Black Tennis Pros

Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga has just BLOWN by everybody and is sitting pretty in his first career grand-slam semifinal.....YAY!!!

Tsonga is playing effortlessly and looking better in his matches than most of the seeds that I've seen, some of which have already gone home.

Even though Tsonga has been playing well and had made it to the quarterfinals, none of the commentators would give him any kind of edge over Russian Mikhail Youhzny, but it has come to pass. Tsonga defeated Youzhny in straight sets 7-5, 6-0, 7-6.

I am just so thrilled for him. His reward for making it to the semifinals? Spaniard Rafael Nadal.

Welcome to the bigs Tsonga!

Defending champion American Serena Williams simply could not pull her game together sufficient to move into the semifinals today. She looked tired and lackadaisical throughout the entire match. Serena appeared to try to modify and control her game to fit whatever may have been ailing her, but it did not work. That big booming serve of Serena's couldn't even save her today.

At one point both ladies were receiving medical treatment.

Serbian Jelena Jankovic, who had all kinds of issues in her initial match, played just well enough, and benefited greatly from Serena's errors, to pull out the win and move into the semis. Serena was defeated 6-3, 6-4.

In the post match interview Serena said, "I'm not going to sit here and make excuses, I lost because Jelena played better than me and I made too many errors..... I think regardless, the match was on my racquet, and I gave it away.

"I didn't move the way I traditionally want to move, and I wasn't feeling 100 percent. But as an athlete you know not every day you're going to feel 100 percent, and some days you have to win feeling 30 percent."

Tonight both Americans Venus Williams and James Blake won their round of 16 matches and are firmly seated in the quarterfinals.

First up was Venus Williams playing Polish player Marta Domachowska. Domachowska came out firing on all cylinders and quickly broke Venus' serve. Venus adjusted her game as necessary and won the first set. In the second set Domachowska's game began to slowly unravel and Venus just kept forging ahead eventually beating Domachowska in straight sets 6-4, 6-4.

Next up for Venus, Serbian Ana Ivanovic.

Up next, James Blake opposite Marin Cilic of Croatia. Cilic did what he could, but the match was all Blake all the time. Blake has been playing so well with such confidence and ease that his matches are almost boring. Blake defeated Cilic 6-3, 6-4, 6-4. Keep it up James, bore us clear to the final!

Next up for James, world no. 1 Roger Federer of Switzerland.

Dum-De-De-Dum-Dum-Dum ought to be the theme song for a lot of these tennis commentators. In particular today we have the ever present ESPN commentator, Mary Carillo.

Today during Venus Williams' match with Marta Domachowska, Mary Carillo decided she'd pay Venus Williams a compliment. The compliment stemmed from Venus and her opponent Sania Mirza standing their ground and refusing to have their third-round match bumped to the next day or to another court after the tournament organizers found themselves facing a backlog due to the late finish of the "daytime" match between Roger Federer and Janko Tipsarevic.

Well, for whatever reason Carillo felt that it was necessary to qualify her compliment, and here is the qualification:

"that's not to say that Venus and her sister don't say all kinds of nutty, goofy stuff as well as contradict themselves....."

"Venus went crazy..."

Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga is rolling full steam at the 2008 Australian Open! Tsonga took one step further tonight by knocking off compatriot, good buddy and one of my favorite players, Richard Gasquet. The score was 6-2, 6-7(7/5), 7-6(8/6), 6-3. It's safe to say that these two know each others games well, not simply because they're French, but because they practice and play together. The duo just recently teamed together to beat the world no. 1 doubles team of Bob and Mike Bryan.

"It's never easy, but it's okay when you are on the court, it's over," Gasquet said. "You have to play your friend. I prefer to lose against a French player, and it's not a big problem for me to lose against a friend. Next time." Tsonga stated, "on the court, we are not friends."

Tsonga and Gasquet definitely played the match that I expected from the two of them, powerful and stylish. They can swat that ball with flair that you would only find in Vogue Magazine, it's beautiful.

Tsonga has entered an entirely new chapter of tennis and tennis talk for himself, the quarterfinals of a grand-slam. The Frenchman's opponent will be Mikhail Youzhny of Russia. I expect to see fireworks in this match, both of these guys are playing burning hot tennis. Let the games begin!


American Serena Williams was up next opposite Nicole Vaidisova of the Czech Republic. Both ladies came out powering serves and returns down the line like there was no tomorrow. I actually thought that this match would go toe-to-toe until the bitter end, but surprisingly, to me at least, it didn't. Vaidisova seemed to get just a touch unraveled and errors began to creep into her game. This is a major no no playing Serena Williams. Serena defeated Vaidisova 6-3, 6-4 in roughly an hour and fifteen minutes. While fairly competitive, you never got the impression that Serena was in trouble.

Serena's opponent for her quarterfinal match has not yet been determined. She will play the winner of the match between Serbian Jelena Jankovic and Australian Casey Dellacqua.

India's Sania Mirza definitely had a plan in mind when she and American Venus Williams finally hit the court, but it was really irrelevant. Mirza was defeated 7-6 (7/0), 6-4.

Roger Federer's five-set, 4½-hour match against Janko Tipsarevic played havoc with the night schedule Saturday at the Australian Open.

That delayed the match between Venus and Mirza by two hours at Rod Laver Arena, and the pair opted not to move to another court to accommodate the next match featuring Australian Lleyton Hewitt and Marcos Baghdatis. The Hewitt-Baghdatis showdown didn't start until 11:47 p.m.

"The tournament did ask if Sania and I would consider playing at Vodafone or playing tomorrow," Williams said. "Both of us didn't want to. We felt like our match was important. We also felt like we wanted the schedule to go as planned."

Venus continues to power through her matches even though she's making a lot of errors. But like her opponents game plans, the errors are irrelevant too, and when you wrap it all up, the win is all that really counts. Go Venus!!

The last 24 hours seemed as if a deep wound of red white and blue was opened and bled tennis players left and right! Sam Querry, Mardy Fish, Andy Roddick and on and on and on.

In comes American James Blake with a bandage! In a wonderful five sets of tennis James Blake overcomes a 2 set 4-1 game deficit to defeat Frenchman Sebastien Grosjean 4-6, 2-6, 6-0, 7-6(7-5), 6-2. Blake looked a bit lifeless in the first two sets, but in the third he somehow revived himself and there was no looking back. It was inspiring.

"That's got to be my biggest comeback," Blake said, referring to his second victory after nine straight losses in five-set matches. "Just seemed like every time there was a mountain to climb ... couldn't have been a better feeling than to accomplish what I did."

Congratulations James!!

James will be playing Croatian Marin Cilic, who took out Fernando Gonzalez of Chile, in the fourth round.