Wednesday, January 16
Last updated at 4:30 am EDT
AUSTRALIAN PRESS
Little Miss Funshine - Melbourne Age
THE conclusion to Novak Djokovic’s well-attended match yesterday afternoon prompted such an exodus from Rod Laver Arena that one watcher wondered if the Svetlana Kuznetsova-Natalie Dechy duel that followed should be dubbed "the lunch break".
LLEYTON Hewitt had to win Wimbledon and the US Open, spend two years at the game's summit, leave several litres of blood, sweat and tears on Rod Laver Arena in pursuit of his home grand slam title, survive Davis Cup matches in places George W. Bush would be hesitant to invade and breed with a soap star before many Australians took him to their hearts....And even now, New Lleyton — the eminently more mature, less combative man apparently mellowed by fatherhood — can find a way to make it hard for anyone other than his joyless, bellowing Fanatics to love him. Like yesterday, when he was leading a humiliated opponent, Steve Darcis, two sets to love (5-0 and 30-0), yet felt the need to use Hawk-Eye to challenge one of the Belgian's rare winners.
Lleyton Hewitt is undoubtedly aware of the majority view that his time at, or even particularly near, the top of the game has been and gone. Yet the world No. 22 is also resolute in his belief that he can still compete with those who have overtaken him since his 80-week stint at No. 1, or emerged in the five years since.
THIS was Nicole Pratt's 50th grand slam singles event and her last. It finished where most others ended, in the first round. This is not a criticism, just a statement of fact.
AUSTRALIAN journeymen Alun Jones and Joe Sirianni still buy their own tennis shirts and live among the vast ranks of the sport's relative have-nots. Both are playing some of the best tennis of their late-achieving lives, although a career milestone for one yesterday contrasted with a dramatic let-down for the other.
THIS is January in Melbourne. Thirty-odd degrees with a big sun. More than 41,000 people at the tennis — 15,000 inside Rod Laver Arena alone — the roof open, sandwiches, beer, sunhats, tanned summer holiday shoulders and singing sports fans in green and gold wigs. They sing songs of Australiana from every corner.
Venus Williams quietly resumed at the Australian Open last night after a year's absence to struggle through an opening-round win over China's Zi Yan, while Roger Federer, shaking off illness, delivered a performance to leave the field feeling very sick indeed.
They say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and that was definitely true for my match yesterday. I didn't play well, but I am through to the second round, and that's the most important thing. It was a good match to come through.
IF THEY were auctioned off as thoroughbreds, Chris Guccione would fetch a much higher price than compatriot Peter Luczak. But on their form on Margaret Court Arena yesterday, those who bought shares in the weight-for-age galloper "Gooch" would be seeking to trade it for a piece of mid-week handicapper "Looch".MARK Philippoussis yesterday gave the strongest hint that his tennis career could be over.
GREEK mythology has Nemesis as the goddess of divine retribution, although in modern times, the word is most often used to describe an opponent who cannot be conquered.
LLEYTON HEWITT has come to Melbourne Park in many guises over the years.From a teenage wannabe with stars in his eyes, to the world's best player with Grand Slam glory on his mind, to the mature-age player who no longer dominates but still carries a tennis nation on his shoulders. And never has he begun an Australian Open campaign quite like this.
IN a sport riddled with players who can talk endlessly about how well their crosscourt forehand is working and how they are taking the tournament "one match at a time", Novak Djokovic is a breath of fresh air.The young Serb is fast becoming a crowd favourite with a comedy routine that is gaining cult status and one of the best all-round games in tennis. Yesterday, after beating German Benjamin Becker in the Australian Open's first round, the third seed succumbed to peer pressure from fans inside Rod Laver Arena and "became" Maria Sharapova.
IN a sport riddled with players who can talk endlessly about how well their crosscourt forehand is working and how they are taking the tournament "one match at a time", Novak Djokovic is a breath of fresh air.
IT was a match between the cool kid and the straight man.At one end was Marcos Baghdatis, the excitable and animated Cypriot with the dark hair who wooed the crowd in Melbourne two years. And he was at it again on Vodafone Arena yesterday.
