When it falls, it all falls down the foibles of Wednesday

Better get the rants out of the way first of all. Good to see the organising people have no fucking brains. They used to allow Ground Pass holders into the Vodafone arena, but they decided to charge a bit more for specific Vodafone or whatever they call the crappy thing now. Problem is that there is a big court with no atmosphere, then the other courts suffer from overcrowding to the max. These idiots either need to limit the amount of tickets being sold, not happening or expand the seating capacities of the other courts to fit in with the demand and that is something that they can easily do and sshould.

Ferrer vs. Hrbaty : Ferrer was impressive, first time in a while I could say that, hit very good length and played very solid from the baseline. I expected this one to be a grindfest, but Hrbaty's forehand broke down big time, in Perth he was coming over it again, but here he couldn't do that and Ferrer exposed that side especially and Hrbaty was done in around 80 minutes.

Berdych vs. Dabul : The Berdman was just toying around with Dabul, and doing what he should be doing to lower ranked players that you are clearly better than, then again Nalbandian hasn't learned this lesson.

Mathieu vs. Delic : This Mathieu what a guy, he can only come back against Koubek, Seppi and Hernandez, but when you want to him to win, he does the opposite.

Seriously, he is up 2 sets to love and 4-1 in the 4th against Delic and he can't close it out. Delic loves playing here, because he gets great support from the Bosnian community, who are pretty good unlike the idiot Serb fanbase that is here, at least they don't scream out in the middle of the rally when the ball hasn't bounced. Mathieu got tight and was just popping up mid court balls with nothing on them and Delic took advantage of them as he should have and deserved his victory.

Safin vs GGL : Yes, I sat through some of this and good performance from Safin, he realises it's his last time here, so he decided to put on a show and it was a good show at that, Friday night blockbuster waits for him.

Santoro vs Kohli : This was a high quality match with Santoro doing his usual slice and dice stuff and Kohli being aggressive, it was hard to get a seat, but eventually we got in. Plenty of French fans there, who weren't there for the Mathieu match.

Fab was fighting hard and Kohli had this match in his hands, when he served for it at 5-4, but wasn't able to forclose the deal and Fab managed to get the fourth set and he rode the crowd momentum home. Plenty of quality rallies, moves to the net and Kohli hit 90+ winners and around 60 unforced errors. Santoro loves his big matches in Melbourne, only problem is now with Roddick winning, Kohli has a better chance of taking him out.

Norm Chryst was umpiring this match, and we were giving him stick, when he was overruling a call he shouldn't have and failed to overrule the one he should. Yes, the old "get the hair out of your eyes" comment was made.

Roddick vs. Malisse: Malisse blew this one, seriously some dumb unforced errors on rally balls. He had a break in the 3rd set, really Roddick shouldn't be outhitting Malisse from the baseline, and he wasn't coming up with big shots at all. Malisse was hitting the off forehand to late and if he wasn't, then he was rolling the ball into the net.

He manages to get to the 3rd set tiebreak, has a mini break and then decides to hit 6 unforced errors, then gets pissed off and Roddick runs it through from there. The fact that both Kohli and Nalle lost, means Roddick walks into the quarter finals.

Other notes, during the day Bolelli was his usual quality returning self, the guy couldn't return a phone call. Nalbandian was clownish in Nalbandian ways. Del Potro is loving it at the moment.

The Toad is a classic Grand Slam midget and up a set and 2 breaks, losing in 4 sets never in doubt.