Masha and Justine finished up their silliness today with a pretty unsurprising result. Justine took it 6-3.

The most surprising thing was the start. It looked like a continuation of the second set with Maria blasting and playing a more straight forward power game. She was up 0-2, 0-40 with Justine serving, got another break point at Ad, but couldn’t convert. Justine would take the game, break, hold, and then break again and that was pretty well it.

Not much to say. Crap conditions, and even crappier play. Justine was getting balls deep and Masha seemed like she was over compensating a bit and the forehand got hella wild. Still, the play from the other side of the net wasn’t exactly overwhelmingly kickass, but she definitely flipped it up another knotch after the first couple of games. She’ll take on Superhero Sam in the fourth round, which should be a hell of a match.

Another new podcast is up. You know the drill.

Weird match. Very weird. Called after a set apiece, Justine and Masha will finish up business tomorrow.

It was a pretty interesting outcome considering the conditions. Justine got off to a quick start, used the angles, and controlled the first set all the way through.

The second set was a different story. Dark, cold and wet, Masha somehow managed to turn the match into her style of game. How, I haven’t a bloody clue. She started hammering the return, being patient with balls in the middle of the court, and basically waiting for Justine to make a move so it could create an opening for her forehand, which was soon dictating play.

The odd thing was the resistance from Justine; there wasn’t much. Instead of attempting to slice or mix it up, she was content with bashing the backhand, and often found herself the victim of dropshots. This led to her being broken and gave her few openings on the Masha serve.

So we’ll finish it off tomorrow. Predictions? Tough to know with the WTA right now, but I expect a brutal battle, especially if Masha can keep that forehand working and the double faults low.

Tough day today for the Armada, to say the least. Starting with JCF, taking on the last American man standing Robby Ginepri, he struggled and looked a bit tired in the first two sets, standing little opposition. But just like that, JCF started turning things around and before you knew it, it was off to 5 sets.

Ginepri turned things around in a hurry in the fifth set, despite being broken early with a lot of bad errors. He broke Juanqui back at love and was having a much easier time holding. Really was due to his big forehand and ability to push JCF back and keep him on the run. I actually thought JCF’s experience would help him pull it out, but in the end, he was just having way too hard of a time holding.

Not much to say about Daveed. Melzer came out firing and wasn’t interested in staying in long rallies. It seemed that nearly every close point was going his way and he dictated play the whole way to a straight sets win.

Fer toughed out a 5 sets win over Kohlswhatever, but was hurting and looked seriously burned out. Rafa circa 2009, anyone? The guy is bound to hit a wall sometime, and I’m not too sure he’ll have enough left in the tank to get his ass handed to him by Rafa.

By Rafa’s insane standards, it was probably a rough walk in the park, but for everyone else it’s a solid 3, 4 and 3 win over Lleyton. Rafa had some uncharacterstic errors in the second set and he had some trouble on break points, but overall he’s looking quite good, and I still don’t think there’s anyone around in his half to stop him.

Thanks to fellow FD Podcaster Lexi for uploading this. Figured it should be shared with the internet as soon as possible. Love how he takes Rafa and says that Fed has things to learn… and if we all remember that AO semifinal, no one can say a damn thing.

Pico tweeted this yesterday:

im not doing any surgery on my wrist, its time to recover well . thank you all for caring…

Hopefully this is good news, his wrist is feeling better, and he thinks just resting it will get it better. But hopefully this isn’t Delpo syndrome and he comes back to just re-injure himself. Sorry Delpo, wrist surgery Pico to snuggle with over the coming months. But I’m sure he’ll still come over and play video games.

Serena needed to call out the trainer against Pavs in the second set due to her fear of screaming out and transforming into the Hulk. Luckily, it calmed her down, and she took the third set easily. The placebo effect is a glorious thing! She gets the winner of this ridiculous Mono/Shahar match.

The men’s top American was blown off the court by qualifier Gabashvili, who played aggressively, hit tons of winners (and more aces?!) to control play and beat Dick easily. I’m guessing the rain didn’t exactly help Dick, slowing down play and taking any sting out of that serve.

Kind of love how the talk of the Americans was Sam/Tree and maybe how far Dick could get, and it’s turned into a story of the underdog, outside guys like Ginepri, Dent, etc. Pretty awesome.

If you were looking for drama, you came to the… well, honestly, wrong place, save for the end of the day.

The match of the day was easily Aravane/Nads, who lived up to the billing. Monsterous hitting from both sides, which led to a lot of breaks due to a lot of huge shots off second serves.

The drama came at the end however, when Aravane had match points at 4-5 on Nads serve… lost them. And then consecutive service breaks got us all the way to 7-all in the third set when the match was called. Nads had three match points, blew the first one with a double fault, couldn’t capitalize on the other two, obviously, and a yelping, fistpumping Aravane and her crazy crowd tied things up.

I’ve gotta believe Aravane will have the upper hand, serving first and with the crowd behind her, that and Nads’ blown match points were at the end of the match, instead of earlier on. Should be a crazy finish.

The other dramatic but not so surprising match was the final fall of Kuz. We all knew it was going to happen sooner than later. Perhaps most fittingly, it comes at the hands of a fiesty Kiri, again, in three sets. Kiri nearly had it stolen from her grasp while serving for the match, but showed off some serious mental strength and massive forehands to eventually take it.

She’ll take on Franny next. A solid chance to make it into the quarterfinals.

Remember the Serena impression that Ernie did in the second set the other day? Yeah, well he tore his hamstring and is out at least 3 weeks. So he’s missing Queen’s and is in trouble for Wimbledon, a place where he could obviously make an impact, especially with this new ranking. Hopefully the Power of Curls well help the healing process along.

It went from this…

To this…

To this!

Nevermind the scoreline. Kimiko fought all the way, looked down and out in the second set, pulled it out, and yanked out the third, 7-5. As much as I was angry at Dinara, my mood quickly changed, as tears welled up in Kimiko’s eyes and she had a pretty heart felt meeting over at the edge with her team and husband (who was the reason she came out of retirement in the first place).

Pretty damn impressive, the way she’s come back and managed to grind all the way back into the top 100. This makes her the second oldest player to win a match at Roland Garros, at 39 years old. Bloody hell. To put it in perspective, she’s older than Pete Sampras and Monica Seles. Here’s hoping the leg heals up and she’s good to go for round two.

As for Dinara, she was living up to her family name nicely. I know the game is still coming back, but holy bajeebus. Screaming “vamos!” at the top of her lungs, the famous Dinara shriek… I hope that new coach has some serious balls. Preferably three.