It’s now Saturday 2.20am in Perth, Australia and I’ve just finished watching live on TV one of the best day of this year’s Australian Open.
Earlier in the women’s singles, the rising star of Australia, unseeded Casey Dellacqua, beat Amelie Mauresmo (18th seed) of France at 3-6, 6-4, 6-4. It was really a fantastic match, seeing an Australian lady finally rising to the stage to claim a winning match, and maybe, hopefully the Australian Open. Although Mauresmo played pretty well, it was really plain old normal tennis. Apart from her single handed backhand, there wasn’t really something I consider special or spectacular.
On the other hand, Dellacqua uses double-handed backhand and her backhand shots were really strong, sharp to the baseline and well placed. Her backhands really caught Mauresmo unaware a couple of times and I couldn’t express how much I like watching her return them, they were really “that” good! Playing in pro since 16, she definately show us some quality, and it’s no question that at 22, she has just rose to be Australian Number 1 lady singles. Her next match will be against the number 3 seeded Jelena Jankovic of Serbia.
The match if the day is probably the men’s singles between US Andy Roddick (6th seed) and Germany’s Philipp Kohlschreiber (29th seeded). The match lasted for 5 sets and 4 hours! Yes, 4 hours. Andy Roddick served 42 ACES while Philipp Kohlschreiber served 32, a total of 74 ACES in a single match!
But guess what, Andy didn’t win the match. Andy would probably still make the headlines, for his ACES as well as for his reactions during the game. To list some of his achievements, he threw his racket to the fridge and broke it, “requesting” the umpire to quiet the audience as their cheers were “getting into his head”, questioning the need and acuracy of a challenge by Philipp which shows that the ball was on-the-line and Andy had chosen not to played it at that time, in which Andy responded to the umpire:
“(That is) One foot from the ball. I’m going to say it slowly so that you can understand me”
That is simply: CLASSIC
To be honest, I’ve never seen Philipp Kohlschreiber played before. Looks are deceptive and while walking through the tunnel to the centre court, he just doesn’t look like a player who is going to win. Andy was obviously more well built, and I wonder how is Philipp going to withstand or even counter Andy’s famous strong and crazy serves. I was soon proven wrong.
Philipp served well, played well, ran well, volley well and managed to make 32 ACES. His single-handed backhand was really top of the league. He made quite a lot of baseline strokes and a couple of drop shots (which win him quite a lot of points), pushing Andy to run all over the court. I simply can’t wait to see Andy return to his backhand, as Philipp will either send a darn good drive straight down or crosscourt, all nicely by the baseline. Seriously, I think only Reger Federer played such good baseline shots, but this guy simply shown some potential to challenge the prefection in placing baseline shots.
Andy should really improve his returns a bit more. I mean, he does make returns, but most of them were not deadly. They were simply, well, normal returns. If it wasn’t for his deadly serves, which went up to 233KM/H, the match might had ended a bit earlier.
Overall, it was a superb performance by both players, to have he courage, stamina and determination to hold on to the match for 4 hours!
I enjoyed the whole live session and definately looking forward for day 6.
hcfoo says
I think Kohlschreiber is having a good time at the Australian Open with all the Aussies support. I used to pass his match on TV but now he’s probably the player we should look out for this year.