Roland Garros 2011: Women's Champion

Something about winning this tournament makes you do this.



They're building clay courts in China as we speak for lots of little girls. Congratulations Nails!





The woman she beat was only the defending champion. There's something about Franny that just makes you want to smile and hug her.



Absent Henin and the Williams sisters, I think woman's tennis is doing just fine.

Australian Open 2011: Caro Knocks Out Franny

You'd think if your opponent had just played the longest Grand Slam women's singles match in history at almost 5 hours, you'd have easy pickings, right?

Instead Franny took it to Caro, and raced out to 63 31 lead. I certainly thought we were head toward the Golden Retriever getting an old-school tennis lesson. But Caro stepped up, and started to take the ball a little bit earlier, and made Franny earn her points. Franny made 4 consecutive unforced errors, and suddenly we had a close match.

You may not like the fact that Caro doesn't hit a lot of winners, but then again she's very similar to Mats Wilander who had a very unflashy game, which was good enough to win the Aussie Open.

Props to Caro for digging deep and getting through to the semis (36 63 63): she's going to need to show this kind of play against Nails who will pounce all over her.

US Open 2010: Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better

For those old enough to remember Mia Hamm, she did a great Nike commercial with Michael Jordan, based on this classic jazz standard.



Watch Franny do it better



We already know Fed can do it again.

Watch the Magician school Fed. It's a bummer he retired. No wonder Feddy felt like he had to add a shot to his repetoire.

Roland Garros 2010: Women's Final

Franny played freely with nothing to lose and served out of her mind to take the
Coupe Suzanne Lenglen back to her home of Milan (6-4 7-6 [2]). Franny played clutch by approaching the net to come up with the goods at key moments. As expected Sam served well except at key moments where it seemed she let up just a moment. She never seemed to relax and was broken in two of her service games facing triple break points. Franny is obviously late in her career (age 29) and this is realistically her only chance to win a major.

	Stosur	Schiavone
Unforced Errors	28	19
Winners	25	26
1st Serve %	42/65 (65%)	46/71 (65%)
Aces	3	6
DF	1	1
1st Serve % Pts Won	30/42 (71%)	35/46 (76%)
2nd Serve % Pts Won	13/22 (59%)	15/24 (63%)
Break Points Won	1/2 (50%)	2/7 (29%)
Net Approaches	11/18 (61%)	14/15 (93%)
Total Receiving Points Won	21/71 (30%)	22/65 (34%)
Total Service Points Won	43/65 (66%)	50/71 (70%)
Total Points Won	64/136 (47%)	72/136 (53%)

It was pretty obvious from Sam's concession speech that she was holding back tears. No, I don't think she choked either. Hopefully she can take away positives from this as she obviously has the game to come back and win a Major on another try.

Roland Garros 2010: Women's Semifinals

The finalists are surprising. Stosur was one to watch out for but had to beat Allez Bitch, ReeRee and Lady JaJa. Franny was not really on the radar screen of most.



Kudos to Franny who outplayed (ever so slightly) a gimpy Demy in the 1st and only set (7-6[3] retire). I thin toward the end of the set she made the adjustment to hit heavier topsin shots so that she played excellent defense as Demy kept trying to break down her one-handed backhand. A real bummer for Lena who has been always been the bridesmaid at a Slam, but never the bride. The injury to her left calf that she sustained in her earlier rounds caught up to her and she might miss Wimbledon.

	Schiavone	Dementieva
Unforced Errors	12	24
Winners	12	15
1st Serve %	60%	71%
Aces	1	2
DF	2	4
1st Serve % Pts Won	20/27 (74%)	23/35 (66%)
2nd Serve % Pts Won	7/18 (39%)	5/14 (36%)
Break Points Won	1/4 (25%)	1/1 (100%)
Net Approaches	8/10 (80%)	6/7 (86%)
Total Receiving Points Won	19/45 (42%)	14/43 (33%)
Total Service Points Won	29/43 (67%)	26/45 (58%)
Total Points Won	48/94 (51%)	46/94 (49%)

Noting spectacular from the statistics side, as would be expected from a set that goes to a tiebreaker.



I was not entirely surprised that Sam terminated Lady JaJa (6-1 6-2). Yeah, that kick serve and heavy topspin FH does wonders on clay. WTA, take notice! When your second serve is a weapon, you really have nothing to fear.

	Stosur	Jankovic
Unforced Errors	16	22
Winners	18	9
1st Serve %	61%	74%
Aces	7	2
DF	4	1
1st Serve % Pts Won	25/31 (81%)	13/24 (38%)
2nd Serve % Pts Won	8/16 (50%)	7/11 (60%)
Break Points Won	5/10 (50%)	1/5 (20%)
Net Approaches	4/6 (80%)	4/6 (67%)
Total Receiving Points Won	26/46 (57%)	18/51 (35%)
Total Service Points Won	33/51 (65%)	20/46 (43%)
Total Points Won	59/97 (60%)	38/97 (40%)

From the stats it is pretty obvious that Sam was all over JaJa's first serve. It's a pretty good bet that in most of the points, Sam took immediate control.

