Commonwealth Bank Tournament Of Champions
Bali International Convention Center
Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia
FINAL

Unfortunately Marion was forced to retire from her match with compatriot Aravane Rezai, in the final of the Commonwealth Bank Tournament Of Champions in Bali. As a consequence Rezai claims her 2nd title of the year and Marion Bartoli Fan Blog extends congratulations to her on a fine achievement.

Match

Both players began brightly, with the French Number 1 taking a grip of the set with a break in the 5th game - a set characterised by candid, powerful, free-flowing tennis.

Serving to stay in the set at 5-3, Rezai held off one set point.

Back on serve at 6-5, Marion seemed to land awkwardly as she chased down a ball at 15-30. A medical time out followed, and once again that problematic upper quadricep was attended to. In evident discomfort, Marion tried to resume play, But double faulted on set point.

Now limping and in a state of some distress, Marion was unable to continue and retired from the match.

Evoking heartbreaking memories of the 2008 Stanford Final, a tearful Marion sat slumped in the chair prior to the prize giving ceremony.

Heartbreak

It is a tough way for Marion Bartoli to end a marvellous season, after all the hard work both she and her father have put in these past 12 months. A double blow after having narrowly lost out on a place at the lucrative Year Ending Championships in Doha in a similar manner.

Team Bartoli could be forgiven for wondering what they have to do break the top 10 having come so close on several occasions this year.

Finishing 2008 in 17th place after an illness blighted year, Marion recovered well in 2009, climbing to 11th place in the rankings by February - a figure which she has revisited on two other occasions this season. It looks like Marion will now miss out on a much anticipated return to the top 10 by just one place and a mere handful of points.

Support

Marion will understandably feel the sense of disappointment keenly at this time, but she can count on the support of one of the ever-present rocks of her life, coach and father Walter Bartoli. As he explained recently, "from my standpoint it’s very important to help her when something bad has happened to her, or she's injured, or she's got too much protection because she lost a match. She find me when she needs me ..I think it's not to be too expansive when she's winning a match, but to be there when she's on the wrong part of her life, and I'm here every time."

In acknowledgment of this, Marion said today "I have to thank one person - my dad. Thank you so much, daddy. My leg was hurting and I tried my best to carry on, but it was too much pain. I'm sorry I wasn't able to finish today." She also congratulated her opponent, "I'd like to congratulate Aravane on the wonderful week she had. She played some great tennis. I'd like to thank Sony Ericsson for making this tour possible, and to Commonwealth Bank for this wonderful tournament."

Progress

Hopefully after a few days, once the disappointment has subsided, Marion can look back at this exhausting yet rewarding season 2009 with a significant level of satisfaction. Breaking the top 10 of course would have been nice, but it is after all just a number. Materially all you can say about number 9, or number 10, is that it is statement of PROGRESS, and if progress be the real measure of achievement, then Marion has without question moved onward and upward - Ending the season at minimum six places higher than last season. Considering many were writing her top 20 obituary at the end of last season in their reviews and previews, as a fan I now have no hesitation in shouting from the rooftops that Marion is a good player and Marion Bartoli has proven many many people wrong.

Nine, ten, eleven, whatever, Marion has proven her point this season. Team Bartoli have made improvements in court movement and serve, while retaining the distinctive bases of the Bartoli game. And with outstanding wins over Venus Williams, twice over Jelena Jankovic, and purging herself of old foes such as Vera Zvonareva and Shahar Peer.. Marion Bartoli has made her presence felt strongly on the wonderful world of the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour. Not only this, but she has reached FOUR tour finals, winning two of them - a sad irony that it had to be in the first and last tournaments of the year that Marion came off as losing finalist.. "ruthless symmetry?".

Only Marion can say whether that little bit of added pressure and hype today caused her to commit herself just that little bit more than was advised at the end of the first set - precipitating the injury. No matter, the French number 1 has brought her fans a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction by her terrific effort this season.

Some applause for the lady please.

Photo of disappointed Marion with runner up trophy.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE

Marion has since shed some light on what happened (commbanktennis.com),

"I started to feel my leg was pretty tight in the middle of the set," she said. "I started to feel some pain all over my quads and I thought maybe it was the stress and no reason to be serious. But then it hurt me a lot, especially each time I had to push and put some weight onto my left leg it was really getting worse and worse and at the end I couldn’t continue.

"It was a good match and I’m very sad to finish like this. The last thing you want to do is injury yourself in the last match of the season. But what can you do? I was trying my best and perhaps it was just too much."

