scoreline Archives - World Tennis Magazine

This was a lot more than an aggressively played, intensely combative windup to the women’s season.

It was further authentication –- and, yes, it was needed — that Caroline Wozniacki is a genuine No. 1.

Finally, and most importantly, this WTA Championship final was a crucial triumph for Kim Clijsters, one of the few elite women in the game who isn’t physically debilitated and who could, much more so than Wozniacki, produce a glorious ending to what has been a crippling WTA Tour season.

The scoreline was 6-3, 5-7, 6-3, in two hours and 19 minutes – not the most elegant piece of theater, nor the most memorable. But it was played at an extremely high level and it was all tennis. No psycho-dramas on court, no gamesmanship, no questionable bathroom breaks and no sudden calls for the trainer to break an opponent’s rhythm.

Wozniacki, 20 years old and with a scintillating future before her, was out there on the indoor court in Doha with taxi cab-yellow fingernails. Clijsters, meanwhile, wasn’t sporting anything quite so colorful, though I’m giving her a purple heart for bravery.

Mentally wounded at the end of the second set and early in the third, she steadied her ship, got her game together and fairly roared to the finish line, winning on a second match point when Wozniacki banged an easy second serve return into the net.

Clijsters didn’t need this win. Certainly, she was happy to have it and the million dollars plus that comes with it, but she didn’t have to have it to secure her place in tennis history.

The WTA Tour, however, needed her to win. It needed a “name” player with established credentials to put an imprimatur on this final.

There have been pluses this year for the women’s game, and CEO Stacey Allaster laid them out in a press conference before the women took the court. But there also has been an inordinate amount of damage to the tour’s most important players.

Serena Williams: Played six tournaments and cut her foot on glass, reinjured herself training to get back on tour and was long ago done for the year.

Venus Williams: Another injury for her, and she was gone early. Who knows what exactly is her problem. The Williams Compound isn’t that press friendly.

Justine Henin: Injured even earlier than the Williamses, and she won’t play again until 2011.

Dinara Safina: Ditto.

Jelena Jankovic: She’s been gimpy much of the second half of the year.

But while new faces Wozniacki, Vera Zvonareva and Sam Stosur pushed their way into the top 10 and while Wozniacki has enough of a blend of tennis talent and good looks to make her an icon, this final needed someone of Clijsters’ wider notoriety, and she delivered.

She seemed on her way to a straight-set win and had two chances to clutch a 6-5 lead in the second set, but crumbled at deuce with a swinging volley into the net and a long backhand.

Wozniacki took immediate advantage, crashing a first serve deep to the ad corner that Clijsters couldn’t return. The two women were headed for a third set.

Clijsters was immediately broken at 30-40 on a wild forehand to give Wozniacki a critical momentum swing. But Clijsters broke back at 30-40, then easily held serve to go up 2-1.

Out onto court came Petr Wozniacki on the changeover to take advantage of his one-per-set opportunity to coach his daughter. My Polish is a little rusty, so I couldn’t make out what he was saying as he several times pounded his right hand into his left palm, but my guess is he was telling Caroline to get back on Clijsters’ backhand and stay there.

At this point in the match, Wozniacki’s wonderfully accurate and deep backhand was winning almost all the cross-court exchanges, so this was very good advice, and Caroline took it.

But this is where Clijsters showed her experience and staying power. She refused to play her backhands safe and her confidence in that shot made a big difference in the third set. She was now winning those cross-courts with Wozniacki and you could see Caroline beginning to break down.

Serving at 2-3, she hit a wild second serve at 15-30 and was broken at 30-40. Clijsters secured the break with a love game for a 5-2 lead and, serving again at 5-3, she had a few shaky moments, but never buckled with the match on the line.

Down 15-40 following a double fault, Clijsters got back to deuce on two surprising unforced errors, double-faulted again on her first match point, then gave herself a second clinching point by getting to ad after having to hit three overheads to win the penultimate point.

The statistics were about even with Clijsters 39/38 on winners/unforced errors and Wozniacki 35/36. Clijsters converted six of 14 break points, Caroline four of 12.

It was Clijsters’ third WTA Championship title, having won in 2002 and 2003, and it was her fifth title of the season (Brisbane, Key Biscayne, Cincinnati, U.S. Open). She finishes the year with a 40-7 record and will be ranked No. 3.

Wozniacki was already guaranteed the No. 1 ranking at the end of 2010 and is 62-17 for the year after winning three of her five matches at Doha.

What’s left is to identify the WTA’s Player of the Year and, for one of the few times, it’s not obvious. There is Serena Williams, who won two Slams (Aussie Open and Wimbledon), but who played only six events. There is Wozniacki, who finishes the year at No. 1 but who didn’t reach a major final.

And there is Clijsters, who has done all she could to save this WTA season. She won the U.S. Open, won the WTA Championships and was 10-1 for the year against top-10 players – 12-1 if you want to count two wins over Henin, who in her un-retirement year hadn’t played enough to reach top 10.

Wozniacki might be the face of the future for the WTA, but Clijsters is the face of the tour today, and it’s a face the tour badly needed.

By Charles Bricker

After losing the French Open final to Rafa Nadal, Robin Soderling went home and took a long rest. No lead-up tournaments and the only prep he got for Wimbledon was an exhibition match and plenty of training on the practice courts at Aorangi Park, which adjoins the All England Club.

He then walked onto court this afternoon and just decimated Robby Ginepri, who had been having something of a rebirth these past couple months. Soderling’s final scoreline of 6-2, 6-2, 6-3 doesn’t begin to describe the enormity of this win, raising the immediate question of whether the tall, feisty Swede can win Wimbledon.

The answer is, why not? He’s got all the stroke essentials and there’s no question about his mentality after reaching two French Open finals in a row.

Nor does he doesn’t have a daunting draw with the major potential culprits being big-hitting Brazilian Tomaz Bellucci in the third round and little David Ferrer in the fourth round to again face Nadal in the quarters.

Ginepri has for years been one of the great disappointments of American tennis, never building on his semifinal finish at the U.S. Open — an extremely likeable character whose outward demeanor, always interview-friendly, also leaves you wondering how seriously he takes his profession.

But he’s played good ball recently, and I expected a competitive opening-round match from him. It never was close.

There was no rust in Soderling’s game from the beginning, though of course when you’ve got his serve, who needs to get synched ground-stroking on grass. There aren’t that many ground strokes!

Here’s the damage: He was 42-4 on first serve and got a very high 68 percent of his first-serve deliveries into play. Those are Andy Roddick numbers. He slugged 13 aces, one of them a second serve down the T into the ad court. He whomped a 140 mph serve at one point — not down the center service line or into the body, but into the deuce corner, and that’s a surprising place for a big blast. He averaged 128 mph on first serve, 109 on second.

Break-point opportunites? Ginepri somehow got two, both erased by aces.

A few scattershots:

* Both French Open women finalists are out in the first round, leaving fans to shake their heads at the lack of consistency on the WTA tour. Winner Francesca (I Kiss The Clay) Schiavone went out on Day 1 and Sam Stosur looked flat and disinterested in a 6-4, 6-4 loss to Kaia Kanepi today. What was most surprising is Stosur’s lack of grass court understanding. She’s still back in Paris, top-spinning balls when she should be flattening out her strokes on grass. It’s not like she can’t. She’s one of the strongest players on the WTA Tour.

* Bethanie Mattek-Sands, wearing over-the-calf basketball-style socks, lost first-round in singles, but she’ll be back as the latest doubles partner for fellow American Liezel Huber, who has been auditioning mates since she and fellow No. 1 dubs player Cara Black split after Key Biscayne. And, yes, Mattek-Sands will be wearing the high socks for doubles. White, of course. Huber and Black fell out after losing first round at Key Biscayne to Natalie Grandin-Abigail Spears (who?) and has since worked with Nadia Petrova, Anabel Medina-Garrigues, Tathiana Garbin and now Bethanie.

* More bad news for James Blake, who went down in straights to Robin Haase, going 0-for-9 on break-point opportunities. He’s in pain from a gimpy knee, but he doesn’t want surgery. He’s not going to be on form anytime soon.

* Nadal rolled through the first round with a 6-2, 6-4, 6-4 win over Kei Nishikori, who is coming back from wrist surgery. Rafa: 69 percent first serves in and a ratio of 45-16 on winners to unforced errors.

* Americans out Tuesday: Blake, Robert Kendrick, Jill Craybas.

* But, Sam Querrey is through to the second round when Sergiy Stakhovsy retired in the third with dizziness.

* Reporters can deep six those dog day stories about old pro Kimiko Date Krumm, 39. She’s out, to No. 31 Alexandra Dulghera.

* If Roger Federer had gone down yesterday to Alejandro Falla, he would have lost about 1,995 ranking points and dropped back to around 6,000-something — lowest he’s been since. . . well, I’ve got the ATP researching that one. Please note: Nadal has zero points to defend here, since he was hurt last year and didn’t play Wimbledon. Every point is gravy. There’s no way he can lose the No. 1 ranking this fortnight because all Federer can do is tread water by defending the 2,000 points he earned in 2009.

Charles Bricker can be reached at nflwriterr@aol.com