First off I apologize for the delay today, but Blogger was having some problems and I could not log in. But enough of that lets get to the good stuff. Martina Hingis pulled it off and she's through to the quarter finals of the French Open:D .
Where she will face her biggest challenge yet in this tournament Kim Clijsters. This quarter final match will be a re-match of The Australian Open earlier this year where Hingis lost to Clijsters in a tough but very close 3 set battle.
Much like the one she played against her opponent Shahar Peer today. This match was a continuation from last night, the match was suspended due to poor light. Hingis was totally in control in the first set dictating all the points, moving her opponent around and making all kinds of drop shots at the net.
That was of course no doubt due to her opponent feeling intimidated with having to play someone that she admires. Hingis won the first set very easily 6/3.
But in the second set Peer seemed to calm her nerves and the intimidation factor wore off. She started hitting a lot more winners and Hingis a lot more errors. Martina started to go for too much and getting frustrated she ended up loosing the 2nd set 6/2.
Hingis started the 3rd set today a little shaky, still very unsure of what she should do to beat this player. This set was a grueling battle the first point of the match took 14 minutes with Hingis as the winner.
But her opponent manged to hold her own and come back a few times during the match. I think it was finally when they were at 2 games all that Hingis decided enough was enough. And changed her strategy from playing long rallies to playing aggressively and keeping the points short.
Making some amazing shots along the way. I didn't see Martina smile too much today, she was in full concentration mode.
Martina has once again shown the amazing talent she has for reading her opponents and her anticipation and craft at the net. This was Hingis's best match thus far at the French Open, and certainly a much bigger challenge then her previous 3 opponents.
Martina won the 3rd set 6/3. The whole match including yesterday took just over 2 hours so it was Martina's longest match thus far as well.
Later in the evening Martina was scheduled to play mixed doubles against veteran Martina Navratilova with her partner Mehesh Bhupathi, but she pulled out stating she was not feeling well.
Now I don't know if that's true, but I'm glad either way because obviously the singles mean a lot more to her and she wants to rest up and have chance at winning that illusive French title.
And after seeing her post match interview she did look quite tired. So I think it was a good move on her part, and she certainly deserves some rest after having to play 4 days straight.
All the best to Martina tomorrow, here is hoping she wins a spot in the semi's:). And just in closing once again I have learned to never count this player out.
Here are some great article links that provide more statistical details of this amazing match.
http://sports.yahoo.com/ten/news;_ylt=ArMelC_iXirK8pHiW.2HMXI4v7YF?slug=reu-openhingisdc&prov=reuters&type=lgns
http://www.rolandgarros.com/en_FR/news/articles/2006-06-05/200606051149508601804.html
http://www.hingisonline.com/martina.html
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