March Madness #9: Kuznetsova happens on and off the court

It's madness, I tell you! Fuzzy yellow ball style. Follow along this week for our Top 17 takeaways and outtakes from the 2017 Sunshine Double in California and Florida.

Check out No. 10 here.

Svetlana Kuznetsova has been a woman of mystery for many years. She can be prone to running the table at any one event—take her two major singles titles, for instance—or she might suffer a desultory first-round loss. She battles with the best (read: Williams, Serena), and yet she might lose to a relative also-ran on the WTA Tour.

That’s Kuznetsova in a nutshell. Sveta happens.

But her return to form in Indian Wells, where she stormed to the championship and ultimately lost to Elena Vesnina, revealed that Kuznetsova is hardly done yet. True, she will turn 31 in late June. Even so, she continues to give us gems of points such as this:

Kuznetsova remains one of those few pros who is equally dangerous when playing offense and defense. And she remains one of the biggest personalities on tour.

A week after her Indian Wells finale, Sveta fell in a hotly contested match against Venus Williams at the Miami Open. No doubt she felt it in the legs, the glory and the soreness of her race to a final in the desert. Even so, she, one of the WTA’s premier athletes, might find more openings in 2017.

She may even have a post-tennis career in interviewing.

With Serena choosy about when to play and Maria Sharapova, Victoria Azarenka and Petra Kvitova in various modes of return and repair, others at or near the top haven’t exactly placed a stranglehold on the big titles. (Looking at you, Garbine Muguruza, Angelique Kerber and Simona Halep.)

What goes around comes around, and Sveta will quite likely happen again. Rejoice.