Today has two themes: Close But Not Quite, and Black and Yellow. It's also a little late, so this is kind of an uninspired post.
First in the close-but-not-quite category is Kimiko Date Krumm. I actually had the chance to hit a little with her quite a few years ago, when she was still solidly in retirement, so by that alone she's totally awesome in my book. She had the misfortune to be matched against Svetlana Kuznetsova, whose game is completely baffling me at the moment, in the first round. At first it looked like she might have a chance, as she opened the match by breaking Kuznetsova's serve, but alas things did not go like that and she lost the first set. Date Krumm then won the second and sort of seemed to be hanging in there during the third, but despite breaking serve various times and having break points in other games ultimately could not get through. Sigh...
I really thought that Novak Djokovic might lose. That would have amused me greatly, since it's recently come to my attention that I like nothing but upsets that put my disliked players in their places and leaves the path cleared for my favored ones. Djokovic losing would have been even more entertaining than usual, because everyone knows that he literally cannot take the heat and this would have simply been one more bit of evidence to that end. But somehow he pulled through. Oh well, I guess that makes sense. (By the way, Daren Cahill or some other reports that Djokovic is 6-0 in Grand Slam matches when he is down 2 sets to 1. Huh?)
Even though I'm happy with the outcome, I suppose Rafael Nadal's match against Teimuraz Gabashvili (yeah, I Googled that, so what?) is another close-but-not-quite. Gabashvili really played Nadal and made him work for his win, but I guess in the end the scoreline just goes to show how Nadal plays when it matters most. 7-6, 7-6, 6-3. A couple of points here and there, and the match could have been an upset or a 5-setter. Now I'm waiting for Nadal to not make this entire tournament a close-but-not-quite.
Apparently the theme for the night matches on Arthur Ashe was bumblebee and Babolat:
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