Cara Black: Good golly Miss Volley.

Publication: South Florida Sun-Sentinel (via Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service)

Bookmark this article Print this article Link to this article Email this article Digg It! Add to del.icio.us RSS

COPYRIGHT 2005 South Florida Sun-Sentinal

Byline: Charles Bricker

NEW YORK _ She's No. 144 in singles, but she's No. 18 on the 2005 WTA Tour money list with $427,430, and there's a strong chance she'll be the No. 1 player in women's doubles at the end of this year.

It's hard to pass a court where little Cara Black is practicing and not get slightly mesmerized by her volleying.

There are those who would identify Rennae Stubbs of Australia as the best volleyer in women's tennis. She's up there on my list, too. But I'll go with Black.

You want a volleying clinic, you watch Black _ fast hands, amazing reflexes, great technique and, at 110 pounds, probably the smallest player in the game.

"My dad had a drill for us when we were young. You'd get very close to a wall and start volleying off the wall, counting down from 100, and he would see how long it would take us," she said. "I think my record is 29 or 30 seconds."

At 26, Cara long ago figured out that finishing 1997 as the No. 1 junior in both singles and doubles wasn't going to put her into the top 10 as a pro.

In fact, she has played only 29 singles matches this year and needed a gold exempt card to get into the Wimbledon singles.

Doubles, however, was no problem, and she and partner Liezel Huber won the title for the second year in a row _ this time without the loss of a set, sweeping through elite singles players Svetlana Kuznetsova and Amelie Mauresmo, 6-2, 6-1, in the final.

"It's definitely been tough to accept what's happened in singles, but sometimes you have to go with what you've got that's good," she said Friday after a one-hour training session with Stubbs.

The two quickly came together as a team after Huber tore medial collateral and anterior cruciate ligaments in a World Team Tennis match right after Wimbledon.

Black and Stubbs will be seeded No. 1 when the U.S. Open doubles draw comes out Monday or Tuesday, with Black taking dead aim at catching Virginia Ruano Pascual for No. 1 in the individual doubles...

Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.