Monday, January 7
Last updated at 6:10 pm EDT
AUSTRALIAN PRESS
Stars' focus wavers superstitiously beyond thin white line - Melbourne Age
But while Fiesta remains popular, it has been superseded by Nobu at Crown. It was only a matter of time, really, only natural that the players should gravitate to a global restaurant chain that started in Beverly Hills and is co-owned by Hollywood star Robert de Niro.At last count, Roger Federer, Marat Safin, Ivan Ljubicic, Fernando Gonzalez and the Williams women had landed in Melbourne. Maria Sharapova is believed to be arriving today and her good friend (but absolutely not boyfriend) Andy Roddick was expected last night.
He will be dividing his time between the tennis court and the poker table. On Friday, he'll be playing in the Aussie Millions' celebrity and media challenge alongside Mark Philippoussis, who won't be playing any tennis, thanks to his dodgy knee. Which, in itself, is another tradition.
WHEN world No. 78 Anastasia Rodionova arrived for a practice session at Melbourne Park yesterday, the Russian-born baseliner was shocked to walk past a framed photograph of herself on the wall showcasing the Australian top five.Rodionova's bid for adoption has been a long process, but finally, it seems, a successful one, and by the time the Australian Open begins next week the host nation's painfully thin female ranks will have officially swelled by two.
Slovakian Jarmila Gajdosova last week had the letters AUS attached to her name, and although the WTA rankings list is yet to be updated, Gajdosova played the WTA tournament on the Gold Coast last week as a local.
A "disappointed" Mauresmo said she had felt the adductor problem during a training session on Saturday and did not practice yesterday. "This is an injury that I am familiar with and know that it will not get better overnight. I know that I would not be 100% fit and ready to play on Monday (today). I have to take a few days rest in order for it to get better."China's leading player, Li Na, also withdrew from the Sydney event, succumbing to a knee injury. Li is ranked inside the world's top 30, having reached the fourth round of the Australian Open last year. She said the right knee problem worsened after she attempted to practice on Saturday: "I just could not move very well."
...Meanwhile, world No. 3 Jelena Jankovic is undergoing intense physio and has not been able to train fully, but she remains in the field in Sydney.
"I can say it has been the best season of my career but also the most difficult year of my life," Henin, 25, said.Along the way she notched a winning percentage of 94, the best since the 1980s glory days of Graf (97 per cent) and edging past Martina Hingis's 1997 season of 93 per cent.
In Henin's personal notes in the WTA media guide, she rates Graf as the player she most admires. So imagine what went through the Belgian's heart and mind when she was asked to play the exhibition match against Graf in Germany.
"It was quite an emotional moment because I was such a big fan. I was, and I still am, a big fan of the player and of the person," Henin said yesterday.
"I was still feeling like a little girl even after everything I achieved last year. Playing against her was like a dream for me."
"My first goal was to be in the top 50 at the end of the year and I think that was not an easy target. But the way I'm going, I think I can reach that."Despite her renewed confidence, Dokic yesterday expressed doubts about progressing far in Hobart, according to tournament director Michael Roberts.
BELARUS teenager Victoria Azarenka made her third WTA singles final at the Gold Coast on Saturday, showing it is possible to make a quick and easy transition from junior tennis to the pro Tour
First, the 24-year-old, who doesn't have a world ranking, must be granted one of the four remaining wildcards into qualifying where a player must win three matches to earn a spot in the main draw for the Open starting next week.That invitation from Tennis Australia should be a formality, given she beat two of the world's top 100 players at the weekend to win a place in the Hobart International starting today.
But now she might not make it back in time after winning three qualifying matches to be included in Hobart's singles draw.
Joining Rod Laver, John Newcombe, Jack Crawford and Novak Djokovic as tournament winners, Llodra swept past Finnish third seed Jarkko Nieminen 6-4 6-2 in yet another rousing triumph for French tennis.He then honoured a bet to jump into the Torrens River with his coach Malcor Oliver and fitness trainer Chris Gaillard - and lived to tell the tale.
The world No. 92, was the last direct acceptance into the tournament and, with wins over Gilles Simon, Evgeny Korolev, Benjamin Becker, Joe Sirianni and Nieminen, thrived on the almost dead art of serve-volleying.
INTERNATIONAL PRESS
The plum tie of round one pits former world No 1 Juan Carlos Ferrero against wildcard Croat Mario Ancic.
"I definitely see myself as the biggest floater in the draw, with not being seeded. I'm sure no one would be excited to get me in the first round."
