Wading through muddled waters: A look at the clay prospects of the top WTA stars

Last week we looked at the prospects of the top male players in this year’s clay season. Today, we’ll attempt to do something similar for the top women players, which would, naturally, be an infinitely more difficult and complicated exercise. The complications start at the very roots – while the ATP has a streamlined lead-up to the French Open comprising of Monte Carlo, Rome and Madrid interspersed with smaller but still significant tournaments like Barcelona and Belgrade, the WTA clay swing is a melting pot of ‘Premier’, ‘Premier 5′ and ‘International’ tournaments in places as unusual and fabulously named as Fes, Stuttgart, Estoril and Strasbourg, along with the traditional biggies in Madrid and Rome. The chaos doesn’t end there, of course – while Victoria Azarenka has had a standout start to the season, her clay credentials have always been a little suspect, so expecting a straightforward pattern of play to unfold over the next few weeks would be as foolish as expecting Mike Tyson to win the Nobel Peace prize. So with a significant amount of trepidation, I put forth my take on the clay prospects of the top WTA stars this year:

Francesca Schiavone: Don’t scoff. The feisty Italian has reached the finals of the French Open two years in a row (famously winning the title in 2010), so you can’t discount her chances on clay. Sure, she’s been rather quiet this year, reaching just one semifinal (Sydney), but Schiavone’s topspin-heavy game poses a unique challenge to her opponents on clay. Her non-Slam results have been puzzlingly poor, even after winning that maiden Major at Roland Garros, and I expect that sequence to continue this year. Don’t be surprised if she loses early at every French Open tune-up but surfaces out of nowhere at Roland Garros to unobtrusively defeat a bunch of higher-ranked players.

Na Li: Winning the French Open last year was a fantastic achievement for Li, but her results after that potentially iconic victory have been anything but. She’s reached just one final (like Schiavone, Li’s lonely beacon of light also shone at Sydney) since the French Open, and her loss to Maria Sharapova in the Miami quarterfinals was one of the worst displays I’ve ever seen by a top player. The woman has changed coaches more frequently than ordinary people change toothbrushes, and the lack of a stable support corner has showed in her erratic play. And when you consider the fact that clay was never supposed to be a surface conducive to her offensive style of play anyway (she had never won a clay title before last year’s French Open), you’ve got to think that it is unlikely Li will make much noise in this year’s clay swing.

Caroline Wozniacki: One by one, everything dear to Little Miss Sunshine is being taken away from her. At the Australian Open, she lost her No. 1 ranking. Last week, she lost her two-year reign over her home tournament in Copenhagen by losing in the final to Angelique Kerber. What’s going to be next – New Haven? Won’t the world come to an end if Wozniacki loses her hypnotic hold over that tournament? On a serious note, though, there have been some signs of progress for the Dane this year, most notable of which was her commanding victory over Serena Williams in Miami. And without the ranking pressure and the nasty ‘Slam-less No.1′ talk, Wozniacki, now, might be able to play more freely, and implement the attacking strategy she executed so brilliantly against Serena more frequently. Is clay the best place for a change in game plan, though? She has won a title on clay in the past (Charleston last year), but she generally finds it tougher to hit through her opponents on the slow surface; without a strong, penetrating forehand, she has to wait for the opponent’s errors to win almost every single point, and sooner or later she runs into a player who doesn’t make millions of unforced errors. But from where I’m looking, that makes clay an ideal surface for Wozniacki to find her attacking groove – since she can’t win on this surface by being a patient counterpuncher, she may as well hit out and let the chips fall where they may. The only thing that can prevent Wozniacki from adopting this win-win strategy is this: will daddy dearest approve?

Samantha Stosur: I’ve always found it counter-intuitive that Stosur’s game comes alive so consistently on clay. Stosur’s game is, technically at least, a fast-court game: big serve, big forehand, good volleying skills, and an attacking mindset. Her lone Major title, which came at the US Open last year, might seem like proof that her game does indeed work better on the faster courts, but her showings on clay in the last 3 years (she reached the French semis in 2009 and was the consensus best-player-on-clay in 2010) suggest that the only place she is really comfortable is on dirt. So while we may never know the real reason why Stosur does so well on clay (psychoanalyzing tennis players doesn’t sound like a remotely fun exercise to me), we know that her results in the clay season will invariably be better than her performances through the rest of the year. Admittedly, considering Stosur’s abysmal results so far this year, that probably doesn’t mean much. Still, it wouldn’t be amiss to expect a slew of quarterfinal and semifinal appearances by the complex Aussie this clay season. Nothing more, but possibly less.

