Aussie Kim

Our Aussie Open 2011 Women's Singles champion:

Kim cleans up well, huh? But couldn't they have chosen a nicer place for this photoshoot?

For the first hour of the women's final, it looked like Kim finally met her match in Li Na, who was was trying to make history by being the first player from an Asian country to win a grand slam singles title. Li was matching Kim's baseline and defense game, and wasn't showing any signs of nerves - which is what I predicted would hinder her from winning the final match. But Kim stayed steady, and slowly worked her way into the match. Kim was a point away from going down a set and a 4-2, but she fought her way back and eventually won 6 straight games, and by the time Li got her game together again, Clijsters already built a good lead and cruised in the last game to claim her 1st Australian Open title, and 4th grand slam singles title overall.

Li definitely acquitted herself well in Australia, not just because she showed that she has the game of a top 5 player (she was on an eleven-match winning streak, including a straight set win

over Kim two weeks ago in Sydney), but she showed that she also had the great personality of a global athletic star. Her post-match interviews (especially the one right after she beat world #1 Caroline Wozniacki) were comedy gold, and she still kept her head high after her loss in the final, which is a good sign that she won't be continuing the rest of the year being deflated about missing this chance.

Back to Kim, she has now won the last two grand slam events and is moving up to the #2 ranking this coming Monday, just 140 points off from Caroline's #1 spot. With Justine Henin's retirement (sad face) and Serena Williams's injury still preventing her from returning to the tour, will Kim be the favorite to win Roland Garros? If she does, that's gonna be her 3rd straight grand slam title, and a win at Wimbledon (where former champs Serena, Venus Williams and Maria Sharapova all are nursing, or playing below their best because of, injuries) will give Kim a career Grand Slam, and her very own Kim Slam.

Suddenly, the WTA Tour got a lot more interesting this 2011.

6-4, 1-6, 16-14.

This Australian Open is starting to be somewhat of a banner tournament for marathon 3-set matches on the women's side.

In the first 3 rounds alone, we've already seen extended 3rd sets in the following matches:

1. Russian Ekaterina Makarova edged out Serbian former #1 Ana Ivanovic, 10-8,
2. Another Russian Regina Kulikova beat Slovakian (and personal favorite) Daniela Hantuchova 9-7,
3. Former top ten player Alicia Molik of Australia defeated Italian Roberta Vinci 8-6
4. Chinese Shuai Peng beat Ukraine's Kateryna Bondarenko 8-6
5. Another personal favorite Maria Kirilenko ousted Italian Romina Oprandi, 8-6
6. Francesca Schiavone (who we'll be talking about again) surviving Canadian Rebecca Marino, 9-7
7. and Ekaterina Makarova again, this time beating out fellow Russian Nadia Petrova, 8-6

But none of those 7 matches even came close to the match we saw earlier today. That match being the longest match in women's grand slam history: reigning French Open champion Francesca Schiavone outlasted 2-time grand slam champ Svetlana Kuznetsova in 4 hours, 44 mins. I only got to see the 3rd set, but that was enough for me to see how much fighting spirit these players had. Sveta isn't exactly known as the steadiest players out there (she's very powerful, but also very erratic), but she held her nerve for most part of the 3rd set and produced some great winners. Both players put their heart, sweat and guts on every shot they made (no, not literally...), but it was Schiavone who just pushed a little harder. She saved 6 match points in all, played great defense by chasing down ever shot even though it looked like she didn't have a chance to win the point, and hit some great winners and volleys herself. Great job on the win Francesca, and despite the loss, congrats are in order for Sveta's great play too.

Their match actually lasted about as long as the Hewitt-Nalbandian 5-setter in the first round. After that match, Nalbandian just had no gas in his tank and barely won a game against up-and-comer Ricardas Berankis before retiring. We'll see how Francesca holds up in the quarterfinals against Caroline (she's had 2 marathon matches already, and her other 2 matches weren't a walk in the park either.)

Split Racket and Some High/Lowlights

LOL. I bet Marat is jealous this never happened to him.

