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Fall to the ground, and rise sky high - Page 2

© Michael Cecilio

Amelia Island 1999 - Monica entered the tournament as the 2nd seed and dropped a mere 14 games en route to her only title of the season. Amelia Island 2000 - Monica entered as the 3rd seed and while she dropped 24 games (10 more than last year), her performance was just as dominating as last year's title run. It seemed the adjustment to clay took no more than a single set for Seles as she faced a strong claycourter in Anna Smashnova of Israel in her tournament opener. She needed a first set tiebreak to get adjusted to her footing on the clay. That was all it took. From there on, it was the Monica Seles of old. Slicing and dicing her opponents into oblivion with her punishing two-handed groundstrokes, she easily dismissed some of the greatest claycourters in the game, including Sanchez-Vicario in the quarter finals and Martinez in the final. Truly spectacular. Truly fun to watch. We are all eager to see what she has to offer at the French Open.

The fact that she won her final four matches over a two day span is testament to the fact that her mental focus and her physical stamina are much stronger than they have been in recent memory. Rain plagued the tournament for the better part of the tournament, causing a tantamount of scheduling conflicts. Monica rose above it all and played each match with the same hard-hitting, fiercely fighting intensity that made her so unbeatable back in her hey day.

Of course the question is, what can she do against the top players? Sure she can readily dismiss Sanchez-Vicario and Martinez, two great top 10 players with a lot of guile and experience. But what can she do about Davenport and Hingis, the two players who have proven themselves to be light years ahead of the pack. So far this year, the only matches she has lost have been against these two players (one to Davenport, two to Hingis). Will she be able to change that around? She plays with so dominatingly against players she is expected to beat. When it comes to players ranked ahead of her, she has tended to falter at the challenge. A number of reasons seem plausible to explain her dilemma:

• Firstly, she leaves so much on the court. So much intensity, so much will to win, that when she is hardly done by in the earlier rounds, she hasn't got much left in the later rounds - ultimately the rounds in which she is to draw the top seeds. Not only the fact that she leaves it all out on the court mentally, but the fact that she struggles physically is another key factor which can tire her by the end of a tournament.

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