It's been a very long weekend in Singapore (no! I'm not complaining), thanks to Chinese New Year festivities which started on Sun, Jan 25 and will continue till tomorrow. So, I've had the chance to catch some good tennis action on TV and here are some of my thoughts on the tournament so far...
Andy Murray came into the tournament with a lot of recent success and consequently, media hype. However, he failed to exhibit humility and openly annointed himself as the favorite for the Aussie Open title. The tennis gods were not pleased, and Murray fell today in the third round to Spaniard Fernando Verdasco. Morale: Never tempt fate into giving you a crappy hand! It almost always succeeds!
Rafa Nadal has been simply awesome so far, destroying opponents in every round with Chilean Fernando Gonzalez his latest victim. Gonzalez, he of the most fearsome forehand in the world, had actually been playing very impressively thus far, and I thought it would be a good contest. However, Nadal proceeded to dismantle him in straight sets with such raw power that he has got to be the odds-on favorite for the title.
In contrast, world number 2 Roger Federer showed his indomitable spirit in coming back from two sets down against Tomas Berdych to prevail in 5 sets. However, the fact that he let himself go two sets to love down against Berdych is sour, and chances are he will not be able to pull off such a miraculous turnaround against the likes of Nadal and Djokovic.
The dark horses for this year's title in my opinion, Muhammad Ali look-alike, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, and defending champ Novak Djokovic. So there you have it, Nadal the favorite followed by Federer, Djokovic and Tsonga. This could yet turn out to be the semi-final lineup! Let's see how good my crystal ball really is.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment