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THE tennisreporters.net NEWSLETTER:
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, NO. 53
Billie Jean would be surprised
if Venus plays Championships
Will the Williamses keep interested
in tennis? Chanda declined Fed Cup spot; Raymond likely in singles;
Top players need to help redesign Fed Cup
By Matthew Cronin
tennisreporters.net
Susan Mullane/Camerawork USA |
US Fed Cup captain Billie Jean King says that
she would be surprised if Venus Williams plays the Bank of America
WTA Tour Championships next week.
"Yes, I would be," she said of Venus, who hasn't played
since the Wimbledon final. "But I'm going to check in with
her again. … Venus has continued to have trouble with that
abdominal pull on the left side. When I did talk to her, she said
she was upset because she wanted to play so badly. And she said,
'When I go out to practice, something's just not right.' I keep
telling her to wait. I've told her since the first time because
those things become so chronic – stomach pulls – they
are very hard to heal and they take forever to heal. Serena [Williams],
of course, you knew would not be able to play because she had
that type of knee operation. It's the tendon that connects all
your quad muscles and that's naturally huge. I think it's more
important for them to get well and start off next year –
if they want to play and hopefully they'll want to – and
to have a healthy 2004."
Serena also hasn't played since Wimbledon and has pulled out of
all the remaining 2003 tournaments.
Should Venus pull out of Championships, promoters will have a
hard time selling tickets to a tournament where its three local
women – the Williamses and Lindsay Davenport – are
on the sidelines. Only two Americans look like they will qualify:
Jennifer Capriati and probably Chanda Rubin, should she have a
decent week in Philadelphia.
Ticket sales are ahead of last year, but it won't be easy to sell
out the final if it contains the tour's two best players, Justine
Henin-Hardenne and Kim Clijsters, because the Belgians simply
aren't that popular in LA yet.
"Unfortunately, in America you need to be American,"
King said. "Like (Andy) Roddick winning the US Open, it's
keeping us alive, which is fantastic. … When anAmerican
asks me, 'how's tennis? what they're really asking me is how is
American tennis? If you go to Belgium, they sell out everything.
If they were Americans, they'd be selling out everything. I personally
love watching them play. But I'm a hardcore person – I'm
going to watch men's, women's, and grassroots. But I think the
general public in the United States usually wants to hear an American
name. Is it right? No, but that's the way it is. That's why it's
so important for Americans to continue to win to a certain degree
because that does capture the imagination of the American people."
Will the Williamses keep interested in tennis?
King has talked the Williamses about
how important it is for the sport to have them playing, whether
it's the Championships or Fed Cup. She's quite sympathetic with
their plight as A-list celebrities, but says they have to put their
outside interests in context. Serena has done a fair amount of acting
this year and Venus owns an interior design company.
"They are pulled and pushed in so many directions," she
said. "They could do an interview every second of every day
and not get through the list. That's how much they're in demand.
I've talked to them. Most importantly, I ask them questions because
they need to hear their own voice. What do they really want? 'Is
it important for you to be No. 1, Serena?' Those are the kinds of
the questions I would ask, for them to search their own souls and
their own minds because it's really about them, not me.
"They're under a lot of pressure. A lot of people want a lot
from them. I think they do a pretty good job of balancing. …
They have a lot of interests and Venus is busy doing designing.
Can you keep their interest and focus long enough to play tennis?
I hope so because it has given them the medium and the expression
to springboard, to go into all these other things. They are known
because of tennis."
Chanda declined Fed Cup spot; Raymond likely
in singles
Susan Mullane/
Camerawork USA |
King will lead an American "B"
team consisting of Martina Navratilova, Lisa Raymond, Meghann Shaughnessy
and Alexandra Stevenson to Moscow for the Fed Cup semifinals Nov.
19-20, 22-23. She'll also take part in a 30th anniversary celebration
of the WTA Championships on Nov. 9 at the Staples Center during
the event with other former No. 1s like Monica Seles, Martina Hingis
and Navratilova, among others.
The US Fed Cup team will play an under-womaned Belgian squad sans
Clijsters and Henin-Hardenne that features the very decent serve-and-volleyer
and Els Callens and junior standout out Kirsten Flipkins.
Not only are the Williamses, Davenport, Capriati and Seles not playing,
but Rubin, who keyed the US's win in July over Italy, has opted
out.
"Chanda declined," King said. "She didn't really
give me a reason this time. She's been having a little injury problem
and she wanted to rest, that's what I got out of it."
A singles combo of Rubin and Shaughnessy would have a much better
chance of taking out Russian or France in the final, but now veteran
Raymond will get a chance to play singles and doubles. Who knows,
Raymond may be able to pull off the run of her life at age 30.
"I know through e-mails and talking to her on the phone she
is absolutely raring to go," King said. "And Martina Navratilova,
only a young 47-year old player, is back with us because of how
well she is playing doubles right now. Our job right now is not
to think about France or Russia but if we played either one of them.
… I think we're capable of beating anybody who is in the Fed
Cup this time. If Clijsters was in or Henin-Hardenne, then obviously,
we would have a much harder task at hand."
Top players need to help redesign Fed Cup
Susan Mullane/
Camerawork USA |
Both Clijsters
and Henin-Hardenne declined to play the semis and final, stating
that it extends the season too long and they need to recover physically
for 2004. Both said they would like to see Fed Cup change its format,
which it has done countless times in the past. However, if the competition
isn't attractive enough to get entice the Williamses and Capriati
to face off against the Henin-Hardenne and Clijsters, that it's
future is very murky. It sounds like a summit meeting is badly needed.
"The ITF – because they own the
event – [needs] to get together with everybody and try to
figure out how it's going to work," King said. "That's
where the WTA can play a big part by communicating what the players
are feeling about Fed Cup and how we need to do it. There's no
reason that it can't be shaped differently or [have] a different
format. Whatever is going to work to get the support from the
top players, I think is very important. I would get the top players
in a room and say, 'Alright, tell us what you need,' and make
them a part of the struggle of thinking it through and understanding
all aspects of the consequences. It's really easy to say what
you want and then you get more involved in a deeper discussion
and you realize, 'Oops, I didn't know about that. I didn't understand
that. Oh, I didn't know that either. Okay, now I understand why
we do it the way we do it.' Let the players struggle a little
bit on this. They can't complain. They have to tell us what they
want. Complaining isn't good enough. Complaining and then coming
up with a solution, that's good."
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