Black Tennis Pros

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.

Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga is truly becoming a fan favorite at this Australian Open. He's come out the last three rounds with guns blazin' and is taking no prisoners. Tsonga defeated Guillermo Garcia-Lopez of Spain 6-3, 6-4, 6-2 to move into round 4. Way to go Tsonga!

It is really going to be interesting to see just how far this young Frenchman can go. Who knows, perhaps this is his Marcos Baghdatis Australian Open, we'll see. In the meantime I'm just going to enjoy the show, and very affable personality of Tsonga.

Next up for Tsonga, compatriot Richard Gasquet......this is gonna be good!

American Serena Williams had a bit of a battle with her opponent Victoria Azarenka of Belarus. Of course Serena defeated Azarenka 6-3, 6-4, but Azarenka definitely had some competitive moments. Nonetheless, Serena is moving on to round 4.

Next up for Serena, Nicole Vaidisova of the Czech Republic.

Doubles Scores

• American sisters Venus and Serena Williams were back on the doubles court today. The powerful duo defeated the doubles team of Ai Sugiyama of Japan and Katarina Srebotnik of Slovenia 6-2, 7-6(7/2).
• Frenchwoman Stephanie Foretz and her doubles partner Selima Sfar of Tunisia were defeated 6-2, 6-3, by the doubles team of Iveta Benesova of the Czech Republic and Galina Voskoboeva of Russia.

American sisters Venus and Serena Williams doubled the trouble for the Australian doubles team of Monique Adamczak and Christina Wheeler defeating them in the first round of doubles 7-5, 6-1.

The sisters powered their way through the match with their usual big serves and fierce net action. A couple of times Adamczak and Wheeler looked as if they were playing dodge ball, HA! No one was injured, so I'll enjoy the humor in it. The Aussie crowd didn't think that it was so funny though. They booed the sisters every time one of their shots almost hit the Australian pair.

The other action during the match occurred when Venus and Serena disagreed with a line call and couldn't get a reasonable explanation from the umpire. She caught an earful from the sisters. At one point Venus asked her "then what are you out here for?" Things eventually settled down and the sisters did what they came to do, kick butt!

American James Blake continued to roll over his opponent with power and excellent shot making. Today he victimized fellow American Michael Russell. Initially it appeared that the match might be competitive as Russell broke Blake's serve. But midway through the first set Blake turned the beat around and never looked back. I hate to see a fellow American take a beat down, but that's the name of the game! Russell's beat down came in at 6-3, 6-2, 6-2......Yeowches!

Next up for Blake is Frenchman Sebastien Grosjean.





Earlier American Venus Williams defeated Camille Pin of France 7-5, 6-4. Venus still isn't showing that totally fabulous game of hers yet. Pin was able to break her serve several times. Hopefully these are just some early hiccups and we'll see her game evolve into the wonder that it usually is.

Next up for Venus is India's Sania Mirza.