25 January 2008

Australian Open

If you haven't been watching, you've missed some good stuff.

Watching Federer is always great, but watching him come THIS CLOSE to being dispatched in week 1 was edge-of-your-seat stuff. Kudos to Janko Tipsaravic, the latest name to come out of Serbia's secret tennis robot factory (how do you explain 4 top players from a war-torn country with no facilities?).

What, you've never heard of Tipsaravic? Well then you obviously do not remember my August 28 post recognizing his ability.

Now remember this name: Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. That's the new name to know. I just finished watching him blow Nadal off the court. You read that correctly. Nadal, who made it to the semis without losing a set, did not even win a set against Tsonga. He lost 6-2,6-3,6-2. That, my friends, is a blowout. Tsonga played the best tennis I've seen since Federer in the 2006 U.S. Open final. Truly amazing.

If he plays like that in the final, Federer/Djokovic is going to be in a world of trouble.

On the women's side, the story is one word: BORING. I didn't see one good match. I'm glad that my two least favorite players, the sisters Williams, lost to my two favorite players, Ivanovic and Jankovic (also from the factory). But then both of them lost in the next round.

If you want to see a beautiful Russian woman with zero personality crush a beautiful Slovakian woman on an emotional roller coaster then watch the women's final. I'll skip it and watch Tsonga again. It's that good. And he's got more personality than the entire women's tour combined.

2 comments:

Jill said...

I am watching/following it too - with Federer out, now what!?

WestEnder said...

I am still trying to wrap my head around that. I've never seen him so flat.

Djokovic is formidable and Tsonga looked absolutely incredible in his semi. It should be a great final (more than I can say for the women's final, unfortunately).