Australia’s Samantha Stosur and Frenchwoman Marion Bartoli said Monday they will be looking to sneak into a potential backdoor slot for the $4.9 million WTA Championships in Istanbul later this month.
The 2011 US Open champion Stosur, currently ninth in the world but with Bartoli breathing down her neck as they look to be first choice replacement, had been desperate to sneak into the season-ending WTA championship but missed out on the elite top-eight line-up after losing early to Julia Goerges in Beijing. That defeat allowed China’s Li Na to claim the final spot in the money-spinning tournament, leaving 28-year-old Stosur dependent on an injury withdrawal if she is to extend her season.
Stosur, top seed in Moscow this week, told reporters that this year, in contrast to some earlier sub-par showings in the Russian capital, she would be out to hit top form and take the title.
“This year I’m definitely come into this tournament hoping to do well,” the 28-year-old Stosur, who announced a last-moment withdrawal from playing in Moscow last year.
“Last year I decided to withdraw from playing here just after the final in Osaka having already qualified for the WTA Championships. It was impossible to play all the Asian swing and then continue playing here. “But this year I have a goal to finish ninth if possible. Of course me and Marion (Bartoli) will watch closely each other’s perfomance here, both hoping to finish as the first substitute in Istanbul. “And as far as we both failed to qualify for the main draw we’ll go to Istanbul prepared to play at any moment looking what will happen to the other players there.”
Stosur, 28, also said that she was satisfied in general with her performance this season. “Compared to last year, this year looks probably more disappointing as my results were much lower,” Stosur said. “I didn’t have such a big win like the US Open, but I had lot of semis and lot of quarters this year and overall it wasn’t really bad.”
Meanwhile, second-seeded Bartoli is keen to move up from her current ranking of 10th.
‘Big year’ makes up for disappointment, says Murray: US Open and Olympic champion Andy Murray says his “big year” makes up for the disappointment of narrowly missing out on titles during this season’s Asian swing.
The defending champion agonisingly saw five match points slip away in his Shanghai Masters final against second seed Novak Djokovic in a gripping encounter on Sunday. It followed a semi-final defeat against Canada’s Milos Raonic at the Japan Open the previous week, in which the 25-year-old had also held match points.
For the British world number three, who won the Shanghai Masters in 2010 and 2011, it is a sharp contrast to last year, when he won the Thailand Open, the Japan Open and the Shanghai tournament in a richly rewarding few weeks. But despite his near-misses, the Scot insisted he was not too frustrated after his 5-7, 7-6 (13/11), 6-3 loss to Serbia’s Djokovic, also 25. In a sanguine assessment of his performance, he said the match hinged on tiny margins. “It was literally the difference of one, two centimetres in winning the match and losing it. You have to put things into perspective. It was obviously a bit frustrating but it was so close and could have had a different outcome,” he said Sunday.
Murray last month beat Djokovic in the final of the US Open to win Britain’s first men’s singles Grand Slam title since the 1930s, just weeks after taking Olympic gold. He said those achievements more than made up for his narrow misses.
“Last year I came away from Asia with three wins. I didn’t win a Grand Slam and the Olympics. Kind of a big year. This year I would have signed up for the way I played here and having won the US Open.” Murray, who had previously lost four Grand Slam finals, said he would continue with the positive approach to his game that has served him so well over the past few months, with a long-term aim of getting to number one in the world.
Djokovic closes the gap on Federer: Novak Djokovic, who won the Shanghai Masters on Sunday, has closed the gap on Roger Federer at the top of the latest ATP rankings, as the Swiss player enters his 300th week as world number one. The Serb, who beat Britain’s Andy Murray 5-7, 7-6 (13/11), 6-3 to take his 13th masters series title, is now just 195 points behind Federer, who was beaten in the semi-final of the tournament, and could even take his position in the coming weeks. Neither of the players is due to play in the three tournaments scheduled for this week in Moscow, Vienna and Stockholm.
The only change in the latest world top 10, published on Monday, is Czech player Tomas Berdych and France’s Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, who a week after changing position to 7th and 6th, are again back to 6th and 7th respectively.
Berdych beat the French number one in the quarter-final in Shanghai.
Meanwhile, the former world number two, Tommy Haas, of Germany, makes a return to the top 20 at the age of 34, despite his career appearing to be over due to a succession of injuries. He has not been in the top 20 since May 2010. In the WTA rankings, Belarus’ Victoria Azarenka remained on top after her victory in Linz, Austria, 1,800 points ahead of Russia’s Maria Sharapova and 3,055 ahead of Serena Williams, of the United States.
‘Bonkers’ Britain looks for Murray, Watson bounce: Having waited 76 years for a men’s Grand Slam champion and 24 years to celebrate a women’s tour winner, Britain, once the cash-heavy, running joke of world tennis, is suddenly a serious player.
Andy Murray’s US Open victory, the country’s first men’s major since Fred Perry took time off from squiring Hollywood sirens Marlene Dietrich and Jean Harlow to triumph in New York in 1936, led the way.
Then, on Sunday, Heather Watson clinched the Japan Open, the first British winner of a women’s tour title since Sara Gomer at Aptos in 1988.
Even world number one Victoria Azarenka was impressed. “congrats to @HeatherWatson92 for making your nation go bonkers,” tweeted the Australian Open champion.
Add Murray’s London Olympic gold into the mix as well as 18-year-old Laura Robson making the Guangzhou final last month — the first such run by a British player since 1990 — then it’s hardly surprising that tennis is enjoying a mini-boom. Figures released by the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA), the game’s ruling body in the country, show that almost 100,000 under-18s play at a LTA-registered club — an increase of 17 percent on last year.
“I know from speaking to Laura and Heather how passionate they are about getting more young girls into tennis,” LTA chief executive Roger Draper told the Guardian.
“They play with a smile on their faces and that enjoyment also comes through in what they do off the court. When we want girls to see tennis as a fun, social sport, what better advert for that than them?”
