Forty Deuce

Fresh and Tasty

 

I'm going to assume that Rafa's giving the actual "thumbs up" and not the HIMYM "thumbs up" from last night.  Because that would be rude.

 

Rafa and Baggy locked horns in a pretty fun match, with Rafa coming out on top 64 36 64.  

And he debuted his neon green kit, which I love.  He looks like a Listerine breath strip.  You just want to put him on your tongue and let him...

 

Wait...what were we talking about?

"F before I, F before I..."

Much love to Mrs. Saifn's boss for giving her the afternoon off to go catch her future husband in LA:

• I got to the stadium during the Isner/Baghdatis 2nd set tiebreaker. At 10-all, Isner had a nasty fall and grabbed his leg in pain. Marcos immediately jumped the net and was the first to reach him. After a short timeout, Isner came back on court. He was having trouble putting weight on his left leg, but managed to win the next few points and the match. Marcos shook hands nicely, walked to his chair and smashed his racket. 

• For Marat I sat in the first row behind the baseline. At first it was a little embarrassing to do the S-A-F-I-N cheer by myself, but after a few beers it was less about embarrassment and more about "F before I, F before I". Towards the end of the match, a group of people at the top of the stands started using the cheer, which is awesome, unless they were making fun of me.

• I was getting worried that my good luck charm status was used up with the 3 wins in two days, but just after I texted you that Karate Kid was looking too good, Marat came back. In his on-court interview after the match he said he's staying in LA until next Thursday and that his ex-girlfriend is from here ("So is your future wife," I shouted. OK, whispered).

• There were only a few people waiting for him after the match so I stuck around and got him to sign the playing card Love All gave me at IW. I couldn't ask about the monkey because when he looked at me all I could think was, "Did he just recognize me? Does Marat know me?"

• I stayed to watch Tursunov and Gulbis play doubles against some other guys. They were laughing and joking the whole time, and they won easily. Dima got pulled wide on one shot; when the point was over he picked a flower from one of the pots lining the side wall and presented it to Ernie as a gift, who knocked it out of his hand laughing. It was a really funny moment. They are a super-cute doubles team.

Dear Mr. Mrs. Saifn's boss.  Please recognize that she has been present at all of Marat's 4 wins in three days.  She needs to be there for all his matches.  Do your part and let her go.

Cuz Tranny'll Cut You

Is anyone else as shocked as I am that Tranny is ranked below A-Bond?  Just me?  
I don't know, I guess I'm just way more scared of Tranny than A-Bond.  Tennis-wise, I mean.  Non-tennis-wise I *know* I'm way more scared of Tranny.

Singles - Second Round
(1) Dinara Safina (RUS) d. (Q) Yaroslava Shvedova (KAZ) 63 63
Francesca Schiavone (ITA) d. (5) Alona Bondarenko (UKR) 46 75 63
(6/WC) Daniela Hantuchova (SVK) d. Kateryna Bondarenko (UKR) 26 62 61
Olga Govortsova (BLR) d. Nathalie Dechy (FRA) 61 63

Doubles - Quarterfinals
(3) Dekmeijere/Kops-Jones (LAT/USA) d. Camerin/Coin (ITA/FRA) 64 76(5)
(4) Dechy/Pelletier (FRA/CAN) d. Lefèvre/Védy (FRA/FRA) 62 63
Errani/Pennetta (ITA/ITA) d. Cirstea/Safina (ROU/RUS) 76(4) 61
Krajicek/Wickmayer (NED/BEL) d. Cetkovska/Uhlirova (CZE/CZE) 61 76(1)

As for the guys it was straight up sadness as Baggy went down with a knee injury and was forced to retire.  Why did this guy do to deserve all this?

Singles - Second Round 
[3] D Ferrer (ESP) d O Hernandez (ESP) 64 63 
[4] R Schuettler (GER) d [Q] T de Bakker (NED) 63 76(3) 
[7] J Chardy (FRA) d [Q] D Norman (BEL) 36 63 63 
[WC] R Sluiter (NED) d M Baghdatis (CYP) 43 ret. (left knee)

Doubles - Quarter-finals 
[1] W Moodie (RSA) / D Norman (BEL) d A Clement (FRA) / M Gicquel (FRA) 63 64 
J Brunstrom (SWE) / J Rojer (AHO) d [3] C Kas (GER) / P Petzschner (GER) 26 62 12-10 
E Butorac (USA) / S Lipsky (USA) d I Kunitsyn (RUS) / D Sela (ISR) 63 36 10-8

1-1

That's Serena's new record against Klara Zakopalova for the '09 clay court season.  So... there's that.  I can't really say anything about anyone's level of play since I didn't watch very much of it, but I can say that Serena's knee wrap looked oddly high tech.  Although I could be making that up in my head.

I don't think she's even wearing jewelry from her own line. What kind of marketing strategy is that, Serena?  

There were other matches this morning, of course, mostly wrapped around a two hour rain delay...

Jelena's new not-entirely-horrible, but not-entirely-awesome Anta dress made its debut today. That's also a pretty good summary of how she played against Petra Cetkovska-- it's kind of like her game is currently on a factory reset: the big problem is gone, but none of the old programming has been reinstalled yet. Competent, and certainly enough to get her through the first two or three rounds, but not entirely solid yet. Meanwhile, look who's wearing pink!

