Black Tennis Pros

River Oaks U. S. Men's Clay Court Championship, Houston, Texas

Final Round - Singles

James Blake, USA defeated by Marcel Granollers-Pujol, ESP
4-6, 6-1, 5-7


Estoril Open, Estoril Portugal

Final Round - Doubles

Jeff Coetzee, RSA and Wesley Moodie, RSA
defeated
Jamie Murry, GBR and Kevin Ullyett, ZIM
6-2, 4-6, 10-8


Family Circle Cup, Charleston, South Carolina

Final Round - Singles

Serena Williams, USA defeated Vera Zvonareva, RUS
6-4, 3-6, 6-3


USTA Pro Circuit

St. Vincent Auxillary Men's Professional Tennis Tournament, Little Rock, Arkansas

Semifinal Round - Singles

Marcus Fugate, USA defeated by Artem Sitak
6-7(1), 6-7(4)

Read the rest of this post...........

Thanks to a good match, good food, and good friends (all of which were in different areas of the country), watching Serena Williams win the 2008 Family Circle Cup was a great time.

Joining me yesterday for a live blogging experience was BlogPassion of "We Need To Stop: Black Blog On African American Issues, News, Celebrity Gossip And More," Harlem Writer of "Harlem Writer", Dave of "Welcome Back Rosenthal," Aunk (The Cultural Health Guy) of The "Cultural Health News Blog," Cooper, of "Wonderland Or Not," and Hasheem.

Thank you all so much, it was such a fun time! We will be doing this periodically throughout the tennis season, I look forward to it.


"I feel like I have some momentum behind me and I just want to keep going." The words of the lady of the hour post match.

Serena Williams and her first Family Circle Cup Championship in five attempts. It was a rocky match for Serena. She had a very worthy opponent in Russian Vera Zvonareva, who came out with every intention of becoming the title holder too.

Serena seemed to be very unsure of herself and not present in the first set, although she can have a tendency to start slow. The problem was, Zvonareva was firing on all cylinders, and that reality could not be taken lightly. Nonetheless, Serena took the first set.

Into the second set, Serena's game took an even deeper lull, and enabled Zvonareva to get back into the match and take the set. Serena was suffering true struggles.

As she has done so many times before, Serena picked herself up, dusted herself off and got back into the groove in the third set. It wasn't perfect, but she did what she needed to do to pull out in front of Zvonareva and ride the winning set in at 6-4, 3-6, 6-3.

"I just wanted to get that first set under my belt, and thank God I did because I lost the second. I've played her a few times, so I really know her game and she's a real fighter and she never stops."

"She never made a mistake when I was up," Zvonareva said. "I think I could have done a little better job about holding my serve, which I wasn't able to do."

"She always puts pressure on you, so you always have to go for a bigger serve and eventually your serve percentage goes down," said Zvonareva, who ended with eight double-faults. "I accepted I would have some double-faults today and I knew it was going to happen when I was coming into the match. It's just too bad to have two of them in a row."

Serena won $197,000 and a crystal cup at the $1.3 million tournament.

Read the rest of this post...........

Jamie Murray narrowly missed out on his second doubles title of the year as the Scot and partner Kevin Ullyett were beaten 6-2 4-6 10-8 by Jeff Coetzee and Wesley Moodie in the final of the Estoril Open.

Murray's regular partner Max Mirnyi, with whom he won the title in Delray Beach in February, was on Davis Cup duty with Belarus but Zimbabwean Ullyett proved a more than adequate replacement.

The pair did not get off to the best of starts however, as top seeds Coetzee and Moodie broke Ullyett's serve twice in the first set.

But a single break in the seventh game of the second set allowed Murray and Ullyett to force a deciding match tie-break.

South Africans Coetzee and Moodie raced into a 5-1 lead and, although the second seeds clawed themselves back into contention, a passing shot down the middle from Coetzee settled proceedings.

Read the rest of this post...........

Okay, I was sitting right there in front of the television watching American James Blake and Spaniard Marcel Granollers-Pujol on the clay court of Houston at the U.S. Men's Clay Court Championship.

In the first set I saw a toe-to-toe match with Granollers-Pujol edging Blake. In the second set I saw Blake get it together, Granollers-Pujol get a bit frustrated and Blake take the set.

In the third set I saw Blake continue the good play that he was utilizing in the second set, until midway the third set. For some odd reason Blake began making mistakes that I don't understand, can't believe and I was watching the match.

The next thing I new, the match was over and Granollers-Pujol had defeated Blake 6-4, 1-6, 7-5. That's the best that I can describe it.

In other words, I don't know what the hell happened.

*throws hands in air, rubs forehead.*

Blakes take on it, "...maybe I started thinking that the finish line was in sight. He made me hit the extra ball every single time."

"Right now, I'm very upset about it, very disappointed. But hopefully in a day or two I'll think about the fact that at least I made it to the finals of my first clay-court tournament and had chances to win it."

"He played well, fought hard and competed very well all week. I wish I could have played better and executed a little better."

