US Open 2010: Labor Day Weekend

On Saturday, I was on the grounds of the US Open catching a bunch of the matches. I'll post on this later even though it will be anti-climatic. I spent the rest of the weekend recovering from watching several hours of live tennis (and I did sneak out to hit some balls myself).

Swiss precision triumphed in the form of Ewok.

The triumph made a Scotsman surly, and edged him closer to the dreaded category: best player never to have won a slam (yet).

The best WTA player never to have won a slam was in tears, because she couldn't convert 4 match points, on her own serve which is sadly the weakest part of her game.

The shyest player in the WTA showed real heart in fighting off those match points, even though she was a break down in the third to come back and win it in a run away tiebreaker.

In the battle of glamazons from Nike and Adidas, Shrieka couldn't hit the ball hard enough (and into the court).

A shriek did knock down Caro when she couldn't run down a lob in one of her few forays to the net.

The jinx showed up in the player's box of TMF.

Alas, Jurgen, the tennis gods just didn't give you enough.

Methinks, TMF worked super hard after Wimbledon on his defense and speed. It shows.

Wimbledon 2010: Teammate Love

Lots of love got exchanged between teammates today.

Petz and Melzer won the gentlemen's doubles championship at SW19 over Lindsteadt and Tecau (61 75 75).




Vania King, gamer gal, and her partner Yaroslava Shvedova came back from a break down in the first set against Bepa and Vezzy to take the ladies doubles (76[6] 62).

Rafa must surely have yelped and danced for joy. In the World Cup, Spain's David Villa scored the sole goal late in regulation (83:00) despite the Paraguayans clogging the middle for most of the game to neutralize the Spanish passing attack. Props to Casillas for saving a penalty kick. They'll play the Germans in the semifinals, who stomped all over La Pulga and Company (Argentina).

Wimbledon 2010: Manic Monday

One of the consequences of Wimbledon taking the middle Sunday off is that all the 4th round matches took place on Monday, which makes for lots of great tennis.

The Greatest Forehand Shanker was kidnapped by aliens and replaced by TMF who returned beautifully and put on practice match against Melzer (63 62 63)

Belgian text-buddies promised to meet each other for the biggest exho since BJK beat Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes. Mum Train's chance of winning a Wimbly before she has another kid were kept alive and JuJu has another year to work on her serve (26 62 63).

Ears were split at Centre Court by Shrieka and ReeRee. Unfortunately for fans of rose petal dresses, Shrieka double faulted in the tie breaker to set up set point to gift the match to ReeRee (76 [9] 64).

Vee her sister also hung in there to win a tight straight setter over Groth (64 76[5]).

The Djoker overcame an "illness" to do his Incredible Hulk impression to overcome Rusty (75 64 36 64)

ARod played not to lose and lost to Asia's best tennis player, Rendy Lu (46 76[3] 76[4] 67[5] 97). Oh, BTW, his interview is a gem where he takes stupid media questions apart.

Nails kept enough balls in play to hit Aggie off the court (63 62).

So did Petra Kvitova to Aggie's best friend, Caro, who really needs to learn to win matches without on court coaching (62 60).

Lady JaJa had to retire with a lower back injury against Bepa (61 30).

In other news,

• Rafa steamrolled Mathieu (64 62 62)


• Sod hung in there against Ferru (62 57 62 36 75)


• Ali danced after triumphing over Benneteau his compatriot (61 46 63 61)


• Samurai couldn't hit through Muzz (75 63 64)


• Big Berd triumphed over Brand (46 76[1] 75 63)
  
• The Hamster lost to Pironkova (64 64)


• Kanepri cruised over Zakopalova (62 64)

Roland Garros 2010: Men's Semifinals

Ladies and Gentlemen: Roland Garros will bring you Sodal.

Sod took five sets to defeat Big Berd as fuzz littered the red clay (6-3 3-6 5-7 6-3 6-3). The statistical difference seems to be that Sod got more of his first serves in, where it was more likely that he would win the point. It was pretty obvious that Berd lost his legs in the fifth set as he could not put in a first serve in his last two service games.

As would be expected from two big hitters, the unforced error count and winner count was high.

	Soderling	Berdych
Unforced Errors	63	41
Winners	62	42
1st Serve %	91/145 (63%)	75/150 (50%)
Aces	18	21
DF	8	5
1st Serve % Pts Won	69/91 (76%)	56/75 (75%)
2nd Serve % Pts Won	27/46 (59%)	35/70 (50%)
Break Points Won	6/13 (46%)	4/12 (33%)
Net Approaches	12/17 (71%)	4/10 (40%)
Total Receiving Points Won	59/150 (39%)	49/145 (34%)
Total Service Points Won	96/145 (61%)	91/150 (66%)
Total Points Won	155/295 (52%)	140/295 (48%)

As expected, Nadal cruised over Melzer (6-2 6-3 7-6 [6]).

It's fairly obvious from the stats that Rafa was all over Melzer's serve and that Melzer could not get much of a toehold into Rafa's serve.

	Melzer	Nadal
Unforced Errors	32	24
Winners	29	37
1st Serve %	72/99 (73%)	65/85 (76%)
Aces	3	4
DF	2	4
1st Serve % Pts Won	41/72 (57%)	49/65 (75%)
2nd Serve % Pts Won	10/25 (40%)	11/16 (69%)
Break Points Won	2/3 (67%)	5/8 (63%)
Net Approaches	19/35 (54%)	13/19 (68%)
Total Receiving Points Won	25/85 (29%)	48/99 (48%)
Total Service Points Won	51/99 (52%)	60/85 (71%)
Total Points Won	76/184 (42%)	108/184 (58%)

From the way Rafa has been playing, the only question is how long Sod can slow him down from walking away with the La Coupe des Mousquetaires.

Roland Garros 2010: The Other Semifinalists

In the match of the day, Superhero prevailed over ReeRee by showing heart (6-2 6-7 [2] 8-6). She played a tight game in the second set where she had a chance to serve out the match at 5-4 but let ReeRee back into the match for a third set. ReeRee had a match point in the 3rd set on Sam's serve but Sam saved the MP on an FH DTL approach shot that forced an error from ReeRee. One would have expected Sam would have wilted but she didn't. She came up with the goods even though she wasn't certain she would have a second chance to win the match.

After losing that game, yeah, things kind of stepped up a notch from her. Yeah, I didn't know if I was gonna get another chance.
That third set just kind of hung in there, and I was behind the whole time serving second. Just tried to hang in and wait for another opportunity.
Then I got one at 6 All, and thankfully I took it.

The first set established the tone of the match with Sam dictating the rallies with her forehand, kick serve and backhand slice. The backhand slice negated a lot of ReeRee's power and clearly bothered her.

Jankovic quietly triumphed over the unseeded Shvedova (7-5 6-4).

It was long five-set battle, but the more mentally tough Melzer came back from the dead to beat the Djoker (3-6 2-6 6-2 7-6 [3] 6-4)

Not entirely a surprise, as the Djoker needed to put this one away quickly or else he would have to depend on his dodgy serve getting him out of the fifth set. Which it didn't.

Melzer will face the Clay Monster who prevailed over his fellow Spaniard Nico.

While it was a tight three-setter (7-6 7-6 6-4), perhaps Nico could have taken a set off of Rafa as he did in Madrid.