The first two rounds of the Australian Open is now done, and we've seen some pretty great matches so far. The best one yet is the 4 hour, 48 minute Nalbandian vs Hewitt first round match. I'm not a huge fan of either players (and I particularly dislike Hewitt's special brand of annoying-ness.), but this was a really high quality, high-tension match. On the opposite side of the spectrum is the first round match between Kim Clijsters and Dinara Safina, which lasted 44 minutes, ending with the score 6-0, 6-0. It's definitely a heartbreaking loss for Lil Sis Dinara, who less then 2 years ago was the world #1. Now, after her 1st round loss, she's projected to drop out of the top 100. To give Dinara a break, let's just focus on Ana Ivanovic's heart-breaking loss to Russian Ekaterina Makarova. Ana started the match well, winning the first set, but Makarova started to find her shots and went on to upset Ivanovic, 10-8 in the 3rd set. It was a shame since Ana's form is definitely starting to pick up. She was hitting huge forehands winners and was really going for riskier shots. Unfortunately for her, so was Makarova and on the crucial points, Ana just fell short while Makarova remained solid.

The match highlights (or lowlights, in Dinara's case) are here:

Tween.

And that in-betweener from Roger Federer signals the start of the 2011 tennis season!

Tons of tournaments in the first week of the year: there's the men's tournaments in Qatar and Chennai, the ladies' tournament in Auckland, and the mixed tournament in Brisbane. There's also the exhibition in Hong Kong featuring the WTA players and ATP legends, and the always awesome Hopman Cup in Perth. It's so awesome that Nicolas Mahut wore Kristina Mladenovic's tennis dress:

The Australian Open starts in about a week!

The Era of Roger/Serena

Roger Federer won his 4th Australian Open, and 16th grand slam title overall, after beating Andy Murray in dominant form, 6-3, 6-4, 7-6(13-11). Roger played great tennis in the semis vs Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and carried that form through to the finals. Murray just couldn't find any openings to break down Roger's game. And honestly, when Roger is playing his best (or close to his best), Murray's best just isn't gonna be good enough on the day. So with Rafa struggling with a knee injury, will this be Roger's year to win THE grand slam? We'll just have to see. One down, three to go.

Better luck next time other Andy, at least you didn't bawl your eyes out like last year's losing finalist.

The women's final ended with Serena Williams winning her 5th Australian Open title and 12th singles grand slam title (She also won her 11th doubles grand slam title with Ate Venus) by beating Justine Henin in 3 sets. Serena is slowly inching her way to the Steffi Graf/Martina Navratilova/Chris Evert group of Best Ever. She's gonna have to survive Justine's return from retirement to get close to the 22/18/18 grand slams that the 3 aforementioned legends have won.

Justine made an impressive comeback at Brisbane on the first week of January, where she lost a brilliant final to fellow Belgian Kim Clijsters. She then followed that up by making the Grand Slam final in only her 2nd tournament after more than a year off of tennis. She couldn't quite replicate Kim's run at the US Open (and Serena fortunately didn't have a line judge-related meltdown too), but with a more aggressive game and the same Allez-screaming, fist pumping, never-say-die attitude, Justine will probably add a few more grand slams to the 7 she already has.

Also, big props to:

1. The Chinese ladies Jie Zheng and Li na who both made it to the semifinals. This is the first time that two Chinese players (heck, two Asians) ever made it to the semifinals of a grand slam.

2. Croat Marin Cilic, who survived several 5 set matches against Juan Martin Del Potro and Andy Roddick to reach his first grand slam semifinal. Cilic is having a great year so far. He has played in two other tournaments besides the Australian Open, and won both of them.

3. Blonde Eastern Europeans - Maria Kirilenko, who followed up her upset win over the other Maria by making it all the way to her first grand slam quarterfinals, and Victoria Azarenka, who made her first Aussie Open quarterfinals and had a 6-4, 4-0 lead over Serena before succumbing to an avalanche of Serena's aces and winners.

*pictures courtesy of the Australian Open website/Getty Images

Aussie Open Seed and Upset Report

The first week of the year's first grand slam is done, and that means the we've got the Final 16 and we've gotten rid of 87.5% of the players in the singles draw. Here's a rundown of the seeds and big names that are part of that 87.5% (a.k.a the early round losers.):

First Round Losers:

(14)Maria Sharapova (RUS) - the very first casualty, losing to fellow Russian Maria Kirilenko in the very first match on Rod Laver Arena.

