Australian Open first week is ova!

by Orysbestos

The first sunday of a grand slam usually refers to the culmination of an upset filled week of tennis on the womens side. The 2012 Australian Open, though, had relatively few upsets on the womens side. The only notable “big name” losses were Kuznetsova (although defeated by higher seeded Lisicki), Schiavone (Oprandi) and perhaps Bartoli (Zheng), but overall it looks like we might actually get to see some second week drama between highly ranked players. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for underdogs and “unpredictability” but sometimes its good to see the players that you’ll hear about in the upcoming months playing actually each other. The interesting fourth round  matchups are Li vs Clijsters, Sharapova vs Lisicki and Kvitova vs Ivanovic. I won’t make predictions but I’d like to see the Sharapova-Williams quarterfinal and see Ivanovic actually win a big match for the first time in years.

Usually it’s the women that provide the entertainment early in slams, but surprisingly the mens side has had me captivated this first week. Hewitt’s campaign in particular has actually left me a little verklempt. It was a little saddening to watch him play his first round versus Cedric Marcel Stebe seeing how the movement and speed that he was famous for at his peak has deteriorated, but he was running like a rabbit against Raonic today when he won in four sets to set up a match with my favourite mens player, Djokovic. His run will probably end now but it was nice to see a veteran player no one counted in play and win matches on the biggest stage in his country against much younger, fresher players. Gives me a fuzzy feeling inside. That’s in contrast to Bernard Tomic who reminds me way too much of Andy Murray and I’m not feeling his recent success at all. I’m hoping Rajah (Federer) will send him packing quickly!