Black Tennis Pros

Let's start with one of my favorite Americans, Venus Williams... it was such a rough day at the office, to say the least, for her and her fans. Venus came out and whipped all kinds of tennis beat down on China's Li Na in the first set, to the tune of 6-2, it was merciless.

At the end of that set it pretty much became a foregone conclusion that Venus would more than likely be headed for a meeting with younger sis Serena in the semifinals. Then, the very weird and strange occurred, the second set.

Somehow, someway... Venus managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, it was an unbelievable spectacle. Not only did her game fall apart right before our very eyes, Li Na was playing like she had just discovered tennis also. And yet she... won? With a score of 2-6, 7-6(7/4), 6-2 Li Na joined the elite of the grand slam semifinal.

There was truly no real winner of this match, only an outcome, it was depressing. Somebody please cue up the song "Mama said there'll be days like this..."

It was so difficult to watch Venus so out of sorts in an element of her life where she knows such perfection.

Post match Venus said that it was a bit early to really make a determination of what went wrong, but when asked about returning she stated, “Absolutely [I’ll be back]. I really love this tournament ... Like I said so many times before, if I would have, you know, kind of gotten involved in what people said I would have never left the ghetto. So here I am playing pro tennis, playing well. The sky's the limit in this sport.”



Next up was American Serena Williams who very unfortunately appeared to be continuing what big sister Venus started, defeat. Although there was a very distinct difference in the matches. Serena's opponent, Belarusian Victoria Azarenka, came to play. Unlike Li Na, Azarenka's game was on point and taken to Serena with everything necessary from the onset. Azarenka was a real force in the first and second sets, so long as Serena didn't utilize her super powers.

Down a set at 4-6 and 0-4 in the second set as well, it looked as if the Williams sisters were history at the 2010 Australian Open. And then, unfortunately for Azarenka, Serena opted to use her super powers: conviction, iron will and absolute refusal to go down without a fight.

Once invoked, we saw Serena turn Azarenka's well-earned lead slowly chipped away until Serena had taken the second set in a tie-break. We all knew that it all over for Azarenka at that point. Primarly because we've seen Serena do this time and time and time again. It was a thing of beauty.

In the post match interview Serena said, “I’m surprised. I’m just happy to still be here. I didn’t expect to win when it was 0-4. I was like, ‘oh well, at least I’m still in the doubles’.”

When asked about Venus's loss she said, "Yeah, I just try not to think about it too much. It was obviously on my mind. Just tried to do what I could ... obviously I was incredibly disappointed. Yeah, just try not to deal with it."


What can you say, what can you say, what can you say? Tsongaaaaaaaaaaa!

Wow... what a performance, and boy did we need it after the first three quarterfinal matches. This lived up to every expectation and more. Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Serbian Novak Djokovic provided a well contested, great shot making, fabulous rallies, down to the wire match - great stuff.

In a re-match of the Australian Open 2008 final – which Djokovic won in four sets – Tsonga recovered from a disastrous third set before gaining confidence against his increasingly ragged opponent, triumphing in five sets for the second match in a row by a scoreline of 7-6(8), 6-7(5) 1-6, 6-3, 6-1.


Speaking on court after the match, Tsonga said that he felt like he could keep going. “I think I was just in a good form, I might be better than him (in the end). He played unbelievable in three first sets, he was amazing. Finally I won, and I am happy with that.”

Tsonga will take on world No. 1 Roger Federer in the semi-finals after the Swiss champion ousted No. 6 seed Nikolay Davydenko in four sets earlier on Wednesday. Tsonga said he was hoping to use the crowd’s energy to assist him during the daunting assignment.

“Yeah, I will be ready, I hope you (the crowd) will cheer for me a bit,” he joked.

“It’s going to be tough, because he’s the best player ever.”