Lucky Number 10

It didn't even take an hour for Serena Williams to dispatch Dinara Safina at the finals of this year's Australian Open -- but the victory was worth a lot.

By getting to the championship match, she became the highest-earning women's athlete of all time -- more than $23 million in prize money during her career. With the win she regained her #1 ranking and took her tenth Grand Slam title -- just four women have more major trophies.

The match was, admittedly, a letdown after yesterday's marathon men's semifinal. Safina was completely outmatched in her second Slam final -- it was only during her first service game I even thought she had a chance to keep things close. She held serve only twice and won just seven points on Serena's serve. Williams on the other hand won 95% of her first serves and didn't commit one double fault.



Serena actually faced bigger challenges earlier in the draw. She struggled in the second round against Gisela Dulko, giving herself a "D-" grade for her performance, and dropped sets to both Victoria Azarenka and Svetlana Kuznetsova. Had the heat not taken its toll on Azarenka, Serena might not have made it past the fourth round. Part of me wishes I'd watched one of those games in the final.

Dinara, with her performance in Melbourne, will climb to a career high #2 ranking on Monday, but I'm sure she wishes she'd put on a performance more worthy of that position on Saturday. But she'll be back, I hope -- she doesn't seem like one to collapse after a disappointing loss.



In the meantime the folks Down Under are getting ready for the highly-anticipated men's final tomorrow. It will be the first time Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer have met in Australia -- or in any hardcourt Grand Slam, for that matter. I'm willing to bet Serena's prize money that we'll be watching for longer than an hour.

See you tomorrow!

¿Dónde están los "Guns"?

That was the sign flying in the stands during Rafael Nadal's quarterfinal match against Gilles Simon, apparently objecting that the world's #1 men's tennis player chose to wear short-sleeve tees at the Australian Open this year, rather than his signature arm-exposing tanks.



He didn't bare anything more during the semis, except during change-overs when he replaced a sweaty shirt, but his guns were out in full force against countryman Fernando Verdasco on Thursday.

Then again, so were his opponent's.

The year isn't even one month old, but I already know this will be one of the classics for 2009. The match started just before 4a.m. New York time -- when I tuned in around 5:30, the first set had barely ended. In 75 minutes neither man had been able to break the other's serve. But Verdasco, with triple the winners and four times the errors, pulled out the win in the tiebreak. I sat glued to my television while I should have been getting ready for work, afraid to miss a point of the second set. After another fifty minutes of amazing angles, unrelenting stretches, and ten-, fifteen-, even twenty-stroke rallies the match was tied a set apiece.



Needless to say I was late to the office.

When the third set tiebreak went to Rafa, Verdasco at first seemed defeated, like he'd expended all his energy early, and was now struggling to hold serves. But he brought his best stuff when the score was tied 3-3, unleashed menacing overheads, delicate drop shots and an inside-out forehand that kissed the lines. He won the third tiebreak of the match 7-1.

The fifth set started past midnight in Melbourne. Even after five hours of play, both Nadal and Verdasco looked spry and energetic -- as if they'd just walked on the court. Like in all Grand Slams the final set is not allowed to go to a tiebreak and, as had been the case since the third set, both men held onto their serves stubbornly. The first and only break came in the tenth game, disappointingly on a double fault by Verdasco -- just his third fourth of the entire match.



And so #1 Rafael Nadal will meet #2 Roger Federer in the finals on Sunday -- the first time they do so with those rankings. Finally.

Roger must be breathing a sigh of relief -- he's had an extra day and a much easier match in the semis to recover from. If Rafa is even a little off his game, this could be the chance for Federer to tie Pete Sampras's long-standing record. For Nadal, this is a chance to prove his dominance on all surfaces -- he's never made a final in a hardcourt major.

But I wonder if the semifinal wasn't really the showdown of the tournament. It was the longest match ever played at the Australian Open, the third longest at any Slam. Verdasco showed he is far better than his #14 seed suggested -- if his upsets of Andy Murray and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga earlier this week didn't prove it, today's game certainly did. He's only won two titles in his career -- one in 2004 and one at last year's teeney Umag tournament in Croatia -- but I think he's poised to take 2009 by storm. If nothing else, he showed in Melbourne that he was not going to back down from any fight.

I've said before that the Australian Open tends to be a stage for new stars -- and my guess is that Fernando Verdasco will be this year's sparkler.

All Good Things...

I have to say I was a little disappointed when I woke up this morning.