Agnieszka Radwanska: With her win over Maria Sharapova in the final at Miami, Radwanska seems to have taken the proverbial ‘next step’ to reaching the very top echelon of the sport. She’s won more titles of significance in the last 6 months than I can remember, and she’s got a shiny new No. 4 ranking to show for her efforts. Now all she has to do is find a way past friend-turned-foe Victoria Azarenka. The Pole has lost just 4 matches this year, and all 4 of them have come at the hands of the World No. 1. Radwanska’s efficient, varied stroke-making and beguiling style of play seem tailor-made for clay, and if she can manage to solve her Azarenka problem, she might just turn out to be the surprise package of this year’s clay season.

Petra Kvitova: With every passing tournament, the Kvitova legend grows. And that’s not necessarily a good thing. The jaw-dropping brilliant play alternated with the laughably poor showings have made her something of an enigma, but enigmas don’t always end up being multiple Grand Slam champions. Sure, she’s not been 100% fit through the whole of 2012, but just one semifinal appearance (at Sydney again – is that place some kind of haven for struggling Slam champions?) apart from her Australian Open semifinal run is not a record that a potential long-term World No.1 should be proud of. She struggled mightily at Indian Wells and Miami, so her confidence coming into the clay swing is a big question mark. Her win at Madrid last year indicates that she can play on clay, but for her no-holds-barred game, surface is almost irrelevant. If she’s on, she can blow any woman off the court on any surface under the sun. On the other hand, when she’s not feeling it, she can even lose to the 1000th-ranked player. And like all things enigmatic, there’s absolutely no way of telling when or where she will be ‘on’. A bookie’s nightmare? You can bet on that.

Maria Sharapova: Instead of practicing her footwork on the slow surface, Sharapova has been busy doing photo-shoots and playing scary pranks on her fans. Can the Russian, who once famously described herself her movement on clay as that of a ‘cow on ice’, shake things up in this year’s clay swing? Since her return from shoulder injury, Sharapova has actually fared better on clay than on other surfaces – last year she won the Rome title, and reached her first Slam semifinal in more than 3 years at the French Open. The slowness of the surface helps her reach more balls than normal; it also blunts the importance of the serve, which masks Sharapova’s recent serving woes. But this year, Sharapova has had a new enemy to deal with: groundstroke inconsistency. Her precision and timing were off in all three of her finals losses this year, and on clay, a problem like that can get magnified. Even with her relatively longer clay preparation this season, it wouldn’t be altogether shocking if Sharapova failed to repeat her strong showing from last year.

Serena Williams: It’s weird to count Serena Williams among the top clay contenders. Even if she herself professes a strange love for clay, her results on the surface indicate that the Serena-clay relationship is based on nothing as docile as love. Ambivalence, maybe. Dislike, perhaps. Hatred even? The American has won just one of 13 Majors on clay, and has traditionally struggled on the slow surface. The reasons for that are not hard to identify. Serena’s game is predicated on offense, and her defensive tools are relatively limited. She doesn’t move as well on clay as she does on other surfaces, and her strongest asset, her supersonic serve, isn’t quite as much of a weapon here. But Serena is just coming off he first clay title in 4 years, having won at Charleston last week without dropping a set. Sure, the green clay of Charleston is vastly different from the red dirt in Europe, but confidence is a disproportionately important virtue in tennis, even for a player of Serena’s caliber. And the woman is hurting too, which is a never a good sign for her opponents. Those early losses at Melbourne and Miami have led to a fair bit of talk about Serena being past her prime, and even if that were true, I wouldn’t put it beyond her to furiously dig into her past and regain her prime, if only for a tournament or two. And if that tournament happens to be Roland Garros, then the rest of the women’s field better watch out.

Victoria Azarenka: The winning streak has been snuffed out, and so has the intense media glare on Azarenka’s tennis, her shrieking and her life in general. But Azarenka is no Dinara Safina – she hadn’t exactly been craving for time away from the centre stage. The woman has, so far, given no indication that her performances are liable to wither when put under the spotlight; if anything, she has played even better tennis after reaching the No.1 position. Her baseline-dominant, punishing style of play should, theoretically, suit the slow claycourts too. The only problem? Azarenka has never enjoyed much success at Roland Garros; she’s fallen in the 1st round twice in the last 5 years, with her best result being a quarterfinal finish. But before this year, Azarenka had never reached a Slam final either, and look how magnificently she turned that stat around in Australia. 2012 has been a year of many firsts for Azarenka, and it may also end up giving her her first strong claycourt campaign.