THE Grand Slam trophy missing [sic] from Venus Williams' cabinet is well and truly in her sights as she cruised through to the second round in a straight sets 6-2 7-5 win over China's Yan Zi.
COMMENTS by tennis commentator Roger Rasheed about Venus Williams' behind prompted a number of complaints to broadcaster Channel Seven last night.Rasheed, a former coach of Lleyton Hewitt, had a slow motion replay of Williams' bottom during her match against China's Yan Zi at the Australian Open.
"Take a look at this now. Make or think as you will, ladies, but for me, that's a pretty good sight,'' he told co-commentators Tracy Austin and Nicole Bradtke.
AMERICAN PRESS
BRITISH PRESS
There is something about Haase that makes you warm to him. If there is not much of him physically – with spindly legs and pipe-cleaner arms – he has a sense of timing, an array of strokes, not least on the return of serve, that baffled Ljubicic, combined with enough of an attitude to make for a compelling package.The lad is bright, too, having passed seven subjects at the highest level of the Dutch school system, including physics and chemistry, which meant that he did not take to the professional circuit until after his 18th birthday. “There are a lot of players around my age, like [Marin] Cilic [of Croatia] and [Evgeny] Korolev [of Russia], who have become top 100 players, but they have had that much more experience than I have,” Haase said after his 6-7, 6-3, 6-0, 7-6 victory. “I had a wonderful year last year [rising from No 167 to No 114 in the world] and now I want to build on that. Everyone says they want to be No 1 in the world one day and that would be a dream, but I would like to be in the top 50 by the end of this year.”
So shouldn’t such dedication be rewarded with a little respect from the organisers? Apart from of course the opportunity of actually lifting a grand-slam trophy and sending Federer home early, Santoro maintains he has one more ambition before he retires from the sport; the chance to play on Wimbledon’s Centre Court. In all probability the upcoming championships this summer will be Santoro’s last and surely the All England Club will not be so callous as those who make the decisions at Tennis Australia. Then again it was the scheduling men at Wimbledon who demoted to Sampras to what turned out to be his last ever match on the lawns of SW19 and he has never forgiven them for the insult.
Speaking at an Australian Open that is making do without Andy Murray, the South American also suggested that the Association of Tennis Professionals, who run the men's tour, have been trying to "scare" the players with methods he likened to "political terrorism"...."Now there's a new rule in that one has to be constantly policing, and pushing away everyone that gets near you asking you something suspicious, or just how you're doing, or if they say: ‘Martin, how are you? Will you win today?’ For this reason, you have to keep your distance because some people are just trying to get information from you," Arguello said in his native Spanish.
"There are a tonne of things that aren't clear or have little meaning. But if you know there's a player who has been talking to someone about something odd, you have to let people know. It’s crazy."
...Just before Christmas, Arguello was shown a copy of the bookmakers' dossier of suspicious matches, and was surprised to see how many times he featured. He had the second highest number of mentions, behind a European player. But Arguello argued that there was nothing unusual about the matches. "They were all matches that I was winning and then I lose, or matches that I was losing and then won. They say that there is a list of 300 matches, and I could say that there is a list of 20,000 matches," he said.
Melbourne is a long way from home for a young girl from Hyderabad, and ordinarily Sania Mirza would have been pleased to see one of her supporters waving an Indian flag when she walked onto court for her first round women's singles match at the Australian Open yesterday.
Hewitt grizzled and growled his way to a 6-0, 6-3, 6-0 win in an hour and 18 minutes yesterday and Darcis looked suitably chastened by the experience. Anyone who tries suggesting to Hewitt that he can no longer compete with the likes of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal at the top of the men's game can expect similar treatment."I know I can, so it doesn't really worry me too much what other people say. So, you know, it's a matter of going out there and doing it," said Hewitt, who turns 27 next month.
Novak Djokovic remembers partnering Andy Murray in the doubles here at the Australian Open two years ago.Friends and rivals since their junior days together – the Scot is only one week older – they had both lost in the first round of the singles and Murray in particular was feeling the weight of national expectation on his shoulders. "There were 10 journalists [in the interview room afterwards] – nine from England and one from Serbia," Djokovic recalled yesterday.
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