kimiko date krumm

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

GROUP A	GROUP B	GROUP C	GROUP D
M Bartoli FRA S Peer ISR M Rybarikova SVK	S Stsour AUS M J Martinez Sanchez ESP A Szavay HUN	Y Wickmayer BEL A Medina Garrigues ESP K Date-Krumm JPN	S Lisicki GER M Czink HUN A Rezai FRA

 

Commonwealth Bank Tournament Of Champions
Bali International Convention Center
4-8 Nov 2009
Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia
WTA $600,000
Surface – Indoor Hard
Format – 12 player round robin (4 groups of 3 players)

FULL PREVIEW

TIGNOR'S TAKE - On his blog last month Steve Tignor recognised how Marion "Bartoli had what looked like a promising summer stolen away by Kim Clijsters, who beat her at two tournaments, one of which was the U.S. Open. Now that Clijsters is safely back at home, maybe Bartoli can pick up where she left off in Stanford."

RECOVERY – With a quarter final in Tokyo and semi final in Beijing, Marion has indeed recovered well from the Clijsters double-wammy. Even before the season has came to a close you can see from the graph below, Marion has performed better this season compared with the other seasons she has been a top 20 player. A statistic which corroborates the result of a recent blog poll about Marion’s level of play.

FATIGUE - However during her most recent tournament in Osaka she complained of having "a little tendinitis that I had already had at Stanford," explaining that, "The end of season is hard for girls who, like me, have much heavier ball. I hope to recuperate." (L'Equipe) The following day the French number 1 retired from her match with Sania Mirza, this time with a painful shoulder tendon problem.

With a whole month between the end of the US Open and the start of the Toray Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo, you may ask how Marion could feel such tiredness and fatigue? The answer is when you are a professional athlete you always have to maintain your condition, a state of readiness. Even between tournaments it is always defcon 4 with team Bartoli, and defcon 5 when noble hostilities resume. So there is never really any off-time in the literal sense.

LA BIDASSE EN BALI - Now, nearing the end of this season’s battle, the walking wounded soldiers on bravely. Hero and all that. It's therefore quite appropriate that the tennis season should end in paradise! The provincial coastal idyll of Bali has a vibrant cultural life, terrific appetite for leisure and sporting interests, and a renowned reputation for welcoming visitors from all around the world. With its gently lapping waves and beach lifestyle Bali is a suitable final tour stop for la bidasse Bartoli, but she isn't there to convalecse.. The outdoor forecast for the next five days is 32c, and the competition at the Bali Convention Center in Nusa Dua is sure to be hot come the start of the tournament on Wednesday. As for the indoor forecast; Stosur, Wickmayer, Peer, and Lisicki look to be main challengers to Marion Bartoli. However the 2006 runner up enters the reincarnated Commonwealth Bank event as the top ranked player this time, and overwhelming favorite to win the title according to blog visitors. Let's now take a look at four potential obstacles in Marion's path..

SAM STOSUR - is fresh from winning her first singles title and has enjoyed a great year, which included a semi final finish at the French Open. Upon taking the title in Osaka, Stosur beamed, “My next goal is to reach the top 10 for which I would need to play like today, every day.”

Her manager Paul Kilderry thinks, “If she can maintain that consistency I think it’s just a matter of time.” Osaka is “the culmination of a great year", reflected Kilderry. "..obviously her ranking and her level of play’s been very consistent from the start of the year and it’s a nice reward for a lot of hard work." Stosur's website,

At Stanford Marion pointed out Stosur is a player on the rise, a player with a huge serve, and a player in the running for a place in the top 10. Marion showed guts to beat Stosur that week over three sets.

After recovering from illness in 2008, Stosur is clearly hungry and motivated to realise her ambition.
HEAD TO HEAD 1-1

YANINA WICKMAYER - How can a player on the margins of the top 100 start the year so horribly with 5 consecutive defeats, then go on to win two maiden titles, enjoy a semi final finish at the US Open, and break into the top 20? Granted, the Belgian avoided all the marquee players in New York right until the semi final.

It's all the more remarkable given the lack of stability in her coaching set up. In the past 12 months Wickmayer has experimented with Dutch coach Glen Schapp, and Justine's Henin's long-time coach Carlos Rodriguez. She has also worked with former Belgian pro Ann Devries, and been a sparring partner with Flemmish friend Kim Clijsters (source; Wickmayer's website), yet according to wikipedia Wickmayer remains without a coach.

It's impressive how Wickmayer has thrived without the guidance and support of a regular coach. But if the independent way works for her, then power to her. Even if the substance underlying her sudden success is a mystery, her form can certainly be considered every bit as amazing as that shown by fellow Belgian Kim Clijsters. We monitor her progress with interest.
HEAD TO HEAD 0-0

SABINE LISICKI - Yes she will be vaunted as the glamor puss of Bali (very bored), and yes she enters the tournament by the backdoor courtesy of a wildcard, but be in no doubt the big German is serious beast in tennis terms, and totally merits the wildcard offered her. Last week she reached the final in Luxembourg. She has also reached the quarter final stage at Wimbledon, and blew away a bevvy of top names to take her maiden title in Charleston - A premier tournament at that. She beat Venus, Marion, and Wozniacki en route, her serve exceeding speeds previously set by Venus Williams. Lisicki seems a more fierce-some player now than the one I watched lose to Marion at Wimbledon last year.