After a rash of upsets and star-making performances during this year's Australian Open, I'd begun to think we could see some new faces shine as they held up their championship trophies this weekend.

But the three semifinal matches that have so far been played showed a reversion to the norm.

I had high hopes for Elena Dementieva in her match against Serena Williams. Though the Russian trails the current world #2 in almost any major metric -- ranking, number of titles, service speed, career prize money -- Elena has been on a roll. She had won the pair's last three meetings, most recently in the Sydney semifinals and at last year's Olympics. And she'd amassed a stunning 15-0 record for the year, complete with two titles.

Serena, however, had random logic on her side. Commentators loved to point out that she's won the Australian Open in every odd year since 2003 and that she's never lost a semifinal or final match in Melbourne. Of course there was more behind Serena's strength than strange statistics -- she led the women's draw in aces, twenty-eight before she even met Elena, and had won a stunning 73% of her first serves. She'd rallied after being down a set to Svetlana Kuznetsova to notch an impressive win in the quarters. And she had some serious motivation -- a trophy here would be her tenth career Grand Slam and help her regain the #1 ranking.

The match wasn't easy for either player -- for Elena especially, as she marked her first loss of the year -- but the outcome was probably expected. Serena won 6-3, 6-4, taking little more than ninety minutes to score the victory. In the end the score didn't reflect how hard Elena fought (it seldom does), but it did represent Serena's continued presence as a real force in tennis.

In the finals she will meet her third Russian in a row -- Dinara Safina was also triumphant over compatriot Vera Zvonareva in straight sets, bringing the seventh-ranked player's best major run to an end.

Vera has never made it past the quarterfinals in a Grand Slam, and she's lost in the first round here three times. But she's coming off her best year on record and pranced through her first five matches in Melbourne without dropping a set, even earning her first win over tenth seed Nadia Petrova since 2004. She should have been pretty confident against Safina. Again, despite the discrepancy in ranking, Zvonareva had won all three matches they played last year, including a semifinal matchup in their hometown of Moscow.

But Dinara was on top of her game Thursday. She was certainly the aggressor in the match, scoring two times as many winners as her opponent, but also committing twice the unforced errors. She was dominant at the net, winning seven of eight points there and dictated points on both first and second serves.

As a reward Safina will get to attend her second Grand Slam final -- she lost to Ana Ivanovic last year at Roland Garros -- and make her own case for the #1 women's ranking, the first time she would achieve that honor in her career. Serena has taken all but one of their six previous matches, but with a title on the line I'm betting we could see some sparks

And then came the gentlemen.

Unfortunately I had to be up early enough this morning that I was able to catch the end of the first men's semifinal match live -- just in time to see Andy Roddick lose to Roger Federer. Again.

Roger led the series 15-2, but he was facing a new and improved Roddick. With the help of a new coach and in better physical shape, Andy had made it to the finals in Doha, his first tournament of the year. Earlier this week he silenced naysayers in Australia when he outlasted reigning champion Novak Djokovic in the quarters, scrambling for balls no one has the right to chase down. Even before meeting Federer in the semis, Andy stood atop the leader board in aces, scoring 79 zingers, twenty-one more than the world #2.

But his run was brought to a halt too -- Roger dominated, as he usually does, in three sets. He scored 51 winners and only fifteen errors, without a single double fault. While Federer couldn't quite match Roddick's serve in speed, he was able to score sixteen aces and win an astonishing 83% of his first attempts, 58% of his second. Though the last two sets were tighter, there was no question Roger is eager to get his hands on a record-tying fourteenth Grand Slam championship.

He still has one match to go though, and will face one of the two Spaniards playing their semifinal match today.

Rafael Nadal is clearly the favorite to beat Davis Cup teammate Fernando Verdasco -- he's won all six previous meetings. But Verdasco has been on a roll of his own, stunning fourth seed Andy Murray and #5 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in consecutive rounds. It remains to be seen whether the semifinals will bring an end to his string of victories as well.

Of course, I've been waiting for the Nadal-Federer rematch for some time -- but Australia seems to be the venue of choice for new talent to emerge, and an upset by Verdasco would certainly not be the first.

So good luck to all, and may all your (future) winning streaks be long-lasting!

I Don't Even Know Where to Begin...

So I go away for a few days and when I return, as is usually the case, the whole world is turned upside down!

Now I confess, I wasn't able to keep up with all the matches while on vacation and some of the shocking upsets that happened in the third and fourth rounds occurred without comment -- but there's still plenty to talk about from latter-round action. But let's just rewind for a minute.

