oddsnark | Racketeering: The Australian Open Quarterfinals

Tennis • The Bad • The Sexy

Racketeering: The Australian Open Quarterfinals

By Peter ⋅ January 24, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

Hey, Everybody, it’s the WTA: hot women playing ugly tennis! Who doesn’t like that?

Hot Russian Blondes Maria Sharapova and Nadia Petrova played a Godawfully ugly 1st set of tennis in Tuesday’s quarterfinals match, which Sharapova won 7-6(8-6), 6-4. She won the 1st set despite being down 4-6 in the breaker. It’s a lot easier to do that kind of thing when your opponent commits 4 consecutive unforced errors. Sharapova herself had 8 double faults and 36 unforced errors in the match. But Petrova’s Nerves of Petroleum Jelly gave up 12 and 49 of her own.

Sharapova moves on into the semis to face Justine Henin-Hardenne, who outlasted My Girl and No. 1 seed Lindsay Davenport 2-6, 6-2, 6-3. Davenport dominated a 1st set in which Henin-Hardenne managed to land only 32% of her first serves. The 2nd set seemed to go the exact opposite leading to a tightly contested 3rd set. The Belgian No. 8 seed broke Davenport in the set’s 5th game and held serve for the victory.

In men’s quarterfinals play David Nalbandian and Frenchman Fabrice Santoro played an epic 1st set that seemed to last forever (though it was just under an hour) with Santoro using all his Frenchified trickery to battle the Argentine. Nalbandian was broken in the 7th game, managed to break back and took it into the 12th before closing Santoro out to win. Santoro must’ve put everything he had into the 1st, because Nalbandian took the 2nd and 3rd sets at love. Andy Roddick’s mojo thief, Marco Baghdatis took out the previously untouchable Ivan Ljubicic in 5 sets: 6-4, 6-2, 4-6, 3-6, 6-3. The Cypriot faces Nalbandian in the semis.

In Wednesday’s action Martina the Come-Back Girl takes on the 2 seed and should-be favorite, Kim Clijsters, and Amelie Mauresmo faces Patty Schnyder. Roger Federer will crush Nikolay Davydenko with his awe-inspiring powers, and Nicolas Kiefer and Sebastian Grosjean will fight because that’s just what Germans and French people do.