Sports | Daily Update: continues

Monday, November 29, 2010

Caroline Wozniacki continues to bring Sunshine to WTA Tour

With so many top flight players on the shelf for the remainder of the 2010 season, a dark cloud has been hovering over women’s tennis recently, but on Thursday at the China Open, the skies cleared for the crowning of a new World No.1, appropriately nicknamed “Sunshine”, Caroline Wozniacki.

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After capturing her 11th career title in Tokyo last week, the 20-year-old Dane needed to reach the quarter-finals in Beijing to become the 20th player in Tour history and seventh youngest to hold the no. 1 ranking. She did just that, dethroning Serena Williams with a 6-3, 6-2 victory over Petra Kvitova.

While many are quick to argue that Wozniacki doesn’t have the power game or a Grand Slam title to justify her new status, the numbers do. She boasts a 25-2 record since Wimbledon, winning four titles in that span including a triumph at the Rogers Cup presented by National Bank in Montreal. Wozniacki’s win over Kvitova was her Tour leading 56th of the season compared to only 15 losses at a time when most of the top women don’t even come close to playing 56 matches in a year. She is also the first player since Justine Henin in 2007 to win five titles in a season.

Wozniacki may not possess the power in her 5’10” frame to hit her opponents off the court like Serena and Venus can, but tennis isn’t just about striking winners, winning matches is what makes a player great and no one does that more in the women’s game than Wozniacki. Her domination is a result of playing by the most basic rule in tennis: keep the ball inside the lines. She excels where others fail in that regard and while it’s not the prettiest approach to the sport, it’s effective and apparently a lost art in today’s era of ‘big babe’ tennis.

Wozniacki doesn’t complain about the heavy tournament schedule imposed by both Tours, she embraces it and chooses to play week after week because she wants to, not because she has to. The little engine that could has carried the WTA on her small, but very capable shoulders over the past few months while her battered and bruised colleagues are at home healing their wounds.

The experts are going to give Wozniacki a pat on the back and say “well done, but Serena’s still the best player”. That may be true, but as Brad Gilbert so aptly put it: “Appreciate what Caroline is instead of what she isn't.”

On the court and off, she’s charismatic, hard-working, tough, driven and quite simply, a happy person whose radiant smile will light up any room. She’s passionate about life, loves her job and that makes her an ideal ambassador for tennis. Not to mention that Wozniacki’s good looks and charm make her one of the most marketable players in recent memory.

Move over Maria Sharapova, there’s a new blonde bombshell in town! The only smile bigger than Wozniacki’s during the on court ceremony to anoint her the new World No. 1 was that of WTA Tour President Stacey Allaster and who can blame her? At only 20 years of age, Wozniacki will have many opportunities to leave her mark at the Majors and silence her critics.

Wozniacki’s well-deserved achievement should be celebrated, not questioned because the little girl playing tennis on her community court with dreams of filling Caroline’s shoes one day doesn’t care about her not so stellar Grand Slam record, she just wants to be like her idol and that’s the greatest compliment anyone can get.

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Saturday, November 27, 2010

Brad Childress fired; Brett Favre’s late-career fall from grace continues

Brad Childress is the second coach in three years to have lost his head-coaching job with a Brett Favre-led team (AP).

In the wake of Brad Childress’ dismissal Monday, there was an interesting nugget buzzing around the Twitterverse:

Childress’ firing marked the second time this season that a head coach had been relieved of his duties after his team was dismantled by the Green Bay Packers (the other being Wade Phillips, formerly of the Cowboys).

This is true enough and will probably age into a trivia-stumper someday, but for me, I couldn’t help but to think about Brett Favre and what has become a truly bizarre career arc. This (what will hopefully be his final) season is eerily similar to his lone year here in New York as quarterback of my beloved Jets, except that rather than presiding over a gut-wrenching collapse, as he did with Gang Green in 2008, the Vikings never got off the ground in 2010.

The final result, though, remains quite similar: A selfish quarterback, fired coach (Eric Mangini was the sacrificial lamb for the Jets) and a lot of disappointed fans.

Childress sealed his own fate, to be sure. To this outsider, he appeared about as sensitive as a toilet seat, to paraphrase one Holden Caulfield, and he and Vikings management went to the well one too many times with a roster loaded with over-the-hill (Pat Williams) and underperforming (Jared Allen) players. Injuries didn’t help, either (Sidney Rice).

But, Favre’s tired act certainly could not have helped Childress. Most pointedly, Favre has once again broken down physically after a long and taxing 2009 that saw the Vikes go all the way to the NFC Championship Game. He’s not even a shadow of the player he was last season, which, admittedly, is a pretty high standard considering how well he played, but he’s been average at best this time around.

To boot, he waffled (but didn’t really waffle) on returning this season, again showing up late to training camp, which can’t sit well with the other lowly peons on the roster — you know, guys like Adrian Peterson. Then, once he was on the team and things weren’t going well, he took some thinly veiled shots at his coach and showed him up on the sidelines.

Whether Childress will get another shot as a head coach remains to be seen. Clearly, he has the chops to win in the NFL, but he has some work to do in managing people. As for Favre, his brilliant 2009 is looking more and more like an outlier in a rather so-so second half of his career, and another coach has lost a power struggle — and his job.

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