Well you won more games than I thought you would so that in and of itself is a victory.
Kind of.
Even though I watched this match I kind of don't remember this match. Like, at all. I remember the commentators saying that JJ fainted in the locker room yesterday, was advised that she should go to the hospital, refused, and had an IV drip all night. I think after I heard that I may have stopped paying attention to the match.
Jim Fleming from USA Today (@USATgolftennis) brought up an interesting debate topic via Twitter. He said he gave JJ a lot of credit for taking the court and trying her best. I countered that it's her job as a professional athlete to try her best, that I give her credit for the hard work to qualify for Doha, but not so much for her competitive spirit once she got here. Matt Cronin has been adamant all week that he thinks JJ should have called her season and skipped Doha to heal up and let an alternate (Nails) take her spot.
I kind of agree that JJ should have skipped Doha. She's clearly not even close to 100% and when you're fainting and needing IV drips after one match that lasted less than an hour, you're not even fit enough to be competitive. But at the same time I totally understand wanting to take the court to try, because you just never know. And of course, there's the money issue. You get $100,000 for showing up and another $100,000 for every RR match you win.
But this brings me to my take on it: I get JJ wanting to make the trip to Doha, try and heal up, and take the court against Vera yesterday to see if she could compete. Why not at least give your body a chance to heal and pocket the $100,000 "appearance fee" while you're at it. No fault in her there. But once you pocket that $100k, you don't get any more money (or rankings points, obvs though you do get rankings points for each match played regardless of result) unless you win matches. So if it's true that after yesterday's match she was fainting and was advised to go to the hospital, refused, and drank from a banana bag all night then she should have sat out today's match against Kim and called it a season. I can't think that she thought that she could beat Kim given her physical state. And I can't think that the fans tuning into the match were watching because they wanted to see Kim get a punching bag as an opponent.
Feel free to voice your disagreement in the comments. I really do want to hear people's thoughts on this.
Anyway, speaking of Kim, she looked great in that first set. She was actually serving quite well, hitting cleanly, and moving great. Then things started to get loose towards the end of the first and into the second. She was double faulting like a mofo (10 for the match, I believe), which means that the serving woes she's been dealing with since her return at Wimbledon are still an issue.
But this was probably a good match for Kim to make her competitive return. JJ really couldn't hurt her, not in her state, so it was a nice way to easy into things. But she'll have her work cut out for her tomorrow when she takes on Vika.
