Australian Open - Looking Back

By maxime68 on Wednesday, February 10, 2010 - 18:07

In our last post about the Australian Open we asked you: “What’s in it for us?”

The finals were played over a week ago and we are now ready to answer that question.

Should be quite easy, don’t you think so? It depends on your point of view and your expectations. If you were waiting for someone to step up respectively to come out and fill the void left with Amélie Mauresmo’s retirement, you – and we all – were off track.

If you expected to enjoy tennis and swoon over some awesome female athletes, all your dreams were fulfilled. Well almost, the official pictures could have been better and coverage of the doubles would have been nice too.

Despite all of this sounding familiar, this tournament was different and might have been the turning point in tennis. Several of the higher seeded players lost to “weaker” players who then continued their way through the rounds until they met the later finalists. At first I even thought that Serena Williams was again put in the easier tableau, throughout the tournament it turned out that I was wrong.

The results of the matches are obvious, only two-set matches except for the quarterfinals and the final. Let’s start with the 4th round match against Australian Samantha Stosur which Serena won 6:4 6:2 in 32 and 33 minutes. Looking at the statistics you notice that Stosur had three break points she didn’t manage to pull through. This was an important phase in the match as Serena’s forehand had decided – not for the first time - to take a short break. Samantha lost this time, but if she manages to keep her form or improve even more we will soon see her among the top ten players. She finished 2009 in place 13 and is now ranked 11th.

Next Serena had to play Victoria Azarenka, one of those extremely young players who made it quickly to the top ten, without advancing further than the quarterfinals. Azarenka won the first set (58 mins), forced Serena into tie-break in the second set and lost this set (57 mins) and was almost demolished by Serena in the third set (32 mins), final score 4:6 7:6 6:2.

Then came Na Li, seeded 16th, who lost in two sets but put up quite a fight as the match lasted 122 mins, with both sets being decided by tie-breaks 7(7):6(4) and 7(7):6(1).

And then it was already time for the final. A final many might have hoped for and just as many would have called illusion. Already throughout the tournament my former distaste for Justine Henin had turned into admiration. Her second round match against Elena Dementieva was one of the best women matches I had seen for a long time. Only two matches into the tournament and Henin showed precision and oversight of the court that many of the current top ranked simply lack. After all the Australian Open was her first big tournament after she decided to retire from retirement.

And like Henin’s second round match the quality of the final proved to be worth a final of a Grand Slam tournament. Three sets, a bit more than two hours played and a final score of 6:4 3:6 6:2.

Serena Williams won the Australian Open 2010, even set a record as she won this tournament for the fifth time. In the history of all-time Grand Slam winners (Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, US Open) she pulled even with Billie Jean King and moved up to place 6 with 12 titles in her name. (Only two more currently active players are listed with more than 5 titles, Venus Williams and ex-retired Justine Henin both on place 12 with 7 titles.)

Serena kept her ranking as number one and Henin has to play yet another tournament before she will be ranked again.