More US OPEN Thoughts.....
Last night, Henin defeated Serena in the Quarterfinals. This is the third time that these two have met in a Quarterfinal this year, and Henin has won each time.... Henin was serving horribly and Adam and I resorted to yelling at the television after her numerous double faults (7 in the match) and inability to get a first serve in - she was getting around 50% of her first serves in - pathetic for the #1 Ranked woman in the world!!! While extremely powerful, Serena wasn't moving very well - not that she has ever been very agile. When Henin ran her back and forth, she didn't stand a chance and her net game was awful. Her footwork was just pitifall, she wasn't moving well.
The Williams sisters aren't known for their sportsmanship, AND never give the other player credit for playing well when they get beaten, but I didn't notice Serena behaving inappropriate last night... So, I found it intriguing this morning when I saw photos of the match and all the captions commented about "an ungracious Serena". One of the photos was Henin/Williams shaking hands after the match and she seemed corgal - so that's a bit of a mystery. Guess I should read a summary of the game and see if I missed anything....
Henin goes on to play the winner of Venus Williams/Jankovic - Jankovic is seeded third, but I believe Venus is favored to win - they play tonight. Yesterday, I had been confident that Henin would be able to take the Title, but if her serve is as bad as it was last night, Venus is going to trounce all over her second serve.
Nadal got ousted last night (4th Round)... impressive that he made it this far, considering his knees have been bothering him. He had said last week that he would have pulled out of the draw by now if he had been any other tournament. I think its nice he has such a drive to win this major AND managed to get this far before being beaten. The match started late (the whole night was behind because Djokovic's match went so long and put the whole schedule over an hour behind) so I didn't watch too much. Nadal wasn't playing poorly, but it was clear that he wasn't moving like he normally did....
This afternoon, hopefully its still on when I get home from work so I can watch, Tommy Hass is playing Davydenko, a Russian that's seeded 4th. Should be interesting if Haas can continue to play as well as he did against Blake.
Big night tonight - FEDERER vs. RODDICK. I'm not a big Roddick fan. He's got a big serve, so he can dominate when he serves, but the rest of his game isn't very impressive. Once his opponent figures out how to block his serve, he looses his edge. I think Federer may get a whoppin' the first couple of games Roddick is serving, but shouldn't have a problem moving on to the Semis.
STAY TUNED!!!
AH HA!: I went looking online for what prompted the negative comment about Serena, and low and behold, she behaved in typical Williams behavior during the press conference. Here's a quote from the NY Times: From Williams’s perspective, she beat herself. “I think she made a lot of lucky shots and I made a lot of errors,” Williams, the eighth seed, said sourly during her postmatch news conference. Why is it so impossible for those two (Serena & Venus) to occasionally give their opponent some credit for winning???
Update: I just couldn't let this go and went searching for more on the press conference comments... interesting/testy exchange between Serena and the press.... details here
