Saturday, June 27, 2009

3rd Wimbledon round shakes up the status quo

Two young players pulled off two big upsets today at Wimbledon. Melanie Oudin defeated a (literally) shaky Jelena Jankovic, seeded 6th at the tournament. And Sabine Lisicki, who has struggled to regain her form after experiencing back-to-back health problems, took out 5th seed Svetlana Kuznetsova.

A small upset occurred when 2006 champion Amelie Mauresmo, seeded 17th, defeated 15th seed Flavia Pennetta in straight sets, and though many (myself included) thought that Samantha Stosur would overcome Ana Ivanovic, the 13th seed held her own, also in straight sets. In fact, with the exception of the Jankovic-Oudin match, all of the wins were in straight sets, though some were more straightforward than others.

Venus Williams did not allow Carla Suarez Navarro to win one game in the opening set, but Suarez Navarro found her game in the second set, only to lose it 4-6. Dinara Safina had a tight first set against Kirsten Flipkens (Flipkens held a set point), a player I like to watch (but that didn't seem to impress ESPN, who showed nothing of the match), but easily won the second. And Caroline Wozniacki defeated Anabel Medina Garrigues, 6-2, 6-2.

More complicated was the contest between 11th seed Agnieszka Radwanska and 19th seed Li Na. Very little of it was shown on television here, but the last part of the third set was a drama all unto itself, with the relentless Li making it next to impossible for Radwanska to close the match. It took Li a long, long time to break Radwanska when she served for the match at 5-4, but Radwanska broke her right back, and went on to win, 6-4, 7-5.

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