Foot Fault!

Well, yesterday was interesting.

Ok, no. Who am I kidding? Yesterday was BATSHITICULOUSLY FUCKING CRAZY. Even now I’m still struggling to understand and come to terms with exactly what happened on that fateful day. Three WTA matches were scheduled for the day, and all three produced the most mind-boggling, head-shaking and face-palmngly crazy results.

After going through my usual routine of scouring the interwebs for quotes and anecdotes from the players following the matches, the one quote that really stuck out for me came from Maria Sharapova after her 3-6 7-6(6) 7-6(5) victory over Dulgheru.

“Sometimes it takes more than just playing well.”

And that’s just it. We can go on about how atrociously bad Maria played, finding herself fighting for her life in a third set tiebreak against a certified claycourter (well, I guess ‘Warsaw-courter’ would be a little closer to the truth). And believe me, it was horrendous – she managed to notch up a grand total of 74 errors and 17 unforced errors. We could then also talk about the other atrocity of the day in Andrea Petkovic’s 2-6 6-2 6-4 victory over Jelena Jankovic, with Jelena regressing back to her form in 2010 as she managed to muster up a 4/25 set. Yes, that’s 4 winners and 25 errors. But it serves no purpose. The bottom line is that both Maria and Petkovic fought tooth and nail, gritting out the ‘W’ and dragging themselves into the semifinals somehow. Maria’s win was made all the more remarkable by the way she sprained her ankle late in the second set yet gathered herself to finish off the match.

Of course the match we all wanted to see was the battle between the resurgent Ana Ivanovic and Kim Clijsters. It was easily the match with the most potential for high-quality tennis, and from the sounds of it, it more than delivered. Of course that meant that, after the rain delays, the tournament decided to stick it out on court 2, in front of no cameras. In a nutshell, Ana managed to lose 7-6(4) 3-6 7-6(5) from 5-1* 0-40 up in the third set. Ouch.