1st and 2nd Round Qualies the Fun begins

1st and 2rd Round of Qualies

This year the great Aus Open organisation decided to start the mens qualies early on Wednesday and it was good as it was only mens matches and didn't have to hide to get away from the rubbish womens matches, which was the thing to do in the last 2 days and how I do these reports, will be in order of how they went in the draw and not in how I saw them, so deal with it.

First of all the tennis wouldn't be the same without the usual characters and there would be some that I think I am part of the furniture, well they would have a case at the Aussie Open. So I will make reference to some of them now so people can get used to when I make reference to them later.

Two of my favourite ladies and yes they are ladies, though I tend to think of them as my kid sisters who amuse me no end, without trying and no this does not mean laughing at them with them. They are Kristen and Peta, who are both funny in different ways. Kristen got called Justine Henin again, yes she is small and petite, but much prettier, though JuJu isn't as bad as some people think. She loves anything Swedish or Austrian, unless that Austrian is Dani Koellerer ( more on him later). Peta on the other hand has problems handling her feelings to Koellerer as a piece of meat and something to perve on, she loves it, but doesn't always appreciate the nature of Crazy Dani. The old car crash syndrome, you know you shouldn't look, but you do anyway.

Kristen manages to embarrass herself in front of players and does it in such style and Peta besides liking Koellerer is a fangirl of Andrei Pavel, who infamously told her once when asked can I have a photo and said "NO", then a few seconds later smiled and called her Petea. I have been known to take the piss out of umpires and most of them do a good job, but Peta has a fascination with the fave umpire of "The Poo" Enric Molina. So if the match is boring then she will go and watch Molina and drool. More characters to come during the blog and now onto the tennis.

Round 1

Bogdanovic vs. Ginepri

Great result this was, even though it was Bogdanovic that did the job. The highlights of this were that the legendary Sundsvall man and super coach Peter Lundgren is back in the land Down Under and this should mean some quality partying to be done. He is getting paid well to do a difficult job working with British tennis besides Andy Murray, but it's far from an easy job.

Ginepri is just lacking confidence in addition to a lack of brains, so he was cannon fodder and at least he didn't retire when he was getting slapped around like the clown that he is. Ginepri is an academy/factory player. He has muscles, can run, but has the feel for the game of a luimberjack, he hits tennis balls, when he plays well it's effective, when it's off, he is worse than hakarl ( go to Wikipedia or do a Google search it's an Icelandic dish). Good to see the back of Ginepri and Bogdanovic looked like Korda against this piece of fodder.

Dlouhy vs. Niland

The Irishman was the 2nd alternate here after the big Belarussian beast Max Mirnyi withdrew from qualies at a very late stage and he put up a very good show against dropshot Dlouhy. It was the first time I have ever see Niland play and he seemed to play at quite a good game and his forehand was working quite well.

Match was cruising along on serve at 4 all and then dropshot Dlouhy played his usual moronic service game in a set and got broken easily and then Niland served it out for 6-4. Then Michael this crazy Austrian guy who has been coming for years rocks up and thinks Niland will win in 2 and I told him he was kidding and Dlouhy has this match in the bag. He is one of these guys who is fine for the first 5 minutes, but 5 minutes and 1 second is too long.

Dlouhy starts to refocus and then keeps the errors down and takes the 2nd set easily and we are into an expected 3rd set. Niland playing well from the baseline and Dlouhy mixing up the rallies with some junk, dropshots and good moves to the net and he had plenty of break points in the service games, but Niland took the first break and served for the match at 5-4, but the choke was as obvious as night follows day and Dlouhy levels and his greater experience was the difference in this match.

Groth vs. Moodie

Didn’t see too much of this match, but as expected there were huge amounts of rallies with 3m clearance over the net and for once I was being sarcastic. It was a good effort from Groth to come back and win 6-4 in the 3rd, coming back from a break down against big Wes, who has a big serve himself. Groth pretty much is all serve and looks different from the last time I saw him, with a haircut and less bleach in the hair.

