[[I'm pleased to finally reveal our mystery guest contributor - you can read more about her at the bottom of this post -- Pete]]**
By Bobby Chintapalli
It’s August, and the women of tennis have made their way across the pond from Europe to North America, only to make their way across the U.S., traveling west to east. That could only mean one thing – the hard-court season is upon us. It will culminate in the US Open, but before it does we’ll have a few weeks to watch a lot of tennis and fulminate against Serena and Safina, ESPN and NBC, shrieking and grunting.
Dinara Safina: There’s a reason she is tied for most singles titles this year, and has been in the semifinals or better of the last four Grand Slams: she’s playing better than ever. She needs to be mentally stronger, and find a way to win more than one game in the later stages of majors, even if she were to meet the second coming of Maureen Connolly or Suzanne Lenglen. Look for her to do well in the US Open Series, which she won last year.
Marion Bartoli: It’s not just that she beat Venus to win in Stanford but how she did it: For one thing she returned serve like Venus was just any other tennis player. Enough said.
**
About Bobby: Many of you know her already by her screen name, Bobby. She's a long-time TW reader who's got more degrees than I've got fingers and toes (BS in computer science, MBA in marketing, a journalism degree. . . you get the picture). Although Bobby is from the U.S., she worked for a few years in India, mainly as the editor and frequent feature writer for the Lifestyle section of the Deccan Chronicle, the fifth-largest English-language newspaper on the sub-continent.
Bobby lives and works in Chicago as an IT specialist, and calls herself a "fitness fanatic." This does not prevent her from practicing the cheery art of the mixologist; her specialty is mango, white chocolate and pomegranate martinis. "But I prefer getting people drunk to drinking myself," she confessed. Bobby plays a lot of tennis (she's a 3.5 - 4.0), runs a 9-minute mile and prefers the 5k course length. She's checking out yoga. Her friends and correspondents at TW include Master Ace, NDK (she's not around much anymore, being a new mother), Greenhopper, and Ptenisnet. She'll represent TW at Cincinnati with a proper press credential for the later days of the tournament and will file a few reports here.
Bobby is single, and when I asked her if she minded my publishing that she laughed and said, "Not at all. My mom will be only too happy. She'll be like, 'Oh good, is this a dating site?'"
Ha! You young bucks should only be so lucky!
-- Pete