(8)Robin Soderling (SWE) - last year's French Open finalist is on 0 wins in 2 matches this year after losing his opening match to Marcel Granollers.

(13)Radek Stepanek (CZE) - Lost to Croat Ivo Karlovic

(16)Tommy Robredo (ESP) - Lost to Colombian Santiago Giraldo

And the lower seeds:

Men: (23)Juan Carlos Ferrero (ESP), (25)Sam Querrey (USA), (28)Jurgen Melzer (AUT), (32)Jeremy Chardy (FRA)

Women: (18)Virginie Razzano (FRA) (23)Dominika Cibulkova (SVK), (25)Anabel Medina-Garrigues (ESP), (28)Elena Vesnina (RUS)

Unseeded:

Richard Gasquet (FRA) - He's getting a mention here because I thought he was gonna make a surprise run. Lost in 5 sets to Mikhail Youzhny in a great match that STAR SPORTS DID NOT FINISH. Your turning into an also-ran fast, Reeshard.

Melanie Oudin (USA) - Had stellar runs at Wimbledon and the US Open, and got tremendous hype from the US media. Gives fodder for her critics that says she only got lucky at the US Open.

Second Round Losers:

(5)Elena Dementieva (RUS) - lost to former #1, 7-time grand slam champ, making-a-comeback-from-retirement Justine Henin of Belgium. Not really an upset, but still, too bad for Elena.

(12)Flavia Pennetta (ITA) - lost to world #16, US Open semifinalist, making-a-comeback-from-unfair-suspension Yanina Wickmayer of Belgium. Not a huge upset, but still, too bad for Flavia.

Lower seeds:

(17)David Ferrer (ESP) - lost to Cypriot Marcos Baghdatis in 5 sets after leading 2 sets to 0. Baghdatis then pulled out from his third round match just to irritate Ferrer.

(20)Ana Ivanovic (SRB) - lost to Gisela Dulko. Ana's ball toss has gone on to hiding after being thrown awkwardly into the air one to many times. The said ball toss is still currently missing upon this writing.

(21)Sabine Lisicki (GER) - lost to Alberta Brianti. Hasn't tweeted since loss.

(21)Tomas Berdych (CZE) - lost to Anna Kournikova's cousin Evgeny Korolev.

(24)Maria Jose Sanchez Martinez (ESP) - lost to China's Jie Zheng.

(29)Viktor Troicki (SRB) - lost to German Florian Mayer.

(26)Aravane Rezai (FRA) - lost to German Angelique Kerber.

(29)Kateryna Bondarenko(UKR) - lost to Great Britain's Elena Baltacha.

Third Round Losers:

(8)Jelena Jankovic (SRB) - lost to #31 Alona Bondarenko of Ukraine.

(10)Agnieszka Radwanska (POL) - lost to 5'5 Italian Francesca Schiavone.

(11)Marion Bartoli (FRA) - lost to China's Jie Zheng, her 2nd straight upset win over a seed.

(12)Gael Monfils (FRA) - lost to 6'9'' American John Isner.

(24)Ivan Ljubicic (CRO) - lost to 6'10'' Croat Ivo Karlovic.

and the biggest upset of all...

(15)Kim Clijsters (BEL) - lost to Russian Nadia Petrova. The big shock here wasn't that Kim lost. It was that she lost badly. And when I say badly, I mean 6-0, 6-1. Brutal loss.

(There were several other seeds who lost, but they lost to higher ranked players, so that's not really an upset.)

The second week of the Aussie Open is where it gets serious, where the title contenders face each other (and when I say title contenders, I mean the Federers and Nadals and Henins and Williamseseses.)

Go blonde Europeans!

The Aussie Open 2010 Guessing Game

So every time a grand slam tournament comes along, I join this contest over at the Tennis X forum, we basically predict who makes the quarters, semis, finals and who eventually wins, plus guesses on extra categories such as the Biggest Loser (Top 1-16 player who loses the earliest) and Winning Ugly (player who plays the most games on his/her way to the quarterfinals), and some bonus categories, in this case it's the Homeboy Hewitt Hanging On (guess the round when Aussie Lleyton Hewitt loses) and the Belgians vs Americans (who wins more matches on the women's side, the 4 Belgians or the 8 Americans?) We can also earn extra points for every bagel and breadsticks our quarterfinalists bake. (Note to non-tennis fans: A bagel is when a player wins a set with a score of 6-0, a breadstick = 6-1.)

