Fitness vs. Power; What is Better in Women's Tennis?

What is going on with women's tennis? There has not been a consistent number one woman in the world in a while. It is not because of some new upcoming seventeen year old Russian beauty who is unbeatable. It is because the women on the pro tour have become so unpredictable; one day they might be playing the best tennis of their lives and then the next day and they are losing to a woman who is ranked 100 spots below them. The consistency issues are due to the lack of finesse in the women's draw. The pro women have become so one dimensional with their base line games, making them get stuck in these long base line rally points. In the end it comes down to two things; (1) fitness and (2) who can hit a bigger shot first. The downside of the latter is that with these bigger shots comes a bigger risk of creating an error. This is not how the game of tennis was originally played; it was a game that required wooden rackets and people with brains. Power was not the most important part of the game, but instead the most important part was who could out smart their openent.

The other day I was watching the second round of the 2009 Australian Open and one player, a young Belgian caught me by surprise. She was playing Jelena Jankovic, the number one seed and really struck me as someone to look out for in future Grand Slams. Her name is Kristen Flipkens and she came out motivated to beat the world's best. She played a different game then most women because she came up to net. Using a tough inside out forehand she was able to work her way up to net and put away an easy volley, throwing off Jankovic. You could see through the frustration in Jankovic's body language that Flipken's net game was throwing her off. By coming to the net Flipkens was able to cut off Jankovic's tough ground shots and put the shots that normally would be hard to put away from the baseline away. Even though Flipkens lost 4-6, 5-7 I think that the top women have much to learn from her; there is more than just strong ground strokes in tennis.