AO 2014 - Day 6

On Day 6 I arrived shortly before play commenced. Immediately it was noticeable that there were a lot more people compared to the previous days.

I watched Bencic practice, surprised that she was still here as she isn’t playing juniors anymore. Her dad was speaking to her in a language I didn’t understand. He wasn’t happy with something she was doing with the serve and she yelled back at him after a while. On the other courts two Italian girls were practicing, when they were done Belinda’s dad came over and asked if one of them wanted to keep hitting with Belinda so the one who didn’t have a match that day went over. It felt like a big deal, imagine being asked to hit with Serena or something. Belinda had three men on her court during the practice while the Italians shared a coach who left.

Then I went to Stefi’s practice. It was just some light hitting and then serves and returns. Nothing like how the doubles specialists practice. Ivo told me Stefi couldn’t move during her match against Domi as her legs were feeling very heavy. He asked me if I talked to Svenja recently and I told him that she asked what happened and Stefi laughs and said everybody was asking that. He said it was his fault that she played in the second match because he only asked that she didn’t play first, rather than play third (which would have started at 6pm due to the suspension of play). In hindsight that is easily said but the past has happened and the result could have been the same. As he is always saying she needs to work hard to improve. It is sad that she is out of the tournament but I shouldn’t complain with seeing double the amount of her matches compared to last year. They’ve been in Australia for exactly a month so I’m sure they are looking forward to going back to freezing Switzerland.

Then I went inside Hisense to see Nara squander a set point and lose the match to JJ. I stayed there for all of the Aga/Pavs match. Pavs played so well winning the first set and had an early break in the second then she felt dizzy, and lost the match. Aga was lucky to get through without a fight.

I left to go and watch Stefi’s doubles match. It was pretty shocking how poorly she and Magda did. They got a break in the first game and it was all down hill from 2-0. A chance to break back at 3-5* in the second but they didn’t take it. Magda didn’t serve well. Stefi didn’t really either. She was too passive at the net while Raymond cleaned up any volley opportunities. Heaps of ufe. Dani was solid with the backhand rallies.

When the match ended I went back inside Hisense to see the third set of Murray against Lopez. That was over so quickly as Murray raced to a two break lead and didn’t drop his serve.

For the night session I met my friend from Sydney who I hadn’t seen in a while. Azarenka won against Meusburger in 60 minutes. I cannot imagine how Meusburger even made the third round with that awful serve. Why couldn’t it have been Stefi against Vika out there? Then Nadal was in beast mode against Monfils. There were some spectacular rallies but Nadal was ruthless taking that match in 1, 2, 3.