Rennae Stubbs (left) with Washington Kastles teammate Olga Puchkova with the World Team Tennis championship banner. (Photo by The Daily Forehand)

View full size photo »

As promised, here is the second half of my interview with former world doubles #1, six-time grand slam winner, and recent Wimbledon women's finalist Rennae Stubbs of Australia.

(Since the interview took place, Stubbs also led her team, the Washington Kastles, to their first World Team Tennis championship).

To read the first half of the interview, click here.

TDF: You’re a pretty well established senior presence in Australian tennis, I have a couple questions about Australian players for you…

Rennae Stubbs: Yup.

TDF: Any word on how Casey Dellacqua’s doing? She’s been out a while.

Rennae Stubbs:  Yeah, she’s going to hopefully be back…I don’t think she’s going to be back for the US Open, but I think she’s going to be back maybe in the fall. 

She’ll be playing smaller events in Australia, and yeah, hopefully by the Australian Open she’s going to be back, ready to go, and we’ll have her back in the top 100, and back on our Fed Cup team.  She’s a talented player, and I’m hoping she’s going to be back to where she was before.

TDF: What are your thoughts on the comeback efforts of Jelena Dokic this year? Do you think the other Australians consider her to be a real part of Australian tennis?

Rennae Stubbs: Yeah, she’s on our Fed Cup team, she’s very Australian with her tennis.  I think her effort at the Australian Open this year was phenomenal. I think it was incredible.  I think it was one of the greatest stories we’ve had at the Australian Open in its twenty-year history at Melbourne Park. 

I think she’s got a lot of things that she has to work on, though, still.  I think it’s still going to be a tough year for her.  I think she’s battling a lot of personal things, like what’s going on with her father, I think she’s also dealing with a lot of stuff with herself.  You know, it’s not going to be easy for her, for the next year.  And she’s got a lot of points to defend at the Australian Open as well, so…

TDF: On the men’s side real quick…

Rennae Stubbs: Let me just touch on Sam Stosur before you do…

TDF: I was going to do her just after, yeah…

Rennae Stubbs: Sam’s a quality player, she’s going to be top ten, I believe.  I said that her goal was to be top twenty by Wimbledon, and she achieved that.  I think that she’s a definite force to be reckoned with.

TDF: Were you surprised that she got knocked out by Ivanovic at Wimbledon?

Rennae Stubbs: No, look, grass is her worst surface.  It doesn’t lend itself…

TDF: But she’s a serve and volley…

Rennae Stubbs: Yeah, but she’s not a real serve and volley player—there’s big misconceptions about Sam.  She’s more a slow court, hard court player, a clay courter.  For one thing, her grip is very western on her forehand, and it’s very difficult to play that type of tennis on grass.  Her kick serve is not effective on grass, as it is on every other surface.  So, you know, the basis of her game is her serve, her kick serve, and her forehand, and those things don’t lend itself that great to grass.

Having said that, I think she can do a lot better on grass, I think she will learn over the years to do better on grass, and I think she did better this year.  But she’s going to be more of a force on a hard court, or on a clay court, than on a grass court.

TDF: You’ve been playing in Fed Cup with Sam for a while and just recently started playing main tour events with her.  What made you wait so long after first playing with her in Fed Cup to make her your full-time partner?

Rennae Stubbs: Well we didn’t really play that much in Fed Cup—she was injured a long time. And she wasn’t that good like five years ago, in doubles.  So it’s taken her a little bit of time to find her way on the doubles court.  And you know, she had a lot of success.  You have to play together for a while to feel comfortable.  Even though we’re good friends, it’s taken us a little bit of time this year to be comfortable.  And I got injured in March, so we’re just getting to the point now where we’re just very comfortable with one another.  Off the court we’re very, very good friends, and now on the court it’s gelling better.

I don’t know, it’s just circumstances.  And then it just so happened that we were partnerless going into this year.  So, you know, it was a last minute thing.  We didn’t even plan on playing the year.  It was just "hey, we’re having fun." Let’s just keep playing a little bit.  Let’s play next week.

The bottom line is Sam knows that I’m here to support her in singles and I think that she wants to play doubles with somebody that supports her singles, and doesn’t play a "doubles schedule."  I mean, we’re only playing two tournaments leading into the US Open.  That proves it.

TDF: Will you be playing with someone else in other tournaments?

Rennae Stubbs: We’ll see, I haven’t decided yet.  I’m tired, I haven’t been home in almost three months.  I need to worry about, like—I always believe that quality is much more important than quantity, especially at my age.

