Agnieszka Radwanska" width="250">The Last Word returns, and each weekday, starting on Monday, December 5, we'll give you our year-end thoughts about tennis' best players—this time focusing on the ATP and WTA Top 10. We'll alternate tours each day; here's who we've looked at so far.
Best of 2011
It’s a real pick 'em because Radwanska won two big fall tournaments back to back, beating a comparable fields in Tokyo (d. Vera Zvonareva in final) and Beijing (d. Andrea Petkovic in final).
Worst of 2011
Let’s go with another two-fer: In Madrid and Rome, Radwanska won just one of three matches (d. Yaroslava Shvedova, first round of Madrid). In Rome, Radwanska lost her opener to No. 41 Elena Vesnina.
Year in Review
This girl epitomizes the concept of “sneaky good,” losing just three first-round encounters in 20 tournaments. Just four women in the Top 10 played fewer events, so you know “Aggie” didn’t game the ranking system (which is based on a players' 16 best tournament results).
Radwanska lost in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open to the destined champ, Kim Clijsters, and remained comparably consistent through the year. After that two-tournament glitch during the Euro-clay season, she made the round of 16 at the French Open (l. to No. 8 Maria Sharapova). However, her Wimbledon was disappointing (second-round loss to Petra Cetkovska).
Radwanska then caught fire: She won Carlsbad (d. Zvonareva) and played for the trophy in Toronto (l. to Sam Stosur). Angelique Kerber surprised her in the second round of the U.S. Open, but she was the dominant player in Asia (the aforementioned pair of wins). Oddly enough, two of those three first-round losses on the year were inflicted by the same player—Lucie Safarova.
See For Yourself
This clip from Radwanska’s French Open loss to Sharapova gives you a very good idea of how well she can defend. That’s the good news. The bad news is that you can also see how little she does with the ball when she’s on offense.
0 komentar:
Post a Comment