So here are my picks. I wonder how I'll rank this time...

Men's side
Quarterfinals:
Roger Federer (SUI) vs Nikolay Davydenko (RUS)
Richard Gasquet (FRA) vs Robin Soderling (SWE)
Andy Roddick (USA) vs Marin Cilic (CRO) (substitute player: Juan Martin Del Potro (ARG))
Andy Murray (GBR) vs Rafael Nadal (ESP)

Semifinals:
Federer vs Soderling
Cilic vs Nadal
(I'm a bit surprised with my own men's SF line-up, but let's see how it goes.)

Final:
Federer vs Cilic

Champion: Roger Federer (This really is more wishful thinking than an informed prediction, Roger might easily lose in the quarters to Davydenko based on recent results. He's already got 15 grand slams in the cabinet anyway, so this shouldn't be heartbreaking.)

WU: Reeshard Gasquet
BL: Novak Djokovic (the world #3 lost in straight sets to Fernando Verdasco, and in 3 sets to 17-year old, #291 Bernard Tomic last week, not a very good omen)
HHHO: 3rd round (to Cypriot Marcos Baghdatis)

Women's side:
Quarterfinals:
Serena Williams (USA) vs Victoria Azarenka (BLR)
Caroline Wozniacki (DEN) vs Venus Williams (USA)
Justine Henin (BEL) (substitute: Elena Dementieva (RUS)) vs Kim Clijsters (BEL)
Marion Bartoli (FRA) vs Maria Sharapova (RUS)

Semifinals:
Serena vs Wozniacki
Clijsters vs Sharapova
(I made this prediction last Sunday, before Masha lost to fellow Russian Maria Kirilenko in the first match of the tournament yesterday. Go Makiri! :D)

Final:
Serena vs Clijsters
(Wanna bet Serena won't be challenging any calls on this match?)

Champ: Kim Clijsters (picking up a back-to-back Grand Slam, the 3rd of her career, and remain unbeaten this year. I'm actually rooting for Justine or Elena, but they'll be facing each other in the 2nd round, then Kim in the quarters... But really this is all just wishful thinking again, since the title will probably go to Serena anyway.)

WU: Caroline Wozniacki (she could meet Daniela Hantuchova in the 4th round, and I'm just hoping Daniela makes a match out of it.)
BL: Elena Dementieva
Belgium vs USA: America, but only by a small margin. And only because the four Belgians in the draw are all in the same quarter.

Gods and Forehands

Wow. Just wow.

That was a highly entertaining final match, but the trophy presentation? With Federer crying? And Rafa saying sorry and telling Roger that he'll get Sampras' record eventually? If I was Barney Stinson, I would've come up with a hundred ways to say legendary already. The match didn't reach the tension and drama of their Wimbledon '08 final, but those two speeches from two of the greatest players of all time made up for it.

So, in summary, Serena Williams wins her 10th Grand Slam over Dinara Safina (easily) and regains the #1 ranking, the Williams sisters beat Daniela and Ai for the women's doubles title, the Bryan brothers win the men's doubles, Indians Sania Mirza and Mahesh Bhupathi win the mixed doubles, a Filipino wins a Grand Slam title for the very first time, Rafael Nadal wins his first hardcourt Grand Slam title, and GodFed cries.

And I still haven't recovered from it.



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And Here Comes The Tail End, Part 2

The Australian Open men's finals almost became a match between 13-time Grand Slam champ Roger Federer and 14th seed Fernando Verdasco. Almost, as Verdasco gave his countryman Rafael Nadal the most difficult match he's had in Melbourne. Rafa eventually pulled out the win, but only after battling Verdasco for 5 hours and 14 minutes and earned the right to stand as the obstacle to Federer's quest of eqauling Pete Sampras' record of 14 Grand Slam titles.

The last time Roger and Rafa played each other on a Grand Slam tournament was in last year's Wimbledon final, which lasted for 4 hour and 48 mins, and was virtually universally tagged as TGMEP (The Greatest Match Ever Played) in the history of tennis.

