With exhibitions and play-offs such as the International Premier Tennis League and the Australian Open Wildcard play-offs filling the void left in the calendar by the WTA off-season, the new season of tennis is now almost here. The first week of the season is replete with tournaments, as events are being held in Brisbane, Shenzhen and Auckland, in addition to the Hopman Cup in Perth and a $50K ITF Challenger in Hong Kong. Following this are the events in Sydney and Hobart, preceeding the Australian Open itself.
With this being the start of a new year, it is always interesting to see how the women perform after having such a long break from the tour. Another thing players have to consider are the various factors such as seedings, match practice and fatigue before they even reach the Australian Open. The off-season is when most players decide to alter their game and make changes to their coaching setup, and this part of the year leading up to the Australian Open can be crucial in giving players the confidence they need before they attempt to leave Melbourne Park victorious.
Here are a number of questions which the start of the year poses for women’s tennis and the first few weeks of the tour:
Is Victoria Azarenka Ready?
With persistent knee and ankle injuries plaguing her in 2014, Azarenka decided to end her season prematurely, after having seen her own fitness and ranking deteriorate to a point where it was better to focus on the new year ahead. This, however, poses many unanswered questions about how ready she is. Having been a finalist at Brisbane in 2014, she has many points to defend and if she is ultimately unable to do so, she will become unseeded at the Australian Open and her chances of even making the second week are very much in doubt.
It will be very interesting to see how the Belarusian performs at Brisbane, as she isn’t seeded and will have some tough competition from the start of the event. Azarenka is always seen as a title contender at events like this, but with her compromised fitness and lack of match play, it will be difficult to see her advancing far this Australian summer. It is also interesting to note that Azarenka has not entered the event in Sydney, but tournament organisers would be more than ready to offer her a wildcard if she requests one. Ultimately, Azarenka is going to be an unknown quantity until she steps out onto court in Australia and it will be a large determinant of how she performs in Melbourne next year.
What to make of Eugenie Bouchard?
Another player still with a number of questions still lingering from the 2014 season is Eugenie Bouchard, as her season post-Wimbledon was not as consistent as she would have liked it to be, capped off with a 0-3 record at the WTA Tour Finals in Singapore. The Canadian, nicknamed Genie, reached the semi-finals of the Australian Open last year and it still remains to be seen whether or not she has the ability to continue this success in 2015. Currently, Bouchard has not yet decided on a coach for the new year, and time is running out before the Australian tennis season begins, where she’ll be representing Canada at the Hopman Cup.
After her fantastic runs at all four slams this year, players are starting to figure out how to dismantle Bouchard’s game and with a much larger presence on tour now, how she performs at the beginning of the year maybe a strong indicator of how the rest of the year pans out. The Canadian is now playing with the pressure of defending points and the expectations of possibly claiming a grand slam, in addition to the distractions of sponsorship commitments and the need to find a coach for the year. Whilst Bouchard appears to be nonchalant about all these, I believe that these will hinder her in the short-term and as a result she may not perform as well, coming into the Australian Open.
Samantha Stosur’s Annual Plight
Rather famously, Australia’s top women’s tennis player, Samantha Stosur, has never performed well in the first month of the season and this has been a problem which has been persistent and somewhat debilitating for her. Stosur herself admits to the pressure of playing in front of an Australian crowd and this has led to a vicious cycle of early exits and shocking losses to players who she would not normally lose to. Again, the month of January in 2015 will pose another difficult month for an already underperforming player.
Interestingly, Stosur has decided to play the events in Brisbane and Sydney in 2015 which has traditionally resulted in very little success for the Australian, in contrast to the different approach she took in 2014. Last year, Stosur played the Hopman Cup and then Hobart, where she managed to reach the semifinals, losing to Klara Koukalova. This confidence transferred into Melbourne where she managed to reach the 3rd round, her best result since 2011. As someone who plays at her best when she is confident and free from pressure deciding to play at Brisbane and Sydney seems like a strange decision, but if she is to finally play well in Melbourne in 2015, she must back herself and attempt to establish some momentum in these lead up events during the Australian summer.
This is a series of articles previewing the WTA tour before it finally begins in January—keep checking LWOS to catch the next instalment!
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