Serena Williams is great but women's tennis needs rivalries to be interesting

Tennis is probably the only sport in which men and women share equal billing. The women athletes are as well known as their male counterparts. But for me, women’s tennis lacks personalities. Serena Williams is a star and Maria Sharapova can dazzle but the sport drops off after that. The sport currently lacks the flair, it lacks Steffi Graf’s beautiful backhand slice that fell drop dead on court, it lacks Hingis’ full court coverage, Billie Jean King’s devastating right arm and Martina Navratilova’s fitness that even made the male players take notice of her regime. [caption id=“attachment_2281556” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  USA’s Serena Williams during the French Open semi-finals. Reuters[/caption] As an example, take Saturday’s French Open final in which 28-year-old Lucie Safarova is set to play Williams. Safarova’s head-to-head record against Williams is a dismal 0-8 and prior to this year she had never made it past the last 16 at Roland Garros in 10 previous unremarkable Paris campaigns. In 23 Grand Slam finals, Serena has lost just four times – twice to sister Venus and once each to Sharapova and Samantha Stosur. Contast that with the men’s semi-final where Andy Murray is hoping to stare down tournament favourite Novak Djokovic. While Djokovic is arguably playing some of the best tennis of his career, so is Murray. Both men are unbeaten on clay this year and there is a tension ahead of the match that is simply missing with the women. There are three things I believe are hurting the women’s game: Outside of Serena, the top 10 women seeds are either inconsistent or don’t win the big tournaments Caroline Wozniacki managed to become World no. 1 without having won a Grand Slam in 2011. Russian Dinara Safina and Jelena Jankovic of Serbia also became No 1 without winning a slam. Serena could win her 20th Grand Slam on Saturday. The next best on the list is Sharpova, with five. That’s a huge gap. And Serena aside, the top players rarely do well from one Grand Slam to the next. Inconsistency is the name of the game. That Serena could come back from injury and dominate the way she has shows how nobody has filled the gap in her absence. No great rivalries Since the 1970s, women’s tennis has has some of the greatest rivalries in sport. Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert were on their A-game in the late seventies and early eighties. They met 80 times, with Navratilova just shading their head-to-head record 43-37. Steffi Graf and Monica Seles were at the top of their game in the mid-nineties. Their fierce rivalry was talk of the tennis world before Seles was tragically stabbed by a crazed Graf fan and was never the same after. Then the Williams sisters, along with Martina Hingis and Justine Henin, burst onto the scene. Now you have a situation where the World No. 1 – Serena – has beaten the World No. 2 – Sharapova - 15 times in a row. Serena is a dominating force Perhaps women’s tennis would be more unpredictable if Serena wasn’t around. She is the dominating force in women’s tennis. “Women’s tennis isn’t a sport these days. It’s Serena’s stage," said The Sun-Sentiniel, in the course of saying she’s a one-woman dynasty. If you look at Serena’s stats against the other women players it show just how unstoppable has been: She leads Azarenka 16-3; Lindsey Davenport 10-4 and Li Na 1–11. The only players who gave Serena some trouble were Martina Hingis, who won six of their 13 matches, and and Justine Henin, who won six of 14. Wimbledon winner Virginia Wade reiterates my point where she wrote in 2012 that “today’s women tennis stars are bland, muscular, grunting, insular, robots with no personality.” Even when we get match that pleasantly surprises us all, it ends in disappointment. Ana Ivanovic’s French Open quarter-final against Elina Svitolina was a stunner. She was back to her old Grand Slam winning self ripping 37 winners in 75 minutes to beat the WTA Rising Star in straight sets and get back into the French Open semifinals. It was fun and engaging, with both players coming up to net. There were slices and backhand drops, and the ferocity of Ivanovic’s forehand, took all the fight away from her opponent. That’s what women’s tennis needs. But Ivanovic promptly lost to Lucie Safarova in the semi-finals.