Tomic vs. Wang

Bernard Tomic the huge massive hope of Aussie tennis took a WC and was trying to break Hewitt’s record of the youngest qualifier in the main draw. He got Jimmy Wang the Taiwanese who doesn’t have much power, but just hits a flat ball and would have expected him to have too much experience for Tomic.

Wang had 5 match points in the 2nd set breaker and lost it 15-13 and Tomic kept fighting hard, maybe he learnt something from the enforced holiday after tanking a junior event. He got the late break in the 3rd and held onto serve and win the match. Surprisingly the press didn’t go overboard with the win as they usually do when an Aussie wins.

Koellerer vs. Ungur

Ungur was utter garbage in the 1st set and anyone could have beaten him, but Dani played and behaved well throughout the match, that apart from taking the piss out of the ballboys in this match, it was just good play from the crazy one.

Odesnik vs. Prpic

Big Wayne was just too strong here, hitting heavy for the most part and then putting away the short ball when he needed to so and Prpic was outgunned. Prpic is a very likable guy and has a very hot girlfriend and it’s good to see when this happens, though I want to ask Stepanek for some lessons. Odesnik and Haase are the 2 best qualies here.

Evans vs. Beto Martin

This one was a very hard fought match and the umpire was getting the treatment from both players for some poor calling. Evans was playing the power game with the big serve and Beto was doing what he normally does, runs and fights hard and tries to win through consistency.

They split sets and then the 3rd went to 11-9 and this was after Beto had to save a lot of break points. He got pissed off with the umpire for not overruling a call in front of him. He says “what are you doing, you can see clear on the far line, but you miss them right in front of you, get some new sunglasseman”.
Evans was getting aggro as well, he was giving it to Beto by saying “keep swinging and all your mishits will hit the line and there was a massive double fault missed by the officials, and Evans went off. After not taking his chances and losing 11-9, then he went on a tirade to the umpire.

“Don’t talk to me, you have done this to me three times once in Kyoto, somewhere else I didn’t hear and now in Melbourne, you are unbelievable, you should pay me money”.

Round 2

Dlouhy vs. Greg Jones

Dlouhy had this match, but as usual had his lapse of concentration, but this was a safe bet and should make it through to the MD.

Koellerer vs. Oger

Dani to some people is Oger like and this is a very interesting French name must be from Alsace. Dani was much better than this guy and it showed in the 1st set which he took easily. Then after that it got interesting. It seems Oger had Jean Rene Lisnard in his corner and they were giving Koellerer crap, heckling him and Dani didn’t take it that well. After the match he screams “salut, ca va” and gives them the glare.

Andreas Egli, the former top umpire seems to be a supervisor these days and whenever there is a Koellerer match, he wasn’t far away at all. Vamos Carlos Ramos and Dani had an interesting debate, where he told Dani, that his attitude doesn’t exactly make it easy on umpires and people alike and they will react negatively in some cases.

Granollers-Pujol vs. Galvani

Galvani started the better, but Granollers was fighting hard and he has a very unconventional backhand, doesn’t seem to swing through it properly, but his forehand is the main shot and from his game it’s obvious that clay is his surface.

He takes the 2nd set and then with some excellent defence, mixed in with attacking at the right moment races to a 5-1 lead in the 3rd and looks safely in hand, but we know strange things can happen in this game. Galvani holds for 5-2 and then Granollers tries to serve it out, but fails to get the job done. He missed all his 1st serves and Galvani just tries to get the ball back into play and Granollers was getting nervous.

Marci Granollers is coached by Marcus Roy, who coaches the King Hernandez and Oscar was there supporting his colleague. One hilarious moment came when on the 3rd match point for Granollers, when after a long rally Galvani gets a dead netcord that lands on the line. Roy, The King, myself and this guy all chucked the head back at the same time, looked very silly, but after 6 match points he managed to get over the line.

The Big Greek Economidis was solid and untroubled, plus the Ram known as Rajeev and Warburg coming back after an ankle problem at the AO last year all through to the final round of qualies.