I'm glad you had fun, preacherfan. I was there Tuesday-Sunday, I had a great time. I thought most of the singles matches were dull. I was very disappointed in Sania Mirza, I thought she was very weak, though she had a wrap on her right arm. Serve, return, were all pretty weak, she doesn't hit with much power, but there's not a lot of finesse either. She doesn't really hit lines or anything, or go for it much. Maybe she was having a dull week, but top 20 seems eons away imo. I saw Vesnina's demolition of Pennetta. I thought Vesnina showed the most promise, a game a lot like Lena D (minus the serve problem), just went for the lines all the time, hit them left, right, left right, she really dogged Pennetta, never messed up at the net. I was sitting about 10 feet from her on Grandstand at the service line, she was nervous as hell when Pennetta won the toss and chose to receive. Very heavy deep breaths and a lot of swallowing, but she was fine. I guess she's real inconsistent match to match, I didn't see the loss to Virginia RP, though Virginia's singles game, particularly her serve, have improved a lot since I saw her play singles last (4-5 years).
I saw all of Dinara/Groenefeld, again about 10 feet or so from the service line. For those interested, her face has cleared up a lot, nothing like those scary photos from Antwerp and Paris. Sort of a slow Lindsay with little strategy. She curses a lot in Russian and in English. Her coach and Vesnina were sitting about 3 rows behind me and it was pretty empty. She seems like one pissed off girl. I was more for Groenefeld, but didn't overtly cheer or anything. Dinara got broken once, looked over (hopefully at the coach and not me!) and says, "Shut your fucking face up." All this, but she has a smiley face attachment at the bottom of her racquet head--what a contradiction. Groenefeld made a lot less errors in the match than in other ones, had some good shots.
I saw most of Stosur/Meghann on the same court. Stosur's entourage was behind me, a rough looking dark haired guy covered in tattoos and earrings with a very strong Australian accent, taking notes and yelling encouragements to her after.every.point. He was with a lady with an Australian flag hat who videotaped the whole thing. I don't remember a lot about the match, except Stosur, while built, seems very, very short.
I saw a funny incident. We were walking around the outside courts Tuesday, and Dulko is like going bananas in Spanish to her coach while stretching next to a court. Mirza was practicing on the court, and I got the impression she was staying on too long and Dulko was mad, but wouldn't do anything. Pennetta shows up and they start talking in Spanish real agitated and Pennetta gives Dulko like this "you moron" look and just walks onto the court and starts unpacking her bags while Mirza is practicing. Mirza leaves like 10 minutes later with a huge entourage, one of the guys looked like a bodyguard. Some Chinese guy got in her face and took a picture and she seemed very put off. She was playing on a Blackberry as she was leaving. Patty was jogging around the venue, I finally just said hello to her as she was passing and she actually said hello back and was nice. I watched Stubbs and Corina practice, Stubbs has an amazing upper body. They stopped and were sitting down chatting like a couple of school girls, but I couldn't hear much, I was just a little too far away.
Karolina/Craybas--Karolina was in control of the match in the first set, so I left after the tiebreak, don't know what happened after that. She serves consistently 115-118 MPH, but it's always to the same part of the box and despite the speed, Craybas returned most of them. Craybas was moonballing most of the match, I guess it got to Karolina, she doesn't have any real patience it seems--she wants to her her big shots and nothing else. Two strange looking guys were with her, a short ethnic guy and a dorky guy, I assume the Bikic brothers? I watched Vera Z's first match, no melt down at all, on her best behavior. After being bored to tears with Granville/Arviddson, it was nice to see Vera taking a lot of chances and going for a lot in points when she didn't need to. Very sweet and gave me an autograph after the match. Diaz Olivia flipped out on Lynn Welch over a call, calmed down, went back to serve, then stopped, walked back to Welch and started bitching all over again. Welch doesn't seem to take any guff from any players, finally just stared her down from the chair with, "we're going to play this match."
I hope you guys enjoy the report!