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With her husband/coach in tow, she's smiling more now and certainly has a Top-10 game if she's clicking on all cylinders. She's fast, hits with depth and power and doesn't appear to fear the big moment. At the Gold Coast, she also took out Sybille Bammer, Nicole Vaidisova and Patty Schnyder. Those are all fine wins and now she'll go into the Aussie Open seeded somewhere around No. 24, which certainly gives her a shot at the second week, and maybe her first Slams semi. Then we will see whether all that time and energy the Chinese Tennis Federation has spent nurturing her will pay off because really, by the time August rolls around and Beijing unleashes it color and crass on the world via the Olympics, Li, in good health, has to be given at least an outside shot at a medal. That's when the huge pressure will come and her performance leading up to the games will be a good indication of her ability to cope....I was more than impressed that Rafael Nadal and his close friend and mentor, Carlos Moya, were willing to contest a nearly four-hour semifinal in Chennai. Rafa saved four match points and won 6-7(3), 7-6(8) 7-6(1). The 31-year-old Moya is 10 years older than Rafa but still stood strong throughout the match. Don't count Charlie out of another Slam quarter, even at the AO. "It was one of the most emotional matches of my career," Nadal said. "It was unbelievable." Rafa will face Mikhail Youzhny in the final, whom he has beaten three straight times and owns a 6-3 record against. You might ask why are Nadal and Moya playing Chennai? Because Moya's agent, Fernando Soler, is the TD there and he's also close with the Nadal camp.
...Either Martina hired the worst defense team on the planet or she gave them nothing to work with, because their avenues of defense looked worse than her second serve against Azarenka at the US Open... Couldn't she have at least said something like, "I was out at a club before Wimbledon, someone at my table was inhaling lines, my drink spilled into it, I picked it up the glass and thought I had cleaned the cocaine off, but I guess I didn't do a good enough job. Here's the waiter's phone number to verify that I was at the club and people there sometimes use recreational drugs."
According to an official, the referee had told officiating personnel that morning that coaching was allowed once a set, but not necessarily at the end. In fact, a player can potentially name three or four coaches and receive visits (one per occasion) from any of them-father, mother, friend, coach, trainer, virtually anyone. Tournament clean-up staff might have an opportunity for a sideline job, the official joked. Even in doubles, players are allowed to appoint multiple coaches. That means if each player names four coaches, the coaching pool for four players on one court would be a total of 16!...By the way, Cornet, who white as a sheet, appeared as though she was going to pass out and lost the second set 6-3 to Pavchuk. She walked off the court and sat in the front row of seats and cried, talking actively to a woman who looked like her mother, occasionally resting her unhappy head on mom's shoulder.
Wires
Three-time French Open champion Gustavo Kuerten will play his farewell season in 2008, the Estado De S. Paulo newspaper reported Sunday.
BRITISH PRESS
It has not taken long for the sport to catch alight — and there can be nowhere more apt for that to happen than Melbourne, which, on New Year’s Eve, recorded the hottest day of the hottest year since records began. It promises to be an exceedingly steamy Australian Open, even by recent standards.
Murray had done his homework and knew that reaching a second successive final of the ExxonMobil event would ensure he claimed one of the top 12 seeding positions in Melbourne, enabling him to avoid the world's four best players in the fourth round."I was unlucky last year in the Australian draw," he said after using all his strength and tactical acumen to get the better of his Swiss friend and rival Stanislas Wawrinka 6-4, 4-6, 6-2 in a gripping, 2½-hour final.
"I had three straight-sets victories and then came up against Rafael Nadal in the fourth round. At least that can't happen this year until the quarter-finals."
Novak & Ana - The Observer
'Football has always been big here, even though we never achieved anything,' says Djokovic, who is a big fan of Red Star, the 1991 European champions. 'I love football and it's the sport I would really like to play. I've said on national television here that I would really love to play for one of our football clubs when I finished my tennis career. Everybody was surprised, but that's what I really want to do. When I finish, who knows? A couple of games, or half a season.'Is he any good? 'Yeah!' What kind of player? 'Attacking. I like to score.' This makes sense: given his propensity to strip off his shirt for tennis fans, he would particularly enjoy the celebrations.
Anyway, who has the best body in the men's dressing room? He pauses to consider this quite seriously. 'Oh. Whooh. I would say, for sure, Paradorn Srichaphan. He has not been playing and I haven't seen him for a while. But he still has the best body in men's tennis.' Better than Rafa? 'Rafa? No, no... I don't like bodies like Rafa's.'
...One player he has befriended - ever since they began competing - is Andy Murray. You suspect they would make a pretty wild duo. 'Well, we haven't partied too much,' says Djokovic, looking almost demure. 'But on the court you can see how we're both playing with a lot of emotion. He screams a lot, and I throw rackets.' The pair have always been closely compared in ability and potential; but over the past year, while Djokovic has been fulfilling his, Murray has been left nursing injuries and kicking the sofa. Does that make things awkward between them? Novak looks momentarily sheepish. 'Actually, I lost his number.' Perhaps he has the gossip on what is happening between Jelena and Andy's brother Jamie, who looked so cosy at last year's Wimbledon? He grins. 'No. But as soon as I see Jelena today I'm going to ask her what's going on. I heard she was denying everything, but I think I saw them at the US Open together, so I don't know.' And speaking of these things, what is the deal with him and Sharapova? 'There is no deal,' he says, though he is clearly not offended at the question. 'Obviously when you see her sitting there in the final of the US Open cheering for me you think, "What's going on?" But it's just a nice friendship.'
