Down to the Semi’s

Thanks to the 4 set- 4 hour battle between Dominic Thiem and Rafa Nadal, my beauty sleep suffered last night.  Dominic truly is the next gen, answering almost all of Rafa’s powerful spins.  Rafa made a lot of mistakes but kept coming back to tie it up only to lose the 3 tie breakers, winning only 1 set.  The crowd was truly kept on the edge of their seats.  

Dominic was so gracious and his respect for Rafa was evident in his body language as he held up his hand, almost apologetically, when he hit a winner.  Love this kid!

We discovered the free tram yesterday, so post midnight, we just went with the flow and in 20 minutes we were back at the hotel.  No fear of walking the 2 blocks from our stop.  There is relatively no crime here in Australia.  One of our drivers told us that’s because here, only the bad guys have guys and they keep the crime to themselves.  Hmmm.  That’s a novel idea, isn’t it?

Simona Halep handily beat Anett Kontavet in the morning session at 6-1, 6-1 to advance to the Semifinals.  Simona is a warrior who, with coach Darren Cahill, has finally matched her brawn to her brain and believes she can win it all.  
Of course, we will see if that’s true today when she takes on the Spaniard Muguruza who beat 30th ranked Pavlyuchenko in straight sets.

BTW, while sitting in my seat I studied Simona’s serve and feel I can now try it out myself on the court next week.  What do you think my chances are, throwing out those 96mph winners?  Try slim to none. 😳

The Aussies will be out in full force today as their Ash Barty takes on the USA’s Sofia Kenin.  This will be a tough one for me.  The hype in America has been centered on the 15 year old Coco Gauff who lost to Kenin in the 4th round.  Perhaps this 21 year old will finally get her due when she competes on the Semifinal stage with Barty.  I might just have to cheer politely for both young ladies and let the scoreboard do the talking.

Before the Nadal-Thiem match we watched the other next gen Sasha Zverev take Stan the Man Wawrinka to 4 sets.  We thought Stan, with his Federer-like backhand, was going to teach Sasha how it’s done, but the young German showed that, although as lanky as they come (6’6”, 198 lbs), his serve packs a wallop.  His perfect English post interview was equally impressive.  It always embarrasses me that we Americans can barely speak English properly and these Europeans not only speak better than us, they add 4 or 5 languages to their repertoire.

The jewel in the crown of today’s schedule will be tonight’s match between my beloved Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic.  Now, admittedly, Djokovic loves this Open the best and basically owns it, based on Roger’s resurrection the other day against Sandgren, please don’t count him out.  These are 2 veterans who know each other’s game like no one else...Joker the best returner in the game but Roger will always be the GOAT.  
I can’t wait!