I’m not really worried about how they serve, but the overall inconsistency is annoying. The Williamses are still the best players and I don’t mind the fact that they have other interests and don’t play as many tournaments as some of the others, but I do wish they’d play better when they did show up.
He’s a very good guy, but he’s on the downside of his career and doesn’t seem to need it that much. It doesn’t help that he relied so much on speed. If you have a killer serve, you can keep winning with your serve into your 30s if your body holds up, but if you’re mostly a speedster, you’re in trouble when the speed starts to go. And Blake’s assets were always his speed and his inside-out forehand. However he’s just broken Robredo’s serve to go up 3-2.
For the third straight match, Safina has lost the first set. It sounds like a bad pun but she has been playing Russian roulette this whole tournament and I am surprised she got lucky the first two times. I don’t think it really matters who is on the other side of the net from her right now, but her secondary opponent is a 19-year-old Czech named Petra Kvitova.
It’s a symptom of widespread overhitting. But I’m more bothered by the choke jobs from top players.
Hell, Ivanisevic did it for years. And so did her brother. I really do want to see her win a major at some point, because I think she has game and I prefer her to Sharapova. But she’s now down a break in the second set and I sure don’t think this is going to be the one for her. Maybe she’ll feel less pressure in Australia.
I’m watching this match on my computer since it’s not on TV, and I am astounded by how good it looks and sounds streaming from the US Open site. Safina and Kvitova are now in a decisive tiebreak.
She needed every chance she got, but Kvitova pulled off the upset, (7-5) in the tiebreak. Goes without saying that Safina should have won, but I was impressed by Kvitova’s lefty serve out wide and by her backhand. She really tightened up at the key junctures, but even so, she kept going for her shots. So Safina is done. This was a foregone conclusion and it’s disappointing that she is internalizing her failure to win a major and her ranking issue. She’s an excellent player. It’s also fascinating that she continues to fight very hard and stays technically sound even in matches where her mind is not holding up. Marat wasn’t like that. If he checked out, he was gone. Safina keeps fighting even when she has a terrible case of the yips. I hope she eventually turns it around.
Meanwhile Robredo just finished Blake in straight sets. Blake hurt his ankle (I think it was) and just didn’t have it. That gives us the following matches in the round of 16 in the top half:
Federer (1) vs. Robredo (14)
Soderling (12) vs. Davydenko (8)
Djokovic (4) vs. Stepanek (15)
Verdasco (10) vs. Isner
The following men will play their third-round matches tomorrow:
Tsonga (7) vs. Benneteau
Berdych (17) vs. F. Gonzalez (11)
Monfils (13) vs. Acasuso
Almagro (32) vs. Nadal (3)
Del Potro (6) vs. Koellerer
Ferrero (24) vs. Simon (9)
Cilic (16) vs. Istomin
Dent vs. Murray (2)
The women’s round of 16 looks a while lot weirder, especially in the top half! Out of that top four grouping, one unseeded player will make the semis. Oudin could make it two, although if she beats Petrova she may get French Open champ and ex-U.S. Open champ Kuznetsova.
Kvitova vs. Wickmayer
K. Bondarenko vs. Dulko
Oudin vs. Petrova (13)
Wozniacki (9) vs. Kuznetsova (6)
Schiavone (26) vs. Li (18)
Clijster vs. V. Williams (3)
Zvonareva (7) vs. Pennetta (10)
Hantuchova (22) vs. S. Williams (2)
Go Gary Oldman! Keep that Tarantino down! He’s won this enough times already.
Seriously though, I didn’t even know you could stream coverage live on your computer. That’s what I get for my very liberal use of the mute button when I’m in control of the TV. Even still, my computer couldn’t connect to the Blake and Robredo match. Sad.
All that I have left to say for Safina is that I think it would be really cool if she manages to finally win a Slam next year and to have that win just open the floodgates of success. You know, to break on through to the other side (How many times you see The Doors tied in with tennis?) and then finally have that burden lifted off her shoulders and just ride the success owning everything she plays in.
Nice fantasy, I do very much live in a dream world though.
I do hope she wins at least one grand slam though, I’d feel so bad for her if she doesn’t. Definately seems to fight a lot harder for her success than other players.
