American Idol runner-up gets recording contract

Kathrine McPhee, who is this year's Idol runner up has just signed a recording contract with creator Simon Fuller's 19 Recordings Limited and RCA.

Personally I'm very happy about this, because Kathrine was always my pick to win Idol rather then Taylor Hicks.

But I'm also not surprised since most of the top ten Idol singers get recording contracts.

The unfortunate thing is that you often don't hear about any of them after their initial single release. Hopefully that will not be the case for Kathrine.

Here is a Yahoo Entertainment article confirming the news
http://ca.entertainment.yahoo.com/s/07062006/6/entertainment-idol-runner-signs-record-deal.html

Clijsters prevails over Hingis at Roland Garros:(

Well Kim Clijsters has once again won the head to head for the second time this year in the quarters, the first time being the quarters of the Australian earlier in the year. Now you gotta give credit to Martina because she hang in there the best she could.

And when Clijsters was leading 5/2 she came back and evened things out. No doubt to Clijsters making some unforced errors. Then Clijsters won the tie break 7/6. In the second set Kim made hardly any errors dominated and won it easily 6/1. With the way Clijsters is playing I'm really surprised she still plans to retire in 2007.

I honestly think Martina just had an off day, she didn't seem to have much energy today. There are reports about her not feeling well, the French Open site says she had food poisoning. The ESPN commentators say she has the flu. Well whatever it was it definitely effected her performance.

Because she was not playing the way she was prior to the quarters. She was just not able to run down the balls like she has been doing. And like I said in my post yesterday she did look tired to me even in her last 2 press conferences.

And if she was sick well that would certainly explain it. Martina herself did not confirm nor deny any physical illness. But obviously she did not want to say anything, because she didn't want to blame her loss on an illness didn't want the players to think that I guess.

That's the way she is. The only thing she mentioned that was tough on her and I wholeheartedly agree is the tough schedule of having to play 4 straight matches in a row with no rest and not much time to recover. I think that was really one of the biggest factors

Having said all of that, I am very happy with her result at The French I mean yes I'm disappointed and I'm sure Hingis is too.

But she can definitely be proud of what she accomplished. She made it all the way to the quarters of Roland Garros with a horrible draw, a tough schedule and she's only been playing for 6 months.

In those 6 months she went from being ranked in the 300's to number 15 in the world. She has won the Italian Open, and beat several players in the top ten. All in a very short span of time. That's certainly nothing to sneeze at.

At least now Martina will finally have time to recover a bit, before heading off to Wimbledon in 3 weeks where she can start fresh. So I wish her a speedy recovery and all the best in the upcoming tournament.

And I'll just end this with what one of the French reports said at Martina's post match conference. The fans don't care that you lost they're just happy to see you back playing tennis again. And that's exactly how I feel.

Hingis through to the Quarters at Roland Garros!!

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

The Swiss Miss continues her run at Roland Garros

Well, Martina Hingis waisted no time moving on to the fourth round of the French Open in just 35 minutes. With a win over Croatian Ivan Lisjak 6/1 6/1.

Unfortunately, I did not get to see this match myself due to poor coverage by NBC who chose to stick with men's matches only for their entire day of French Open broadcast.

But I have read articles and reports, and according to them Martina played magnificently. She had 25 winners and only 8 unforced errors. She even threw in a couple of aces. Again she didn't get much of a challenge this match either.

Tomorrow's match however might be a different story she's playing Shahar Peer from Israel. Who is having a very good week, and who ousted Elena Dementieva to get to the fourth round. Hopefully I'll actually get to see it. And since Martina finished her match so quickly she'll have plenty of energy tomorrow.

It should be interesting to see how Martina handles this player. As I've mentioned before things will just get more and more difficult for Hingis in the second week. She'll be facing tough competition from Kim Clijsters to Justine Henin. It's gonna be a good week:).

Here are links to a couple of great articles that detail this match. One is from the French Open site and the other is from TSN.ca.

http://www.rolandgarros.com/en_FR/news/articles/2006-06-03/200606031149355375081.html

http://www.tsn.ca/tennis/news_story/?ID=167722&hubname=tennis

And once again all pics belong to the Martina Hingis Message board.

Where's the love?

To all my blog readers (returning and new), I'm feeling a little lonely and unloved people. Nobody is leaving any comments.

In case I haven't made it clear I welcome comments. I'm very interested in seeing what people think of my blog.

However just so you know all the comments are subject to my approval before publishing.

I know there are people visiting 'cause the stats don't lie, see counter at the very bottom of page;)

So please, comment away! all 400+ of you. I don't bite:)

Thanks, and happy reading;).

Hingis through to 3rd round at Roland Garros

Martina waving to the crowd after winning 6/1 6/3 wearing my fave outfit again:D

Well, Martina Hingis is through to the 3rd round. She was playing very well very relaxed, won the first set easily 6/1. It was a perfect set with something like over 40 winners.

It was great to see. But I think maybe she relaxed a little too much in the second set and allowed her opponent to get back into the match. But she held her serve and managed to close it out at 6/3.

She had a much better service game today she served at over 80% which is ten times better then her first match. So far she really hasn't had a challenge, I don't think she feels all that threatened yet.

But things will get very interesting next week, because it's looking more and more likely that she will play Kim Clijsters in her quarter final match on Tuesday. And if it happens that will certainly be a challenge for Hingis.

I expect her to get through her next 2 matches without a problem, and I really think playing mixed doubles is helping her, keeping her sharp and giving her confidence as illustrated in today's match.

After a day of rain this is what I like to see, great woman's matches one after the other. Kim Clijsters is moving on, Venus Williams still hanging around surprisingly. And if she hangs around then the other quarter final will be quite interesting as well. It might be Venus and Mauresmo.

Now if I had to pick I would rather Martina play Venus in the Semi's especially since she already has a win over Venus this year in Rome. Next week is going to be just chuck full of excitement.

Above pics taken from the Martina Hingis Message board already linked on this blog.

Rain delay at Roland Garros

Well, looks like a lot of matches got suspended until Friday due to rain. Including Martina's second round match. And I thought rain delays like these only happened at Wimbledon lol.

Darn it I was so looking forward to it because it was going to be on at a decent time.

Instead of 5am EST. Kim Clijsters match, Dementieva's and Kuznetsova's match were also cancelled. But of course since Justine Henin was one of the first matches out on court she's already through.

Yesterday Venus Williams made it into her 3rd round match as well.

So now Martina is going to have a full plate, since she was going to play mixed doubles tomorrow.

Now she'll have to play mixed doubles plus second round singles. And it gets worse, because of the rain delay she has no day off and plays on Saturday (3rd round match) and Sunday (fourth round match).

That's gonna be quite exhausting, I hope she's able to dispose of her opponents quickly so she can get some rest in between each match.

It'll be a challenge but I wish her all the best, hopefully since she's one of the fittest players on the tour she'll make it through.

Check out the Yahoo Tennis link for the latest news on this as well as all the latest scores.