It was business as usual for the ladies yesterday… or perhaps business as unusual, as pretty well everyone who should have won yesterday did so. Caro, probably for the first time this year, looked like her old self, really hitting the ball, spreading Kiri out, and hitting some big serves (she went for an ace down the line on the ad court at one point and just missed wide, it was weird) and threw a bagel and 3 at Kiri. Ouch. Maybe now that Nails is out of her way, she’s believing. She’ll take on Nads next.

Birthday girl Aravane took out Franny, and Lena, A-Rad (bagel and ‘sticking Dulkbag), Mono and Molik all won.

Yesterday’s biggest “Performance Of The Day… Brought to you by Balls To The Wall©” is from the lil’ scrapper, JZ, who continues to prove that no opponent is too big (or too tall) for her this year. Taking out Masha in three (ridiculously long) sets, she sets up a fourth round meeting with Alicia Molik. So basically, she should be top 5 in the early WTA YEC race by the end of the tourney, if she isn’t already.

Sucks for Masha though, who apparently was feeling more right elbow pain, just as in USO, and she’s not exactly one to make excuses. It might explain her TEN THOUSAND (read 14) double faults, and just one ace. At one point, break point, she took extra long on a second serve, and proceeded to flop it into the net. Something was definitely up. I’d say the bottom half’s remaining 8 has shaped up quite nicely, overall.

Cute little photo gallery at the WTA site over some of the media coverage in China for JZ and Nails. Despite the fact that the Chinese quite literally grab people and go “you, play this sport! Be good! Win us medals and make our country look good!” not all sports are that popular there, and tennis definitely isn’t. Still, the coverage is great, and the WTA site has a little tidbit:

Chinese site browsers rose by 667%; five major newspaper front covers; 500,000 people watching Li play Venus…

500,000 is probably the average Canadian viewership for Hockey Night in Canada in a 30 million person country, and they picked possibly the worst match EVAR to watch (one of the most painful of the tournament)… but hey, she won, right? And 667% seems like a whole shitton. Who knows, maybe in 15 years we’ll have a Chinese invasion on the top 10. Move over Russians.

Justine in the semis? OK. But JZ? I hope whoever guessed that one pre-tournament put some serious money down on it.

Justine squeaked past an error prone Nads once again, 7-6, 7-5, and JZ more or less dismantled Kiri, who I’m guessing is probably exhausted by now since she had to play two doubles matches yesterday… and you know, isn’t used to even playing this many singles matches.

This is one excellent match-up, as both players are rather small and compact. JZ doesn’t have the power that Justine has, but she can drive players absolutely bonkers by getting balls deep, and her speedy recovery after shots. Watching her give Serena problems last year in Miami was some sort of wonderful.

If you’re curious, they’ve met once before, back in 2005 in Toronto. Justine won 2 and 4.

But it was all going so well? What is this, the US Open?

No Justine/Kim, not even Justine/Kuz. Instead we have Nads, who has been playing incredibly solid tennis all week. I’m a little bit sad that Kuz lost… but at the same time, if you saw the first round of Brisbane, Nads and Justine were absolutely ripping the cover off the ball. Nads will be looking for revenge, and let’s be honest, probably has the upper hand. She’s been pretty consistent all tournament, and Justine, if anything, may start running out of gas sooner than later. If it’s anything like Brisbane, a match you do NOT want to miss.

And then there’s the other quarter, which was a mindfuck to start out with. Questions around Dina… Mono and JJ? Didn’t happen. So sad to see Dina go down. She apparently was in so much pain she could barely move, and it was exactly what happened in Doha. The really unfortunate part is that she’s been playing quite well, and getting progressively better. Not to mention if she were to have won, JZ is an easily beatable opponent.

And how about JZ? She’s a pesky one all right. She took out A-Bond, which is really not that huge of an upset, and will take on MaKiri next round. The two of them have been pretty solid all tournament, especially Kiri, who is out to prove something (which she did, making her first ever slam quarterfinal. Props.) I actually think that may be a really fantastic match, despite detractors likely looking to go blabbing about two unseeded players in a quarterfinal. So JZ or Kiri and Justine or Nads will be in the semis. And one of them will be in the final. I’ll let you take a moment to wrap your head around that.