Aus Open Days 7-8: Weekend Blues

The end of Week 1 always makes me a blue.

The first week of the Aus Open has a village fair atmosphere to it, so full of youth and vibrancy. People come for the tennis, but also for star-gazing, freebies, amusement park-styled stalls, and a little rock-and-roll with the live bands.

By the second week, the smell of sausages is gradually replaced with the smell of gun-power … or Dootsie’s hair on fire. This is serious business bitches. So serious, that it must be spelt SRS BSNS.

Anyone heard John Isner’s Barmy Army at the Aus Open?

Here they are. In their own universe, it all made sense.

So getting down to the SRS BSNS: I spent my entire weekend right where I spent the last one: at Melbourne Park, making it 9 consecutive days of dawn to dusk tennis, and by close of play on Sunday, I was bleeding yellow fuzz coming of my nostrils.

There is such a thing as tennistical overkill, after all.

1. Canadian tennis. It like … exists or something.

As of Sunday night, when Andy Roddick was whipped off the court by the Wawrinka backhand, Milos Raonic became the only “North American” left in both the men and women’s draw. He eventually ran out of steam today against Ferrer, losing in 4 sets after taking the first emphatically, but I saw him earlier, against Youzhny, where he clobbered the Headclobber with icy power.

Not much not to like – massive serve, attacking, purposeful baseline game with a good affinity to the net – an unfortunate resemblance to Mark the Poo. Let’s hope Milos has more motivation and less of a penchant for reality TV than Scud.

The only thing I’m sure I’ll grow to dislike: hearing his migrant family story over and over again in the years to come.

2. New balls, pwease.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen one day when I lose my Swiss muse. As much as I love tennis, words just flow more when I write about McWoger – or rather – they burst through a dam of angst, anger and adoration.

But new faces are focussing out of the blur too – faces that I think I could get used to:

• Cilic Peppers, despite losing erratically to Rafa last night, is looking less like an empty shell and more like the shot-twisting stick insect that he was one year ago.
• Dolgopolurrrve seems to have caught the annual Aussie Open giant-slaying bug, literally slaying the gigantic Tsonga and Soderling. I remember the first time I ever saw his name at last year’s Brisbane International: “how on earth did Bernanrd Tomic lose to someone named Oleksandr Dolgopolov Jnr?” I asked. I don’t think anyone would be saying that after the spirited performance he put on against Soderling yesterday.
• The Petkorazzi, newly crowned Miss Popularity of the Aussie Open, danced on the grave of Maria Sharapova after defeating her in straight sets. As much as I hate to admit it, Shazza has completely lost the zinging presence she used to have on court – her movement exploited, her power matched, but her mind and spirit as eager as ever. As a fan, it’s been a hard journey watching her attempt to rediscover her slam-winning form pre-injury, a journey that del Potro fans will take in the coming year.
• Petra Kvitova, shotmaking brilliant in its sheer randomness, eyes shining with desire and determination. Sam Stosur couldn’t have done much more to neutralise the deluge, and mercifully, most of the Australian media have picked up on this assessment.
• Bernard Tomic, almost universally disliked in tennis fandom, deserved a lot of credit for the pressure he unexpectedly exerted on Nadal. I wonder if sometimes, it takes a little bit of brattishness to be nonchalant to the occasion of playing the top seed and one of the great guys on the ATP tour. As for his style of play, until he moves with the kind of cat-like court coverage that Murray brings to the game, I think we can stop with that comparison. If anything, Tomic plays like Marin Cilic with greater variation.

None of them stirs up the kind of dam-bursting desire to blog that Wogie McFed does, perhaps I won’t find another muse like him for a long time, but they are reasons to keep watching and keep returning to the moving tides of tennis, to see if these tiny ripples converge into tidal waves of awesome further down stream.

3. THE MATCH.

I could come up with a wittier tag line, but I think CAPSLOCK suffices to express my awe. You know you’ve just witness something that transcends tennis when your non-tennis following friends ring you to let you know, “I just saw the most amazing tennis match …”

There is a difference (or so I’ve always felt) between fearlessness and bravery, being not just the mere absence of fear. Sometimes, it is precisely brave to overcome your fear, to play through it and live dangerously. To paraphrase a well-known truism, “it is better to have fought and lost than to have never fought at all.”

