{"id":984,"date":"2009-01-20T22:16:57","date_gmt":"2009-01-21T06:16:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/?p=984"},"modified":"2009-01-20T22:16:57","modified_gmt":"2009-01-21T06:16:57","slug":"will-we-have-two-first-time-winners-at-the-aussie-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/will-we-have-two-first-time-winners-at-the-aussie-open\/","title":{"rendered":"Will We Have Two First Time Winners at the Aussie Open ?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>We  haven&#8217;t had too many first time slam winners in the past few years, especially on the men&#8217;s side, could we end up with two of them at the Australian Open?<\/b><\/p>\n<div style=\"height:459px;\" class=\"picappstyle\"><script src=\"http:\/\/cdn.pis.picapp.com\/IamProd\/Resources\/Javascripts\/PisV3.js\"><\/script><script src=\"http:\/\/cdn.pis.picapp.com\/IamProd\/Resources\/javascripts\/DataV3.ashx?ImageId=522313&#038;PublisherId=13010\"><\/script><a href=\"http:\/\/www.picapp.com\/ViewDetails.aspx?ImageId=3633663\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"remove\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" id=\"picappimg\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.picapp.com\/ftp\/Images\/2\/5\/a\/b\/58.jpg\" width=\"234\" height=\"313\" oncontextmenu=\"return false;\" onload=\"try{registerLoadImage(this)}catch(ex){}\" alt=\"2009 Australian Open: Day 2\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var iamInit = function() {try{initIamServingHandler(234,313,522313,\"http:\/\/cdn.pis.picapp.com\/IamProd\/Resources\/Css\/css2.css\")}catch(ex){}}()<\/script><\/div>\n<p>Our little enclave in the middle of Hollywood, Tinseltown, put up a big television screen in front of the Beachwood Market and gathered at 9am this morning to celebrate the inauguration of Barack Obama. This tells you the importance of today because I\u2019ve lived through quite a number of presidents by now and I\u2019ve never seen any community I lived in join together and bear witness to an inauguration.<\/p>\n<p>There was also a dose of reality. One of my neighbors had to leave early because, he said, \u201cI\u2019ve got to get to work. I have to lay off a few people today.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I was thinking that <b>Serena Williams<\/b> might have turned up at an inauguration ball in some stunning outfit or other until I remembered that Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses tend to steer clear of politics. In any case, she\u2019s in Melbourne looking for her fourth Australian Open title and the cycles favor her. She\u2019s won it every other year since 2003.<\/p>\n<p>She looks like a deadhead with her quasi tie-dyed tennis outfit, albeit in very undead shades of the same color \u2013 aqua blue \u2013 that make her dress blend into the court at times. I almost wondered if she\u2019d dive into the court and cool off like those kids who catapult into the basketball court in the <a href=\u201dhttp:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=G1latJ7K8zc\u201d>Sprite \u201cLiquid Freedom\u201d ad <\/a>. Would that be surreal or what? It certainly would have gone through my mind, especially as you\u2019d think the organizers would stop torturing the players and close the roof under these flaming conditions. Isn\u2019t that why the roof\u2019s there?<\/p>\n<p><b>Elena Dementieva<\/b> looked like frozen fruit juice in her all orange outfit as she hugged a long bag of ice to her chest during the changeover. If I\u2019d only seen her serve and had to guess which player it was, I might have been wrong because her serve actually now looks like a serve. There\u2019s a knee bend, a trunk twist, and a toss that puts the ball more or less where it should be. Most of all, she serves with a nice rhythm, but her serving problems are not all physical. She lost her serve six times in her match with <b>Kristina Barrois<\/b> before winning in three sets.<\/p>\n<p>Elena and Serena are the story here since defending champion <b>Maria Sharapova<\/b> isn\u2019t quite finished rehabbing the tear in her shoulder and <b>Ana Ivanovic<\/b> is still shaky. I love, love <b>Jelena Jankovic<\/b> but I don\u2019t have her winning a slam against a heavy hitter like Serena. On the other hand, Elena, like Jelena, has never won a slam and that brings up today\u2019s question: Will the Australian Open end with titles for two first time winners?<\/p>\n<p>Not on the women\u2019s side. Elena is in Serena\u2019s half of the draw so Jelena could very well reach the final, but my money is on Serena and here\u2019s why &#8211; as if I need any more reasons than she\u2019s already given us. She\u2019s in shape and she\u2019s feisty. She got mad early in her first round match when she couldn\u2019t convert break points and then she threw in some attitude. After slamming a short lob into the court and over the court boundary in the second set, she struck a pose and stared down her already overpowered opponent, <b>Meng Yuan<\/b>, in case she needed any more convincing that Serena is a bad dude. Serena passed through to the second round in straight sets.<\/p>\n<p>On the men\u2019s side: maybe. Maybe <b>Andy Murray<\/b> will win it. I wouldn\u2019t put my money on him but I wouldn\u2019t put money on anyone else on the men\u2019s side either. People said Murray lost last year\u2019s US Open final to Federer because he was exhausted from his semifinal victory over Nadal and he was, but Federer also out-maneuvered him with the short ball. Murray played a lot of four set matches and one five set match in that slam. If you look at Federer\u2019s slam resume, you\u2019ll find very few four set matches and precious few five set matches, and that could be an advantage in Australia with the court temperature hovering around 120 degrees Fahrenheit\/49 degrees Celsius. If Murray does the same thing here &#8211; and long matches are one of the hazards of being more of a counterpuncher than a puncher, Federer has a chance to tie <b>Pete Sampras<\/b> with 14 slams.<\/p>\n<p>Or, Murray could win by default. He\u2019s beaten Federer twice this year already and as you can see, Federer now needs help to win a slam in the form of, for example, an exhausted finals opponent. <b>Jo-Wilfried Tsonga<\/b> has a bad back, <b>Novak Djokovic<\/b> is screwing around with a new racket, <b>Juan Marin Del Potro<\/b> isn\u2019t quite ready as he himself said this week, and <b>Rafael Nadal<\/b>\u2019s body is unlikely to weather these broiling conditions.<\/p>\n<p>Who would you put your money on?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We haven&#8217;t had too many first time slam winners in the past few years, especially on the men&#8217;s side, could we end up with two of them at the Australian Open? Our little enclave in the middle of Hollywood, Tinseltown, put up a big television screen in front of the Beachwood Market and gathered at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}