Weekly Wrap: There’s still some tennis going on.

Hello, Picket-Fencers! Thought I’ll help upkeep the Fence with wrapping up the week’s tournaments as it happens. As you all know, Roger is skipping Shanghai, and he won’t be seen on a tennis court hitting yellow fuzzy balls until Basel, which is like 5 weeks from now…

HOW DO I LIVEEEEEE WITHOUT YOOOU?? BUT I WILL SURVIVEEEEEEEE!!!! (even my song choices reflect my schizophrenia/bi-polar/split personality disorder)

Anyway. I’ve watched next to zilch tennis so I’m just writing quick wrap-ups based on news articles/tweets/my own random observations.

Florian Mayer finally struck jackpot on his fifth try, beating Pablo Andujar (also known as The One who Farted 8 SPs against Nadal in RG) in the Bucharest clay court tournament, becoming the 9^th first-time winner on the ATP tour for the year. He didn’t have to face a seeded player until the final though, with Disco Tommy Robredo and Granola Bar all bombing out early. I have to admit I paid very little attention to this tournament as I’m not a huge fan of clay and the field didn’t hold my attention…so congrats to Florian Mayer, hip-hip hooray.

Now the Moselle Open in Metz, this I paid more attention to, because Crazy Ponytail Dolgopolov was playing, as well as Jo Tsonga and Papa Ljubs. Those three managed to reach the semi-finals as per their seedings (with 2^nd seed Reeshie Gasquet losing rather tamely to Gilles Muller in the quarter-finals) – and Crazy faced off against Tsonga in one semi.

I was really really REALLY hoping for Crazy to win this, because

1)      I harbour Wimbledon angst and rage against Tsonga (don’t care if I am being unreasonable, nyaaar)

2)      I actually like Crazy more than Tsonga. I thought Dolgo had a realistic chance seeing he beat Tsonga the last two times they met.

3)      How awesome would it be for Dolgo to grab another title!??! Awesome for me anyway 😛

But alas, it was not meant to be. All it took was a bit of crazy gone wrong and a bit of Tsonga brilliance at the end of both sets, and that was enough for Tsonga to seal the win 6-4, 6-4.

Boo hoo hoo.

Jo then faced-off against Papa Ljubs in the final and laboured to beat the old guy in three sets, winning his first tour title since 2009. This takes him to number 7 in the race for the WTF and he’s looking quite good to make it.

(On an off note, I cannot believe The Berd is still in the running at 8^th place. Seriously?)

Over in Guangzhou, and on the more feminine side of things, Chanelle Scheepers of South Africa snatched her first WTA title, beating Magdalena Rybarikova in the final (and beating no.1 seed Maria Kirilenko en-route to the final). Previously she has never been past the quarter-fiinals of a WTA tournament (and if I can be honest, I’ve vaguely heard of Scheepers and never heard of Rybarikova…either this is really a Minnie Mouse tournament or I need to watch more women’s non-Slam/non-Masters tennis).

Hopping across to Seoul, a favourite of Fence Owner Dootsiez, Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez won her first hard-court title, beating Galina Voskoboeva in straight sets and two tiebreakers. MJMS is back and making some noise on-court again, hopefully, after a period of time where she had been relatively quiet.

That’s all from me for now. See y’all in the interim if there’s any Federpants tennis news to blog about. I’ll be hoping to update more about the Malaysian Open in Kuala Lumpur simply because it’s my home tournament – but with Headsmashy Youzhny pulling out, I’ve admittedly lost a huge chunk of interest, so we’ll see. I hope Kolya turns in a good performance and I can blog about him winning a week from now. 😉

Till next blog,
PJ

P.S. Y’all want Federporn? Go bug LJ 😀

Advertisement