Sam has been playing very consistent and steady clay-court tennis, and plays better offense than Franny. Tactically, Sam should adjust to attack Franny's FH with an inside-in FH or BH DTL. Franny will need to hope that her high bouncing topspin shots or BH slices can frustrate Sam. But none of that from Henin really frustrated her. From the way Sam has been playing, I think the Coupe Suzanne Lenglen is on her racquet.

Roland Garros 2010: Surprise Semifinalists

The biggest surprise, by far, is the end of TMF's record of 23 consecutive appearances in Grand Slam finals courtesy of General Sod the Evil One (3-6, 6-3, 7-5 6-4).




Many (like Bozo, FYB and Killer) think that Sod's ability to hit big was the sufficient condition for his win and keep Fed on his heels. As Killer put it, Sod played Red Line tennis for three sets and shot the moon.

I'm in the minority (with Fed incidentally). While I think Sod had to play his game (hit big), I don't think that was enough to bet Fed. From the match statistics, everything was even except for breaks of serve. I think that the net gain of winners to UFE favored Fed (+13 to +7). Perhaps the forced error advantage to Soderling (+9) washes out those Fed's UFE/winner advantage for a measly +3 point advantage. In conclusion, it's not hard to guess that the difference in the match got down to break points.

	Federer	Soderling
Unforced Errors	27	42
Forced Errors	48	39
Winners	40	49
1st Serve %	64%	64%
Aces	12	14
DF	2	5
1st Serve % Pts Won	56/76 (74%)	59/81 (73%)
2nd Serve % Pts Won	23/41 (56%)	25/39 (64%)
Break Points Won	2/7 (29%)	4/9 (44%)
Net Approaches	13/17 (76%)	18/30 (60%)
Total Receiving Points Won	42/126 (33%)	40/119 (34%)
Total Service Points Won	79/119 (66%)	84/126 (67%)
Total Points Won	121/245 (49%)	124/245 (51%)

A key point was set point on Sod's serve in the 3rd at 4-5 where Fed replied to a Sod overhead in the deuce corner (by the fence) with an overhead. Then Soderling hit a backhand overhead reply crosscourt to save set point. After a rain delay in which the umpires waited a point to suspend the match while it was pouring, Fed double faulted on his serve to hand Sod a break point which he converted with a FH approach shot.

Afterwards Fed had this to say:

Q. In any case, before the stop you had a set point, so it could have been another story, or he started playing flat?

ROGER FEDERER: Yeah, I mean, best of five set matches you always get chances, and I definitely had those at, what was it, 5 4, Love 30? I mean, he missed a forehand that was close to go up at Love 30, and then he had a forehand that just touches the line a little bit to go maybe Love 40 instead of, you know, 15 30. So that's obviously a big change.
The backhand smash he hit he catches with the frame a little bit, you know. I mean, that was kind of a hard shot to hit, I thought. That kind of shot from my side with the smash and stuff is very unusual.
So hit it well, you know. But he played aggressive and kept on coming. When the conditions got more heavy when we came back from the rain delay, he played well, you know.
That was a tough set for me to lose after having those chances and being up 40 15 on my serve when I came back.

One other consequence of Fed losing in the quarters is that he will loses the chance to break Sampras' record at the number of weeks holding the #1 ranking this summer if Rafa wins the French. Rafa will displace Fed as #1.

Q. As you look inside yourself, what is worse for you: having been beaten in quarterfinals and have no chance to win another Grand Slam title, or let the chance open to lose the No. 1?
ROGER FEDERER: I mean, you just take the defeat as it is. You don't think of the consequences. I guess most disappointed I am that I can't defend my title here. I really felt like my tennis was good enough to come here and do it again, but that was not the case today.
So it's more the disappointment in having maybe not delivered my very best performance today, conditions and opponents didn't allow me to.
And, yeah, then you move on. You know, you move on to the grass and forget a little bit.

Big Berd continued to show good form by triumphing over Head Banger (6-3 6-1 6-2).





Kudos to Franny who triumphed over Caro (6-2, 6-3) to earn her first semifinal appearance in a Grand Slam.

Caro gave all credit to Franny:

She played well. She played with a lot of spin. She didn't make a lot of mistakes. She played aggressive. She was playing better than me today. I was always one step behind.

By using a lot of spin, Franny actually beat Caro at her normal retriever-style tennis.

Franny will face LenaD who triumphed over a gimpy Nads (2-6, 6-2, 6-0). This is tough to believe after the clay-court season LenaD had been having.