Men’s Semifinals Placeholder

We switched writer schedules around on Tennis Diary and I already switched days this week so I could party last weekend, so everything’s a bit messed up. Not only that but I spent hours on the phone with the Internal Revenue Service today and I know you Europeans and East Coasters will be tuning in to the men’s semifinals before I’ve poured my spelt flakes into a bowl tomorrow morning, so I’m putting up this very short post to give you somewhere to go back and forth with each other.

Don’t expect too much out of Rainer Schuettler. The poor guy slogged through two tiebreakers and an 8-6 fifth set today before finally putting away Arnaud Clement and that’s after playing the first two sets of the match yesterday. Meanwhile, Rafael Nadal, his opponent in the semifinals, was lazing about waiting for tomorrow.

Marat Safin and Roger Federer makeup the other semifinal and we could be looking at a day that looked very much like the women’s semifinals today: Venus and Serena Williams cruised into the final with straight set victories. And that brings up the perennial question: can Venus and Serena play each other tough in a final?

They’ve played in six slam finals – which is pretty amazing in itself – and two of those have gone three sets and that was five years ago. They did play a tight three setter that ended in a tiebreaker in Bangalore earlier this year so there’s hope but I am left wondering: much of their career has been the Williams sisters against the rest of the world and that breaks down, obviously, when they play each other. Does that explain why they don’t play each other closely? Or is it just the the difficulty of beating up your sibling who you love dearly?

We’ll be back tomorrow.