Safina, Venus Lose Opening Round in Tokyo; WTA Circus Continues
One day the WTA appears to have no depth, the next, more than enough depth. Kim Clijsters missed two years, played seven matches upon her return which turned out to be just enough prep for her to slice through the US Open field to win her second major. So much for depth! ADHEREL
Already this week in Tokyo, quite the opposite as the three seeds dropped to qualifiers Monday. Yes, qualifiers! Those bitten were (1) Dinara Safina, (2) Venus Williams and (5) Sveta Kuznetsova. And today another qualifier knocked out a seed when Katerinya Bondarenko upset (3) Elena Dementieva (not a huge upset there).
Incredibly, after just two rounds of play the Top 6 seeds are now out when you add (4) Caroline Wozniacki and (6) Vera Zvonreva were losers as well today. Amazing.
I understand in part that these top girls go to pick up an appearance fee and after a long, tough summer it’s probably difficult to get that motivation up especially against a strong Tokyo field, but the Top 6 seeds can’t go 0-6 in the opening round! They can’t but they did!
And world No. 1 Safina losing to No. 132 Kai Chen Chang, if it wasn’t comical already it is now…
Also worth noting is that Kimiko Date, the 38-year-old (now 39), just capture the title Sunday in Soeul. How old is Steffi? Steffi may be a year older but with a few months of training Mrs. Agassi would easily be winning titles right now. Easily!
If you wanted to know why players like Clijsters and Justine Henin are back in the game this is the reason. Women’s tennis is a total circus right now.
As for the men…Well, perhaps a separate post is in order!
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