Couple of Americans are left in the draw on the men’s side (Roddick -Blake) Venus Williams knocked out by a qualifier from Spain. There’s some good tennis going on down under in Oz.
I’ve been watching when I can. It makes me miss college, when I could stay up to watch most of the coverage and then just sleep through class. Work would not be so tolerant.
Anyway, the women’s field has been predictably crazy, as Ivanovic and Jankovic are both out. Serena is playing herself into shape. The top men are cruising - so far. Federer looked very good in what I saw of the Safin match. And we’ve got the standard ethnic tension, which is just wonderful. :rolleyes:
While Federer has looked good, Nadal looked absolutely unstoppable in his match against Tommy Haas. He didn’t just win, he totally annihilated him.
It wasn’t so much Haas’ fault; Nadal made nearly no errors and had a crazy amount of winners.
Alize Cornet, who I’ve heard touted as a promising newcomer for some time, is trying to have her coming-out party by upsetting Dinara Safina. She just lost two match points and Safina broke twice in a row to get even, 5-5 in the fifth.
Mary Carillo was declaring this match over at 5-2 Cornet, which was just stupid. There are simply too many breaks of serve and failures of nerves in a typical high-level women’s match to call it that way. Safina owns a huge edge in power and looks like the far sturdier player in this one right now.
Anyone see the match between those two young girls, McHale and Moore? That was torture. McHale was having terrible leg and arm cramps because of the heat, and Moore was thrown off by her struggles and couldn’t finish her off. It went to 9-7 in the third before Moore wrapped it up.
Safina shows some impressive mental toughness in storming back to win that match 7-5 in the fifth. She hit the lines with amazing consistency and looks great. She’s still mental but apparently not the headcase her brother is. Maybe she’ll get more from her talent than he did. Disappointing for Cornet, though, who hung very tough but couldn’t close the deal.
We’re lazing around on Sunday afternoon, watching the Federer/Berdych match, rather surprised by how insipid Federer’s play was in the first set.
Federer is up two breaks on Berdych in the fifth set. Federer still isn’t playing like he did against Safin, but he picked up his game in the second set, even though he lost, and gradually took control of the match. Berdych stopped being comfortable once he got that two-set lead. You could see he didn’t swing as freely and stopped blasting away at the lines as he had earlier. When he was the underdog he had the confidence to play his game, and he lost that as it got later. He got tight on the biggest points. He actually got comfortable in his own skin as his lead went away and began hitting bigger again, but late in the fourth set he started having leg problems. Now he doesn’t seem to have his legs under him.
For all that, it’s been a well-played match. Federer made a lot of early errors, but Berdych was really terrific and even now, he’s not playing badly. Both players are hitting a good number of clean winners.
Federer finally got there in the end, but he had to fight for it.
Bolding mine.
It’s a long time since i took any interest in competitive tennis; are women now playing 5 sets in Grand Slam tournaments?
Because if they are, i think that’s great. Modern women tennis players are incredibly fit professional athletes, and there’s no reason they can’t play 5 sets
Not at this tournament.
They don’t play five sets in any tournament.
btw, Safina pulled her game together just in time and beat Cornet 7-5 in the third.
Yeah, that was my error, probably because the Aussies are stubborn and insist on playing in their own time zone. Women don’t play five sets anywhere. The final match of the season-ending championship used to be best of five, and I was Graf beat Hingis in one of those. Hingis was cramping at the end and she lost the fifth set 6-0. The women don’t want to play five and I don’t see the need to make them. And good for Jelena Dokic last night, by the way!
Couldn’t stay up long enough to see Djokovic beat Baghdatis, but Djokovic-Roddick and Federer-Del Potro look like good quarterfinal matchups. And there should be some more good stuff tonight, with Blake-Tsona, Nadal-Gonzalez and more.
Monfils out! Too bad.
Monfils is fun to watch, even his hair is entertaining. But he can’t stay healthy because his style of play is just too demanding.
Right now Serena looks very ordinary against Azarenka - down a set, up a break in the second. Serena’s having her ankle taped and I think Azarenka is off the court throwing up from dehydration.
Williams beats Azarenka due to retirement. That’s a shame. Azarenka really looked awful for those last few minutes.
Could I please see a cite for any of this?
For those interested, the weather’s supposed to be ugly for most of the rest of the week - 38 on Tuesday, then 41, 40, 40, 40 before falling back to 31 for Sunday. This is not so much of an issue as it used to be, as play is suspended when it gets fairly hot.
Look at the list of Tour Singles Finals - she played five five-set matches, winning three in four sets (against Sabatini, Navratilova and Sanchez-Vicario), and two that went to five sets, against Anke Huber and Hingis. It was the Virginia Slims Championship.
Edit: pipped to the post!
Thanks!
“Was” was supposed to be “watched,” but yes, that’s the match I was talking about. I re-read the article hawthorne links to before I made that post, actually.