Weapons: Incredibly flat strokes, short, impressive power.
Weaknesses: Short (lots of netted shots), surface might be a bit too fast.

While Aravane has yet to find any serious success at Wimbledon, she’s having a similar, solid year to Shahar, and both have pretty similar games. Go figure they’re beside each other in my mock seedings. Both wield flat strokes and a considerable amount of power. Just like Shahar, Aravane is confident coming in and doesn’t tend to headcase. She has a solid chance of putting together her first big run at Wimbledon.

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.

Gooooooooold!

Just a damn impressive week from Aravane, who if you remember, started her week by beating Justine, and also knocked JJ, Lucie and Venus in the final on route to the biggest tennis week of her life.

Not much to say. Aravane was taking the ball early, pushing Venus around appropriately, and Venus’ weak movement on clay was pretty obviously exposed. She was just a half step behind, the majority of the time, and her power couldn’t really make up for the movement because she was rarely dictating play.

So big props to Aravane, who is looking like she’ll be top 16 and the highest rank Frenchie going into the French. Which is Sunday. Wut?

While the Friday matches for the ATP look promising, girls just wanna have fun, and there’s a bitchfest galore tomorrow in Aravane/JJ. Aravane “Gooooold!” Rezai made comments earlier in the year about JJ’s sports(wo)manship, and well, JJ don’t forget, y’all. She’s also gotten her act together, as she only lost 2 games against AMG. Aravane beat Petkovic in straights.

In other entirely predictable, straight sets news, Superhero Sam kept rolling against Patty, Nails was nails against A-Bond, and Shahar beat Parra Santonja.

Smoking the ball all first set, and taking it rather handily, and then serving for the match in the second set, two points away from victory… and Aravane goes to 30-40, the Ghost of Nando’s Past makes an appearance, and double fault on break point. Then she drops the set. Then she drops the match, despite breaking back twice in the third. Same old crap. Aravane seriously needs to figure out that second serve, it’s entering into A-Rad territory, and there’s no way she’s going to be able to compete with big time ball-bashers when they can just smoke that second serve all day long. And of course she knew it, so she often tried to make up for it by going for the second serve… and double faulting. Whatevs. First ever Sydney final for Serena.

Her opponent in the final will be defending champ Elena, who has looked pretty solid this week from the little I’ve seen. What’s up with Vika though? I didn’t see it, but not much of a scoreline at 6-3, 6-1. Love that the WTA home site is starting to call Serena/Lena a rivalry. Of course. It’s the new Federer/Nadal! Anyway, I saw a bit of Vika this week, and she did not look consistent at all. I was figuring, like Nando, she’d be able to come out of the gates flying just like last year. Remains to be the case, though obviously a semifinal berth is pretty solid.

If you’re curious, Lena leads the head to head 4-3. Might not be a bad final to catch. It will be at 7:30pm local time.