The Sporting Blab

I have a bee in my bonnet at present and it involves what has been a sensitive subject during the two weeks of the Australian open; the fitness levels of “elite” female tennis players.

I had the fortune or misfortune to spend a day at Melbourne Park watching the second round of the qualifying tournament, pre the main draw.

This is something I do every year. Usually you see quality tennis with players playing their hearts out in an effort to scrape together enough money to put food on the table. Real tennis highlighting lower ranked players on the way up or older players on the way back, or out. Gut wrenching stuff with players going for every shot. To win is to earn money to pay expenses for the week, to lose means you are maybe one match closer to running out of cash and having to retire. Winning is everything.

I settled back on one of the outside courts with my son and watched a game between Carly Gullickson of the USA and Elena Baltacha of the UK. Elena, a journeywomen of the WTA, has been around the circuit for eight years and looked every bit a professional tennis player, lean, toned and agile. Her opponent on the other hand a veteran of five years on the pro tour looked decidedly portly, to the point of being obese.

Carly Gullickson can hit, no doubt, and won the first set 7 – 5. Elena then seemed to realise that she just needed to work Carly a bit and proceeded to hit the ball all over the court. Carly, puffing like a steam train, lost the next two sets, to love, didn’t win another game.

I left the court commenting to myself that obviously Carly needs some work. It was when I walked to another court and saw a young lady previously in the public eye for being somewhat of a child prodigy, Alexandra Stevenson and the size of her, that I started putting some serious thought to the fact that there are players on the Women’s tour who are decidedly unfit. I wasn’t watching grade tennis, I was watching world ranked players! 

Alexandra lost her match to Viktoria Kutuzova in straight sets.

Is it the fact that Women on the tour only play three sets and they don’t have to be fit or that they rely heavily on a power game and focus on weights instead of aerobic type training? I am sure it’s a combination of both and probably other things but the bottom line is the WTA is littered with overweight participants.

I accept that we are all different and I appreciate that there are different body types in the game but there is no excuse for being overweight in elite tennis. Look at Serena Williams as an example. A larger body type but very fit, toned and professionally prepared to do her best as an elite sportsperson. 

I am happy to admit there are some very fit female tennis players and I was grateful to see two supreme female athletes play in the women’s singles final but I am convinced that there are far too many unfit overweight female tennis players playing on the tour.

Compare this to the men’s tour, enough said.

Roger Rasheed, came out in protest of the “shape” of one of Australia’s most promising players, Casey Dellacqua after her first round loss to the very beatable Daniela Hantuchova of Slovakia.

You didn’t have to be a tour “expert” to see that Casey was carrying a lot more weight than at the same time last year, in what was her breakthrough year.

Roger went on record as saying that Casey was carry extra “baggage”. He went on to suggest that there are two things that a tennis player can control, one is the serve and the second is the physical condition. He added also that if you were a young lady (Casey is 22 years of age and is ranked 57 in the world) why wouldn’t you want to compete in your very best shape after a promising year last year?

Casey fired back with comments indicating that whilst she has never met Roger, he doesn’t know her training technique, her background or her personality.

Guess what……he doesn’t have to!

The bottom line is that she came to play seemingly unfit and lost in the first round, simple. Last year she made it all the way through to the 4th round! 

Surely Casey would come to play in “tip top nick” in her home grand slam in front of not only her family and friends but the world. Roger is correct in his comments, as sensitive as we may think they are. Casey turned up 10 kilos overweight and her early exit was exacerbated by her physical condition. Nothing more nothing less. Casey should be disappointed with her early exit, and the circumstances that led up to the tournament are irrelevant.

It’s interesting when you are unfit and the pressure is applied physically in a game and this is in any sport from “d” grade football to the Olympic 400 meters. You become slower and your recovery is compromised. You can’t do the things you want to do often enough and things don’t work as well when you do them. This isn’t rocket science and all of us who have played some level of sport know this to be true. The less fit you are the less you actually achieve.

What also occurs when you are unfit and under physical stress in a game is that you start to mentally negotiate with yourself.

What, at the start of the game, was unnegotiable, towards the end becomes a justifiable reason.

“I have done an ok job, better than I thought”.

“This girl is ranked higher than me, people will still think I did ok, I have done ok considering”.

“There is always next week or next year”.

“I am not feeling so well today”.

“It’s just not my day, so it’s ok.

Yes the opposition may be better on the day and you get beaten by a better player, so be it, but to compete at less than full fitness allows your opposition to play with an advantage. As Roger suggests its one of the 2 things that can be fully controlled by the individual, so it should be an irrelevant topic in elite sport and only relavant and accepted in lower levels of sport.

Let’s hope as the year progresses Carly, Casey and Alexandria can find the energy to give themselves every chance to be successful professional tennis players.

Next year when I take my son to the tennis next year I hope to see elite performers with sublime skills, not struggling overweight participants who don’t have the heart to do the hard yards and hope like hell they can fluke a game every now and then with power and if they don’t, hope like hell again that nobody saw them.