Paul Lewis: Women's tennis needs a big serve

Gladiators might seem a strange term to apply to women tennis players but, with a burgeoning injury rate affecting the top level of the sport, there is only a small leap of faith required. Unlike the gladiators - some of whom fought only a few times a year - women tennis players are in their version of the Colosseum every week.

While the crowd may not be baying for their blood, injury has the same effect on the players as the gladiators - it can end their career. Of course, if a gladiator was injured beyond useful repair, they were marched out the back and introduced to the wrong end of a gladius, or Roman short sword. There are those who think world tennis authorities are pretty much putting top women players to the sword with the spate of injuries affecting them.

Late last year, former world number one and teenage prodigy Tracy Austin slammed the women's circuit, saying that the season is too long, too hard and that many tournaments are missing star players because they pull out with injuries brought on by too much tennis. She has urged the WTA to cut the tour or face a crisis.

Austin should know what she is talking about. After all, she won three Grand Slams and had her own career ended at 21 because of chronic injuries. There are any number of examples in 2005 of top players pulling out of tournaments with injuries and Maria Sharapova was already out of this month's Australian Open before news that she will play after all. Kim Clijsters has remarkably announced she will retire in 2007 because of injuries - she is 22 - this in a sport where the leading players regularly used to play on until in their 30s.

Austin's beef is that the season allows only six weeks off in a year. While that doesn't sound too bad, she maintains that the players really only get two weeks off a year before they have to start getting back into mental and physical shape because the Australian Open occurs early in the year. Some put the rash of injuries in the women's game down to the new physicality of the game - booming serves, stronger ground-strokes, weight training - and the new stresses put on bodies. There is some truth in that but the underlying problem is world rankings and the status quo.

To maintain or improve their ranking, women have to undertake at least the same programme as the previous year. Rankings have to be maintained or improved so that players (besides earning prize money at tournaments) also attract the lucrative endorsements that bolster their earnings so spectacularly.

And there is the real problem: money. The WTA fill the year with tournaments from which their own income grows; players do not want to relinquish their rankings or earnings level (although it's harder to criticise players who are, after all, only making the most of what is often a short sporting life).

Players have to stay on the international treadmill for another reason - it's tough to catch up once you jump off. Examples: Serena Williams and Martina Hingis. Williams is probably the most talented and powerful player on the circuit, when she is focused and fit. But she is suffering from burnout and/or the delusion that she is a fashion guru and/or actress.

She played only 28 matches last year (21-7 record) and somehow won the Australian Open after the best women's match of 2005, beating Sharapova in a semifinal thriller. But the rest of the year dwindled from that point and her ranking slipped from No 7 in the world to No 11, her first time outside the top 10 since 1998. At times during the season, Williams took a month off. When she returned to the circuit, she was often overweight and undercooked - and suffered injuries to knee and ankles as a result.

Hingis, who retired late in 2002 with heel, foot and ankle injuries, is returning to the circuit this year but faces a different problem. The game has moved on and although Hingis has undeniably good court-craft, ground strokes and determination, her serve, these days, looks even more kerplunk than kerboom. It will give the big hitters at the top end of the top 50 a chance to attack her. Her progress this year may be an interesting illustration of how the women's game has changed and grown in power and she has a fascinating clash with Justine Henin-Hardenne today in Sydney.

But it is doubtful that the game will change in the way Austin wants. The WTA is too wed to its 'Colosseum' to change or to want to change. The players earn a lot of money - enough to justify starting young, blazing brightly and then burning out.

Sadly, there are plenty more where they came from. It will take a real emergency to bring change - like player revolt or a large number of seeds injured or public discontent at reduced fields in a major like the US Open.

In the meantime, enjoy what you see of the top women's tennis players. Stars, yes, but maybe only shooting stars.