Okay thank you.
So who found it unclassy then? 
I don’t find it “unclassy.” She was in a press conference where the issue had been raised again, as it is ad nauseum with her, and she wasn’t poking fun at Safina, she’s making a very pointed comment about the rating system. We had a debate about that after Wimbledon here in this forum, sparked by exactly the comments you mentioned. Of course, there were perhaps better ways of expressing her opinion, but really, how is she supposed to address it? “I’m better than she is, I beat her every time we go head to head, she’s yet to win a major, and her only wins come in minor tournaments.” Is that going to come off any better? 
“I’m better than she is, I beat her every time we go head-to-head on any surface.”
That would suffice. She didn’t have to make fun of her for only winning small tournaments.
Federer got a decent test from Greul tonight but looked excellent. Serena played extremely well and laid an ungodly butt-whooping on her opponent. I eagerly await Covered_In_Bees!'s reaction to that staredown with the line judge after the foot fault call. She took her game up several notches after that, though.
I’ll be at the night session tomorrow with my little brother. The matches are Sharapova-McHale and Roddick-Gicquel. I’d much rather have seen tonight’s pairing but I’m hoping for a good time. I’ve seen Sharapova before and as I’ve said many times here, I’m not a big fan because her style of play is not that interesting. Christina McHale is an American player who lost a brutal match at the Australian Open. She lost 9-7 in the third after having leg cramps. I hope she can give it a good go.
I like Roddick’s rejuvenated game and I’m looking forward to seeing it in person. Here’s hoping for interesting matches.
We discussed these comments at the time; she made them at Wimbledon. I don’t know if there is a full transcript, but here’s a more complete quote anyway.
ETA after viewing:
Yeah, okay, she just about busts a got after saying Safina won Rome and Madrid (significant non-major tournaments, not “Charleston”). She’s being egged on by the journalists, but it’s far from classy.
I missed it. 
In my imagination though, the line person is flipping her off.
And it doesn’t sound like one of those things that will be replayed in tomorrow’s coverage. YouTube to the rescue?
Have fun.
My mistake.
They didn’t help, but she did enjoy a pretty hardy laugh and you can’t egg a person to laugh that much.
You might see a clip on SportsCenter or something. It’s pretty simple, though: a linesman called her for a foot fault and she just stopped and stared for maybe 10 or 15 seconds.
They were laughing pretty hard throughout the interview. It was odd, really, because she was being a bit sarcastic but didn’t say anything to elicit that strong a response.
This has already been an upset-riddled tournament for the women, but right now Melanie Oudin is up a break in the fifth set with a chance to knock out Dementieva. That would by far be the biggest stunner of the tournament. Dementieva’s been the best women’s player this summer, she’d finally fixed her serve, beaten Serena, won some tournaments and looked mentally strong. But Oudin is up a break at 5-2 in the third. Maybe it’s a bad day, but with her Wimbledon result and this potential upset, Oudin’s looking like the real deal!
Melanie oooh, damn! She did it! Took her three match points, but she takes out the potential favorite (at least in the non-Williams division), 5-7, 6-4, 6-3!
And now Jankovic is almost on her way out. :eek:
She lost the first set to Shvedova 3-6 and the second set is in a tiebreaker as I type this.
Okay, upset averted. They’re going to the deciding third set.
Jeez, it’s like clockwork with the Serbian duo these days. They both got to #1 last year and Ivanovic won a slam, but this year neither of them has even reached the quarterfinals of any major.
Okay upset confirmed. Jankovic out.
And my baby Sabine is definately out. Rolled her ankle big time and just laid on the court crying. :(:(
I had a great time at the Open last night with my brother, but as you probably noticed the matches weren’t exactly high on drama. The evening session started almost two hours later because of day matches that ran long, probably including Safina’s second straight attempted choke job and the long Jankovic and Oudin upsets. (I don’t know which court each one was played on.) We did get to hang around the grounds for a while to watch the last two sets of James Blake’s win over O. Rochus, which was tougher than it should have been. We also tried the Tennis Zone and had our pictures taken with a ridiculous car made of or covered in tennis ball felt. Of course you just had to stand in front of it - they would let you touch it, but refused to take a picture of you doing anything but standing three feet in front of it.
McHale hung with Sharapova for about two games - she was broken immediately, got even, and then got steamrolled. She was clearly nervous, which was understandable. The crowd tried to loosen her up, but Sharapova had way too much power. Her serve disappeared for a little while in the early second set, but by the end of the match she was playing very, very well.
I was a little let down that we didn’t see more of the new and improved Roddick game. He won easily because Gicquel doesn’t have the weapons to challenge him at all, and his serve was as good as usual, but he hardly came to net (17 times), sliced the backhand sometimes but didn’t show off that improved two-hand groundstroke, and played WAY behind the baseline. Gicquel was at the baseline and Roddick was behind it, which was really backward. All that said, Roddick won 6-1, 6-4, 6-4. I’m sure his match with Isner will be more challenging and interesting.
Since Roddick is so much stronger and more talented than Gicquel, I thought last night’s match would be a chance for him to try some new things and experiment, take a few risks. Not to be disrespectful, but Gicquel is the definition of a journeyman. He’s got a sub-.500 career record, is 32 years old and ranked #81 - although given his age and style of play, that’s impressive - has never reached the quarters of a major. He was very fast, though, just like Roddick’s first-round opponent, Bjorn Phau. In fact Gicquel did several nearly-compete splits as he raced around the court and then tried to slide to a halt. Which leads me to this piece of trivia from his Wikipedia entry:
Gicquel’s misfortune with Ben Becker’s serve is bad, but not as bad as lineman Richard Wertheim’s misfortune with Stefan Edberg’s serve during the 1983 Boy’s Single final at the 83 US Open.
Wiki trivia in the Stefan Edberg’s article:
The top 17 men’s seeds have all reached the third round, which is just crazy. The highest seed who didn’t make it was Ferrer, who lost in five sets. Looks like Taylor Dent played an amazing match to make the third round, but it’s hard to imagine him having a whole lot left when he takes on Andy Murray. Big matches tomorrow include Federer-Hewitt, Sharapova-Oudin, Roddick-Isner, and of course, Safina-Safina.
Sounds like my Saturday is booked. I never heard on ESPN today what tomorrow’s feature matches were. Probably because three out of four of today’s feature matches were all featuring a bitch or two that I don’t like. Both Williams’ and Andy Murray. shudder
Thank God for Nadal to finish the night off. A pretty decent match. That second set definately had people raising some eyebrows as to just what was going to happen. Then the third and fourth sets cleared it up rather nicely. 
Yep, Nadal played a solid match last night.
Question: Why does Rafa always look like he is going a to movie after a tennis match?
Answer:
Because, he is always picking his seat
Man, it would be awesome if the qualifier Witten manages to sneak past Djokovic. I don’t think he’d make it that far, as he’s playing the match of his life against a stumbling Novak, and he’s still down two sets to one. And he looks like the least fit guy on the men’s side…
And why is CBS going away from the match to show us 15 minutes of hype for the Sharapova-Oudin match? It hasn’t even started yet!
My mom called me to complain about that. In fact she was annoyed they went away from Federer-Hewitt to show Djokovic-Witten, and then went away from that to talk about Sharapova-Oudin. ESPN hasn’t been doing this kind of thing this year, or at least not that I remember, but CBS always does it a lot. I was out running errands so I just started watching a few minutes ago. Looks like Oudin had to fight like hell to close the second set against Sharapova, and I can’t wait to see how it ends!