Quarterfinalists give new meaning to the term "winning ugly"

I expected the Elena Dementieva-Nadia Petrova Wimbledon quarterfinal match to have some drama, but perhaps not as much as it had. But it wasn't good drama--more like a competition to see who was the bigger head case. It started off well enough, but then a kind of strange foot fault (serving with a foot in the wrong quadrant) was called on Petrova, and things went downhill. Petrova was baffled by the call, tried to contest it, and then could not get it out of her mind, which made it easy for Dementieva to take the first set.

Petrova continued to decline until about the middle of the second set, when she saw her opponent getting tight (at 5-1, with two match points). Once she saw her advantage--to her credit--she switched back on, played some good tennis and won the set in a tiebreak. I expected Dementieva to pull the same stunt she did at the French Open, and melt away in the third set, but instead, she came back a different player, just in time to watch Petrova's forehand fail her again and again. Dementieva emerged the victor, 6-1, 6-7, 6-3.

Petrova remarked later that the heat got to her, but no ballkids appeared with umbrellas, even after she informed the umpire that the umbrellas were missing. I know that regular umbrellas--not heat umbrellas--are the order of the day at Wimbledon, but there was no excuse for not providing the players some protection from the sun.