There's no middle ground for Stosur

Sam Stosur’s loss against Iveta Benesova in the WTA Brisbane International tennis tournament has identified exactly why she will not be lifting the trophy at the end of this month’s Australian Open.

Despite having all the talent in the world, Stosur appears to be very much a Plan A player, with no secondary set of skills to fall back upon if someone is handling her big serve and forehand.

Benesova is a solid player but nothing special and certainly not in the class of Petra Kvitova. Kvitova is a left-hander, I am tipping to walk away from Melbourne Park with a second Grand Slam title.

Stosur’s solid one-two game is more often than not, enough to guide her to victory but the problem is, she is either penthouse or outhouse.

She doesn’t have the consistency of a Caroline Wozniacki, who despite not winning a Grand Slam yet, does have a raft of career titles under her belt – oh and a world number one ranking to boot.

To be honest, watching Stosur against Benesova today was more frustrating than viewing Jarmila Gajdosova’s double bagel against Marion Bartoli the previous evening at the Hopman Cup.

Both Sam and Jarka are good players, but there is little doubting Stosur is the more talented of the two, which is why it is harder to cop the fact that she seems to go to water if her forehand isn’t belting winners.

I hope I’m wrong, because Sam is a nice girl and obviously has the ability to win Grand Slams, but unless she can find a mindset to add consistency to her game and stop losing to players ranked outside the top 50, we won’t have a hometown champion at the Australian Open.