One day into the Australian Open and i’m already struggling to keep up. I say this all the time. I’m sorry. I got up at 5am this morning to watch a bit of tennis. Being at work when everything is going on, particularly with what sounded like the match of the tournament between Thanasi Kokkinakis and Ernests Gulbis (Kokkinakis won 8-6 in the fifth after saving 4MPs) is an absolute killer. The big story of the day however was the loss of eight seeds from the bottom half of the women’s draw. I’m sad about all the players who lost today, not just Lucie! I was really disappointed for Belinda Bencic, who has had a rough start to the year. Her first two matches of the year have ended in comprehensive defeats, but I am convinced she will turn it around during the rest of 2015.
Ana Ivanovic was the most high profile loss as she was defeated in three sets by Lucie Hradecka. Angelique Kerber also went out in three sets, a match that I got to watch some of. Her opponent, Irina-Camelia Begu is a really terrific player when she manages to put it all together; however she is incredibly erratic which partly explains the middle set, which Kerber won 6-0. I still felt like Kerber would win this match. She looked rushed and tense out there and at the end, was making far too many errors based on the game that she plays.
The upsets kept coming and I was most disappointed to see Lucie Safarova go out in the first round to Yaroslava Shvedova, 8-6 in the third set. I watched the first five games and was concerned that Lucie was perched way behind the baseline and playing very tentatively. I couldn’t watch anything after that, but agonised following on the live scores. I saw Safarova went down, *2-4 *15-40 on serve, but managed to hold and then lead 5-4* and 6-5*. Shvedova is known for her mental fragility.
Unfortunately for Lucie, Shvedova did hold her nerve and served out the match to love. And credit to her for that. I wanted Lucie to win, but one of my pet hates is when fans of players never give any credit or respect for the players that they go out too. I heard from people on Twitter that Lucie was in tears going off the court, which just sucks. Really sucks! This will be a very tough loss to take, but I hope she can use it has motivation going forward. I’ll always be cheering for Lucie, no matter what the results!
Predictions wise, there were a lot of upsets, but I came out doing reasonably OK. I correctly had Yanina Wickmayer and Caroline Garcia scoring upset wins and didn’t have either Kerber or Ivanovic past the fourth round. Ivan Xie, who has written a couple of previews for the Sydney doubles draws for Moo’s Tennis Blog, has offered his singles predictions as some friendly competiton to rival mine! Like almost everyone, we all had a tough first day at AO 2015…
Thanks to all those who joined the Moo’s Tennis Blog leagues for the TFF DreamTeam game and Racket Rally. We got 17 teams for the TFF DreamTeam (they are very slow to update so far) and 31 teams for Racket Rally. I’ll aim to keep you posted on league standings for this tournament and also for the whole year for Racket Rally.
Moo's Tennis Blog 
And I’m sad with you 😦 Especially sad for Lucie of course, I hadn’t seen that coming at all. At one point I couldn’t even watch livescores anymore. I really, really hope she”ll be able to forget and move on and get better and better the rest of the year. She can do it, we all know that. I was also pretty sad for Belinda but really, really happy for Lucie H – I hadn’t seen it coming in the least but she played some peak stuff in the third set. As for the rest of the results, Karolina had a solid win and Siniakova won too – something I’m pretty happy about.
I think for me the biggest surprise of the day wasn’t Ana, but Kerber losing. Ana can always go off the boil, and she did, in a way, but Kerber usually grinds out the win and after that second set bagel she dished up I was convinced she’d manage the win this time too – but she didn’t.
All these upsets have succeeded in making me pretty anxious for Petra’s match tomorrow. She’s in good form and she should have tons of confidence at the moment – but Petra will be Petra, and I’m afraid she”ll have a bad day tomorrow all of a sudden. We”ll see. At least she doesn’t have any points to defend, so that does certainly help to calm my nerves somewhat.
Okay, this is a reaaaaally long comment already. I”ll shut up now. I”ll just say that I’m really looking forward to my alarm at 5 am tomorrow…when does that ever happen (;
LikeLike
Agreed. The only upset I wanted to see was Sharapova (teehee!) Though Ivanovic losing was always on the cards.
I’m anxious to see Kvitiva and Williams in action!
LikeLike
No don’t shut up, thanks for the comment! I was nervous about the match, but I expected Lucie to win. Fingers crossed that Petra doesn’t suffer the same fate. And snappp, 5am alarm. I can’t believe I’m voluntarily getting up at this time… 😀
LikeLike
I’m sad as well, Moo. I was almost sure, Kerber would win that after I woke up and saw that she served a bagel so I didn’t look up the live scores anymore until going to work before realizing she had lost 😦 😦 😦
So I need to have at least Petra and Simona going far, Pliskova as well..she has now a feasible draw hasn’t she?
@Andrew: Saaaaame, so much hoping for an upset and OF COURSE she will ease through the draw
LikeLike
Oh we are all sad! It was a shame to see Kerber go out, I really enjoy watching her play.
LikeLike
Pliskova’s biggest competitor before Halep (who also has a pretty easy draw now) in the QFs would be Makarova, and I think that matchup would suit Karolina. Fingers crossed.
I’m not a Bouchard fan either bit I’m rooting for her purely so she could potentially knock Masha out LOL. If she doesn’t reach the semi finals and Serena does then she has almost no chance of regaining #1 until later in the year, since Maria has so much to defend over late Spring/early Summer.
LikeLike
Ahahaha I feel you Andrew, I also want both of them to lose early but of course that’s not going to happen sadly.
LikeLike
Bouchard and Sharapova or Williams and Sharapova?
LikeLike