Russian Invasion
They are here in force, but can the Russian women keep winning?
By Eleanor Preston

Ten years ago you could have counted the Russian women in the world’s top 100 on one hand. These days you would need all your fingers and toes to even come close. Thirteen of them litter the top 100, 19 in the top 200, and let’s not even mention the four in the top 10. Three of the women’s Grand Slam titles this year have been won by Russian women, two in all-Russian finals—and the list goes on from there. The Russians aren’t just coming, they’re here.

“The rise of Russian players in the standings is very impressive,” said Justine Henin-Hardenne, who has been quoted as saying, privately, that Russian is fast becoming the common language of the locker room. “They’re young, audacious, and they never relinquish anything, even if they are losing.”

“I don’t recall ever seeing such a dramatic onrush of players from one country rising to the top as quickly as the Russian brigade,” said Larry Scott, the chief executive of the WTA Tour.

Nick Bollettieri, whose Bradenton, Florida, academy has enjoyed a mutually profitable relationship with a number of Russian players, notably Anna Kourn-ikova and Maria Sharapova, says that there seems to be more and more talent emerging from the ruins of the former Soviet states all the time. “They keep coming at you,” he said, “like the Russian army.”

“I think [Russians] are really strong inside,” explained Sharapova. “In Russia, I don’t think they have many opportunities when they decide to play a sport. They think [tennis] is their only chance to make it. They work really, really hard at it and achieve many good things because they know that’s maybe the only thing they can do.”

That the group of women Russia’s national publication Pravda called “the queens of tennis” has arrived is not in question. What remains to be seen is whether they can continue to dominate the women’s game as they have done during 2004.

Anyone with the loosest grasp of math should be able to work out that, by virtue of weight of numbers, they have a good chance of tightening their grip around the throat of the WTA Tour for seasons to come. With the three Grand Slam champions, plus Roland Garros and US Open runner-up, Elena Dementieva, all inside the top ten—and Vera Zvon-areva, Nadia Petrova, and Elena Bovina all on the fringes of it; the odds are in favor of Russia peppering the women’s game with champions next year and beyond. After all, such a phenomenon is not without a precedent in other sports and there are valid comparisons with Kenya’s hold over middle distance running, Australia’s dominance in swimming, and China’s plethora of table tennis experts.

Tennis, however, is a sport all its own, and there are other factors that may mean prophecies of a Russian Grand Slam in the women’s majors—something that happened for American women as recently as 2002—may prove to be a little overblown.

This past year has hardly proved to be a typical season for the women’s game. There is no doubt the rising Russians have been helped by the brittle form shown by the previously dominant Williams sisters, and the injuries and illness that blighted Kim Clijster’s and Justine Henin-Hardenne. Clijsters’ recurring wrist problems sidelined her from March to October, when a relapse ruled her out for the rest of the year, while Henin-Hardenne briefly emerged from her sickbed to win the Olympic gold medal in Athens but was otherwise a shadow of herself for most of the year.

Better luck at the US Open might easily have given Lindsay Davenport a better crack at the title. She did, after all, win four consecutive hard-court tournaments in the lead-up to the last Grand Slam before a sudden thigh injury hampered her in the US Open semifinal against Kuznetsova. Jennifer Capriati served for the match in her semi against Dementieva and while the latter fought with customary gusto, Capriati’s hex in US Open semifinals meant she contributed to her own defeat by being psyched out by her circumstances.

Only at the end of 2005 will we be able to say if the Russians are truly unbeatable or not, but those outside of Moscow and St. Petersburg will certainly be hoping that they are. All are great players and some, notably Sharapova, are marketable icons who will sell the sport globally, but a mix of nationalities and personalities is what best promotes the game worldwide. Just look at the last three US Open finals and ask yourself what they have in common—all Williams; all Belgian; all Russian; all dull as dishwater to watch.

“Maybe it’s everybody’s nightmare because there are so many on the tour,” said Dementieva’s coach, Olga Morozova, recently.

Morozova tells a story that dates from the days of the Cold War, when the then Soviet president, Nikita Khrushchev, was asked by a reporter why there weren’t any Russians playing at Wimbledon. “What’s Wimbledon?” Khrushchev asked and, on being told, issued an order that goes some way to explaining the current situation the WTA Tour finds itself in.

“Next year we will have people at Wimbledon,” said the Soviet leader, whose words, years later, were echoed by Russian president, Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin is a huge tennis fan who nurtured the sport in such clubs as the famous Spartak Club in Moscow, a hotbed of talent nicknamed “the Kournikova factory.”

Khrushchev’s prediction could be equally valid for 2005 and not just for the All England Club but tournaments, big and small, all around the world. Regardless of whether they go on to dominate the women’s circuit in the same way they have done this year or not, Russians will not only play in many of those events, they will win many of them.

You can count on it.