...Having remained unmolested for the duration of her lakeside date, Ivanovic is spotted by a few youths. They blush and jostle and, much like your reporter, ask her random questions that she claims to enjoy more than talking tennis tactics. 'Get it over the net and between the lines,' she says of her complex technical game. 'At the end of the day it's really that simple.'...Who, to your mind, is the most attractive woman on the tennis circuit? [Laughs] It's hard to say for a girl but... [Maria] Kirilenko. She's quite attractive. Are women attracted to you? Oh my God, I've had a few uncomfortable experiences but I'm so allergic to that. I just can't... even now when I see my friends and they just want to kiss the cheek. I prefer men.
...Could you ever date a short man? I know you should say it's about the person inside, but probably not. I'm tall and it's too difficult....You may need to do that at Wimbledon this year. Is there anything you wouldn't do in order to win Wimbledon? Oh, I'd do so much that you can't imagine - as long as it wasn't really bad. Sell your soul? No, I need that.
Perry is usually represented as the last British male to have won Wimbledon - three times, from 1934 to 1936 - which is perfectly true. It would, though, give a far more accurate picture of just how unsuccessful, and insignificant, we have been as a tennis nation if he were labelled as the only British male to have won Wimbledon since 1909, the year that 41-year-old Arthur Gore (unrelated to Spencer) retained the title he had won on a walkover 12 months earlier.Bunny Austin, Perry's team-mate, is deserving of mention as a highly competent accomplice in Britain's monopoly of the Davis Cup between 1933 and 1936.
...What history has shown us is that we are not, by inclination, a tennis nation, which, if the notion exists at all, is derived principally from the fact that we happen to stage the world's most famous tournament. If tennis had been invented 100 years earlier, and challenged cricket's right to be regarded as our national summer sport, things might just have turned out differently.
Leon Smith coached Murray for nearly six years from the age of 12. He rejects the idea that the split from Gilbert last November was a sign of weakness and that the support team he has put in place since will be required simply to agree with him. 'Andy valued his time with Brad, and he has said that. He got a lot from it,' Smith says. 'But he wanted a fresh start and I don't think he's made a lot of wrong decisions so far.'Smith saw the Murray-Gilbert relationship at close quarters last October when he travelled with them to the Madrid Masters. 'Andy had a pretty good week and it was just after that that he and Brad finished working together. It was one of those things that happens,' he says. 'Obviously what Andy wanted was for himself to make a lot more decisions, which he didn't feel he was able to under Brad. It was just a question of his wanting more choices. They're certainly not yes-men he has surrounded himself with now. I think it's more a team feeling that he's looking for. Rather than Andy being told what to do, there are going to be many more discussions involved.'
...Since amicably ending his association with Leon Smith in his late teens, Murray has fallen out with each of those who has followed and on each occasion the way he applies his unpredictable brand of tennis has been the central issue.
He had a particularly acrimonious parting with the Colombian Pato Alvarez - 'He wanted me to be more like the Spanish players, but that's not the way I play' - and after that he had a painful break-up with Mark Petchey, who was someone he wanted to like, but felt the Englishman was another who did not understand his game. Then came Gilbert, for whom he had respect but was at a loss to find anything else to sustain their partnership.
...The problem for any coach is that Murray plays tennis as idiosyncratically as Vivian Richards used to bat for West Indies or the Spaniard Seve Ballesteros played golf... Most players try to establish dominance early on, but, says Roddick, Murray 'almost tries to bait you into coming in and he almost likes being approached on. It's a kind of a backwards match from a lot of matches you play.'
...Even in an Olympic year and with Lewis Hamilton promising us weekly thrills from mid March onwards, Murray's quest for greatness has the potential to be British sport's most irresistible story of 2008.
'I always said my game would take a long time to come together and I feel that it is now,' Murray said. 'I guess that it is a bit complicated and I'm only just beginning to understand it myself. But I feel that it works and I feel that it is getting better.' Murray has given himself great preparation for the Australian Open, but the win over Wawrinka, in a long and exciting but patchy struggle, was the least convincing of all his performances here, depending much on courage and durability.
AMERICAN PRESS
The Silvas returned to the Sacramento area for the holidays to visit family and friends. But even on vacation, Jan practices daily. A recent practice session in Gold River revealed he's bigger and stronger, his strokes are more polished and powerful and his serve, once a weakness in his pre-kindergarten days, is now pro-quality [?], too.
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