Such physical commitment can be punishing on the body, "Before the US Open I injured my shoulder" she wrote last week in her Sony Ericsson WTA Tour player blog, "..there was a big question mark over whether I'd even play there, but four days before I was able to start practicing again, so I was able to go. Unfortunately I twisted my ankle during my match there, and then I got food poisoning in China a few weeks ago too. But I'm a fighter and I never let those things break me down."
HEAD TO HEAD 1-1

SHAHAR PEER - Not considered a top contender to take the title in Bali, but a player from our perspective who always hassles Marion, and preferably one to be avoided in the group stage. She has great stamina, will dig deep no matter the score-line, and hang in there waiting for her opponent to finally crack, fall, and wail before the wall - the counterpuncher - A percentage and error inducing player. Trouble.. in the nicest posible sense.

Recalling the diplomatic incident that arose earlier this year, Peer told the Jerusalem Post of her relief to receive a visa this time, "I'm happy this issue has been settled and that I can play in Bali, "I'm looking forward to this event and I'm especially pleased with the fact that the Dubai scandal did not repeat itself." Although predominantly Hindu, Bali is a small province within the much larger and generally benign Islamic country of Indonesia.

Since the fall-out from said "scandal" subsided, Peer has finally been able to focus on her tennis and move up the rankings a bit. The former world number 17 has still a bit of ground to make up to get to the ranking she had in 2007 and 2006, but with back to back titles in Guangzhou and Tashkent she has every right to feel she can do well here and go all the way. Her recent form is certainly suggestive of dark horse material at the very least, or Trojan horse were Bartolian ambitions are concerned. Real threat.
HEAD TO HEAD 1-6

THE PELETON - Turning to the other players playing Bali, the two Spaniard's Anabel Medina Garrigues and Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez will firstly be pleased simply to have qualified for this great event. However both players typically play their best tennis on clay and look outsiders for the title. Magdalena Rybarikova has long maintained that she plays her best tennis on grass, she proved this In June by winning Birmingham and thus qualify for Bali. Aravane Rezai qualifies virtue of her unexpected win in Strasbourg and recently lost in straight sets to Marion in Tokyo. Melinda Czink and Agnes Szavay lead a surprise and very welcome Magyar contingent in Bali. On the cusp of the top 10 just over a year ago, Szavay has shown signs of apprehending her calamitous ranking reversal, while Czink is enjoying the best season of her long and winding career, including a debut title in Quebec.

KIMIKO DATE-KRUMM - is the last card in the pack, the 39 year old Japanese ace recently returned to professional tennis after an absence of 12 years, and became 2nd oldest player in tour history to win a title when she took the Hansol Open in Korea. "Maybe some people think it's too crazy, but I'm enjoying a lot," Date Krumm said during the LA Women's Tennis Championships. "For me it's not only for the ranking or always to win the tournament. It's just to enjoy life. Before when I play, after losing it was like everything finished. Now I have more wide views."

Not only is Date-Krumm the player who has held the highest rank of all assembled players in Bali (No.4 1996), but more recently gave US Open finalist Caroline Wozniacki a torrid time at Wimbledon before finally going down in three sets, also narrowly losing to Lisicki in a close three setter in LA. She has stood up well against two of the biggest draws in women’s tennis today.

Date-Krumm doesn't do brutal cannon-power tennis, her dying craft is more that of a swords-woman, with net surges and forehand jabs, it's tactile tennis, and by this she will win, she will lose, she will live, she will die. That's her game. Her 'classic' forehand technique is a point of curiosity for some.

"Everybody hits harder, more powerful, more speedy," she said. "A long time ago, in my generation, everybody was using more the head and more the tactics, and tennis I think was more interesting to watch and play. Now everybody says my style is old style, but I don't care. It's working so I don't care." It's the kind of commendable individualism and defiance which has also characterised team Bartoli over the years. So fans of Marion can easily find grounds of affinity and respect for the way Date-Krumm is doing things on her own terms, and why not.

Date-Krumm is rank outsider to lift the tournament, but will be the sentimental favorite in Bali for sure. She's my pick for a semi final place.

PRIDE – So to wrap things up, whatever the outcome of this tournament Marion Bartoli Fan Blog has PRIDE in the terrific effort and results Marion Bartoli has submitted this year. To be in with a chance of returning to the Top 10 after the Clijsters rumble and "catastrophic" spring hard court season is just marvellous. She is strong in 2009, and if fit this coming week, has the arsenal to deal with all her opponents and be crowned champion of champions.

CELEBRATE - Bali is of course a great place to celebrate spirituality, with its fine temples, and veneration of the gods and goddesses. Let’s look forward to our very own goddess having something to celebrate next week. Let’s do this Marion. I believe in you.

     Marion Bartoli 2006 Bali runner up, and Svetlana Kuznetsova winner

Vera Dushevina is the reserve player
*Bidasse means soldier