She will now return home, and will not pick up a racquet for the next three weeks as she allows the injury to heal.'

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Italiano / Francais

A note to visitors who use translation tools, some posts are not displaying until after a delay, sometimes of many hours.

Commonwealth Bank Tournament Of Champions
Bali International Convention Center
Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia
SEMI FINAL

All French Affair Set Up For Bali Showdown

Marion Bartoli today reached her fourth WTA final of the year by defeating Kimiko Date-Krumm, and in doing so, set up an all French final with Aravane Rezai at the inaugural Commonwealth Bank Tournament Of Champions in Bali.

The French number 1 secured a break to 30 in the opening game of the match, and then continued in scintillating style with three consecutive aces to send out a message in no uncertain terms that she was aiming to be the ace player on court today. Marion sealed the game and a 2-0 lead with a winner produced from her first serve.

The former top 5 ranked Date-Krumm lost another break, but immediately retrieved the break to get on the scoreboard at 3-1. However this was simply applying war paint to a battle-scarred face, as the Japanese player took just one point from the next two games for all her gallant effort.

Serving to stay in the set, the best Date-Krumm could do was apprehend Marion at deuce for a fleeting moment. But as if energised by Olympique Marseilles' 6-1 victory midweek, Marion Bartoli formed a beautiful symmetry with the ruthless arithmetic; 6-1 first set.

The 2nd set did little to alter the complexion of things as the veteran Jap's ephemeral title hopes yellowed rapidly. A 2nd set bagel looked on the cards and Marion began to fire out the aces again towards a seemingly inevitable 6-0 end. 5-0 up Marion earned a first match-point, but she was unable to convert with a forehand down the line which went wide.

Date-Krumm took this stay of execution with gratitude and glee - fighting back with skill and guts to within a point of bringing the 2nd set on serve at 5-4. However Marion held off the break point and eventually sealed the match with a 2nd match-point of the game and third match-point overall, almost half an hour after earning the first match-point. (OMG'ess..)(Bartoli)

"Until 6-1 5-1 it was absolutely perfect", said Marion, "Then Kimiko started to play really well. She was swinging freely and hitting some really great shots. It wasn’t my level going down, it was her playing too good. But I knew I just had to win one more game and that’s what I did."

Date-Krumm offered her own analysis, "I like this surface but I think she likes it more than me, and I think she likes my ball also, very flat. If I can play with more spin I think she would have more trouble, but that’s not my tennis. In the beginning I tried to hit more angles, using the backhand slice and dropshot, but her ball is very deep so it’s difficult to hit them. And I made too many mistakes, and if I didn’t hit the right angle she could attack."

It has been an infrequent occurence during the time i've been running this blog that Marion has played a player as old as I am, let alone a player three years older. So fair play to Kimiko, i'm still trying to get my head around the 'Krumm' bit, being of an age who remembers her as Kimiko Date, and with typical tennis-illiteracy at the time would have made a hazy cognitive association with another name of the era, Yayuk Bazuki.

Yours trully did however pick Kimiko to reach the semi final. So good luck to her for next season. I'm sure every tennis fan hopes that the tour enriches her life and gives her some fun and excitement over the next few years, just as her own presence has enriched the tour since coming out of retirement.

This victory positions Marion Bartoli to within one win of a top 10 return, and to within one win of a career landmark 50 wins in a season, and lastly to within one win of a third title in 2009. The opposition lain before Team Bartoli for tomorrow's deul is a certain Aravane Rezai. Marion claimed a famous even infamous victory over Rezai at the French Open in 2007, and more recently beat the Strasbourg titleholder in straight sets only last month in Tokyo. "It will be great that a Frenchwoman will win the title." observed Marion.

Marion Bartoli will deservedly start the overwhelming favorite for tomorrow's showdown, but Rezai has had a good run in Bali including a surprise upset over Sabine Lisicki. No one will be taking this casually, but if form, rank, and ability hold true, Marion will win.

Congratulations to the team on reaching yet another final. Good luck for tomorrow. With you 100%. CUMMON!!

New photos on the Slide

The evergreen Kimiko Date Krumm

Commonwealth Bank Tournament Of Champions
Bali International Convention Center
Nusa Dua, Bali
GROUP STAGE

Following her match on Wednesday Marion told reporters that the court inside Bali convention center was fast and that it required that she make some ad hoc adjustments. Nevertheless, going by results so far it's clear that Marion has taken to this surface like a duck to water, and left her group stage opponents looking like lame duck's Shahar Peer is out, and Marion Bartoli has qualified for the semi final.

