US Open Day 9 - Nadal, Serena fall

Day 9 in New York saw the completion of the men’s fourth round matches and another much anticipated tussle between Justine Henin and Serena Williams.

First match of the day on Armstrong was a tight contest between Stanislas Wawrinka and Juan Ignacio Chela and this one was an entertaining and close contest that went all the way.

Wawrinka was the first to show and easily took the first set 6-4, only to lose his way and allow Chela back into it – the Argentine took the second set 6-2.

Several breaks of serve by each man, reminiscent of a WTA match, meant the third set had to be decided by way of a tie break and Chela stepped it up to take the set and Wawrinka smashed his racquet into the floor hard twice, completely obliterating it and getting rid of his frustration.

Stan has gone through a few Head’s this week and has emerged as a surprise contender for stroppiest player of the fortnight, but Chela made a late entry with a smash after losing his serve at the start of the fifth, after being blown away in set four.

Chela came back from the loss of his service to take the match 6-4 in the fifth and Wawrinka really let the racquet have it and it will take someone having an almighty strop to overtake Stan now in the racquet smashing stakes.

To calm things down a bit, I decided upon a brief sojourn onto Armstrong to have a look at what I thought was a ladies doubles quarter-final match, but what Bethanie Mattek had turned into a wannabe porn star’s convention.

I thought that Federer had been badly advised by his stylist yesterday, but Mattek’s skin tight tiger print outfit was presumably all her own doing and she certainly wins points for bravery if not fashion.

After a few minutes of that, it was back to Ashe and Djokovic’s continuing physical struggles re-emerged in the match with Juan Monaco.

My Serbian hope took the first two sets, but appeared to be struggling and had the trainer out frequently. This was not good news for my tournament wager, but Djokovic fought his way to a match point in the third set tie break, despite Monaco being penalised a point for a ball dropping out of his pocket in the middle of a rally at 5-3 ahead. Monaco saw the breaker through and set up a fourth.

Djoko dug deep though and saw the match through 6-1 in the fourth set for a hard fought victory. Sadly, even the terrible commentary from Barry Cowan and in particular Sam Smith, who did their best to put Novak’s performance down, couldn’t detract from a fine win for the Serb over a tough opponent, playing at the top of his game – something that neither Cowan nor Smith know anything about incidentally.

In fact, this disgraceful hypocrisy led me to double check the tour records of this pair and other than chucking away a two set lead against Sampras at Wimbledon that I recall only too well, Cowan’s career week was a victory in a challenger in Brazil in 2001 – value US$3,600 – with a finals victory over Andy Ram (ranking 285). Total wins on the main tour - 5 with 21 losses.

Smith of course was almost as bad, with seven first round exits at Wimbledon to her name from eight attempts and a paltry three titles on the ITF circuit (the challenger’s of women’s tennis) in a twelve year career. How these two have the cheek to criticise Djokovic beggar’s belief. John Barrett, Mark Cox, Pat Cash - come back, all is forgiven.

Anyway, I digress and the match of the day was up next – Justine Henin v Serena Williams. I had my cash and hopes resting on Serena, but she couldn’t quite come up with the goods this evening.

The American lost her serve early on, but eventually broke back to set up a set point on the Henin serve at 5-6, but the Belgian held on to force a tie break, which she took and never looked back from there.

Serena was making way too many unforced errors and although she had her chances, she couldn’t take them and Henin ran away with it in the end by 7-6, 6-1.

It was a late one tonight and by the time Nadal v Ferrer arrived on court it was after 3 am and I couldn’t face a three hour marathon of sock adjusting from Nadal, so I called it quits. He lost in four and my Djoko wager lives to fight another day… just.