Something About Cibulkova

There is something about Dominika Cibulkova that is extremely compelling to watch!

She's scrappy, running down every ball that comes on her side of the net. She's intense, seemingly always looking for and trying to hit "the shot" in every rally. She's feisty, readily showing her emotions on court. All of these things and more in one of the most diminutive frames in the WTA!

The 22-year old Slovakian stands at just 161 centimeters, but possesses some of the strongest ground strokes in the game. In the past few years she has been able to pull the pieces of her immense talent together to maximize the benefits of her attributes. Her height allows her to defend well while staying low to the ball and balanced, while her intensity allows her to go for the aggressive shot early help to keep her opponents off-balance.

Zeljko Krajan, her current coach and Dinara Safina's former coach, might have something to do with this transformation. He helped Dinara reach the number one ranking. But they parted ways as her decline from the elite started to take its' toll on the mental side of her game. It was often hard to watch them interact during her matches. She often looked up at him in her box for signs of how to fix all that was seemingly going wrong in her game. Sometimes she would look lost, other times like a petulant child. His looks to her were not for the faint of heart either. Many times he seemed irritated our even disgusted by Dinara's play. It never seemed like a good match.

It's a very different story with Dominika. Maybe it's that odd alchemy that happens sometimes with tennis players and certain racquets, coaches, strings, shoes... They may not know why, but it just "feels right"! And so it had been with Zeljko and Dominika. It feels right. He has helped her channel her on-court emotions to help her game instead of hurting it as can happen during tense matches. He has also given her confidence and belief in her abilities.

When they first started working together there were some who thought he wouldn't last more than a few months because of her reputation for mowing through coaches. They were wrong, of course. And her results since they began speak volumes to the benefits of this partnership. As I watched them interact on the practice court there is a good feeling present. Guidance and respect without over-reliance on her part. And an overall sense of a positive partnership that has clearly given her the ability to step her game up several notches.

She is coming into the Stanford event after withdrawing from her previous tourney due to a recurring abdominal injury. She's looking good and striking the ball well, so hopefully her injury fitness won't be in question. Ask Maria Kirilenko. They played an extremely tough practice set together while qualifications were going on around them. And the level of play by these two top players was clearly evident from the qualifiers around them. Maria K's distinctive grunt, and deep groundstrokes, Dominika's distinctive grunt and deeper groundstrokes were on full display. More often than not, it seemed that the points were going to Dominika with depth, pace, and angles. It was a set worthy of tournament play.

Here's hoping that she can keep up the strong results and show that, like Justine Henin, you don't have to be one of the Amazon-sized players to have success on the WTA tour.