Petra Kvitova emerged from the wreckage of the 2013 Dubai Premier tournament silverware in hand. She did so without having to face either of the world’s two best hard court players, world number one Serena Williams and recently crowned Australian champion Vika Azarenka. Though Kvitova’s draw was tough, beating Ivanovic, Radwanska, Wozniaki and Errani, it was not one made up of the two current hard court Major Champions. And it would have been one thing if both women had played and been beaten in the draw but neither of them struck a ball. Kvitova merely looked on as both women turned up in Dubai but limped off before their opening matches. With the draw already done, Suarez Navarro, a lucky loser, was placed in Azarenka’s spot in the draw while spectators missed out on the scheduled Williams-Bartoli encounter. The world’s top two were subsequently fined for their late and inconvenient withdrawals. But it had all the fairness of a parent spanking a child who hid before the swimming race after having spent all morning performing medal-winning pirouettes.
It was not just Kvitova and the tournament that looked on as both players hobbled away out of pocket. It was the fans, too. The very fans who would have bought tickets to the event after seeing Williams’ and Azarenka’s faces on the tournament promotions, faces they would have remembered only too well from last year’s ultra-competitive and entertaining US Open final. The excitement of perhaps seeing them in another hard court final would have been fueled even further by the Doha final the day before the start of the Dubai tournament, a final that went to three and in which Azarenka got her first win over the freshly re-crowned World number One Williams in ten successive attempts.
Yes, you read correctly. The final of the Doha Premier tournament was played the day before the start of Dubai. The two premier tournaments are played back to back, Doha being a Premier 5, Dubai a premier. Though it takes only 40 minutes to fly from one destination to another, and they would have flown first class, factor in the checking out of the hotel, the checking in at the airport, the disembarking of the plane, the checking into the new hotel, after a week of playing tennis at the highest professional level, contesting a three set final against your top rival and then the prospect of all of that all over again, and straight off the bat for Serena who would have faced no less than Bartoli in her opening match, and the withdrawals seem, though not excusable, somewhat understandable. Had fans seriously considered the stresses put on both Williams’s and Azarenka’s bodies, and those hard courts punish the players considerably, they would have done well to refrain from buying tickets expecting to see them in the Dubai final and bought their tickets instead to spectate two professional tennis players, regardless of who they are, competing for champion status and the ranking points and prize money that come along with it at the highest levels of the sport. Many would have done that but nevertheless there would have some disappointed fans seduced by the glitz of the promise of the world’s top two’s participation, expecting to witness the two divas decked in jewels sweating it out for the title only to find that both women were tucked up in bed instead, their mugs full of cocoa, jewels on their dressing tables, feet freshly spad and well and truly rested. Those two resting divas would not have been watching Errani and Kvitova duke it out though. After all there is nothing these two women love more than fighting it out in finals. They too would have been as disappointed as the fans that they could not compete. Wouldn’t you, if you loved your job, and you were the very best at doing it, and yet you could not handle the demands and had to flake out?
Having already played in 3 tournaments, one of them a Major, and going far in each of them, both women had certainly been playing their part in the WTA’s seven week old 2013 season. And another 15 or more tournaments, another eight months of checking in and checking out and pounding the body against fierce competition lies ahead before a two month ‘break’, if you call training and improving your game in order to be ready for the first Major of the next season which starts two weeks into it a break. The fitness necessary to come back at the crack of the new season and take the spoils is not gained from letting your hair down on the beach for more than a few nights. Thus the women have to find breaks in the tour itself, too, or face the consequences of early-curtailed careers a la Henin, Hingis and Clisters. If their bodies say stop, they have to listen, and if it happens to be on the eve of a big WTA tournament then someone has to suffer and somewhat humanly neither player is going to make that someone themselves.
Had there been perhaps a week’s rest between the final and the first round, then the fans, the WTA , the sponsors and the players would have all gotten what they wanted. The tour is too long, the competition potentially too deep to not have it any other way. But it is another way. The WTA’s way. You see, Indian Wells and Miami go back to back in less than a fortnight and then comes the clay. Doha and Dubai have to be back to back because that is where the money lies and the WTA is a business and Williams and Azarenka their top employees and with that comes both great rewards and great demands. And with those demands come consequences such as injuries and late withdrawals and fines rather than what those demands were designed for and which the WTA anticipated with their roadmap: the rivalries and ratings, anticipations which have gone unfulfilled and created a situation where the only real winners are the WTA chiefs.
Kvitova won though. And the fans saw a three set final. And as long as there are players there will be finals and the wheels will keep spinning and the sponsors money will continue to pay the bills and the bonuses. Unfortunately for Williams, Azarenka and the fans, who after all want to see the best players and rivalries more than anyone, the wheels of Serena and Vika stopped spinning and they not only paid with their bodies and their resumes but with their savings, too. The WTA though took the sponsors money and will no doubt be readying their next promotion for Miami and Indian Wells, demanding that players compete in both, promising the fans they will; yet those in the know, and even worse, they, the WTA themselves, know that a promise from the WTA means as much as the player’s health and safety do to those unfair parents of the game that were meant to help the players grow into and reward them for being the best professionals they could be rather than leave them hobbling out the gates and taking to their beds, sometimes for a few weeks or months, and sometimes, in the case of recent number one Safina, for good.
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