Second Round Fun

Ok, children I know you have missed my reports so the priviledge is all yours for two reports from the non Roddick/Agassi Australian Open.

Wednesday, wasn't too bad in some respects and not others. I met up with an old Croatian friend of mine Sammy, I was wondering what happened to him during the first two days. The clown broke his arm, falling while playing soccer and couldn't come the first two days. Luckily he knows me very well and knew what matches to find me.

First of all I will talk about the hiding that Hrbaty gave Gaudio 6-1, 7-5, 6-0. The Dominator definitely dominated Gaudio, and for once Gaudio didn't give up, but he didn't vary his game enough to throw Hrbaty out of rhythm and it's about time that Hrbaty at least showed some of his potential, and he hasn't been pushed too hard and I think he has a very good opportunity to beat Grosjean on Friday night.

Enqvist and Beck was a tough match, but Enqvist was good enough to win. The Swedes definitely give the tournament a lot of atmosphere which is a good thing, and it's usually easy to know how one of their players is going from the crowd, if you can't get in the court. I am not a huge fan of Enqvist, one of my friends was heckling him when he was training in Stockholm last December, and it was funny when Enqvist recognised the heckler. He has a very good record against Agassi, so hopefully the boring churchboy can put one over Bald Eagle who walks like a Duck Agassi.

Escude and Söderling was quite a good match and Escude played very well, but the problem is that Escude isn't known for his consistency and could quite easily lose to that waste of space Ginepri. I remember seeing Ginepri last year playing Rosset and that was one hell of a poor match. Rosset was injured and played absolute crappy tennis and Ginepri wasn't much better, but to his credit he decided to bulk up, but this is a cosmetic change as I still don't rate him very highly.

Speaking of ordinary players it's an absolute joke that " have a little" Patience is in the 3rd round. Davydenko has been on a very poor streak which doesn't say much about the gnome Clement, but losing to Patience come on that is virtually unacceptable for Davydenko.

I saw Roger and Yves playing doubles and they lost to Sa and Saretta, Roger didn't really try that hard, and I would even go to far as saying that Allegro was probably the better out of the two, though Allegro and return of service aren't mutually exclusive terms.

Then Costa and Ferrero were practicing and there were a lot of silly girlies watching Ferrero and he was getting frustrated and threw his racquet against the back fence after he missed a shot, it was quite funny to see actually. I spoke to Costa afterwards, actually mostly about how I hope he will play better in the tournament than Barcelona are currently going in La Liga, also joked about the huge serving left handers that they keep throwing him Rusedski then Arthurs.

Björkman girl who is very keen on Jarkko,myself and also Sammy who was very frustrated at this time with Ljubicic and Karlovic's exits from the tournament.

The Ljubicic match he had plenty of chances against Guga in the 1st and 3rd sets but managed to find a way to lose, whilst Karlovic the tiebreak king played some very poor points in the breaker against Martin. We all like Jarkko, but the reason we went for Safin were practical reasons, as he had a more realistic chance of doing more damage in the tournament.

The match was of a very high standard and Safin knew he had to lift his level of play to beat Jarkko, which he did very well. The old temper was flaming and there to see on show, but his overall form was good. Jarkko played some very good shots, but he really does need to improve his second serve to take that next step. Freddy is a good coach and got Norman to the top, and he will work on that and get him stronger physically. Safin has to continue improving and he will with more match time and I think he should take care of old man Martin.