It’s a correct call — and the event continues to thrive as Melbourne’ best international event.

But what is out of Tiley’s hands is the women’s product he has to work with. The depth of quality, remembering Kim Clijsters and Lindsday Davenport are other recent retirees, just is not there.

There is a sameness about the women’s game. As Seven commentator Tracy Austin often said during the past fortnight, few players have a plan B.

Where’s the science and subtlety? Any chance of Safina starting to use slice, take the pace off the ball or (heaven forbid) even come to the net to put Williams off? Hell, no. Plan A is all she had.

And yes, too many women turned up looking out of shape. Anyone with two eyes could see that . . . you don’t need a degree in physical science.

Marion Bartoli and Kaia Kanepi were obviously carrying extra kilos and why is everyone so sensitive about it? Imagine the flack Lleyton Hewitt would cop if he turned up with “excess baggage”. He’d cop it far worse.

What Roger Rasheed said about women in general in his role as a commentator was spot on. Others in the hallways may have whispered but agreed.

Take away the Dokic story and it was not a great fortnight for the credibility of women’s tennis.

February 1st, 2009 at 7:26 pm