The Pilot Pen Tennis event taking place in New Haven, Connecticut is the last stop on the Olympus U.S. Open Series before the U.S. Open kicks off next week. In the past few years, this event has become more of a last chance for top pros to get some needed match play in either because the rest of the summer wasn’t that great for them at other events or because injuries forced them to curtail their schedules as it did Sam Stosur who dropped out of Cincinnati and Montreal to rest her arm.
But for top seeds Caroline Wozniacki and Marcos Baghdatis, a different dilemma presents itself. Both players are coming into the event having had great summers on the hard courts and hardly need any more match play before New York. Although one has to admire their commitment to participating in the event, one also has to wonder if they could be costing themselves a chance to win Flushing Meadows in the process.
Wozniacki, who won New Haven last year before going all the way to the finals in New York, committed early this year to New Haven and never showed any signs of dropping out even when she was forced to play her semifinal and finals matches yesterday in Montreal due to ongoing rain delays there. Wozniacki, along with her father and coach Piotr Wozniacki, has been criticized of playing too many events on the WTA tour which has kept the Dane’s ranking in the top 10, but injuries and exhaustion caused by her ambitious schedule, usually prevented her from going deep at major events on a consistent basis until yesterday’s title run in Montreal.
For Baghdatis, who’s having a career defining summer reaching the finals of Washington and the semis of Cincinnati last week where he took out world No. 1 Rafael Nadal along the way, his arrival at the event is for him, a promise kept. During his press conference yesterday, he talked about his struggles last year that saw his ranking dip below the top 100 which made it difficult for him to enter big events. He asked New Haven for a wildcard and in returned promised he would show up for the 2010 event. Since he made that promise, Baghdatis won the Sydney event in January, beat Roger Federer at Indian Wells and is now back in the top 20.
Preparing for a Grand Slam is a tricky balance of getting in enough matches, playing well to hopefully ensure a good seeding and also knowing when to rest. Mardy Fish, who reached the finals of Cincinnati with the help of a wildcard, pulled out of New Haven himself due to “fatigue”. And though you have to respect Fish’s choice since he now has an outside shot to win New York himself, it makes one respect Wozniacki and Baghdatis’s choice to show up and play New Haven even more, especially in Wozniacki’s case as she will go into New York as the top seed on the women’s side and as one of the clear favorites. For small events like New Haven, which really rely on big names to show up, despite not being at the most advantageous spot during the tour calendar, having players like Wozniacki commit is a big boost both in selling tickets before the event starts and for planning publicity around a name player’s arrival.
We’ll see how well Wozniacki manages her commitment to New Haven and her new status as the top seed for the U.S. Open when she takes to the courts on Wednesday.
For more information about the event, click here.
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{ 3 comments }
It’s a fine line with how much to play, where and when to play, and all that. It seems like a bad idea, but everybody is different in terms of what they need to be prepared for a Slam. I think the week off might be tough for someone who likes to come in hot as well. You never know, but it definitely is something to consider, and makes for an interesting read.
Way too many tournaments during the US Open series. Even though the players are not obligated to play all of them I still think it’s too much, especially on hard courts.
Injuries happen all the time. I am not sure that we need to worry about this too much. To be honest, every body is different and every body can take different kinds of strains and pressures. Andy Murray for instance is always injured and he doesn’t train harder than the rest, I doubt, so who’s to know what might happen and what might not. Time will tell and I for one am excited about the beginnings of the US.
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