WTA Championships (Final)

Some random thoughts as I wait for a phone call...

I really like Caroline Wozniacki and Kim Clijsters, but I think I'm going for Wozniacki so she can finally silence all of her doubters and add a validating line to her resume. Clijsters will probably win, though.

Is the new WTA logo in effect immediately? What's with this desperate image change? I can't remember the old logo (haha), but I can't say I love this one.

This isn't really about the final, but I'm still trying to wrap my head around Elena Dementieva's retirement. I was always vaguely annoyed by her as a player because she screeched and because her serve was irritatingly soft, but as usual Jon Wertheim makes several good points. I never saw Dementieva play live, which is a tiny bit curious considering how long she was on tour and the number of matches I managed to hop between at various US Opens, and so I don't have a very good grasp on what her serve was truly like. Wertheim points out that Dementieva wasn't broken any more than any other player (perhaps on the basis of her groundstrokes, though), and that it wasn't as if other players could simply set up a hitting clinic during their receiving games. This analysis, though, does not solve the screeching.

I guess one thing that partly prevented me from consistently seeing her as an elite, elite player was her lack of presence off the court. This is, in fact, a good thing, I know, because it means she never cashed in on various endorsement and marketing opportunities that all too often focus on sex appeal. But it did make her somewhat easy to forget when the media is filled with shots of Maria Sharapovas and Ana Ivanovics. Clijsters doesn't do much of the off-court opportunities, either, but she's just so nice and also quite verbose. So yes, in summary--my perceptions of Dementieva were probably never really fair.

Oh, and yeah, Clijsters did win. Surprise! Is Wozniacki too nice to win?