It’s always a mystery when a new venue is erected onto the WTA. It’s
impossible to tell what will happen, and the questions are always the
same. Will people in the area be willing to pay money to attend the
tournament? Will they even show interest in the event?
The story was no different with the Istanbul WTA Championships this week.
Though the city has hosted a WTA event in the past, it was a tier III
clay-court event – a far cry from the fifth biggest event on
the WTA calendar in the Sinam Erdem Dome super stadium. All signs pointed
towards – following Doha – yet another year-end tournament lacking
character, interest and spectators.
The result however, was a much different story. The crowds came – 10,284 of
them filling up the stadium close to capacity and leaving it up to the
players to pull their end of the bargain by delivering some quality
tennis.
And deliver they did. The most impressive performance of the day was
the very first, as Petra Kvitova stepped to the plate, dismantling
Vera Zvonareva – a player she had never previously beaten on
hard courts – 6-2 6-4 in 85 minutes. Afterward she stated that she
was so nervous in the locker room that she “couldn’t move”, but none
of those nerves showed when she took to court.
The most striking part of Kvitova’s victory wasn’t just her win, but
rather the manner in which she navigated past Zvonareva. Gone was the
trademark hot-and-cold first-strike tennis which has seen her reach
both majestic highs and embarrassing lows in 2011. In its place was a
more cautious attack, with the Czech testing the waters before
unleashing and looking to minimize her chances of making unforced
errors by confidently rushing the net. She mixed up her
groundstrokes with some deft slices and drop shots, like a Wimbledon Champion.
This is nothing new, however. Just a week ago, Kvitova employed the
same varied style of tennis en-route to her triumph in the Linz
tournament. Before the start of the WTA championships, she spoke
openly about the change.
“We are practicing still for every part in my game. And this, the
volleys and the dropshots and slices, everything, it’s important to
put into the game so we are practicing for all.”
It’s one thing for her tweak her game at an international
event against players far inferior to the Wimbledon champion, and it’s
another thing altogether to have the guts to take it to one of the
biggest tournaments of the year against the top eight players in the
world.
The question mark surrounding Kvitova has never been about her talent
and ability, but simply whether she could contain her nuclear weapons
in order to find some consistency in her results. Even after her
Wimbledon victory the problem was far from dealt with, as for the
following five tournaments she struggled to even find the court with
her strokes.
But today‘s performance told a different story. The most telling
moment came at after Kvitova lost three games in a row after leading
6-2 *4-1. Just a few weeks ago, the old Kvitova would have simply
closed her eyes and hit as hard a possible. But instead, she pulled
herself together, gave herself more margin and looked to get as many
balls as possible over the net and into the court.
That type of compromise in the Wimbledon champion’s game is almost
unheard of, and though the tournament is young and there is still
plenty of tennis to be played in Istanbul, in a few years we could
look back at this as a turning point in the young career of Petra
Kvitova. We shall see.
Tumaini Carayol is a contributing writer at On The Baseline, and writes about professional tennis at his site Foot Fault.