And third set between Schiavone and Kuznetsova epitomised this sentiment to poignantly. Neither wanted to lose, both struggled physically and mentally to hold and to convert match points. Yet neither relied on the other to hand the match over on a silver plait. Neither stopped making their shots, swinging for the fences. Neither stopped attacked, or fell back into their comfort zone. The longer the match went for (the clock finally stopped at 4:44), the more they put on the line. Winner takes all, loser is left with nothing but the tale of a lifetime.

Unlike the Petkorazzi or Kvitova, there was no merry dance to celebrate this fight to death; there was no youthful, eager spark in the eyes of either woman, a desire to prove oneself on a big stage for the first time in their career. Sveta and Franny played with such bravery, maturity and hearts of steel that they made the contrast between girl and woman on the WTA tour an incredible sight to behold in a single tournament.

Perhaps the best moment after the match was when Svetlana Kuznetsova logged onto Twitter after the match with this tweet:

i was worryed that i gaig one kg…i think i ve lost it)))

It takes a giant well of optimism to joke about your own heartache.

4. The Outsider

The amount of Wawrinka-hate I am being exposed to in tennis fandom these days is making me sick.

Such is the absurdity of human existence, that when a man decides, for whatever reason UNKNOWN to us, to end a relationship and inform the world of it, our first reaction is to judge. Our second – to hate. Our third – to wish a fellow human being ill. As my nan would say, if you haven’t got anything nice to say to that, don’t fucking speak at all.

At the end of the day, Wawrinka is a tennis player. What he chooses to do with his private life is none of our fucking business. He’s never going to be the next Mister Family Man, but without cheating on court, without bringing an inexcusable attitude to tennis, I had no reason not to cheer him on as he played like a man possessed to dismiss Roddick, hitting a total of 67 winners to 19 unforced errors.

I hope Wogie McFed saw the stats sheet.

xx doots

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Tokyo: Just retire for 2 years, okay?

The headlines read “Safina stunned by Toyko loss”, “Ivanovic upset by Safarova“. Unfortunately it was just one of those cliches that journalists like to fall back on when they run out of worthwhile things to say.

There was nothin stunning or upsetting about Safina or Ivanovic losing first round. 

 

 

Self-professedly, I’m not an Ivanovic-fan, but cheering against her these days is a bit like kicking a dead puppy: not only is it cruel, it’s also futile. 

Knowing how I felt when my favourite players were slumping or injured, I’ll save the negativity for a sunnier day.

Sure – the girl is confused, she doesn’t have a proper coach, she’s on track to finish the year ranked outside the top 20. She’s tinkering with her serve and messing it up. She lacks conviction in her mind and fire in her belly. But you gotta think there’s a rock bottom to this slump and that when she gets there, the only way to go is back up. 

Umm, just ignore Nicole Vaidisvoa. 

As for the actual match, there is only one word to describe it: dreadful. Errors flowing from both sides, not to mention 11 DFs from Ana alone. I do however give a lot of credit to Mrs Berdych for showing class in victory.

 

“It wasn’t the best match Ana did. We played against each other in Toronto. It was a much better match, much tougher.

“I know how Ana is feeling and I feel it with her. She’s struggling with her serve and when that goes, all your game goes.”

 

Have a break Ana, have a Kitkat. Take the rest of the year off and comeback ready to win matches again next year.

 

 

I had a bizarre moment opening up my scoreboard this afternoon, thinking that Dinara Safina had lost the first set of her Round 2 match to Chiang Kai-shek.

Turns out it was only Chang Kai-chen, an 18 year old Taiwanese sensation making her debut on the WTA tour this summer. Given that her previous biggest victory was over Kanepi, I was fairly impressed with Chang, who showed the sort of guts, massive forehand and composure under pressure that you so rarely find in youngsters late in the third set. 

It also goes to show the lack of “the fear factor” these top women hold over their lower ranked opponents. Teenagers like Chang and Kvitova walk on court not only believing that they could pull off an upset, but almost expecting it.

 

“I had a lot of chances in the third set but I just let it go. The way I played the game at 5-4 was not right after her latest setback.” – Dinara Safina on her loss.

 

Yada yada, story of your career.

There’s something in the water in Tokyo – Kuzzy also went out a gutsy Andrea Petkovic. This whole win-a-second-slam-then-slump-spectacularly thing has been done once before by Marat Safin. Try something new Sveta. 

 

I’ve survived for 16 months without Henin, but suddenly, awaiting her return has never felt so long and arduous. 

 

xx doots