Hello to all of you and welcome to first daily summary of my US Open journey. Today was the first day of the tournament (excluding qualifying) and it is always a special feeling to be there at the opening with other true tennis fans. That is even more true when, like this morning, it is raining. You know people in line with you are probably as excited about seeing the courts, hearing the balls being hit in all directions and just feeling the uncomparable "Grand Slam" excitement.
So we headed inside, saw some players practice and I did take a few photos, but it didn't take too long for the rain to intensify and within a few minutes, all players were back inside, all fans hiding in all of the different possible places to escape being completely wet (and yes there are many possibilities!). It lasted for over an hour but that was fine, I was near the courts, had a tennis ball and good company, what more could you ask for? Ok, well after that, I was ready to see some tennis, from the moment they started to work on some courts, it took a very long time to get them ready for action, or so it seemed.
Then matches finally started, I headed first to see the start of the match between Iveta Benesova and Jill Craybas, I actually beleived this match might take a while and just wanted to get a few shots before the match started so I quickly left... I was pretty surprised to see the match was so quick, it beats me what happened to Benesova, she can be so unpredictable, but still, 6-0 6-2??? Needless to say the photo in this post was taken before her match...
Then I headed to see Vera Zvonareva against Marta Domachowska, Marta had a lot of support from the crowd as could have been expected, and she was really close but in the end she came up a bit short, she was just not maybe consistent enough. And also, when she saw her opponent Vera lose her patience and lose her mind a bit, I think Marta should have let her at least a chance to beat herself, while today I'm not sure Marta really tried to change her game plan when that happened. Certainly the end of the first set was a big factor, and Marta played a strange point while down 3-2 in the tie-break, she went for a huge return, one like she had not tried earlier in the set, not sure why she did it, but she missed and that certainly didn't help her...
During that match, I also tried to see parts of the match of Shahar Peer, a player I've been liking more and more, I don't think she had much opposition today, she was just so much more determined than her opponent... it was a no-match.
After all those matches, while I was wondering around, I did see some practices, Ana Ivanovic and Daniela Hantuchova among others, nothing special, Ana looks really relax which is a good sign because with all the added pressure she is currently experiencing, it could have been difficult to deal with but it looks like its no problem...
After that match I headed to see the match between Stephanie Dubois and Severine Beltrame, I had never seen Beltrame play and I must say I'm very impressed, she was not consistent throughout the whole match but mostly, she played very solid tennis. I know she didn't have much opposition (I didn't feel like Dubois had any weapon over Beltrame), but still Severine was impressive, especially her backhand, a lot of variety, power, and nice slices. I think her Wimbledon quarterfinal was perhaps not a fluke, I'll be curious to see her play again, see how she can play against tougher players and how consistent she is from one match to another...
Then, I went to see Aravane Rezai and Anne-Lena Groenefeld's match end, it was a high intensity battle, I saw about the last 30 minutes, it was a great battle, wow...Both players looked exhausted in the 3rd set, especially the young French qualifier... and she had lots of problems closing out the match, she was getting match point after match point after match point and never being able to convert. Then, finally, she got one, such drama... it was "overruled"...!! Lucklily for her and her fans, she followed right away with a winning point to pull off the upset against the German, very nice player...
I then proceeded to see a bit of Lucie Safarova's match, no problem there, she looked in control, so I headed to see Maria Kirilenko, I was a bit disapointed to see was wearing the same clothes as in Australia (different colour but still), ok that's superficial on my part;) So anyway, it was an ok match against Julia Schruff, I did not see that much, but it wasn't that impressive from what I saw... She was making too many errors and was not being tested that much!
Match of the day: Dulko vs Jankovic
For so many reasons, this was the best match of the day! Gisela Dulko and Jelena Jankovic put on quite a show, it was an impressive display. I think Jelena deserved to win and was the better player but as soon as she stepped her agressivity level down a bit, Dulko would fire back. In that first set, Dulko was back to the girl who was heading towards the top 20 a year ago... ! It was nice to see. Both players gave so many examples of their talent, and I wish I could talk more about the match but since it's too late, I'll cut it short... In the first part of the match, Gisela was clearly robbed on many calls, with no overrules, she was very annoyed (with reason, and I rarely say this), but then things switched and some bad calls started going the other way, Jelena was very aggravated, she could just look up, then started complaining, and finally when she was up 5-4 in the third set, she just lost it, asking the umpire to call a supervisor because she wanted a referee change, showing line judges how to look at the line, asking the crowd to confirm she was right (she was), asking Gisela if she agreed some bad calls had gone to both players (Gisela agreed), it was crazy... Honestly, I don't blame Jelena, it wasn't out-of-line, it was as bad of an umpire had been in a long time in matches I saw... only problem is that I think it really took out Gisela's rythm and in the end, she made a few errors (and a double fault) to lose the match, Jelena explained her actions to Gisela afterwards (Gisela seemed disapointed not upset)... Anyway, it was the best match I've seen both in terms of quality of play and level of entertainment... quite a show... way to go Jelena for standing up, on this occasion, you were entirely right...
Just a quick word, I finished
with Mirza, who seemed to be playing solid tennis...:)
# posted by Pierre : 11:27 PM