Jelena Dokic continued her comeback for as long as she could, beating #11 Caroline Wozniacki and #29 Alisa Kleybanova before finally being stopped in the quarterfinals by Dinara Safina. You can't say she collapsed under the pressure, though -- she did take the middle set from the #3-seeded player. Marcos Baghdatis also followed up his strong start with a straight-set win over American Mardy Fish, but reigning champion Novak Djokovic put an end to the Cypriot's surge in the fourth round. Even Carla Suárez Navarro was able to back up her defeat of Venus Williams with wins over two compatriots for the right to meet Elena Dementieva in the Elite Eight.

There was also the day of retirements, when three matches were suspended early due to injury or sickness. Gael Monfils and Jie Zheng both pulled out of their fourth rounds with wrist injuries while nineteen-year-old Brisbane champ Victoria Azarenka nearly collapsed after taking her first set from Serena Williams.

But then came the real shockers.

I suppose technically Andy Murray's loss to #14 Fernando Verdasco in the fourth round was an upset -- but I can tell you I shed no tears. After winning the Capitala World Championship in Abu Dhabi, an exhibition match in which he beat Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal on consecutive days, and Qatar's ExxonMobil Open, Murray was considered by most to be the favorite in Melbourne, despite his #4 seed and the fact that he'd never won a major before.

Verdasco had other ideas though.

The score over the first three sets makes them each seem like blow-outs -- Murray took the lead 6-2, 1-6, 6-1. But the Davis Cup winner, who had lost his five previous matches to the Brit/Scot, was not dissuaded. With a shocking 78% first-serve percentage in the last two sets, Fernando didn't allow Murray one break point opportunity. He served six aces in the final set, leading Andy in both winners and errors, and after more than three hours of play came out with the win.

On the women's side Jelena Jankovic looked like she might've had an easy road to her second Grand Slam final with both Williams and red-hot Dementieva in the bottom half of the draw. I'm sure she didn't expect her biggest threat to come from sixteenth-seed Marion Bartoli.

It's easy to have forgotten Bartoli. The Frenchwoman made it to the finals of Wimbledon in 2007 but was demolished by Venus Williams, officially ranked lower but hardly the underdog. Since then Marion has struggled a bit. She barely made it past the third round in any tournament last year -- only making one final -- and saw her ranking drop from #10 to #17. She began 2009 with a second place finish in Brisbane, but I still didn't expect her to be much of a force against the top-ranked woman in the fourth round -- even though she'd won their last two meetings over a year ago. But Jankovic was almost no match for Bartoli. In less than ninety minutes Marion scored twice as many winners, three aces to none, and took 81% of the points on her first serve.

It's a shame that she was handed just as big a defeat at the hands of Vera Zvonareva in the next round. Again, I admit, I didn't have high hopes for the runner-up at last year's Sony Ericsson Championships. Though the seventh-ranked Russian led Bartoli head-to-head and is clearly coming off her best year ever, Vera pulled out of the Sydney warm-up tournament with an intestinal illness (to be fair, Bartoli withdrew as well), and I worried she might not be in top form in Australia's sweltering heat. But Zvonareva did triumph -- in barely over an hour! -- as Marion spewed errors and struggled to hold serve.

And of course the biggest quarterfinal upset so far came in the men's draw. Novak Djokovic was only three matches away from repeating as champion, but he'd suffered some early-round disappointments in the last few weeks. Still, he was the favorite to beat Andy Roddick who, at #9 in the world, is at his lowest ranking since 2006. After a first set with no breaks of serve, Roddick found himself down in the tiebreak and then down in the match. But the newly slimmed-down American showed off his fitness and regrouped in the second set as temperatures on the court rose. Nole couldn't withstand the heat -- from the court or from Andy -- quite as well and fourteen minutes into the fourth set, down two to one, he retired.

So that sets up an interesting second week at the Open.

On the men's side we might finally see that highly-anticipated Nadal-Federer match-up, though it does require a few more wins from both players. Nadal hasn't dropped a set this entire tournament, but next faces a wily Gilles Simon who received a walkover after Monfils retired. And Roger has to get past Roddick, who could power through solely on adrenaline.

For the women Serena is still the betting-man's favorite, but I wouldn't put it past Dementieva to make it through on her half. And Vera might be on a role, but I have to believe Safina's going to make it to her second Major final. That potential match-up, a repeat of the finals at Sydney and last year's Olympics (Elena won both), could usher in a new era for women's tennis.

And I can't wait to see it!

Cheers to the Vets!