This coming final should be a treat.

But before that, (and before I write about Serena's win over Dinara in the women's final), let me just congratulate 16-year old Pinoy tennis player Francis Casey Alcantara, who has done something no other Filipino has ever done before: win a Grand Slam title. Sure, it's a juniors' doubles title, but it's still a Grand Slam. Here's to hoping he goes on to bigger things after this!







In Picture: Francis Casey Alcantara of the Philippines (right) and Cheng-Peng Hsieh of Chinese Taipei, Australian Open 2009 Boys' Doubles Champions
Photo by: Getty Images





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And Here Comes The Tail End, Part 1

The finals of the Australian Open is coming in the next couple of days. That means I'm staying home this weekend to watch the matches again :D

The women's final match will be a battle of the little sisters (except they're both far from being little, actually.) Three-time champion Serena Williams, who has won the Aussie Open the past three odd-numbered years faces Dinara Safina, who was the finalist in last year's French Open. Dinara aims to follow her older brother Marat's footsteps, who won the Aussie Open in 2005 (he beat Roger Federer in the semis that year in an awesome 5-setter.) Serena is aiming to follow her own footsteps, since older sister Venus has never won this thing. It's also a winner-take-all kind of match, as whoever wins the title will take the #1 ranking from Jelena Jankovic.

Serena will also be playing the women's doubles final with her sister Venus against Daniela Hantuchova (woohooooo!) and Ai Sugiyama. The Williams sisters rarely ever loses a doubles match, but still, PODME DANKA!!!








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Halfway Through AO 09

It's been a pretty good Australian Open so far, with a huge number of upsets, mostly on the women's side. I don't know if that's a testament to the depth of the women's field, or if the top ladies are just wildly inconsistent. A mixture of both?

The men wouldn't want to be outdone as far as upsets go though, as #4 seed Andy Murray proved yesterday. I picked him to win the whole thing based in his great results on hard courts in the past few months, and because he's one of only 3 players to have beaten all the Big 3 (Nadal, Federer, Djokovic) last year (Andy Roddick and Gilles Simon were the other two.) But Ana Ivanovic's ex, Spaniard Fernando Verdasco has been playing top 5 tennis this year. He reached the final at Brisbane and had great results at the Kooyong exhibition tournament, losing to Federer in a 3rd set tiebreaker.

Murray's loss was even more magnified by the fact that all players in the top 8 reached the quarterfinals. Except for him.

Meanwhile, on the women's draw, I got 50%* correct on my picks, with Russians Elena Dementieva, Dinara Safina, and Svetlana Kuznetsova, and former champ Serena all going through to the quarters. And since there were a lot of upsets on this side of the draw, there are a lot of surprise quarterfinalists too. We've got Spaniard Carla Suarez Navarro, who beat Venus Williams, the soul-selling Bartoli, and Australian (by way of Serbia) Jelena Dokic, who beat my bet Caroline Wozniacki.

I picked Elena to win this thing, and barring any injuries or chokes from her, it really looks like she's the one in the best shape among those left. C'mon Elena!


Update: Defending Champ Novak Djokovic just lost his quarterfinal match to Andy Roddick, retiring with heat illness. That's just a disappointing way to lose. Novak has won this before, he should've been ready for the hot conditions in Australia.



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Near Misses and Actual Casualties

Lots of huge results happened earlier today during some 4th round action at the Aussie Open.

Following in the footsteps of fellow Serbian Ana Ivanovic (who's Grand Slam disasters continued with a 3-set loss in the 3rd round to Russian Alisa Kleybanova 3 days ago, which by the way, I predicted in my previous post), world #1 Jelena Jankovic lost to 16th seed Marion Bartoli of France (scoreline: 6-1, 6-4). Bartoli was the same player who upset then #1 Justine Henin couple of years ago at the Wimbledon semifinals when no one expected her to. I don't think anyone (except maybe her coach/father) ever predicted that she'd be able to beat Justine at a Wimbledon semifinal match, but she did. And I definitely didn't expect her to beat Jelena today, but she did it again.

