Less is more for women's tennis: Davenport
Bruce Emond, The Jakarta Post, Bali
With a clogged tournament schedule and players traveling to distant points around the globe for their next competition, the top ranks of women's tennis resembled a casualty list for much of 2005.
Jennifer Capriati has been out with shoulder problems, Venus and Serena Williams have been on-again-off-again in their tour commitments in the run-up to the U.S. Open and Lindsay Davenport was out injured for two months after Wimbledon.
That was only this year; two of 2004's walking wounded, Belgians Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin-Hardenne, returned to the tour after their own prolonged health battles.
The latest victim is Russian Svetlana Kuznetsova, who decided to give up her defense of the Wismilak International in Bali this week due to a back problem.
Davenport said on Tuesday that efforts must be made to make the schedule more player friendly, taking into account the physical demands on them and also the risk of burnout.
"I think it's too much, we have a really tough schedule," the top seed at the US$225,000 tournament told The Jakarta Post. "The tour wants us to play 11 months of the year and yet still stay fit."
The American acknowledged that many "different entities" -- from the tour to sponsors and the ranking system itself -- were involved in prodding the players to go the extra mile -- thereby running the risk of injury.
Players today need to play from 17 to 18 tournaments a year to defend their ranking points -- compared to about 12 in the early 1990s.
"I would hope so," Davenport said when asked if returning to the old system of tournament commitments was the solution. "It will make for a better product and for better tennis for the fans."
The 29-year-old Californian, who spent a couple of hours on photo calls and interviews at her hotel villa on Tuesday, noted that she was the fittest she had ever been, but "I'm also getting injured the most of my career".
Although her ranking slipped from first to second on Monday in her recent see-saw battle for points with Russia's Maria Sharapova, Davenport seemed unfazed.
"It's nice to be number one, but I've always felt that I shouldn't worry too much about something that I couldn't control -- you can't control what tournaments another player competes in. Winning the Grand Slams was always more important to me."
After her Wimbledon semifinal loss to Sharapova in 2004, Davenport hinted in her postmatch comments that she was leaning to retirement.
Instead, she continued on -- "I realized I still wanted to play --, reaching the Australian and Wimbledon finals, and holding a matchpoint in the latter before losing to Venus Williams in July.
Davenport said she was pleased with the year: "It would have been nice to win Wimbledon, I would like to have done a couple of things differently in the final, but she played the big points well. She won it."
Married since 2003 to Jon Leach, Davenport said she was feeling good about her career right now, but did not see her following Andre Agassi's example by playing at the age of 35 or the game's grand dame Martina Navratilova, who reached the U.S. Open women's doubles semifinals last week a month before her 49th birthday.
"It's the big question mark (retirement). I started really young, and I will continue for a year or two more if I like it. But a lot depends on how my body holds up."