As the relentless heat continues down under, tempers rose in time with the temperature. There were upsets, yelling, screams and racket smashing. Let’s review:
Frannie S.
After Samantha Stosur’s shock exit the day before, Italy’s top ranked female and last year’s French Open finalist, Francesca Shiavone was ushered out by her compatriot. Sad to see her go. Frannie’s a ton of fun to watch. She’ll be missed.
Mardy Fish
Not to be outdone, the top ranked American, Mardy Fish was dismissed by Alejandro Falla in straight sets. The pile on the by ESPN bobbleheads was immediate. I do think Mardy still has problems keeping it together emotionally when he’s not playing well, though. Although Falla is a great player, this is a match that Fish should have won. Instead, he was listless and temperamental. A distressing trait that we are seeing more and more often. Let’s not forget his very recent dust-up at the Hopman Cup between him and his opponent. Falla reported that during the match, Fish said something less than charitable to him. C’mon now. Even the best players have bad days, Mardy. You just gotta suck it up, tug ‘em down and play. Well, maybe he’ll think about that on his plane ride home.
Then again, he didn’t get as mad as this guy:
Smashing!
Marcos Baghdatis did not take his bad play against Stan Wawrinka well at all. As you can see from the picture, he made quite a job of smashing his racket. He didn’t stop there, he smashed four rackets in succession. There’s a YouTube video of the carnage. I like a good racket smash as much as anyone, but it didn’t seem to help. He lost in four sets and was fined $800. Poor little tink tink.
But what’s a Grand Slam without a questionable call from an umpire? Picture this: It’s the fifth set of a grueling men’s match. The score is knotted at 8 a piece (there are no tiebreakers in final sets). Player one serves and it’s called wide. The crowd erupts. In the confusion, the Umpire overrules the call and says the serve was in. Player two is aghast and asks what the hell is going on. He checks the mark, he asks Player one what he thinks, and then decides to challenge. The Umpire says no. His call stands. Player two is livid, Player one is befuddled but goes on to win the match.
You cannot be serious?
Poor David Nalbandian got hosed for sure. A replay of point showed that the serve was wide. The linesperson was right. Tough break for sure. Although Nalbandian said that the point wasn’t the deciding factor in his loss, we all know it kind of did.
The heat did bring some good things, though. Like this:
Tommy Haas
And this:
