!Alize_2 By Rosangel Valenti, TW Contributing Editor
Good morning. This will be today's thread for discussing the tennis action in Rome (let's hope there's more of it than there was yesterday) in the men's final featuring Novak Djokovic and Stanislas Wawrinka, and the WTA final in Berlin (between Elena Dementieva and Dinara Safina).
I was on Stadio Pietrangeli yesterday, with a Roman friend. I took photos for TW earlier in the week, but the semifinals tickets were bought on a personal basis a while back. Because my friend doesn't know tennis, I'd naturally hoped to see two high-quality matches as an introduction - and if you'd asked me at the start of the week, I would have expected to see Nadal in one of them, and probably Federer in the other. Still, even with the unexpected lineup, there was hope that we might see some good tennis.
It was a searingly hot day in Rome - my chilled water was soon well-heated from sitting on a baking concrete floor by my seat, and even shady hats weren't providing us with much shelter - watching is hard work when it's so bright, especially as the golden court is light-reflective. But I was right into the match, and Stan was hitting the ball beautifully. Seeing Andy Roddick pull up and then retire after three games was bad enough - it was clear he'd tweaked something. When Radek Stepanek was blown out in the first set, 6-0, and retired one game into the second, looking nauseous, it was hard to believe what was happening.
I note that some of the Tribe were unsympathetic to "the crowd" yesterday, because of supposed bad behaviour on its part during this tournament. It's true that it sometimes feels as though elements of the Italian crowd treat some players like gladiators being thrown to the lions. But any crowd is made up of individuals, and most people in it are just like any other tennis fans - while the boos did not come from anything like the majority. I spoke to quite a few people there - not all of them were locals. Most people around me were merely shaking their heads, and chattering loudly in disappointment, not behaving rowdily. When Stepanek and Djokovic came out on court after the first retirement, they got a tremendous reception - far louder than the negative elements that preceded it after the Roddick retirement. Novak Djokovic has plenty of fans in Rome.
After the retirements, the doubles semifinals were moved over from Campo 1, and the second semi from the BlackRock Tour of Champions, was moved over there. Who would have thought that a non-blistered, virus-free Richard Gasquet, along with Fabrice Santoro, Nenad Zimonjic and Daniel Nestor, would have provided the main light relief of the day? However, it's quite likely that if I had been alone, I would have left after the miserable singles semifinals, which in total provided just 49 minutes of one-sided play, including medical timeouts. My mood was that bad. Trying to explain to someone who doesn't normally follow tennis that this kind of thing doesn't happen all the time simply felt inadequate.
The doubles matches lasted 1 hour 14 minutes, and 52 minutes. Some of the crowd stayed for that first doubles semi; far fewer remained for the second one, featuring the Bryans versus Jonas Bjorkman and Kevin Ulyett. You can't really blame paying customers for voting with their feet. I don't take doubles matches played under the new rules as seriously as those under the old rules - and if they happen to include well-known singles players, sometimes see them more as a kind of glorified exhibition. Whether scheduling issues or other factors are to blame for the spate of retirements and injuries we're seeing, tennis fans are getting the worst of it.
The day was an unmitigated disaster for the ATP. That's why today's photo is of Alize Cornet. We caught part of her qualifying match yesterday, on an outer court, before hurrying over to Stadio Pietrangeli for the "main event" of the day. Her 7-5, 6-2 victory over Shuai Zhang was a lot more entertaining to watch.
As always, enjoy today's tennis.