As Wimbledon draws to its dramatic conclusion, British interest in the main events has been reduced to just the one hope - Andy Murray - again.
On Monday, Laura Robson tried hard but really wasn't at her best against a good and much more experienced opponent, Kaia Kanepi. Kanepi is a superstar in her homeland, Estonia, and was good value for the win, which brought her up against a much tougher nut in Sabine Lisicki who'd achieved the unthinkable in knocking the champion, No 1 seed and hot favourite out. If anyone had suggested that Serena Williams wouldn't be in the final, they'd have been laughed off court, but Lisicki just got on with her job and won the day. Against Kanepi, it was an easier story as the hard hitting German had little trouble in setting up a semi-final meeting with last year's beaten finalist Agnieska Radwanska. Radwanska came through a gruelling match against China's Na Li and the semi will be a fascinating match between players of wholly contrasting styles.
In the other half of the draw, Marion Bartoli came through relatively comfortably against the young American, Sloane Stephens, and will now play the real surprise package of the Ladies' tournament, Kirsten Flipkens of Belgium. Flipkens, after losing the first set against the 2011 champion, Petra Kvitova, won the next 2 in dramatic style to reach her first Grand Slam semi-final at the age of 27. Not only is Flipkens tiny compared with most of the other leading players, but she also suffered life threatening illness last year and wasn't even ranked highly enough to enter the qualifying tournament for Wimbledon in 2012. For what it's worth, my money would be on a Lisicki-Flipkens final, but I'm not exactly confident !
In the men's event, the 4th round and quarter final results were much as expected. The top half of the draw has boiled down to Djokovic against Del Potro, the latter having defeated both injury and David Ferrer to get there. Although Ferrer was the higher ranked player, Del Potro's size, power and greater suitability to a grass court must have made him favourite in this match anyway. In the other half most of the seeds had already gone and it was left to Murray to overcome Mikhail Youzhny, while Jerzy Janowicz had no seeds left to defeat but did take 5 sets to beat Jurgen Melzer.
Yesterday's quarter finals were between Murray and Fernando Verdasco, and an all-Polish match between Janowicz and Lukas Kubot. While Janowicz despatched his compatriot in straight sets, Murray had an almighty struggle, going 2 sets down before clawing his way back to win in 5. Rather like Flipkens, Verdasco has had a bad time over the last year or so, but he was once a top-10 ranked player, and it showed; Murray may have been a bit 'out-of-sorts' but Verdasco was well worth his 2 set lead and, in the end, it probably came down to a matter of nerve as Murray served out for the match at 7-5 in the 5th set.
As in the Ladies' tournament, the semi-finals will be fascinating. World no. 1 Djokovic against the huge Argentinian Del Potro - Djokovic has to be favourite but Del Potro did win when they met in the Olympics and on the same court. Murray should beat Janowicz but he had a very hard match yesterday. A Murray-Djokovic final has to be favourite, but who knows ?
No comments:
Post a Comment