Tuesday was the same morning ritual followed by a walk to the tennis center to see:
Vera Zvonereva v Sybille Bammer: this match was bo-ring. Bammer won 2 games and the match was over in under an hour. Zzzzz
Rafael Nadal v Marcos Daniel: snoozefest 2011 continued here. Marcos had a hurt knee and put up little more than a hitting partner would and he withdrew in the second set down 6-0, 5-0.
Sam Stosur (Australian) v Lauren Davis (American): I think Lauren is about 12 years old. And she is under 5' tall. Stosur is a tall basher. Not good. Stosur won 6-1, 6-1 in another match that lasted under an hour. Wow, today is going to be over fast. No matches lasting more than an hour.
Then we had a break because these matches were so quick. They put on an Aussie (Alicia Molik, an old favorite of mine) but we took off because she tends to lose and is boring. I went and sat at a new bar that is built on a support of a bridge in the middle of a river right next to our hotel. Here is a picture of my beer!
Dinara Safina v Kim Clijsters: Safina used to be #1 but is coming back from an injury. And wow did it show. Unlike the first two matches there were good rallies here but Safina was just delaying the inevitable. 6-0, 6-0 Clijsters. Felt bad for Dinara.
David Nalbandian v Lleyton Hewitt (2 of my friend Bianca's favorites): here was the chance to have a match that lasted over an hour. My guess before the match started was 5 hours, Bandy (my nickname for David used only by me) tends to play marathon matches. It started out innocently enough with Lleyton winning the first set by a break, 6-3. Bandy looked awful, lots of errors. Lleyton was cocky as always, yelling "C'mon!", pumping his fists, lifted by the chants of the Aussies. Then the second set came and Bandy could do no wrong. Unforced errors were gone, Lleyton was hitting balls in the net and out. Set to Bandy. Third set was same as the first with Bandy back to making errors, getting pissed off and Hewitt taking it 6-3 after Bandy was up 2-1 (I think). Then the fourth set came and Hewitt had it in the bag. He was up 0-40 on Bandy's serve at 3-1. But Bandy came back and sent it to a tiebreaker. The tiebreaker started and Hewitt had nothing. 7-1 in the tiebreaker to Bandy and we were on to the deciding set. Bandy was serving for the match at 5-3 but tighetened up and Lleyton brought it back to 5-5. When it got to 6-6, , we left the tennis center at about 11:45 after 3.5 hours of match time. We went back to the hotel and watched the end.
I thought the match would take 5 hours. I was wrong. It only took 4:48. This was a good ending to a day when the other four matches were a snoozefest.
Here are some pictures I took during the Hewitt match!
Batty is a toy that my friend Kate gave me. She said in exchange for a ride to the airport she asks that I would take pictures of this little dude around Melbourne and send back to her nephew in DC to show where in the world it has been traveling. Deal!
Hewitt serving up a tennis ball. I watched it from my front row seat. Not a bad vantage point.
See you on Wednesday, Melbourne!
I love the Batty concept.
Posted by: Bianca | 01/18/2011 at 05:32 PM