John Farley Spotlight WTA: Farley's 20 Predictions for 2019

I don't normally predict. I don't want to presume to be some tennis pandit who looks perspicacious at the start of the year and then ends up with egg on his face at the end, if anybody cares to check. I don't mind the egg even though I'm a vegetarian, it's just that the whole exercise is so futile. But I have this impulse at the end of this year to predict a few things for 2019. So here we go:

1. Bethanie Mattek-Sands will be on the short list for Mad Magazine's Best Dressed Women of 2019.
2. Having given up the reigns of the USTA, Katrina Adams will take up the Luge and prepare for the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing.
3. Aryna Sabalenka will end the year among the top five and will win the US Open. Why, among the other Slams, the US Open? She did well in Flushing Meadows last year, she likes the hard courts with her two titles in 2018 coming on hard courts at the Opens in Connecticut and Wuhan, and she is young and strong and will still have the vitality by September to take on the field.
4. Georgina Garcia Perez will find a Dmitry Tursunov and end the year inside the top 50.  She's 6' 2" and has a big game. She is currently at 124, up 120 ranking points above her 2017 year-end ranking.
5. Justin Gimelstob will avoid Halloween trick or treating.
6. Elina Svitolina will win a Grand Slam and end the year #1.
7. The new deal between the WTA and Tennis Channel, "geo-blocking" the US subscribers, is going to bomb for the WTA. (I watch the WTA events on computer, so what I'm describing here is a digital guys experience.) I hope I'm wrong, but it seems to me that after so many years of the WTA playing second fiddle to the ATP via Tennis Channel (TC), and finally, after the many delays to launch WTATV and have its own media platform so that it could have exclusive control over WTA programming, that the WTA would never relinquish that autonomy and again put itself in a subordinate position where the whims of Tennis Channel could create WTA viewer horrors like TC cutting away from a WTA match at championship point to an ATP match so that Brad Gilbert courtside could tell us how many shirts Rafa goes through on an afternoon match in Melbourne. I realize there is a lot of money talking here, but does the WTA really trust TC to give its subscribers the same high quality, comprehensive coverage they were getting through WTATV?  Also, consider the following:
1. According to an announcement to US WTATV subscribers, the WTATV content will be picked up on TC Plus. As any TC Plus subscriber knows, only some of tournament content is broadcast on TC Plus. The other "juicier" content, like big name match-ups and the "business end" rounds for example, often air on TC not on TC Plus. I would imagine this would be especially true for the 4 Premier Mandatory Tournaments and the Premier 5s. So, if you only have a TC Plus subscription and not also a TC provider, you're screwed. The new deal might be different, but I doubt it. 
2. ESPN does the same thing to its ESPN+ subscribers. At the Slams, 3 of which are covered by ESPN (not the French?), you can get the early rounds and most of the matches on ESPN+, but some of the higher-profile matches and, again, the business-end tournament matches (semis, finals) will only be available on ESPN, ESPN 2, ESPN 3. For that you need a provider, an additional subscription. 
3. So... unless Tennis Channel changes the way it presents WTA content over its linear and digital platforms, the WTA is going to find itself wishing it had retained its autonomy and not got lured into the TC buck.
8. Camila Giorgi, having risen to #26 in 2018, in her dainty, mother-made outfits and Sergio, her coach/father, who was once described by a tennis commentator as, "a combination of Jerry Garcia and Grouch Marx," will continue to entertain. (Outside of Sabalenka, there is no player I like to watch more than Giorgi.)
9. Garbine Muguruza and Sam Sumyk will part ways.
10. To avoid embarrassing elocutional problems for commentators, the 127th ranked player from Greece, Valentini Grammatikoloulou, will be required by the WTA to shorten her name to "Valentini G." (And you thought Pavlyuchenkova was a toughie)
11. Angelique Kerber will enter the Guinness Book of World Records for saying the English word "amazing" over 37 times in a two-minute on-court interview.
12. Belarus will win the Fed Cup if they can knock out Germany in February.
13. On-court coaching dialogue profanities will proliferate increasing brand entertainment value much to the delight of the sponsors.
14. The WTA Sports Science and Athlete Assistance Program will include the technology of Transcendental Meditation in its offerings for player development.
15. Racquet Magazine will become 'The New Yorker" of tennis magazines, intelligently including submissions by John Farley and more wary of submissions by Andrea Petkovic.
16. Inspired by the mockumentary 7 Days in Hell, the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, to dispel its stuffy image, decides for the Wimbledon Championship to allow 'streaking," but only if the streaker, if wearing anything, wears white.
17. Rule Changes: 
1. Because the WTA dress rules for 2019 addressed only below-the-waist garments, for example, allowing leggings below the knee or above the knee, with or without a skirt, and compression shorts, in an effort to "give our players the chance to be who they want to be" the WTA will make rule changes regarding what the women wear on top, allowing Madonna-type cone bras and metal breastplates. 
2. If a player is out of competition due to pregnancy resulting in Quintuplets, she is allowed as many years as it takes to get the last child out of the house to use her special ranking. 
3. Because of the rule change for 2019 decreasing the number of toilet breaks from 2 to 1 for an entire match, there will be a disturbing increase in the number of retirements by players who "just had to go to the bathroom."
18. Over the next two years Serena will win 2 Grand Slams and surpass the ho #$/%*&ic Margaret Court. Her best shot - Wimbledon. Next best - Australia.
19. Fulfilling the original vision of its founder, Billie Jean King, the WTA will acquire a major sponsor that will allow it to position itself with complete technological autonomy, with parity, and with an increasingly global reach.
20. The 2019 WTA tennis year, driven by the loft of so many good players' visions of conquest and the incarnations of compelling, unfolding dramas from previous years, has the potential of an unheard-of 95% from Rotten Tomatoes.

