If Roseanne Roseannadanna were with us, she could do her entire tangential routine on Jelena Jankovic. A few days ago, it was one of Jankovic's chronic foot problems. Today, it was dizziness, in addition to the foot. No one is more of a JJ fan than I am, but the fact remains: It really is always something with the talented but under-achieving Serb.
Melanie Oudin could have lost her nerve and let a less-than-stellar Jankovic win the match. And she could have become distracted after holding four set points in the first set. But Oudin didn't do that. Oh, she had her anxious moments and made some errors because of them, but when it mattered, the 17-year-old was there with the right shot. She used the drop shot successfully and often, a combination pulled off by few players (Sabine Lisicki comes to mind right away), and she covered the court very well. She stayed tough, and her reward was a 6-7, 7-5, 6-2 victory.
In the round of 16, Oudin will play the winner of the third round match between Agnieszka Radwanska and Li Na.
10 comments:
Mauresmo won! Please tell me she and Lisicki will be on US television sometime before the end of Wimbledon. Things just started looking up! BTW, Diane, the WTA now has a PDF with player name pronunciations and they have corrected the one for Dinara -- don't know what it was before but the one for Zheng Jie is pretty decent. Haven't checked the rest yet. Wonder why -- in this age of multimedia -- don't they just post mp3s in the player's voice. To see it, go to the Off-Court section and then search for "pronunciation" or just go to http://www.sonyericssonwtatour.com/SEWTATour-Archive/Archive/AboutTheTour/player_pronunciations.pdf
Mel
Oh, thanks for pointing that out, Mel. Could you please also point it out to Pam Shriver, Mary Joe Fernandez, Chris Fowler, etc.? (don't even bother with Brad Gilbert; you'd hang him up with "PDF"). Of course, they would actually have to exert some effort...
Yes, Amelie won! I am also a fan of Flavia's, but grass just isn't her surface, whereas--now that she is into the second week--perhaps Amelie can get some confidence and keep going.
I'm thrilled for Liskci, but she really needs to clean up those double faults.
So Melanie Oudin is facing Aga Radwanska, and apparently ESPN crew is not happy about that. They were showing that seasaw 10 game of the second set and making jokes about Agnieszka serve (not pretty, I admit), hoping for her to lose. She lost several match points and Na Li even out 55 only to be broken in the next game. Than ESPN switched to showing Levine. OK, I understand that, it was important point in his match, too. But what do you say, when couple minutes later, when showing summaries of all the matches throughout the day, they did not mention even Radwanska match, because she just won, which means she is playing Melanie. Now, Oudin is the talented young player, but Aga will be the favorite, and it looks, they don't like that at all, do they!
Since the last 16 players on each side of the draw plays monday, center court will have Andy M,Rodger F and Andy R. the women will be on court 1 and 2 with maybe on exception Safina because she's #1 and hasn't played on center court yet aganist Mauresmo whose also been on the back courts
I think Beatka's right--there was little interest in the prospect of Melanie's playing Aga. (And for her part, Aga better clean things up.)
I also think Safina is likely to wind up on Centre Court, then ESPN will have to deal with her, too. Other than a half-second view after the fact, ESPN showed nothing of Dinara's 3rd round match. Pity, too, because I really like watching Flipkens, something I don't get to do very much.
Beatka -- Your post doesn't make much sense. Why would ESPN sweat over Oudin being an underdog against Radwanska when she'd be just as much an underdog against Na Li?
David, ESPN doesn't care about Radwanska, they are not talking about her, unless they absolutely have to, they are not showing her playing, unless they absolutely have to, (like when she is playing Venus or Serena), they don't consider her a treat to almost anyone, the comentators are often surprised when she is winning (they don't watch her matches, how would they know?) It almost seems, they are annoyed, when she is standing in a way of another player, who is supposed to win!
It makes me angry, when I am watching the coverage and waiting for some news and the player is completely ignored in the comprehensive summarization of the day events. But I guess, that's what I can expect from American TV coverage, how typical!
What stood out to me on ESPN yesterday was the total absence of Safina. Regardless of what one may think of her status, she is number 1 in the world, but she didn't exist at all for ESPN.
Diane, that's my point to Beatka. ESPN isn't singling out Radwanska. They give the shaft to many players.
It's true--they don't care much about many players who are not American or who are not really big. In Safina's case, being really big didn't help, either. I can recall entire tournaments in which they didn't even mention Mauresmo's name, and that was back when she was winning a lot of titles.
I'll never forget the Year-Ends in which Petrova beat down Sharopova, and the two commentators mentioned Petrova's name once during the match. When it was over, they didn't even acknowledge that she had won it.
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