TDF: Before you were playing with Sam you were playing with Kveta Peschke—why did you two decide to split?

Rennae Stubbs: We just weren’t—you know, it’s like a marriage.  It’s like a relationship.  You don’t see things the same way anymore.  Circumstances led us to not being that happy on the court with one another.  I think we had a really very tough schedule last year with the Olympics, and we played way too much.  You know, quantity was more important to her than quality, and we talked about it. 

Look, I’m not easy to get along with on the court sometimes.  Her personality didn’t lend itself to dealing with that very well.  But at the same time, we’re friends.  We talked about it, we just thought that…she just wanted to go in a different direction, and that’s just the way it was.  I mean, this happens.  It happens in life.

TDF: With other partners you’ve had, like Cara Black and Lisa Raymond, it’s been more about personality conflicts on the court than actual tennis—i.e. this part of your game isn’t working well with mine?

Rennae Stubbs: Yeah, well Cara and I, we had great success together.  I mean, the bottom line is that Cara’s a better backhand court player. And I’m  a backhand court player.

TDF: So that was more of a tennis decision.

Rennae Stubbs:   That was a little bit more of a tennis decision.  And she had an opportunity, she went back to playing with Liezel [Huber], and Liezel’s a forehand court player.  I think that that was a little bit more of a how we play on the court, what strengths and weaknesses decision. 

But having said that, I think Cara and I probably could have continued to play and we would have a lot of success.  There were a few, not personal things, but there were emotional things to battle as well.  I mean, that’s just life, that’s just how it goes.  Cara and I are friends, and there’s no hard feelings or anything like that.

With Lisa, it was six-and-a-half years, almost seven years of playing together, and we tried again two years later.  There’s a lot of water under the bridge with Lisa and I.  I mean, that’s like a marriage that went, you know, that just ran its course.  And we remain friends.  And again, it’s a bit of a soap opera out here sometimes.

TDF: It must be a strange dynamic with all the top doubles specialists in the WTA switching partners within the group so often.  You all know each other so well.  Does that make for more rivalries, or more friendliness? Or both? Is it just a strange dynamic?

Rennae Stubbs: It can be a combination of all of those things.  Depends on who you’re playing How it ended, if you’re still friends, if you’re not friends.  It can be a friendly rivalry—when Lisa and Sam and I would play sometimes it was a friendly rivalry, sometimes it wasn’t.  When I play Cara and Liezel, it’s more a rivalry than a friendly rivalry (laughs). 

But that’s business.  It’s business in the end.  We’re entertaining the people, and we’re trying to make a living.  So it’s a combination of all those things, really.

Rennae Stubbs: Wow, nobody’s ever asked me that.  I’ve been asked "who do you think you were best with?"...

You know, I think Lisa Raymond and I were probably one of the best teams.  When we were on, we were very solid.  We served well, we volleyed well, we moved well, we combined well on the court.  Our strengths and weaknesses matched up together.

But when Cara and I got the ball in the court, we were probably the best team ever.  I mean because we both have great hands and we’re both very athletic.  Cara brought out a lot of things in me in terms of leadership qualities on the court.  When we won in ‘04 at Wimbledon it showed me that I could be a leader, with her.  That was the first grand slam she ever won, and that felt really good for me.

And Sam, same thing.  I have to be a little bit more of a leader, emotionally on the court.  But at the same time I’m playing with one of the best singles players in the world now.  So all of them bring out a little bit of everything that is good in me. 

I would have to say Lisa and I were the best team, but there’s things for Sam and I to accomplish yet.

TDF: One last question—you’ve talked previously about there being a need for more openly gay role models for kids.  Do you think the WTA or the ATP can do anything on that front?

Rennae Stubbs:  I don’t think so, I don’t think it’s up to the leagues to promote it.  I don’t think it’s up to the leagues to promote it either way.  They don’t go around promoting heterosexual marriages.  I think it’s up to the individual. I think it’s up to the gay community and also the sponsors of the gay community—the sponsors that lend themselves to the gay community, that support the gay community to get out there and support some of these athletes that they know are openly out.  I think it’s up to them to promote them, I think that would be a way to start doing it. 

I don’t think the individual leagues—whether it be World Team Tennis, the WTA, the ATP, the NBA—I don’t think it’s up to anybody.  I think it’s up to the individual, and I think it’s up to the gay community to get out there and support its constituents.

Big thanks to both Rennae and the Washington Kastles for generously giving me the time to talk with her during the team's busy schedule.

*All photos by The Daily Forehand.