Let me blow your mind.

In the quarterfinal she needed to save two match points. In the semifinal, she had to come back from losing the first set to love. The final was all cruise control for metal giant (…wait, what?) Chaky, who takes home her first title since 2008. She showed she can play consistent tennis, and really control that fine line of playing aggressively without being psycho and over the top.

It wraps up what was a pretty fantastic championship Sunday, including Golubev, Goerges and junior Watson.

Oh, and Mardy Fish won at home again. Whatever. Tree coming back home to win a title would have been far better.

Up and comer, hometown favourite, Slovenian Polona Hercog. Comeback Kid of the year, ponytail slingin’ Anna Chakvetadze. Portoroz semifinal. Match of the year. 6pm local time. Be there.

ATP – Hamburg (500)

Official Site: Here
Draw: Here
Top Seeds: Kolya, Nico, Melzer, JCF

Hopefully if you picked your tennis pool team with intentions of picking up big points in Hamburg, you chose the “throw darts at the draw” method, as three big names withdrew before the tournament even started (Ferru, Monf and Garlo) though conveniently AFTER the trading zone had close.

Not exactly a super exciting draw with their absence. This is a big two weeks for Kolya, however. If you remember, he missed a ton of time last season and came back on a mission, winning Hamburg and then Umag (next week) equaling a total of 750 points to defend. At 4,740 points, it’s not going to drop him out of the top 10 or anything, but it’s two of four tournaments (Shanghai and London) where he’s got a serious chunk of points to defend (3250 of his points come from those four tournies).

ATP – Atlanta (250)

Official Site: Here
Draw: Here
Top Seeds: Dick, Tree, Lleyton, Zeballos

What better way to kick off the US Open Series than with what must be the oldest average draw all year? No, seriously. All top 8 seeds are 25 or older. You’ve also got Blah, Dent, Russell, Kunitsyn… My favourite part about this draw? The winner of Blake/Dent, a pretty prime time match in the early round of a small time, American event, gets to play clay court, Challenger guy Horacio Zeballos… who got a first round bye. Hee.

Ladies – Portoroz (250)

Official Site: Here
Draw: Here
Top Seeds: JJ, Kvitova, Pavs, Errani

Oh hey JJ. Pavs and Polona for the win. That is all.

WTA – Bad Gastein (International)

Official Site: Here
Draw: Here
Top Seeds: Petko, Bacsinszky, AMG, Zakopalova.

The prettiest site with the most boring of draws. Bit of a shame. Seriously though, go look at centre court. It gives Monte Carlo a run for it’s money.

Last year seemed so magical. All my youngin’s (read: players born within a year of me) were doing so well. Caro had solid results all hard court season (and eventually made the final). Sorana was having the season of her life. Sabine came off a fantastic Wimbledon and looked poised to make a run at the hard court season. Delpo was owning it all up, and eventually won the USO. This year?

Well, to add insult to injury, Sabine is still out, and will not make her return at the fifth slam, Portoroz. Sob. Not sure her or Sorana will be in Montreal. They weren’t in Toronto last year, which made me really sad. So… yeah. I’ll be in the corner crying.

Gawd dayum life getting in the way of blogging! I’m sure most of you have already figured out what’s happened and what not, and I don’t have much interesting to say, since I didn’t see the matches, but here’s a quick wrap up of the finals today.

Petkovic captured her first career WTA title in Bad Gastein, and was awarded the Holy Flower Vase trophy, one that looks like it’ll make a run in the top 10 trophy awards at the end of the year. I mean what more could you want? Your beautiful “first title” trophy can help you give birth to gorgeous flowers. Or other substances to be enjoyed in the Ginormous Pink Bong. Just sayin’.

We all know how much Dina loves finals (of all the one’s you had to win, it HAD to be against Caro, of course) and she didn’t disappoint, going mega headcasey on the tourney that she only should have won, but HAD to win. The draw was a walk in the park, and it didn’t hurt that a majority of the top 10 seeds were took out in early rounds. Well, Dina needed 3 sets, not to mention 75 in the third set, but hell, a win is a win. The trophy was one of those lame glass shapes with the tourney name painted on. Yeah, not fun OR practical. Slovenia fail.

WTF, Q-Man? Captain Querrey couldn’t get shit done today against Ginepri, who claimed his third career title. And hey, he’s still an American, so the tourney organizers have to be happy about that, even though there was about a 50% chance an American was gonna win. Too bad for the Q, he really has trouble getting deeper in slams and stepping up and claiming tourneys where he could really do well, especially with the two seeds about him (Boresunov and The Dude) going out in earlier rounds.

