phyncke

I am sitting here and I just watched a great match...the quarter final match up here of Venus Williams (5 time champion and 82 seed (much lower down) Tsvetana Pironkova (Bulgaria). It was an amazing game, 2 set whomp-um over the American. This girl really varied the pace on Venus and made her work for her power. In tennis, they usually slam it at each other so you go pace for pace. This girl sliced and diced and kept her pace low so that Williams had to hit it out and bring the power. That gets very tiring and it was so crafty and smart for her to do. I tell you, GREAT match here by this girl. She drop shotted, hit spin and really mixed it up so that she won over the heavier playing Venus Williams. Clever, shrewd and really good tennis.

I was sitting here and talking to the TV...I wanted her to win this. AND SHE DID! Williams tried to pull it back but she could not. This girl took it!!!

What a great match! The crowd was totally with Pironkova and she was the first Bulgarian to make the semis. How great is that?

I know I have been rather absorbed in World Cup football but while this has been going on, Wimbledon made history in the men's singles tennis today, well in all tennis. Longest match, ever! 11 hours long...5 sets and the last set went to 70 games. To put it in perspective --

Men's matches are best of 5 sets (3 of 5 takes it) and you have to take a set by 2 games first to 6 wins (if you win by two games). They do not allow tie breakers in the fifth set at Wimbledon which is the technicality that got this match into the wicket of lasting so long.

The last set, well no one could quite win by two games for a very long time. They kept going and going and going. One up, then the other up, one up, then the other up. This match spanned three days, 491 minutes and yes, 11 hours. Pretty darned amazing. I did not watch that much of it but caught the end.

The players were:

American: John Isner (winner of match)
Frenchman: Nicholas Mahut

Some links:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-25/fueled-by-andy-roddick-s-pizza-delivery-isner-wins-longest-tennis-match.html
http://blog.al.com/solomon/2010/06/hot_corner_history_in_the_maki.html

Anyways. Thought I would share this interesting tennis thing. Tennis was one of my sports in HS. Varsity letter in that one. Cheers! I only played JV soccer. Heh.



by bubbly