tennistress...

waaaaaaaaaa! I can only whine and bitch about not being able to see the French Open tennis tourney on Hongkong television and just looking at meaningless scores on the Roland Garros website just now....i mean nothing beats watching a live match of course....but it certainly depresses the hell out of me to just view numbers and figures taking me back to my my Chemistry subject where I labored over balancing equations and the numbers associated with "IDE" and "IC" in Sodium Chloride or Chloric acid LOL ...pathetic ain't it?


but then again it's not too late to make a tribute and i just made it in time for the ongoing Wimbledon competition as of writing....


January 27, 2005....2005 Australian Open
women's semifinals: Serena Williams def. beat Maria Sharapova 2-6, 7-5, 8-6 ..


if this is not the greatest game among the new generation of stars in today's tennis then it has to be the noisiest wouldn't you agree? Bwahahahah...

On one side of the court is an American girl who is a legacy of great American tennis and black pride in sports as well...On the other side, a tsarina, with covergirl looks, from the bowels or should I say steppes of Russia, but trained in the tennis academies of the United States...

What's similar about them?

For the tennis insider, one word...power. Lots of it too. Serena can disembowel an opponent with well-placed several mph-serves and unbelievably accurate groundstrokes while Maria can eviscerate a foe with relentless groundstrokes and winners from both sides of the racket....

For someone new to tennis, NOISE....grunts, moans and screams and high decibels are part and parcel of each other's game. No matter how deep the rally, how long the point has gone, these two players' vocal chords produce guttural sounds which are a combo of pain, force, effort, and I don't know maybe perversely orgasmic vocal calisthenics for the discerning male LOL

If there was a setting for this classic confrontation or maybe not classic but thunder against thunder it would be this stage. It's held in January, early part of the year where everyone is healthy, not too many players have indulged in too many tournaments, injuries are few and far between....

The atmosphere was a Roman circus...the circumstances leading to it a mediaman's dream....

Sharapova had shocked Serena Williams in the past year by beating her in the Wimbledon finals and the Women's Season-Ending Championships where the top women players based on the year's final rankings competed. And both occasions in the finals...

Sharapova wanted a cementing of her mastery, Serena was a hound for revenge....

The first set seemed like Serena would once again be outduelled. Sharapova's groundstrokes were too piercing, even her shrieks too I would believe, deafened Serena's ears. For a set and a half, Serena was forced side to side and was playing catch-up. Her forehand was failing her.

(For outsider's information, the Williams sisters as most experts seem to notice have remarkably better double-handed backhands than forehands which is very unusual for the outsider like us I think. But not for the tennis people. They know there are certain grips to the backhand which will make it a better offensive weapon. However this grip does not usually favor the forehand stroke or you would need to change grip as soon as you switch to a forehand stroke. hehehe i knew i would know that! :))

The searing heat is a staple at the Melbourne tournament. Temperatures can soar really high and if one can remember it became so hot that it became a factor in Hingis' defeat at the hands of Capriati several seasons ago.

But anyway back to this match, the heat seem to sink deep into the ground and soak into the player's feet...and necks. Sharapova served for the match and had a match point in the encounter but was saved by Serena whereby Serena went on to win the second set and forced a third!
I was so happy at this point! Well you knew who i was rooting for huh? LOL ....
Never had I watched a match and sat at the edge of my seat literally. The third set was going to be quite the battle.

serena eventually prevailed in the third...holding her nerves in the third set and earning a revenge for the previous year's defeats in two of the more important events of that year to the russian girl...

as for sharapova, well she looked really frustrated after the match but then she could never really blame herself...the match was too close to ever be called serena proved better in many departments...

and as in many professional tennis' matches both men and women, there is little margin between the skills level...many times it's the athlete who steels her nerve during the crucial moments who come up with the win....victory is just a narrow margin, a two-point difference, an inch off the baseline, or an inch under the net....

that's what tennis is all about...

(Note: Thank you to http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-01/28/content_413219.htm for the pictures!!! You guys are amazing!)