Not gonna lie, Tree is enjoyable to watch, and has fucking skills. Is serve comes flying in at a flat 11 feet off the ground, and arguably may be more detectable than Ivo’s, but fuck sakes. Try catching up with a ball at 130mph coming in from 5 feet above your head. Yeah right. Dude got er dunn against fellow American Odesnik in three long sets, with one of the most ridonkulous match points Ive ever seen, dinging a return off the net cord to win. He looked pretty guilty right after, for winning off something that ridiculous. Don’t worry dude, its Sven, not you, dude fucks with stuff like that in his sleep.

So your semis are Fancy Dancy/Q-Man and Ginepri/Tree. Epic.

In Hamburg, Koyla and Ferru had pretty regular wins and will face each other, PHM beat Troicki, and Cuevas dinged out Almagro, and they’ll play each other tomorrow in the other semis.

Bad Gastein continues to be incredibly “Bad”ass, Trumpet won, Petkovic knocked out ALG and Shvedova continue to roll in straights, and those are your semifinalists.

Your final scores for Slovenia are 63 60, 63 62, 61 61, 61 61, to Dina, Britanti, Voegele, and Errani. Sorry, I missed the point where this was relevant. Honestly, look at those scores, fuck sakes.

NOW YOU KNOW

At least I think that’s what she was saying here. Dina continued demolishing/feeding on lower ranked players, like she does, on qualifier Pervak (unfortunate name) 61 62. The other three matches contained the 4th, 5th, and 7th seeds, and they ALL lost. (Vinci, Safarova, and Dushbag who got bagelled in the third set). So the yellow brick road to the trophy just got golden. Seriously, this is a bit silly. But I guess its Slovenia, and she loves them and they love her, and its a warm up, so meh, I’m not complaining.

Nothing much exciting in Evil Gastein, only four matches, Shvedova demolished Shahar 62 61, and has only lost 4 games in her first two matches there. Hot damn. Rybawhatever, ALG and stereotypical-name-wildcard-German Meusburger also won.

As for the men, Indy is presumably getting rained upon, so whatever to you fellas. Hamburg saw a more regular day, Ferru, Koyla, Chardonnay and Sodomy all moved on, and Pico! Who breadsticked poor Chucho, who then retired at 1-1 in the second set. Hopefully he’s doing fine. Pico plays Ferru next, sometime around 3 or so local time, on the second court. Of course I work all effin’ day, so I’ll miss it, but ah well. Order of play for tomorrow is here, on the right, if you’re curious, some pretty interesting matches tomorrow.

So wtf? No Hamburg pics anywhere? At least not on the sites I normally go, OR the official site, and I’m too damn lazy to look anywhere else. Fail.

Gilly lost in three today, everyone is still baffled as to why he decided to play in Hamburg on the clay, instead of defending his title in Indy on the hard courts, and getting a head start to the long gruelling season. Maybe because he knows the hard court season is long, and would get a bigger rest losing early on the clay. Or that its a 500, and Indy is a 250. But I’m sure he would have gained more points from going deep in Indy than losing in the second round of Hamburg. Whatever dude, rest up.

In other Hamburg news, Boredo, Stan the Man, and the Melz all lost. So basically all these dudes were REALLY bored or just don’t really care right now. Either way I don’t get it. Just gaining points for the argument that clay tourneys post-Wimbley are a bit silly.

But in REAL news, Pico won! Knocking out the Youz-man in straights.

Nothing too nuts in Indy, Boresunov lost the second set and then served it out with a bagel, and Dudi “The Dude” Sela took out resident local captain d-bag Spadea. Too many mochizzles there dude. Or whatever you called them.

Not to sound like a sexist pig, but holy, women tourneys are a total snorefest, especially without Dina having played. CSN dropped out of Gastein, Shahar and Trumpet both won, though it took Alize three long sets.

Slovenia, AMG lost, the second seed, pretty well creating a golden road to the trophy for Dina at this point, and the Dushbag won too, knocking out Garbin.

Nothing too exciting today on the women’s side, Dina’s clothing was probably the biggest story FFS. As noted, she owned it up on the court. CSN lost in Gastein, and Kanepi lost in Portoroz, 1 and 2, to
Govortsova, whoever that is. I think that’s Sven taking his revenge on her for losing in the first round after I picked her in the French Open suicide pool. That or she’s been sucking lately.

Nothing too nuts for the men. Hamburg was a lot of qualifiers playing, Tipsy lost, but there weren’t any big names in play really.

Indy could actually shape out to be interesting, with some solid hard court players, and a pretty fair field overall. Fancy Dancy won too! CANADA, FUCK YEAH. Americans Sammy Q and Tree (AKA Isner, cause he has the reach of a fuckin tree) both owned it up, as did Odesniek, tagging out poor Ole Baggy. Ernie lost to Gicquel too, which is, ya know, not surprising. Might end up paying more attention to this tourney than I expected.