Early Rounds: The Australian Open

There is something surreal about coming to Melbourne for the Australian Open. Surreal is now one of the most overused words according to a recent poll, but how else to describe the pleasant shock of this transition time into the first Grand Slam of the year? Here we are in the San Francisco bay area, freezing our tushes off and having to wear tights now on our cycling rides, then we turn on the TV and seeing gorgeously tanned people, packed into the stands under warm skies.

“There seem to be a lot of blondes here,” quips Patrick McEnroe from the cool shade of the announcer’s booth. And not all of them are seated in Hewitt’s box either.

The tournament is only a few days along, but already it feels like a million years gone. Stuff has happened, lots of it. Among the men, it feels almost like there was a conspiracy of sorts, and they got together and decreed that hardly anyone would get through a round without playing five set matches. They were everywhere, which suggests that perhaps a lot of the lesser ranked guys went out and practiced hard during their off-time. Here they are now, ready to hang in longer with the higher ranked players, thus giving rise to really long matches.

Guillermo Coria, Nikolai Davydenko, Lleyton Hewitt and David Nalbandian had their hands full. Although their opponents played well, these were matches that should not have taken five sets to win. In Nalbandian’s case, he was up two sets before his opponent decided to play after all. On the one hand, we could regard this extra effort as a good conditioner. Or we could take it as a sign that lots of guys are going to be completely worn out by this trench warfare going into the second week of the tournament.

Numbers One and Two would certainly not complain if that happened to the field. Roger Federer and Andy Roddick have gone through their early matches in efficient, ho-hum fashion. Barring major upheavals here, it seems inevitable they will meet in the final.

The women’s field saw the usual wild array of weird upsets and major crush jobs. Lindsay Davenport, Kim Clijsters, Maria Sharapova, Nadia Petrova and Mary Pierce made short work of their opponents. Amelie Mauresmo needed a third set before beating her opponent. Patty Schnyder got by Greece’s Eleni Daniilidou in straight sets, perhaps the most interesting first round women’s match on paper. Elena Dementieva looked like she hadn’t quite gotten off the plane even, going down in straight sets to a German, Julia Schruff, who has surprised her before.

Just as my eyes were getting used to the glare from Venus’ canary yellow outfit, suddenly she was gone. Ousted by Tszvetana Pironkova of Bulgaria. Notice the care taken in spelling this one correctly. Perhaps in future Venus will check passports, this is the second Bulgarian player she has lost to in the year. The first one, at last year’s French Open, was Sesil Karatancheva, now known as the player with the two-year ban for using an illegal substance.

Pironkova will probably be asked to donate for testing nearly every bodily fluid she has after her match with Venus. Only 18, she is a tall 5’11”, the daughter of a canoest dad and a swimmer mother. Her style of play has a cramped look, she loves hitting the ball almost in on her hands. Her service motion is straight up, very little movement of her body into the court. She kept her cool remarkably well. Venus may have hoped she would get nervous and go off her game, but that never really happened.

“Obviously she benefited from my largesse,” quipped Venus later. A nice way of putting it when you have 65 errors in the match to your opponent’s 22.

The other interesting women’s match in the early rounds was the return of Martina Hingis against Vera Zvonareva. Perhaps because we were not expecting huge things from her, everyone seems rather pleased when Hingis played so well. Her body looks stronger, the shoulder girdle seems wider and her deltoids more prominent. She has more power on her serve and forehand, and she looks fit enough to run forever on court. “Isn’t it nice to see someone out there actually thinking,” said Mary Carillo. Isn’t it though? There is always more room for actual thought processes in the game of tennis.

The Rest:

Into the Twilight: Carlos Moya and Tin Henman both lost their opening matches. It seems only a few weeks ago that Carlos was here in the final himself against Pete Sampras. Henman has had a terrible time trying to get some consistency in his game this past year. Interesting to note that as they near the ends of their fine careers, Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray are ready to follow them onstage. Nadal was a no-show due to injury, Murray lost rather handily in three sets to Juan Ignacio Chela. Henman has complained about how the press has been touting Murray as his successor, while Murray complained after his loss about being Henman’s successor with all the pressure that comes with that. Is no one ever happy in tennis? No one from Britain, anyway.

The Americans: Robby Ginepri won his first two sets in the second round against qualifier Denis Gremelmayr, was up 3-0 in the third, then dropped the next three sets. Ouch. This reporter was expecting good things from Ginepri this year. We still do. But it’s a good thing they didn’t show Robby’s match. James Blake looks good, he has made it into the third round.

A Dark and Ugly Moment: Fernando Gonzalez, seeded 9th, got into a shouting, snarling match with American qualifier Alex Bogomolov Jr. And didn’t we all discover how great we are at reading lips? Apparently Gonzalez complained to the chair about the American’s behavior on court (too demonstrative). One thing lead to another, and the referee had to step in between them. Darn. Haven’t you ever wondered how tennis players would fare if they had to throw a punch or two? When the dust settled, Gonzalez saw the match slip away from him in five sets. The highest men’s seed to exit so far.

Dark Horses: Tommy Haas is back and looking great. He cut his hair, lost a good ten pounds and fired his long-time coach. The man is serious. Ask Richard Gasquet, who lost to Haas in straight sets in rather petulant fashion in the first round. His opponent in the fourth round, assuming he claws his way into it, would be Roger Federer.

And wouldn’t that be a lovely battle of lovely one-handed backhands?

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