Sunday, January 07, 2007
Hantuchova's ups and downs
As much as Daniela Hantuchova is quiet and reserved, she still manages to get a lot of people talking about her. There were her great looks that have always been there. Then, when she was coming on tour, her incredible talent and poise had generated much deserved publicity including Martina Navratilova predicting she would one day reach #1... Then, she started going downwards, losing more and more, getting scaringly thin, leaving her fans and the tennis world without any clue what was going on. Later, it was reported, although not very loudly, that all that had happened in part because of problems between her parents..
And so she was able to recover and started a long way back.. It's been a couple of years now since she's been heading back and many of her fans are wondering if she'll ever fulfill all that was once hoped and predicted of her. She still has that great game, can hit all the shots, fights for her life.. but somehow, it never seems enough in those big matches. She lacks that big weapon, or that extra gear. Today, she was defeated by a Nicole Vaidisova who was clearly lacking confidence and was perhaps not even at 100% physically... but Daniela did not really test her opponent...
Will she rally back and come back to silence her critics? I would be the first one to applaud if it happened... but unfortunately at this point, her improvement has been slowed significantly, let's hope it's just a pause...
# posted by Pierre : 5:38 PM
