BEIJING—The Asia Tennis Swing landed the ATP and WTA tennis player ’stars’ in Beijing for the China Open 2014. It was a week full of emotion and excitement for the tennis fans, as the WTA, the players and fans paid tribute to the Chinese tennis legend Li Na at the tournament’s state-of-the-art Diamond Court.
The Beijing tournament provided a last opportunity for the men who were chasing points to reach the World Tour Finals at London’s O2 Arena in November and women players to collect qualification points for the Oct 20-26 World Tour Finals in Singapore. The $6.5 million (HK$50 million) tournament will feature the tour’s top eight players, and all of them were in Beijing.
We saw the return of Rafael Nadal the ‘warrior’ trying to do a comeback after missing nearly 3-months of tournaments and competitive play due to a wrist injury. Nadal was back in the action, looking good on court, winning a few rounds and just before his fall in the quarterfinals, complained about the ‘bad’ balls the tournament was using…. Shortly after his complaint, he was stunned by Martin Klizan, ranked 56 in the world who came all the way from qualifications and shocked the fans and Nadal himself by winning 6-7(7), 6-4, 6-3.
Tennis is a tough sport though. The difficult three set victory over Nadal, proved too much for Klizan as the Slovak seemed to have run out of gas in the semifinals. Tomas Berdych had an easier game against him moving into the finals, where no other but the No.1 seed of the tournament, the unbeatable Novak Djokovic was waiting.
While Andy Murray came to Beijing after a tournament win in Shenzhen, he wasn’t able to hit the ‘perfect’ shot it took to have a chance against Djokovic. The Serbian player proved once again why he is world’s No.1. With a 6-3, 6-4 victory over Andy Murray, Djokovic’s unbeaten record at China Open continued, as he entered his fifth final in Beijing.
Whatever world No.6 Tomas Berdych tried in this final, Novak Djokovic had an answer for it. He just simply didn’t miss. It was probably his best performance in all the finals in his career. Djokovic took the first set 6-0 and the lead in the second 5-0 in under an hour. Berdych managed to get only two whole games in the match. Everything the Serb tried worked, and the Czech didn’t know what to do.
Djokovic fans were happy to watch their champion lift the China Open Trophy for the fifth year in the row and are looking towards Shanghai, where the Asian Swing continues and the tennis world wonders if anyone will be able to stop Novak Djokvic’s Asian run.
It was a tough tournament for the ladies as all of the tour’s top eight players came to town.
As the tournament was going into the mid week, a few of the ladies struggled with illness and injuries. The Williams sisters and Simona Halep, defaulted their matches. First, Venus Williams withdrew before getting on court to face Petra Kvitova and then shortly after, Serena Williams had to pull out of her quarterfinal match, citing a knee injury that caused her problems. Halep, the world No.2 injured her hip, which caused her to default her quarterfinal match.
It all came down to Maria Sharapova and Petra Kvitova who made their way into the finals. Sharapova had a quick win over the Serbian Ana Ivanovic and Kvitova battled Sam Stosur from Australia to reach the finals. Both ladies (Sharapova and Kvitova) have won Grand Slam titles this year, with the Czech winning at Wimbledon and Sharapova winning at the French Open.
The tall Russian served her way to the fifth title this year and her first China Open, in 2 hours and 38 minutes. She played extremely aggressively throughout the tournament, hitting pure flat winners all the way from the baseline and served her way into almost one Million Dollars in prize money and 1000 points to take her back to No.2 in the world.
The players will head to Singapore for the WTA Finals in just a few weeks time.
Vlatka Jovanovic is an ex-professional WTA ranked tennis player and an independent broadcaster journalist.
