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Post by TennisHack on Jun 10, 2007 21:36:31 GMT -5
Updated through Roland Garros 07
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Post by TennisHack on Jun 17, 2007 14:53:58 GMT -5
Updated through Birmingham/Barcelona 07
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Post by TennisHack on Jun 24, 2007 15:28:41 GMT -5
Updated through Eastbourne/'s-Hertogenbosch 07
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Post by TennisHack on Jun 29, 2007 2:34:39 GMT -5
Farewell Anna Smashnova
She was the last of the great scramblers.
We don't mean that there aren't some very fast players out there. Anyone who faces Jelena Jankovic, or faced Kim Clijsters, knows that full well. But Jankovic, and Clijsters, and Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario before them combined great speed with the ability to hit winners when they had an opening. If someone asks you to name players who won solely with speed, perhaps the only recent name that would spring to mind is Amanda Coetzer.
There were others. Tatiana Panova, for one. But, in recent years, none has stood above Anna Smashnova. She wasn't a big threat at Slams -- she was basically a live practice partner for her opponents at Wimbledon, and even at Roland Garros, someone would eventually overwhelm her. She rarely even tried to play doubles -- she was too easy to lob, and even at the baseline, players at the net were too likely to blister a ball past her. On fast surfaces -- grass, carpet, even indoor hardcourt -- she would be overwhelmed.
But she won a total of twelve titles, mostly on clay with some on (mostly slow) hardcourt: Tashkent 1999, Knokke-Heist 2000, Auckland 2002, Canberra 2002, Vienna 2002, Shanghai 2002, Sopot 2003, Helsinki 2003, Modena 2005, Budapest 2005, Budapest 2006.
What's more, she won all twelve of those without losing a final. It was not until her very last final appearance, at Forest Hills last year, that she lost on the last day of an event (to Meghann Shaughnessy).
She turns 31 shortly after Wimbledon. She's been through a lot in her life, being born in Minsk in what is now Belarus and ending up in Israel. She married her coach, then watched it fall apart. She came back to win those last few titles. If that isn't grit, what is?
She never made the Top Ten, but she did spend about a month at #15 in 2003. She spent a couple of years in the Top Twenty, starting in mid-2002 and staying there most of the time until August 2004. She was in the year-end Top Fifty in 1994, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005; she didn't fall below #50 to stay until after last year's U. S. Open.
Since Forest Hills, she has played only Slams, with no wins at all in that time. She almost didn't get into Wimbledon, because her ranking has fallen so low. But she did get in. That means she has played every Slam since Roland Garros 1998 (inclusive) -- 38 consecutive Slams, the longest active streak on the Tour. In total, she played 49 Slam main draws. She also set a record for Fed Cup service. She has been playing pro matches since 1990. There are a lot of miles on those legs of hers. Surely she deserves the rest.
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Post by TennisHack on Jul 8, 2007 21:50:34 GMT -5
Updated through Wimbledon 07
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Post by TennisHack on Jul 22, 2007 18:06:58 GMT -5
Updated through Cincinnati/Palermo 07
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Post by TennisHack on Jul 31, 2007 2:09:09 GMT -5
Updated through Stanford/Bad Gastein 07
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Post by TennisHack on Aug 6, 2007 0:57:46 GMT -5
Updated through San Diego/Stockholm 07
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Post by TennisHack on Aug 12, 2007 22:52:03 GMT -5
Updated through LA 07
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Post by TennisHack on Aug 26, 2007 1:36:36 GMT -5
Updated through New Haven/Forest Hills 07
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