I don't get how Bartoli does it. It's like her game is just a 7 usually, and once every two years, she manages to raise her game to an 11 against the No. 1 player in the world at a Grand Slam event. Maybe she sells her soul as a shared stock to the devil, thus the sometimes bug results, and the usually mediocre ones. Anyway, she's one hell of a quirky French player, so I guess I... like her?

Dinara Safina was another player who had a huge struggle in her match against another French player, #15 Alize Cornet (who defeated Daniela in the previous round.) The difference was she managed to win. Lil Sis Dinara (I've decided that she'll always be Marat's lil sis until she wins a grand slam...) was down 2-5 in the 3rd set, and Alize even held one match point before Dinara staged a huge comeback to win the match 7-5 in the 3rd set. With the two Sebs out of her way, I think Dinara has a huge chance to reach her 2nd Grand Slam final here, unless of course, the devil decides to buy stocks from Bartoli again. And in that case Lil Sis is toast.

Last but not the least among the players who were on a sinking ship today was, surprisingly(?), Roger Federer, who had to come back from 0-2 sets down to win in 5 sets against Czech #20 seed Tomas Berdych. Federer started off playing a bit wobbly, making a lot of errors and hitting some short, loopy shots that allowed Berdych to pound the daylights out of the ball. But as the match wore on, Berdych started to miss his big shots and Fed was able to steady himself and hang tough. He better clean up his game though, if he expects to beat Murray in the final.




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2 Rounds and 2 Misses

The first two rounds of the Australian Open just ended and after 4 days of play, most of the major contenders for the title are still alive.

All except for Venus Williams, who just lost her 2nd round match earlier today to 20-year old Carla Suarez Navarro of Spain. Venus played really well at the end of the year and I pegged her to reach the quarterfinals, but I'm really rooting for Elena D. to win this thing and Venus losing early is a good thing for Elena, so woohoo!

Another player messing up my predictions is David Nalbandian, who I predicted will lose to Federer in the semis (after he beat defending champ Novak Djokovic.) He lost to Taiwanese Yen-Hsun Lu (go Asian!) in a 3hr55min-5 setter.

And yes, me getting my predictions right is more important than these players getting match wins.

The 3rd round starts tomorrow with some really interesting matches:

1. Federer faces former No. 1 and 2-time Grand Slam champ Marat Safin,
   
2. The awesome Dane Caroline Wozniacki faces Aussie Jelena Dokic, who is making a nice comeback from loserhood,
   
3. Underachieving talents Richard Gasquet and Fernando Gonzales face each other
   
4. Underrated talents Gilles Simon and Mario Ancic battle each other.
5. Newcomer Victoria Azarenka against former champ Amelie Mauresmo
   
6. Ana Ivanovic meets Alisa Kleybanova and I predict an upset.
7. Daniela Hantuchova vs Alize Cornet (no reason, I just wanted to mention Daniela.)
   

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Picking Things Off

The first Grand Slam of the season (that's the Australian Open for you non-tennis loving peeps) kicks off tomorrow (hence the banner above), and here are my predictions of how things will go down in the next two weeks:

Mens:
Quarterfinals
(1) Rafael Nadal (ESP) will def. (6) Gilles Simon (FRA)*
(4) Andy Murray (GBR) will def. (5) Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (FRA)
(10) David Nalbandian (ARG) will def. (3) Noval Djokovic (SRB)
(2) Roger Federer (SUI) will def. (19) Marin Cilic (CRO)

Semifinals
Murray will def. Nadal
Federer will def. Nalbandian

Championship
Andy Murray will def. Roger Federer (I'll still be rooting for Fed though)

















*Substitute Pick: Mario Ancic (CRO)

Women's
Quarterfinals
(1) Jelena Jankovic (SRB) will def. (10) Nadia Petrova (RUS)
(3) Dinara Safina (RUS) will def. (11) Caroline Wozniacki (DEN)
(4) Elena Dementieva (RUS) will def. (6) Venus Williams (USA)
(13) Victoria Azarenka (BLR)* will def. (8) Svetlana Kuznetsova (RUS)

Semifinals
Dinara will def. Jelena
Elena will def. Vika

Championship
Elena will def. Dinara in an all Russian final



















*Substitute Pick: Serena Williams (USA)

We'll see if I'm right in the next couple of weeks. I'm just glad the tennis season is back and Star Sports has full coverage.