Today I turn thirty.

Ew.

And while I've always been jealous of the scrappy teenagers who could come out on the tennis courts and eke out wins against top-ranked players -- and moreso of the ones who could handily beat well-seasoned opponents -- that envy is even more palpable now.

But us older players still have some spunk, and a couple showed their stuff in Australia this week.

Thirty-six year old Fabrice Santoro returned for his seventeeth Australian Open and notched victories over former #1 Juan-Carlos Ferrero and seeded German Philipp Kohlschreiber before he ran into a wall against Andy Roddick. The zany Frenchman previously proved he was no has-been and recaptured the hearts of fans everywhere when he took my dear James Blake through five emotional sets and three and a half heart-pounding hours at the 2007 U.S. Open. And with two titles last year Fabrice has shown that he's not going to leave the game quietly.

Veteran Ai Sugiyama tried to follow up her semifinal appearance in Sydney with more success in Melbourne. Ranked #26 in the world, she's not exactly an underdog, but she hasn't been a huge force in a major -- at least not in singles -- in years. At this year's Australian Open she dropped her first set to Nathalie Dechy before rebounding for the right to meet -- and unfortunately lose to -- top-seed Jelena Jankovic in the third round. Again, her top-thirty seed suggested that this match-up was inevitable, but I'm sure Ai was still happy to come through.

Gorgeous German Tommy Haas has been ranked as high as #2 in the world and has eleven singles titles to his name -- this time last year he was a stone's throw from the top ten. But a shoulder injury in 2007 and allegations of being poisoned during a Davis Cup match against Russia pushed him out of the top fifty for the first time in nearly five years. In Melbourne he put together back-to-back wins for the first time since last August, rolling through the man who dispatched Dmitry Tursunov in the first round. Against Rafael Nadal in his third match, Haas's comeback was stalled -- though, I believe not quite ended. He's rallied before, climbing from a four-digit ranking in 2004 all the way to #17.

The greatest story of this year's Open, though, might be that of Japan's Kimiko Date-Krumm who, at 38, was the oldest player in the main draw. She turned pro in 1989, before players like Caroline Wozniacki or Alize Cornet were even born. She once made it to the semifinals in Melbourne -- in 1994 -- and acheived a career-high ranking of #4 the next year.

But that was pretty much the last we heard of her for a while -- she hasn't played a Grand Slam since 1996, when she lost at the first round in Flushing Meadows.

Kimiko returned last year, playing a handful of ITF tournaments and even scoring three titles. She played a few tour matches in Japan and a round in Auckland earlier this month. Before the Australian Open began she fought through three qualifying rounds, beating two players half her age and one in her twenties, to earn the right to play in her first major in a dozen years.



In her first round match Kimiko put up quite a fight against twenty-three year old Kaia Kanepi, who faced a slightly stronger opponent than she might have expected. They split the first two sets, 4-6, 6-4, and took the third to fourteen games before Kanepi eventually claimed the victory. But the stats were close -- Date-Krumm had a better first-serve percentage, but lost more points on her second try. She won over three-quarters of her net point attempts, but made fewer winners and unforced errors. In two hours and fifty minutes, she scored only eleven fewer points than Kaia.

Maybe it wasn't quite the return she'd wanted, but Kimiko Date Krumm definitely reminded the tennis world of her name. And I'm hoping this isn't the last we've heard of her.

So good luck to the veterans, if not at this tournament then certainly at others -- I hope to see you out there for many years to come!

In the meantime, I'm off to celebrate the last few hours of my twenties.

Cheers!

The Match(es) of the Moment

I was originally planning to dedicate this morning's post to what I considered the most memorable match of the second round, but man were there a lot to choose from.

I'll start with the one that made my jaw drop this morning.

Venus Williams hasn't been the biggest threat on hard courts in several years. Even though she won the Sony-Ericsson WTA Championships on the surface last year, she did so almost as the underdog with an eighth seed. In the Majors she hasn't made it to a final on anything other than grass since 2003. Even still you know opponents were terrified to see her in their side of the draw in Melbourne this week. And pundits were talking about the potential semifinal matchup between her and her sister as soon as the bracket was released.

But all those players can breathe a sigh of relief this morning -- on Thursday Carla Suárez Navarro, playing in her very first Australian Open, took Venus out of contention in three sets.

The match started predictably enough, with Williams winning the first set 6-2 in less than half an hour. She won all eleven points on her first serve and almost half the points on Carla's serve. But in the second set Suárez Navarro amped up her game -- she served more winners and fewer errors than she had in the first and converted both of her break opportunities. The third set went the distance -- sixty-three minutes and eighty points played. Venus couldn't capitalize on match point with Carla serving at 4-5, and a double fault in the subsequent service game handed the match to the forty-sixth ranked Suárez Spaniard.

No one expected the result. In the preview of the match posted on the Open's website before the match, Alan Trengove wrote:

"The 20-year-old Spaniard would have a better chance at Roland Garros, where she reached the quarterfinals on clay courts as a qualifier. On hardcourt, she could be overwhelmed. Williams in straight."

But I can't help feel that it's just an indication of how wide open the women's draw really is. With five different women holding the top ranking last year, the #1 spot is really up for grabs at this tournament.

Number One may still be a long shot for Amer Delic, one of only two American men to make it through the qualifying rounds in Australia, but he's certainly on the rise. In the main draw the twenty-six year old has had to fight more than most. His first round match went five sets and almost three hours against countryman Taylor Dent, but he was even more impressive in the second round against 28th-seeded Paul-Henri Mathieu.

Less than an hour into the match, he was down two sets to love, and it looked like he would soon be headed home. But he rallied in the third set with the help of six aces and won the fourth in a tiebreak. The deciding set took sixteen games and seventy-two minutes, but Delic had better first and second serve percentages. There was only one break the entire set, but it was the one that counted. Amer became the fourth U.S. man, and the only one not ranked in the top 25, to make it to the third round.

Next he faces world #3 Novak Djokovic, to whom he lost in four sets at Wimbledon two years ago. It'll be a tough task, especially after two five-set matches in sweltering heat, but stranger things have certainly happened.

The last two matches yielded results I've been looking forward to for some time. Marcos Baghdatis followed up a straight-set win in the first round by knocking out #16 Robbie Soderling with relative ease. And, in a matchup I was a bit torn over, Jelena Dokic continued her comeback with a win over a still-stuggling Anna Chakvetadze. They'll both struggle in the next round, Marcos against Mardy Fish and Jelena against Caroline Wozniacki, but whatever the results, they've both chosen to make their statements here in Australia.

See you next time!

An Inaugural Opener

Round One matches for the year's first Grand Slam are in the books, and as expected some players were welcomed to Australia with stunning victories, while others were ushered off the court, scratching their heads and wondering where the last eight years five sets had gone.

On the men's side only three seeds failed to advance -- #27 Feliciano Lopez lost to Gilles Muller, Flavio Cipolla only dropped a set to #29 Dmitry Tursunov, and Dudi Sela beat #30 Rainer Schuettler. But that doesn't mean the rest of the draw was without drama.

I'm strangely happy that Lleyton Hewitt failed in his comeback attempt but disappointed that neither Japan's Kei Nishikori nor the U.S.'s Sam Querrey were able to pull out upsets.

Other Americans fared better, however, in the hours and days leading up to a proud moment for our country. Andy Roddick, James Blake and Mardy Fish -- all seeded in the top twenty-five, believe it or not -- only dropped one set between them in the first round (Mardy was the offender).

The women's seeds suffered a few more casualties -- seven in total -- headlined by the early exit of #9 Aggie Radwanska who failed to follow up on her quarterfinal appearance here last year. My favorite, Elena Dementieva, gave me quite a scare too -- she dropped her middle set to 88th-ranked Kristina Barrois in the sweltering heat -- and Ana Ivanovic took a while to find her footing, though both made it through relatively unscathed.

And two of the players I had my eyes on pre-tournament set the stage for possible comebacks -- Marcos Baghdatis rolled over Lyon runner-up Julien Benneteau, and Jelena Dokic emotionally pulled out her first Grand Slam match win since 2003.

The weirdest thing about this Open so far, though, is how disorienting it is to see the #2 next to Roger Federer's name. Yes, this is the second major where he's held the ranking since losing the top spot to Rafael Nadal, but somehow the higher number is so much more tangible now than it was at the U.S. Open. Maybe it's because Roger's proved himself more than fallible in the last few months. Maybe it's because a surging Andy Murray seems to be the real man to beat, even though he's only ranked #4. And similarly, on the women's side, only one of the top four players, Serena Williams, has ever won a Grand Slam before -- this could be the chance for a new star to shine.

So maybe this Australian Open will mark the beginning of a new era -- just like Inauguration Day will for the U.S. The reigning kings haven't quite been knocked off their thrones yet, but brand new players are out for blood.

And it's going to be an exciting campaign.