Tipsy v. Djoko… so far Tipsy is holding tough.
That didn’t last long. Djokovic has won five out of six games and is serving for the set. As much as I like Tipsarevic - and despite the Neitzsche tattoo - you could say he’s not mentally tough. His attention seems to wander. Meanwhile Wozniacki won the first set against Petkovic 6-1.
And just as I say that… Tipsarevic is now up 6-5 and will serve for the first set. This one is definitely fun!
This is some good tennis!
Two sets of great stuff. But now Tipsarevic’s leg is hurting, and he had it wrapped for an injury. Djokovic won the third set 6-0 in about 5 minutes.
And Stosur has beaten Zvonareva. 6-3 6-3.
Fed starts strong against Tsonga, and now it gets stopped for rain.
Federer just finished off Tsonga in three sets, and he looked as good as I’ve seen him in a long time. Federer served exceptionally well and Tsonga did not serve well. Tsonga wasn’t bad, and he was definitely very good from the mid-second set to early in the third, but it wasn’t his night and without his serve, he wasn’t going to pull off a comeback like he did at Wimbledon - in that match, Federer got one break point in the first set and never had a sniff for the rest of the match. Here, Federer had many more chances to break and he made good on enough of them. I think Tsonga had two break points.
The men’s final has been postponed to Monday and the women’s final to Sunday. So the women are all off tomorrow, and two of the men’s quarters will be played - Isner vs. Murray and Roddick vs. Nadal. Checking the doubles results, I saw that one of the teams I mentioned, Matkowski/Fyrstenberg, upset Bhupathi-Paes to reach the semis. The Indo-Pak Express is also still alive and they will play the last quarterfinal match tomorrow.
We haven’t posted about it here because I’m not sure any of us knows about her, but there are three big names in the women’s semis - Serena, Wozniacki, and Stosur - and unseeded Angelique Kerber, a young German player who hadn’t won a Grand Slam match in more than a year and whose career U.S. Open record was 1-3 before this. She’s ranked 92nd, so she just barely qualified for the main draw. I don’t think she’ll beat Stosur, but you have to give her credit for making it this far.
Federer looks totally driven. I think he can win this thing. Beating Tsonga like that is quite hard. If he wins the next one, he’s clearly the favorite.
This is the fourth year in a row that the final has been moved to Monday because of rain, renewing calls for putting a roof on a stadium. Arthur Ashe is too big, but it would be a great result IMO if they tore it down and built a more sensibly-sized stadium with a roof. I wonder if it would be possible simply to remove the upper layer of Ashe - seats in there are not worth having anyway because you are so far from the action.
Fingers have also been pointed at the scheduling. the US Open is the only slam that takes three days to complete the first round. It then crushes the men’s semis and final into the last two days. This leaves little leeway for rain delays. If the first round had finished a day earlier, they could have completed all the quarters yesterday, giving all players a day’s rest before the semis.
if he wins the next one, he’ll certainly be in the top 2 favourites
No way they’ll tear the thing down. It’s not even 15 years old and despite the flaws, it’s the National Tennis Center’s main attraction and I am sure they’re making plenty of money from it, too. Taking off some seats would be better, although I don’t know if they would be able to complete a project like that without disrupting the next year’s tournament.
That’s not quite true: the French Open now plays a couple of matches on the first Sunday, although before that they did complete the first round in two days. I admit I don’t like having the semis and finals on consecutive days, but the Open takes the same amount of time as the other majors - two weeks. A rain delay is always going to cause a disruption, especially if it lasts for two days. A roof over one of the show courts would have helped, but even that would not have totally prevented this. And unfortunately it does not sound like there is a simple solution to this problem.
Does Wozniacki have a shot against Serena today? The betting lines have Serena as about a 4 to 1 favorite, which seems odd considering their rankings.
Well, they use three days by starting a day earlier. Let’s make my point 100% accurate: the US Open is the only slam that does not finish the first round until Wednesday.
I’d be very, very surprised. I don’t expect it to be close. Stosur might be playing well enough to give her a good match in the final.
Serena’s ranking is low because she was out for almost a year. There was talking that the USTA should have seeded her higher, and given her results to this point, you have to conclude they should have done that. She’s been wrecking people since she came back to the tour and she has looked really good at this tournament. And then there’s the small matter of their comparative success in major tournaments. Wozniacki either has to turn on some reserve of offense that we haven’t seen before, or she to hope Serena starts making mistakes, which she hasn’t done to this point.
I’m not sure how much difference it would really make if they scheduled things differently, but it couldn’t hurt. Like I said, I don’t like the scheduling of the semis and finals, and the men seem like they are considering making this into a labor issue. Meanwhile it should be noted that in rescheduling things, the women are now going to play their semifinals Saturday night (the first match will start at 7) and the final Sunday afternoon (starting around 4). That seems even more ludicrous.
Murrary…Murray …Murrary…quite cha’ bitchin’!
Isner has his moments.
I think CBS is pushing their weight around with the scheduling.
I don’t think they even need to throw their weight around. TV is a huge source of revenue and the organizers want to keep the networks happy without being told so you have a situation where the original timeslots for the semis and finals are still occupied under the new schedule even though it means the finals and semis will be so close to each other. And I’ll admit playing matches back to back is less of a problem for the women than for the men.
Isner gave Murray a pretty good battle, but he looked drained for most of the match. As many free points as Isner gets from his serve, dragging that huge body around the court always wears him out, so playing two days in a row was just too much to ask. Murray does not tire. Even so, the last set went to a tiebreak. Murray won 7-5, 6-4, 3-6, 7-6 (2). It was interesting to hear how critical Luke Jensen was regarding Murray, though - said he’s way behind Djokovic and Nadal and Federer and it’s extremely hard for him to beat them because he lets his opponents dictate play and doesn’t have a weapon to end points. I agree with all of that, but you don’t hear the ESPN guys put it that way, for example.
Fyrstenberg/Matkowski are in the men’s doubles final after taking out the Indo-Pak team. Back at the ranch, Nadal is destroying Roddick. Nadal too the first set 6-2 and is up a break at 2-1 in the second. Roddick’s first serve percentage is about the same as Nadal’s, and not that I thought he was going to win, but if he serves that low a percentage there’s no way he can even make it competitive.