Safina’s got the talent to win a handful of slams for sure - not one and out a la Clijsters, I mean I could see her at least winning one per year for several years if she gets her mental blocks under control. For a Safin, that’s asking a lot, of course. I don’t know about this situation with her coach, who was supposedly really nasty with her, but it might be time for a change there.
There’s a “Watch Live” button on the main page of the site. I don’t know if it’s always there, because every other night there has been coverage on cable and tonight’s matches were only available on the Tennis Channel. But it’s the same deal tomorrow night so I’m sure it will be on the site then, too.
Yeah I saw the button and the secondary window that it opened would just stay loading the match for minutes on end. Perhaps I’m just impatient, but I saw no signs of progress and I already knew the Blake/Robredo match was nearing an end, so I figured by the time I got connected it would be over.
Sigh… Poor Roddick. His post-game interview was honest and kinda depressing. It’s funny how the commentators and reporters really want to construct a narrative in which Isner was clearly the superior player in a tight match, that he deserved to win more. The reality was that Isner and Roddick were dead even. Sure one or the other dominated certain sets, but Isner happened to win the one mini-break in the tiebreaker, which got him the match. If they played a best-of-11 tiebreak, it could easily be Roddick that won. This randomness is inherent in sport, but the commentators and reporters never want to acknowledge it. I like how Roddick brought it up, not just to explain his loss but also to admit that he has benefited by winning due to random quirks of fate when he maybe shouldn’t have.
Watching the Safina - Kvetova match was embarrassing. It was basically just a contest of two nerve-wracked players both of whom were only comfortable playing from behind, and just cracked at the slightest of setbacks and cracked even more when they actually succeeded at something! Safina in particular doesn’t look like she needs to be on the court but rather on a therapist’s couch. I like Martina’s suggestion that Safina just brick a serve into the upper deck as a cathartic way to get the most embarrassing possible scenario on the table and make everything else seem less grave in comparison.
Did anyone else love her commentary? It just felt refreshingly direct. I loved her scolding of the players for all of their mental errors, like Safina not adjusting to the fact that her opponent kept kicking every serve out wide.
This is why I think Oudin has a tiny chance of making it; she’s already beaten opponents just as good or better, with the possible exception of Kuznetsova, who I think has a decent chance of taking the tourney (if Serena has an off day in the finals).
And I guess I’d really love the statistical oddity of Oudin possibly playing only Russian opponents every round to the final!
There’s a world of difference between being the “best woman in tennis” and being ranked #1.
I was very glad to see Oudin beat Sharapova. I can’t stand Sharapova. She is a cheater. From her conveniently planned bathroom breaks, to her ear deafening shrieks that get louder at critical junctures, to her bogus injury timeouts, she consistently bends the rules to give herself an unfair advantage.
The injury rules were implemented to keep players healthy. Using them to ice your opponent when the momentum has turned against you is bad, bad form. 20 double faults? Ha! Meet karma, Maria.
Personally, I hate the injury timeout rule. If they want to keep it (and what other sport allows the entire game to come to a halt while the players receive a massage?), they should at least impose some sort of penalty – at a minimum, forfeiting one game.
I think Sharapova’s shreiks are much louder than Seles. Unfortunately, women tennis players that shreik are the rule rather than the excpetion as it was in Seles era.
And I think if I shreiked that loudly and that many times, I would have no voice the next day.
Don’t be too harsh about the shrieks, because you have to consider that the microphone’s pick up much much more now than they used to, so she may not be that much worse than someone like Seles was. And given that so many of the women shriek these days, I’m betting it’s much less of a distraction than it was when there were only one or two doing it.
I think a more appropriate rule would be a penalty in the same arena of gamesmanship; every 2 minutes of an injury timeout gets rid of one challenge. If you run out of challenges for that set, it starts getting rid of challenges for the next set.
Does anyone know why the women’s game almost always has a much higher ratio of unforced errors to winners than the men’s game? I don’t mind the balls being hit less hard, and I welcome the lowered reliance on serves and aces, but all these errors are so annoying. Are women just naturally less coordinated at the top level or what?
I don’t know what is worse: Seeing a “Who can outlast the yips?” match that is permeating women’s tennis or “Wow, that serve was a bullet.” that is ruining men’s tennis.