On paper the case history of this Franco-Israeli contest hasn't made easy reading for those with a Bartoli bias; the head to head stood at 1-6. But no sooner have we digested that brick when we consider the head to head against Vera Zvonareva was every bit as unpromising as the one held against Peer. Last month Marion demonstrated that fundamentally her level of play is good just now and that she is possessed with an unrelenting will to win - a lady determined to show that she is a highly credible force at the top of women's tennis. She proved it by the way she came back to beat the Top 10 ranking Russian.

As for today's match, the first break came midway through the first set in Marion's favor. Yet with all due respect to the opposition, Marion always seemed the in-control player, frequently earning break points, and swatting away the slightest wiff of threat.

5-3 up, Marion won the opening set in style with a break to love. There-after Marion was like an extra in a Mad Max movie as she went on the rampage. Of course 'we don't want another hero..' one's enough. And Peer? Left looking as hapless as, well, Peer Gynt!

The service stats today where really solid from Marion, and when it came to returning first and second serves, the number 1 French was killing it. With such a fast court Peer simply wasn't getting the time on the ball or an opportunity to hypnotise another unfortunate victim with a soporific shot-fest. Peer, dependant on percentage, just wasn't getting the stats today, with less than 50% of first serves in.

Learning From The Past

Alluding to a painful reverse in Miami this year, Marion explained, "I had to stay focused until the very end of the match. I lost too many matches in three sets against Shahar, where I led by a set and with break or double-break in the second set, and where she came from nowhere to beat me." "My groundstrokes were really strong and deep and I was not doing a lot of mistakes from the baseline, and I think my power was pretty high so I was putting a lot of pressure on her. I think it helps when you hit a lot of winners and few mistakes, usually you win the match."

To be fair to Peer, her recent reverse against Mirza in Osaka, and this one today, may be symptomatic of the tiredness and fatigue felt by players at this stage of the season. It's the same for everyone though. Overall the Israeli star can take encouragement from a great performance over the second half of this year. She's on the rise again.

Redolent of that summer 2 years ago, Marion's first win in a tournament over her old pal since Wimbledon 2007 has by happy coincidence drawn her towards the cusp of the top 10 once again. Two more wins and its job done. She'll do her best - that's her covenant!

Talkin' Up The Tennis

In a week of challenging headlines and negative publicity surrounding the sport of tennis, it is all too tempting to yield to the leaven of cynicism. But you know, whoever wins the title this weekend will have a remarkable cynicism-busting story to tell, especially true of Marion and Kimiko Date. There are a lot of good people working very hard to try to make tennis a viable, sustainable, vital, and integral fabric of our global sporting culture, or if that sounds a bit too high fluting; simply set a positive example in life as a role-model. A few days ago Kimiko said, “I want to show to the tsunami and earthquake victims here that it's never too late to restart your life, just like what I've done.” To some that might sound like pretentious cods wallop, but I don' think so - at 39 years old and a former world number 4, Kimiko Date has nothing to prove to anyone. She didn't have to do this. Her partner is a racing driver, and wants not for cash. She didn't have to expose herself to potential ridicule by coming back or tarnish her legacy. But she has done so for the simple love of the sport and also to give something back to it. She is a great role model and her story can inspire and catalyse people. Just as Marion's story has done. What Marion, Kimiko, and all the other hero's do has altruistic and motivational spin-offs, which sometimes gets ignored by the press clamor for the latest manky drama, and suppressed by the media hyperbole that follows.

Of course, It would be unfair and plain daft to attribute all ills to the media, because there is light and shade in that scene just as there is in all walks of life. My appeal as a fan is simply that we don't forget the good stuff about tennis, especially women's tennis. It has a lot to offer and a lot of good going for it. So chin up, keep smiling, talk up the sport.

Just indulge me a bit more sugary Eurovosion.... As the Slide song goes.. Don’t forget to look ahead.. See what you will find..

*The scoreboard stopped working just before this.

Match Statistics

Player	M  Bartoli FRA	S Peer ISR
Aces	1	1
Double Faults	2	2
1st Serve %	67%	49%
1st Serve Pts Won	72%	58%
2nd Serve Pts Won	69%	41%
Break Points Saved	2/2	5/9
Service Games Played	8	9
1st Serve Return Pts Won	42%	28%
2nd Serve Return Pts Won	59%	31%
Break Points Won	4/9	0/2
Return Games Played	9	8
Total Service Pts Won	71%	49%
Total Return Pts Won	51%	29%
Total Pts Win	60%	40%
Duration	1hr 16mins 14secs
Fan Blog Moodset