Man. If, in some alternate universe, it ended up being a Dinara/Sveta final, Sveta would immediately have the upper hand because Dinara would be so. Jealous. Sveta played a really solid match against Claire Feuerstein, a French journeywoman who turned out to be much better than anyone thought she'd be-- possibly including Feuerstein herself.

'Round the ATP side, Nicolas Lapentti did his part to get Philippe Chartrier back on schedule by retiring down 4-6, 1-3 to Nole.  

  

Lapentti rolled his ankle-- which was already heavily taped-- towards the end of the first set, and obviously never got comfortable again. Nole looked calm and collected, had some silly misses, but mostly looked in perfectly good shape for the beginning of the tournament. 

Other results thus far: Monfils, Kohlscreiber, JMDP, Gicquel, Seppi and Disco Tommy all through easily in straight sets. Juan Monaco just knocked out Marcos-- Marcos, we hardly knew ye.  Caro, unsurprisingly, took the third set against Vera D fairly easily (6-1). The Gypsy prolonged Dani's misery by beating her in straight sets, Ruano Pascal did the same to Nikki V. Aleks Wozniak went through in 3, U-Rad went out in 3. Lena D through in straights, but went down a couple of breaks in the first. Sania's out and Dokic is through (only her second win since the AO?!). Quality guy Ivan Ljubicic is in a deciding set with Ferrero and Jo Willy and Apricot Bars are locked down in battle on Chartrier, but ESPN2 has decided I'd rather watch Blah. They are incorrect. Thank god for livestreaming. One note: conditions today have been terrible-- hours of rain delays this morning, terrible wind ever since. It looks like hell out there.

Players Who Suck Take The Practice Court

How dare you show your face around these parts?  Loser.


I would kill for those legs.


I had to do a double take to recognize who this was. 


Gael is questionable for RG. He said he's hoping for a miracle in the next 6 days.  Then again he's such a drama queen, though, considering he's French, isn't saying much.


Aww...Americans on clay.  They try so hard but it still doesn't look right.


Pretty.


Anyone know what his shirt says? 

(Pics from RG website)

Baggy Checks His Smile At The Door. Thankfully.

I have to say, for all the crap promotional stuff the ATP/WTA makes the players do, I'm really impressed that they chose to have someone visit the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg.  I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that professional tennis players aren't the most highly educated bunch (not that they're not smart or intelligent) and if left to their own devices, probably wouldn't take time out of their busy schedules to get a history lesson.  So promo visits like this one are nice to see. 

The Smiling Cypriot was clearly moved by what he saw:

“It’s weird knowing that they separated people for everything,” he said. “They had different toilets, black people had toilets, white people had other toilets, but it was not only that, it was everything - beaches, houses, taxi queues, entrances, bus stops. Mainly the black people suffered a lot and that’s sad to hear.”

Moving through the museum, Baghdatis was clearly moved by the overwhelming experience. “It’s sad to hear that people suffered, and I also watched some videos which showed how they were treated and it wasn’t really nice, it hurt a lot to see that and all I can really say is for them to forgive - forgive them for what happened and move on, to have peace, love and everybody together. It’s like Mandela says 'One Nation One Country'‘, in the end we are all the same,” said the Cypriot.

The SA Tennis Open No.8 seed was taken through a visual and physical explanation of the life of Nelson Mandala, one of the most influential and inspirational men in history. Mandela was incarcerated in 1964 for alleged crimes of sabotage against the country, a crime he never committed but saw him remain in prison until 1990. Four years later, Mandela was voted in as the first democratically elected president of the Republic of South Africa.

“I can understand now why he is a hero to so many people. The guy is an amazing person and whatever he wanted to and whatever he wanted to help those people he did it even if it meant death for him. He spent 30 years of his life in prison and he suffered a lot to maintain what he maintains today, and I have a lot of respect for him. I can understand now why people see him as a hero,” Baghdatis remarked.

...

“It was great, you know, it’s something that we don’t get to do so often and you know it was great learning about one country’s history and about how people suffered so much, it’s a bit shocking when you’re in there and watching that, but it’s also nice to see because it is a small wakeup call and it does wake you up, you see life a bit differently and people a bit differently and it’s a great experience,” concluded Baghdatis.

USO Redux

Is anyone else weirded out by how skinny Andy looks?  I just want to give the guy a sandwich.  He doesn't look healthy to me.  I'm not implying anything.  I just liked Heavy!Andy better.

But Skinny!Andy is quietly tearing through the field and he's looking great.  He destroyed Disco to move to a 10-0 record against him, 75 61 63.  I don't love his style of tennis to watch, but good on him for making changes in the off-season to address his game.  I have a lot of respect for that.

But he'll get his first major test when he meets Nole in the quarterfinals.  I've always maintained that the "non-elite" players always look great when they're playing "non-elite" players, but when they play the top guys the gap in quality is ridiculous.  I have a feeling it's going to be a pure grindout, with the deciding factor being how well Andy can serve.

Nole has to come in with some confidence in coming through after being tested by the always dangerous Baggy.  It took him four hard fought sets, but he won, 61 76 67 62.  And when you 're talking about two of the more charismatic and emotional guys in the game, you know there's gonna be some love at the net:

The face stroke is money. 

The Smiling Cypriot Fights On

Welcome back, Baggy.

He's slimmer and trimmer but the smile and the heart are as big as ever.  After dropping the first set to General Sod 6-3, he came back to take it in four sets, 36 75 63 63.  Here's hoping that body of his holds up to keep him playing in the tournament.  He's a joy to watch.