To be totally honest, Sam/Justine was the match of the day, and other than that there wasn’t too much madness going on, so I’ll do ‘em up in one post.

The dudes were pretty predictable. The “upset” of the day was Nico knocking out an exhausted Fer, who was only able to claim a set. Monte Carlo, Rome, Barcelona, Madrid, Nice… that’s a lot of tennis. And after a week at RG, 5 sets is a lot to ask against the hard hitting Nico. Really just as simple as that.

Rafa continues to work off some rust, but some props have to be given to Thomaz, who played him tough and is an impressive youngster on clay. The Melz knocked out Oompa Loompa in four (sad face) and Djoker lost a set to Ginepri, who has had a hell of a week, but otherwise looked pretty solid. Likely looking at a Rafole semifinal, which is a tasty prospect.

As for the ladies, as noted in the live blog post, Shahar tried to go toe to toe with Serena and, go figure, it didn’t work, as she lost 2 and 2. Dani put up a solid fight against JJ in the first, but JJ is looking like the JJ of 2008, absolutely rock solid from the baseline and exhausting her opponents by having them run side to side for seemingly all match.

As for the “no name” match, Slava defeated Groth 4 and 3. Super excited about that. I saw both of her matches in Toronto, the first one she came back against Dani, down 5-1 in both sets to win 7-5, 7-5, and then gave Serena a pretty good battle on centre court. She has a pretty solid backhand and fantastic movement. Oh, and she beat JJ at the USO. The surface definitely favours JJ, but Slava has had a solid clay season, so bring it on. Imagine if she made the semis? Oh WTA.

Not exactly a bold statement, but I’m pretty sure the winner of this tournament is going to be Serena, Sam or JJ. If Sam can beat Serena, who knows. But gotta like Serena’s chances if she gets past Sam. How weird is that?

Whatever, Kohlswhatever. Russia won 2-1, but they needed a win from Igor and the mixed dubs team, after a complete thrashing of Lena to the hands of Sabine. And since I watched that, that’s what I’m going to talk about. (Not to mention, in the first couple of games of the doubles, all they did was laugh at each other. So its not like it was a super competitive, heart breaking loss or something).

SRSLY THOUGH. Girl’s got skills. Sabine came out crushing the ball, blasting huge winners, and more or less running Lena off the court after, yes, she had troubles getting serves into the service box. But BLOODY HELL, Beanie Baby (new Sabine nickname alert!) really needs to tame her wildness. In the sense that she takes huge cuts at certain balls that she just needs to get over the net. In this sense, it would be easy to see how someone putting less pace on the ball, or mixing it up more, could cause Ms. Licky some serious problems. Its not to say she needs pace to hit big, or is counterpunching or something, she fired some ridiculous 175km/h winner in the second set. She’s just sometimes reaching or over doing it, trying to blast everything, and balls end up into the net or nowhere near to a line, when it really wasn’t necessary. Regardless, when you think power in the women’s game, you usually think “the Sisters and maybe a few of the Russians”, but you can definitely add the ball crushing German to the list. If you haven’t seen her play yet, get on that shit.

And team GRRRREAT BRITAIN won! And I saw like two seconds of it, but this may be the cutest dubs team evar. Kind of get the feeling Muzz is taking on the big brother role with L-Rob who is only 15?! I for some reason thought she was like 17 or something. She managed to take the first set off of Slava Shvedova, and then only managed to take 3 games over the next two sets. Muzz won easily, and then they wrapped it up in the dubs. And damn can Laura whack a ball, considering her age. Hurry up and get old, would ya?

There’s been a lot of talk about headbands this summer, there’s been a lot of them. Masha has been rocking (a silver) one, Jo has his curly haired samurai kid look going, you name it. But Yaroslava Shvedova looked like the queen tennis ninja out there today, and upset JJ, eventually, saving two match points on the way.

I actually saw Slava play twice in Toronto, when she beat Dani (coming down from a double break in BOTH sets to take it in straights) and in her loss to Serena, where she was good, but inconsistent. She has a kind of weird game, she’s got quite a serve, and a wickedly powerful and accurate backhand, better than her forehand. But she’s also a great athlete, can work the court, and isn’t a bad volleyer either. It kind of sounds like she’s the complete package, but she’s incredibly streaky, and my commentator said she has the type of game that would take a while to mature, which is a great point.

Overall a really entertaining match. Tons of breaks in the third, but they weren’t lazy breaks. Slava actually had two chances to serve it out, and couldn’t get it done. JJ was her usual self in the tiebreak, relentlessly defensive, way behind the baseline, chasing down balls and getting right back into position like few players can do. And despite Shvedova playing beautifully to each side of the court, she couldn’t get it past her. JJ eventually blew two match points due to some UEs and great hitting from Slava. Slava eventually stumbled upon match point, and took it with an ace.

Apparently JJ’s grandmother died last night, so I don’t want to rip on her game. Both players were wildly streaky, and despite a lot of breaks, were both playing pretty good tennis. And despite quality, it was entertaining for sure. Its just too bad JJ couldn’t close it out, cause she easily could have and should have, and played a very smart tiebreak. None the less, what a huge win for Slava, she’s got quite an exciting game (and how about that backhand? Holy crap) and will play Dulkbag in the next round, who bagelled A-Bond today.