Anyway, that's how I see it.



P.S. If you're gonna throw egg at me January 1, 2020, make it poached on gluten-free bread, lightly toasted.

For those who celebrate it
 Merry Christmas
and a 

Very Happy New Tennis Year

John Farley Spotlight WTA: Amanda Anisimova - Showcasing Young Climbers of 2018

It happens sometimes you put on a match and you see a player for the first time and immediately you sense something special. Maybe it's from a strut, that signature swagger of an athlete exuding power and confidence or just from some cogent intangibles that haven't yet crystalized into a concept you can clearly articulate. But you know she's got it. I saw it in Garbine Muguruza even before she beat Serena at the French Open in 2014. I saw it in Aryna Sabalenka before both she and her Belarus compatriot Aliaksandra Sasnovich took out Sloane Stephens, at the time the reigning US Open winner, in the 2017 Fed Cup Final, almost upsetting the USA. Those are the two who most strongly come to mind. Now there is another who I feel has got it - Amanda Anisimova.

I don't remember when I first saw her, but I do remember I had that feeling about this 2018 climber who was only 16 at the time. Let's throw the spotlight on some major milestones and highlights in her rise:

• She was ranked 761 at end of 2016, but climbed quickly to end 2017 at 192.
• The first American finalist at the 2016 French Open Juniors in 14 years, where she was the #2 seed.
• As a junior she was ranked as high as #2 in the world.
• In her Grand Slam debut into a main draw, she lost in the first round of the 2017 French Open, but became the youngest player to participate in the main draw since 2005.
• Capped her juniors career by winning the Grand Slam title at the 2017 US Open, not dropping a set.
• A member of the US team that won the 2017 Junior Fed Cup.
• At the 2018 Indian Wells BNP Paribas Open, she became the youngest player to reach the 4th round since 2005, where she defeated Pauline Parmentier for her first WTA match win before upsetting #23 Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and then #9 Petra Kvitová who was on a 14-match win streak - her first victory over a top 10 player.
• On the strength of this performance, she was awarded a wild card into the Miami Open, where she won her opening match against Wang Qiang despite injuring her foot in the third set. She was forced to withdraw from the tournament where she was scheduled to play Garbine Muguruza in the second round. The foot injury kept her out of action for four months.
• Returning from injury in San Jose, she beat Wang Qiang again in the first round before losing to an in-form Mihaela Buzarnescu.
• During the 2018 US Open Series in Cincinnati, she took out Timea Babos and Petra Martic before falling to Elina Svitolina who was ranked #7 at the time.
• In the Hana-Cupid Japan Women's Open (where did they get that name?) in Hiroshima, she became only the 2nd qualifier to reach the final of a WTA tournament in 2018.(the other was Aliaksandra Sasnovich in Brisbane). She lost to Su-Wei Hsieh in the final, but did not drop a set through the main draw getting there.

She will end the year 2018 #98 in the world, up 84 points from her 2017 year-end ranking of 192.

Now, still only at 17 years of age, under the WTA eligibility rules, she may be limited to the number of tournaments she can play in 2019, but no doubt she'll make the most of them. From both the forehand and backhand sides, she can produce blistering baseline shots that catch you by surprise with their accuracy and pace. With an imperturbable match demeanor that belies her mere 17 years, she carries onto court that charming, youthful obliviousness to the possibility of defeat. All that makes her dangerous, and if they haven't done so already, the rest of the field should take note.



Anyway, that's the way I see it.


Here are some highlights from Amanda Anisimova's victory over Petra Kvitová at Indian Wells 2018: