russian tennis

svetlana kuznetsova had just been bounced from this year’s US open. losing to flavia penetta in the third round, kuznetsova joined the 14^th seed maria kirilenko and 20^th seed nadia petrova in the early loser list at this year’s final slam. with these and the much hyped loss of form of dinara safina and shoulder injury to vera zvonareva, as well as the retirement of elena dementieva... is russian women’s tennis on the decline?

 

russia arguably helped to define women's tennis for much of the 2000s up until last year when maria sharapova lifted the roland garros trophy. 2004 was a banner year when 3 russian women lifted 3 grand slam titles. while some may argue that USA and belgium were the real powerhouses since out of the 55 slams played starting from the australian open 2000, USA (led by serena and venus williams, jennifer capriati and lindsay davenport) won a total of 26 slams while belgium (justine henin and kim clijsters) accounted for 11 titles. russia (sharapova, kuznetsova and anastasia myskina) won 7 titles during these years - not as successful as USA or belgium and just 3 slams ahead of france (amelie mauresmo, mary pierce and marion bartoli). however, russian women were a staple in the top 10, with sharapova and safina reaching the number 1 spot while myskina and zvonareva peaking at number 2 at one point in their careers. petrova and dementieva reached number 3, while anna chakvetadze was at number 4. for much of the last 13 years, russian women almost always fill up the top 10, even peaking at 5 (or more?) russian women ranked inside the top 10. zvonareva and dementieva each reached 2 slam finals and these russian players are familiar names in the second week of the slams.

however several issues hounded the russian players. injuries halted sharapova’s successful run and threatened her career altogether. lack of form caused safina’s fast decline and is now temporarily retired, while zvonareva has yet to make a return after a long layoff due to injury. dementieva officially retired while still playing well while myskina’s career was cut short prematurely in 2007. petrova and kuznetsova are still ranked inside the top 30 but have yet to find consistent results unlike in their prime years, losing to players they used to beat regularly. there are other names in the mix such as kirilenko, elena vesnina, ekaterina makarova (who’s now in the US open 2013 quarterfinals after upsetting agnieszka radwanska), anastasia pavlyunchenkova, the returning alisa kleybanova, among others. then again, none of these players have yet to make major inroads in the slams to pose serious threats in the current roster of top players. deep bench as they say but has yet to translate to considerable success in the slam stage.

these things got me to thinking... will there be another sharapova in the coming years who would banner russia and bring tennis glory? i hope so. russia has a lot of up-and-coming players. in fact, they have one of the most number of players of all countries inside the top 1000. i tend to favor spreading the wealth among deserving players and russia could very well provide major competition.