Sunday, March 18, 2007

Daniela Hantuchova Wins the Pacific Life Open Tennis Tournament

Daniela Hantuchova of Slovakia won the Pacific Life Open yesterday, defeating second-seeded Russian Svetlana Kuznetsova 6-3, 6-4 in the women's final. This is Daniela's second career title, her other one being the same title in 2002.


Congratulations to her, but I bet (or at least hope) she wishes the field had been stronger. The absence of three of the top five women robs players like Daniela of the chance to really get a lot of credit by winning a big tournament like this. For, everyone thinks, "Sure, Daniela won only because Henin, Williams, Mauresmo, and other top women players didn't show up."

The statistics support that notion, because Hantuchova had but a 3-25 record against top-5 players before yesterday's final, only the sixth of her career. And, to win the title she needed only to beat Martina Hingis and one of the only two Grand-Slam winners seeded at Indian Wells. The other one, Sharapova, was eliminated in the prelims.

Like the ATP, the WTA had better start taking care of the tournaments that take care of them. Indian Wells is part of the Masters Series in the ATP, and the WTA should institute a similar program.

But beating Kuznetsova ain't nothing. She said:

She [Hantuchova] was playing very well. To beat her today, I had to play key moments better than I did and I forced a little bit more than I had to in the first set. When she was on the roll, it was pretty hard to stop her.

Hantuchova joins Mary Joe Fernandez, Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graf, Lindsay Davenport, Serena Williams, and Kim Clijsters as the only players to have won the Pacific Life Open twice.

She seems to think she had some kind of premonition about yesterday's match (tennis players aren't superstitious!):

I had exactly the same feeling like I had against Martina in 2002. I just knew that I was gonna enjoy myself out there, and not for one second I didn't believe in myself. I was just so confident from the first point, and I didn't really think about the score. I just went out there and tried to play my game and really just enjoying every moment on the court.

Come on. This wasn't a bit of a Sunday afternoon hit.

You can find interesting bits of information and comments on the match at On the Baseline and Peter Bodo's blog. In fact, I think he nailed it:

I decided to give it one more shot on the psychology angle later in the presser, asking her to name the biggest psychological difference in her perception of herself or her game these days. She said:

I learned not to try -- I mean, of course you always want to be perfect, but if you're not perfect all the time. It's okay. And I realized that, you know, there are always going to be some difficult times that you have to get through. But as long as you enjoy what you're doing, I think that's the most important thing.

So there you have it, once again: perfection is the quest that leads a player to transcend the pack and become a successful pro, at which point the quest for perfection becomes a lethal obstacle to achieving the highest of goals. It haunts and taunts a player who isn’t willing to roll with the punches of fate and recognize that, at the end of the day, it’s not about perfection at all it’s just about beating the person on the other side of the net.

Amen.


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