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Sobering Facts

The world is a vampire...

I can't believe it's time to bust that song out again.

Then someone will say what is lost can never be saved.

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So I missed the Aussie Open finals (but I missed it because of my El Nido trip, and it was totally worth it), just to recap, Daniela reached the semifinals (her first in a Grand Slam) where she lost to Serbian Ana Ivanovic, who then lost in the finals to Maria Sharapova, who takes her third Grand Slam title (after Wimbledon and the US Open). On the men's side, Serbian Novak Djokovic takes his first Grand Slam title after beating Roger Federer in the semifinals. It was the first time Fed didn't reach a final of a Grand Slam in 3,273 years.

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TK and Rachel won TAR12. Woohoo! This is the first time a team I liked from the very first leg actually won the whole race. (Remind me to do a geeky post about my TAR lists)

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And finally, El Nido. So I posted a few pics on my previous post. And I mentioned how awesome El Nido is. Well, I'm gonna do it again.

We went island hopping El Nido has the most beautiful islands, beaches, lagoons. We went kayaking in the snorkeling and kayaking in the Big and Small Lagoon in Miniloc Island, and we saw baby sharks! with our bare eyes! swimming right beside our kayaks! We also stopped by Entalula Island (it's the last pic on my previous post) where we tried some rock climbing. It was awesome! I have short arms and legs, so getting to the top took some effort, but it was still awesome. Most of the pics are in Charmaine's cam so I'll probably post some once I get a hold of some copies. We also tried some scuba diving (there was a free introductory course, just like every freaking activity you could do in El Nido). I've snorkeled a bunch of times and but scuba diving was a totally different, and a whole lot cooler experience. You could actually see fishes and corals and sea creatures right in front of you! It was amazing. Definitely one of many highlights of the trip. We also had lunch at a private beach. A speed boat dropped us off a private beach, with our lunch all prepared right on the beach (baby back ribs and grilled salmon, shrimp kebab, shrimp sinigang, baked potatoes, salad, and a bunch of fruits) and left us to enjoy ourselves.

Speaking of food. The food was fucked up great. It was buffet for breakfast, lunch and dinner (including desserts!) I'm not sure but I probably gained a few pounds in those three days.

And it was an awesome three days.



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Things That Are 5 Years In The Making

I've been heaping a heavy dose of instant yakisoba, pancit canton and chicken noodles on my hungry mouth for the past few weeks. If not that, it's usually tuna or corned beef from the can.

I need to learn how to cook good food. Badly.

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In other news, my favorite hottie Daniela Hantuchova of Slovakia is in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open! She's been a quarterfinalist at a Grand Slam thrice before, but the last time was in 2003 when she was still 19. She beat my other favorite hottie Maria Kirilenko (from the earlier post) in a two hour match, 1-6, 6-4, 6-4.

She next faces teenager Agnieszka Radwanska, who comes from my favorite Polish city of Krakow :P

Podme Daniela!






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The Aussie Open 2008, and The Amazing Race 12

Lots of action at this year's Australian Open in Melbourne. Roger Federer almost lost his third round match yesterday to Serbian Janko Tipsarevic. The match lasted more than 4 hours, ending 10-8 in the fifth set. A couple of days ago, Andy Roddick was beaten by German Philipp Kohlschreiber (who I'll be calling PK because his last name is so long) in 5 sets too, 8-6 in the third, with PK playing out of his mind. Other huge upsets yesterday came from Maria Kirilenko (pictured, while practicing one of her flying trick shots), who beat #6 Anna Chakvetadze (I liked watching their match, they looked like Russian teen-age socialites on the verge of a cat fight), Agnieszka Radwanska, who follows up her upset of Maria Sharapova at the US Open with a win over #2 Svetlana Kuznetsova, and Croatian Marin Cilic, beating out last year's runner up Fernando Gonzalez of Chile. The other huge upset came from Day One, when #9 Andy Murray of Great Britain lost to French Muhammad Ali look-alike Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. Bring on the second week of action!