"It's tough because I'm really happy for Granollers-Pujol. This is now the second time this year I've kind of made a young player's day. It's tough being on the receiving end of it."

Read the rest of this post...........

Grab your favorite snacks, take off your church clothes, or keep them on, fire up that CPU and join me!!

Black Tennis Pro's will be blogging live on Sunday at 1:00 p.m. while watching the Serena Williams and Vera Zvonareva final at the 35th Anniversary Family Circle Cup in Charleston, South Carolina.

Simply click the comments link to this post, come on in and speak up.

See ya' tomorrow!

Read the rest of this post...........

Top seed James Blake advanced to the semifinals for the second straight year at the US Men's Clay Court Championships with a 6-4, 6-3 win over No. 5 seed Agustin Calleri on Friday.

The No. 2 American lost only 12 points in 10 service games and broke the Argentine twice in the 67-minute match. Blake saved the only two break points he faced while converting both break points, in the 10th game of the first set, and second game of the second set.

Blake improved his career record to 15-7 in his eighth straight appearance in Houston. He also evened his career mark to 34-34 on clay with his third consecutive straight-sets victory this week.

Blake is hoping his experience will pay off a first ATP clay court title this weekend. The remaining three players are appearing in their first career ATP semifinal on Saturday.

The 28-year-old Tampa, Fla. resident takes on No. 8 seed Oscar Hernandez for the second time in his career. Blake defeated the Spaniard 6-3, 6-4, in the first round of Basel last year.

"Tomorrow is going to be tough and he beat Mardy and I know Mardy's been playing well because I've been practicing with him," said Blake. "I'm expecting a tough match and the only time we played was on hard courts."

Hernandez reached his first ATP semifinal as he beat No. 3 and 2006 Houston champion Mardy Fish 6-2, 7-6(5).

Read the rest of this post...........

U.S. Fed Cup Captain Zina Garrison will be writing a daily blog from Moscow as she leads the U.S. team of Liezel Huber, Madison Brengle, Vania King and Ahsha Rolle against Russia in a Fed Cup Semifinal tie April 26-27. Come back each day to read Captain Garrison's thoughts exclusively on USTA.com.

It is a great developmental opportunity for the players who are going to Russia. Mary Joe Fernandez, U.S. Fed Cup Coach, and I talked about it and we decided to take this direction (with these players) since she is coming in next year as Fed Cup Captain. I wanted to make sure that Mary Joe had input, as they are players she will be working with next year. We talked long and hard about it, and I also spoke to Jean Nachand, Director of Women's Tennis with USTA Player Development.

I’m really looking forward to spending time with Liezel and getting to know her a little better. It is a great opportunity for the other players to be around someone who is at the top of her game right now. We’re going to Russia and playing people who are at the top of their game. I am just going to keep reinforcing to everyone, you never know. You go out and play your game and let things fall as they may. I’ve been giving some thought to the lineup and I think it will probably be Liezel and Vania in doubles. I’m a little more confident with Vania in the doubles spot because I’ve had her there before.

Madison has been a “Future Fed Cupper” before so she knows the atmosphere and she knows me. Ahsha has never been in this situation before, but I thought she had a great US Open last year and that she would be a good person to select. Vania was also a Future Fed Cupper. I think this will be a great opportunity for the developing talent that is coming up.

This is my last year as captain so it’s a natural thing to think about what I’m doing next. I’m going to train to become a life coach. I’ve always been a great motivator, that’s been my asset and this is something I have been dipping in for quite some time. Specifically, I want to be a sports life coach and I start my first class today. I’m pretty excited about that and hopefully in about six to eight months I will have my first client. I’m going to partner with Jackie Joyner-Kersee and we think we will be a good duo to help athletes - to help the young ones, the ones at the college level, etc. just understand the steps you have to go through to become an athlete, the steps you need to take to maintain it and then when you retire, what you have to do next.

Read the rest of this post...........

River Oaks U. S. Men's Clay Court Championship, Houston, Texas

Quarterfinal Round - Singles

James Blake, USA defeated Augustin Calleri, ARG
6-4, 6-3


Estoril Open, Estoril Portugal

Semifinal Round - Doubles

Jeff Coetzee, RSA and Wesley Moodie, RSA
defeated
Yves Allegro, SUI and Nicolas Mahut, FRA
5-7, 6-4, 10/6


Family Circle Cup

Quarterfinal Round - Singles

Serena Williams, USA defeated Maria Sharapova, RUS
7-5, 4-6, 6-1


USTA Pro Circuit

Ballenisles Women's Challenger, Palm Beach Gardens, Florida

Semifinal Round

Raquel Kops-Jones, USA and Sunitha Rao, IND
defeated by
Ekaterina Afinogenova, RUS and Lauren Albanese, USA
6-4, 6-1


St. Vincent Auxillary Men's Professional Tennis Tournament, Little Rock, Arkansas

Quarterfinal Round

Marcus Fugate, USA defeated James Ward, GBR
7-6(3), 6-3

Phillip Simmonds, USA defeated by Julio Peralta, CHI
6-4, 6-2

Read the rest of this post...........