Surviving the quarterfinals and frying pans - Wimbledon

By maxime68 on Thursday, July 2, 2009 - 04:49

What happened on day n° 8 in the women singles?

Dinara Safina, current number one, was favored over Venus Williams and got to play on Centre Court, again.

Venus Williams finished the first set in astonishing 27 minutes with 6:1, she started to struggle in the beginning of the second set and lost the first two games to Radwanska. She then recovered and finished that set in style with 6:2.

There have been many speculations about her knee, if it holds until the end. Though it’s heavily taped it doesn’t really seem to interfere with her game.

(Venus Williams, photo EPA/G.Penny)

Dinara Safina had yet again to go through three sets, looking at the statistics I seriously wondered how she managed to win that match. I’d say if Lisicki had had more experience, she would have won. Once again this was not really a pretty match to watch. I’ve never seen more use of the frying pan in a top tennis match than in this one. (when you don’t hit the ball correctly but instead get the racket below the ball and throw – instead of hitting – it somewhere on the court)

(Dinara Safina, photo PS./S.Wake)

While the channels switched from Safina/Lisicki to Williams/Radwanska when Venus was about to score an important point (set- and matchballs), we hardly saw anything of Dementiewa/Schiavone.

(Elena Dementiewa, photo Professional Sport/B.Queensborough)

Ehmm….yes

(Elena Dementiewa, photo Getty Images/P.Gilham)