Also coming up (tomorrow) is the finale of the 12th season of The Amazing Race. It has been a great season so far, and TAR 12's ratings are really going high so that's great news too. I'm rooting for TK and Rachel, and Christina (I suppose she needs her usually assy dad to cross the finish line with her...) The Grandfather-grandson team of Nicholas and Donald are fine with me too, which makes this the first season ever where I like all the final three teams. Awesome. Amazing.


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Now playing: The Dresden Dolls - My Alcoholic Friends
via FoxyTunes

Roger and Serena

are the Australian Open 2007 Men's and Women's Singles Champions (or at least in Serena's case, doubles).

Roger Federer won the 10th grand slam title of his career and is well on his way to equaling (surpassing?) Pete Sampras' record 14 grand slam titles. And he also won the Aussie Open without losing a set. That's seven best-of-5-set matches that he won in 3 sets, and three of those 7 matches were against opponents ranked in the top 10. Now that's domination.

A couple of years ago, Serena Williams was the Federer of women's tennis. She was completely dominating women's tennis, even winning all four grand slam titles in a span of one year (Roland Garros, Wimbledon and the US Open in '02 and the Aussie Open in '03.) Of course, injuries and a seemingly lesser interest in competing put a stop to her domination. She had her worst tennis year last year, when she only played 4 tournaments (although she did reach the semifinals in 2) and dropped out of the top 100.

But now she's back. And she's playing great. And to prove it, she bitch-slapped world number 1 Maria Sharapova 6-1, 6-2 in the Aussie Open final.







And I bet every female tennis player with the exception of Justine Henin-Hardenne is scared.

The Oz Open, losing that Work From Home privilege, and the sides of luck

The Australian Open starts tomorrow! Woohoo!

Star Sports will be broadcasting the 2-week grand slam tournament, and as luck would have it, my schedule allows me to stay at home during the day and watch the tennis matches on my tv.

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Not so lucky is my laptop, which is still under disrepair. The last update I got was that they need to replace the hard drive, and they have yet to recover my files (and the may never will). Not only do I have to reinstall all my applications, I will also have to re-do/research/find copies of all my work-related files (No, I do not regularly back up of my important files. Yes, that is stupid.) And since I don't have a laptop, I also can't work from my home (a perk that my officemates enjoy once a week.)

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Last night I was at the SM Mall of Asia to watch the final night of the 2nd World Pyro Olympics. China and the Philippines were the two countries presenting that night, and the show was AWESOME! We had a great view of the fireworks (and the accompanying smoke. I was trying to enjoy the moment so I pretended that smoke does not in any way contribute to air pollution.)

Click here for the pictures. What? You can't click it? Oh... right... We forgot to bring our camera.

Recommended Viewing/Listening:

I was scanning through www.youtube.com when I came across this video:

Damien Rice's Volcano

I say you view it. Because it's amazing.

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Yesterday, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo declared that the nation is under a State of Emergency, supposedly because there was a supposed coup attempt. Good on her for realizing that people don't want her in power. Excuse me while a vomit.

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I noticed that I forgot to keep my blog updated with some Aussie Open news. Well, the Aussie Open ended about a month ago (heh) so I'll just make this quick. Amelie Mauresmo won her first ever Grand Slam at the age of 26, Roger Federer won his 7th Grand Slam at the age of 24, the Bryan twins won the men's doubles, Zi Yan and Jie Zheng became the first Chinese players to ever win a Grand Slam after winning the women's doubles, and Martina Hingis capped of her successful comeback from competitive tennis by winning the mixed doubles with Mahesh Bhupathi.

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Work related: Starting March 6, our team will be having 12:00 am - 8:30 am working hours. (I don't want to elaborate because I don't want to say something that I might not like saying after).

In another work-related news, checking my schedule for the next two months, looks like I'll be working on Holy Week (including Maundy Thursday and Good Friday). And that's bad because people don't usually work on those two days (at least here in the Philippines), they go on vacation. In Boracay. Or in Palawan. Or in Sagada. Because it's a holiday. Yet I won't get any additional pay for logging in 9 hours of work. On a holiday. Damn it.

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A couple of weeks ago, me and my officemates Mike, Jan, and Ben went to Eurostar (it's a carnival/amusement park). They only have around 7 rides there, but each one will definitely hit you hard. Parang Red Horse. My favorite was the Joker. Imagine riding a giant vertical centrifuge. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!