Tennis: Hopes for a bit more bang

Yanina Wickmayer played some blistering tennis en route to last year's title but she was never seriously pushed. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Organisers and fans will be hoping for a little more bang for their buck this time around after last year's women's tennis tournament turned out to be anything but classic.

After two boom years when the world-class talents of Lindsay Davenport (2008) and Elena Dementieva (2009) wowed fans en route to the title, 2010 turned out to be, well, a bit of stinker.

A late re-entry after having earlier been ruled out for infringing drug-testing rules, Yanina Wickmayer was a worthy champion. The Belgian teenager, who this year returns to defend her title as the second seed, played some blistering tennis en route to the title.

But she was never seriously pushed, which turned out to be the theme for the tournament.

Of 32 matches, just three went to a third set, and not a single set was decided by a tiebreak; 6-4, 6-2 in just over an hour was very much the order of the week.

Even matches that shaped as potentially gripping contests, such as the all-Italian semifinal between Flavia Pennetta and Francesca Schiavone, were complete flops. Schiavone went on to win the French Open but against Pennetta she was blown out 0-6, 3-6.

Throw in a second year of childish but still annoying anti Israeli/Shahar Peer protests, and a Kiwi challenge that consisted of a Sacha Jones withdrawal and a rare Marina Erakovic first-round exit, and 2010 was a damp squib all right.

It wasn't supposed to be like that.

Tournament director Brenda Perry assembled a field that included five of the world's top 20 players. The cutoff mark for the eight seeds was world No 27 Anabel Medina Garrigues. It just goes to show there is no real recipe for engineering competitive matches in the women's game. Sometimes they happen, more often they don't.

In terms of rankings, this year's draw pales in comparison to 2010. Kimiko Date-Krumm, the 40-year-old Japanese comeback queen, is seeded sixth despite being ranked just 46.

Even so, with glamourpuss Maria Sharapova topping the bill and the likes of former world No 1 Dinara Safina floating around, this year's field looks likely to produce some meaningful contests.

And in fairness to the 2010 Classic, it would hardly rate as one of poorer tournaments. It simply suffered by comparison to recent years.

Before the mid-90s, the list of champions doesn't exactly contain too many household names. Ginger Helgeson Nielsen or Marion Maruska anyone?

Now in its 26th year, the tournament has certainly come along.

That's a credit to long-time director Richard Palmer and Perry, whose begging, cajoling and favour calling continues to produce fine fields.

The rest is down to the players.