Serena Williams vs. Dinara Safina at WTA Champs: Do You Care?
Q1: Do you really give a **poop** about the WTA Tour year-end championships in far-away Doha, the Middle East?
Q2: Do you think the players care about the year-end championships?
Q3: Who will end the year No. 1?
ADHEREL
Many times the year-end championships comes around and the No. 1 ranking is moot. This time, Serena Williams and Dinara Safina are battling for No. 1, and whoever gets farther in the tournament, finishes No. 1.
Safina is in the easier group with No. 8 qualifier Jelena Jankovic, Caroline Wozniacki, and Victoria Azarenka in the White Group.
Serena is in the tougher Maroon Group facing sister Venus, French Open champ Svetlana Kuznetsova, and Olympic gold medalist Elena Dementieva.
BTW, according to the WTA, dumb-ass Qatari tennis authorities paid $42 million to stage the season-ending event for three years until it moves to Istanbul in 2011. Cha-ching WTA!
“We always wish for the number one ranking to be on the line at the tour finals and that’s what we’ve got this year,” Andrew Walker, the WTA’s senior vice-president of marketing and communications told Reuters by telephone. “And Doha is giving us wheel barrels full of money which is awesome!”
Sorry, I made up that last part.
According to Reuters, “The WTA Tour finals have often struggled to capture the imagination of the public. Last year in Doha the early round robin matches were played in a muted atmosphere, although the fact that Serbia’s Jankovic had already clinched the number one spot hardly boosted late ticket sales.”
Check the stands, see how full they are this year.
This year’s storylines:
Who deserves No. 1, Safina who plays her ass off winning WTA events but choking at the Slams, or Serena who wins the Slams but hardly plays WTA events, and doesn’t win them when she does?
How Photoshopped was that ESPN The Magazine cover with a naked Serena? Where she looks hot but has looked HUGE this year at some tournaments? That SI cover was hot.
Will Serena keep dissing Safina in her post-match conferences or “take the high road”? Will the media take it to her or whuss out?
When will the ITF bring the hammer down on Serena for going ape-shit on that lineswoman at the US Open? Will she be out of the Aussie Open?
Is Caroline Wozniacki just a hot blonde ball retriever or can she hang with the big girls?
Funny that the best players on tour — Kim Clijsters, Maria Sharapova, Justine Henin, who will be playing in 2010 — aren’t in Doha.
Now is the time for Safina to erase all the “fails” from 2009, not only outlasting Serena in Doha, but beating Serena in Doha.
Let the game begin.
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