Lucic-Baroni is just yet another case of the mental nature of tennis. More and more everyday I'm convinced that tennis is more than 50% mental. Here's a woman who went to the semifinals of Wimbledon in 1999. She had and has game. I'm not saying she could have won slams or went to finals or even more slams semis. But there was no reason she should have lost in the first round so often, especially right after going to that semi. I mean, she took a set from Steffi Graf in that semi. Steffi had just won her 22nd slam at the French less than a month before that. She lost to a lot of ladies outside the top 50 that she really should have been winning. It looks like she didn't play anything after the 2000 US Open until Miami the next year. So maybe she was injured. She had to qualify at the French. Whether she was dealing with an injury or not, this woman never went to a semifinal again, anywhere, after that 1999 Wimbledon semi. That is not an injury. It seems an extreme case of a lack of mental fortitude.
Now she's letting some confidence carry. She's into her first semifinal since that 1999 Wimbledon semi. I imagine if you had told Steffi Graf that day that this would be the case, she would have laughed in your face. I find it quite sad. The money she's missed out on. The titles she could have won. Maybe not a ton. But more than 10 I'd say. She won the first tournament she ever played. And went the the final of the second. At 15. She played doubles with Hingis and won. Obviously Hingis could win many doubles matches on her own as long as she had another person around to at least get some balls back in play, but I mean, Hingis was willing to play with her. That says something. I mean, what happened to this young lady that caused her to just.... lose it. By 2003 she had almost quit playing. She played one event on the ITF circuit in 2004 and 2005 and didn't play at all in 2006. She was 24 in 2006. I just find this all rather fascinating. I'm not thinking she could have been up there with the Williams sisters and Capriati and Henin and Clijsters and the lot in the early 2000's. But she could have been part of the top 30. Top 50. She could have been part of the Chanda Rubin, Nathalie Dechy, Tatiana Golovin, Eleni Daniilidou. That's not exactly the tightest knit group. But that's part of the point. These are women who I remember their names when I look at them and they didn't dominate the game.
uzzled
