Ho hum all hail the Goddess what's for dinner?
That about sums it up. I find I can't get real excited about Venus Williams sailing through Gold Coast without dropping a set. I SHOULD be. She's my favorite player and she's never started the year strongly before. And she was coming off a long layoff and injury. She looks like she's only a little way off her US Open form.
So why am I unexcited? I think I'm taking my cue from Venus herself. It's business. This way Venus gets her prep, and no one she has to worry about know how she's really playing. No one but Justine and Serena. She looks healthy, she not underweight, she moved easily. Which, of course, is exactly the image she likes to project. This is her job. Winning the tournament without dropping a set is efficient.
If Venus Williams is as good as she's looked the second half of the last two years, she SHOULD win any Tier III tournament without dropping a set. It's not a big deal, it's a tuneup. And a way of saying, 'I'm the player who won the last four tournaments I entered, including the US Open. Who are you?'
She didn't look unbeatable. She looked very-very-hard-to-beat-able.
Martina, Serena, Kim, Monica, Jenn, Amelie and Jelena all just got to watch Justine get dismissed. Are they playing any better right now? If they're gonna beat Venus, they have to. Who got fat over the holidays? Who's not fully healed from last year? (We know Lindsay isn't. Will she pull out of OZ if she isn't 100%?)
To me, all this says is, Venus is prepared to pick up at the level she left off at. Which I'm sure most of the elite players figured would be the case anyway. The question is, who got better since then?
Answers this week in Sydney.
That about sums it up. I find I can't get real excited about Venus Williams sailing through Gold Coast without dropping a set. I SHOULD be. She's my favorite player and she's never started the year strongly before. And she was coming off a long layoff and injury. She looks like she's only a little way off her US Open form.
So why am I unexcited? I think I'm taking my cue from Venus herself. It's business. This way Venus gets her prep, and no one she has to worry about know how she's really playing. No one but Justine and Serena. She looks healthy, she not underweight, she moved easily. Which, of course, is exactly the image she likes to project. This is her job. Winning the tournament without dropping a set is efficient.
If Venus Williams is as good as she's looked the second half of the last two years, she SHOULD win any Tier III tournament without dropping a set. It's not a big deal, it's a tuneup. And a way of saying, 'I'm the player who won the last four tournaments I entered, including the US Open. Who are you?'
She didn't look unbeatable. She looked very-very-hard-to-beat-able.
Martina, Serena, Kim, Monica, Jenn, Amelie and Jelena all just got to watch Justine get dismissed. Are they playing any better right now? If they're gonna beat Venus, they have to. Who got fat over the holidays? Who's not fully healed from last year? (We know Lindsay isn't. Will she pull out of OZ if she isn't 100%?)
To me, all this says is, Venus is prepared to pick up at the level she left off at. Which I'm sure most of the elite players figured would be the case anyway. The question is, who got better since then?
Answers this week in Sydney.
