Its been quite an exciting day so far at the Mutua Madrid Open for both the ladies and gents tennis with quite a few good matches. On the woman's side there's been another upset as Vera Zvonareva has gone out in straight sets against Petra Kvitova who has rapidly been improving (she even beat Kim Clijsters a few months back at the Suez Open in France). And Julia Goerges came through a stern match against Danira Safina of Russia, who battled back but ultimately lost in 3 sets, 4-6 6-4 4-6. I thought Goerges would win as she has been on top form since beating Caroline Wozniacki at Stuttgart quite convincingly. Speaking of which Caroline plays Julia again tomorrow, which should make for a really interesting match, I hope Caroline can pull through and win this one this time. Hopefully she will have looked at what she did wrong last time and make it right, but if she goes out again, Goerges sure will prove to be an absolutely formidable opponent, who could even take it as far as the finals and maybe even win. We'll see, but it should be quite a match.
And as it happened it was quite a match with another upset for the World No.1 who went out against the feisty German Goerges who defeated Caroline in 3 sets, despite suffering from fatigue and blisters in the second set, she still came through and won the match in 6-4, 1-6, 6-3. But clearly clay court isn't Caroline's forte, so she will have to be very careful at the French Open as if she runs into Julia again it will be three in a row. So Goerges will go on to face either Sam Stosur or Anatasia Pavly (call her that for short as her surname is too long!) and I'm thinking she could beat either player as she beat Stosur last time as well. I'm beginning to think that Julia could go all the way in this tournament, although the noisy Victoria Azarenka has been playing very well too, as so far she's been demolishing players, so we'll see how it pans out.
On the men's side of things we had a few interesting matches, firstly Novak Djokovic continued his seemingly unending winning streak today against Kevin Anderson from South Africa, who Djoko beat in straight sets 6-3 6-4, Djokovic has now gone 28-0 this year (30 matches in total counting the last two from 2010) but it remains to be seen if he can keep it up. Perhaps more impressively Juan Martin Del Potro continued his immensely impressive comeback today against Marin Cilic, as he hammered the Croat in two straight sets with a crushing score of 6-3 6-0. Tomorrow he faces an almighty challenge against Rafa, no doubt the king of clay will triumph but it will be interesting to see how much Del Potro can push Nadal.
And of course we go to one of the main interests of the men's tennis today, Andy Murray who made his comeback from his elbow injury today, who played against Frenchman Gilles Simon for the second time this year. Simon got injured in their last match which Murray took advantage of to finish off the match. But this time he was up against a much tougher opponent in Simon, who this time pushed Murray all the way in the first two sets. In fact it has to be said it was one of Murray's poorer performances this year (his straight set losses not withstanding) as he dished out a stream of unforced errors and double faults, as Simon managed to take advantage of them, especially in the second set (which was met with a lot of angry expletives from the dour faced Murray) which Simon won. In the third set though Andy knuckled down and started playing more consistently and served better, although he still had to fend off a series of break points by Simon, but he did successfully as he broke down the increasingly frustrated Frenchman and gave him a third set bagel, the final score being 6-4, 3-6, 6-0.
No doubt about it this was a brutal match for Andy, and he certainly has played a whole lot better, I wonder if it was just a mixture of match nerves and not being used to the high bounce of the ball, not to mention the speed of the Madrid court. Let's hope he's gotten more used to the court when he meets Thomaz Bellucci in the third round tomorrrow. But he can't afford to play as shakily as he did today, although to give him credit, he did battle back very well and his own stubborness to refuse to give in saw the match through. But on the plus side it was a win, if not a pretty one.
But the match of the day had to be Federer who played against the gutsy Spaniard Feliciano Lopez. Lopez already had given Djokovic a hard time last week as he took him to a first set tiebreak before losing 2-6 in the second. But this time Lopez managed to push the former world no. 1 all the way in a thrilling 3 set match, which ultimately saw him fall in the closest of margins as Federer triumphed in 7-6(13), 6(1)-7, 7-6(7). It definitely possibly will be the match of the week, but I'm sure this week will hopefully see a few more thrillers to come. Its already a great tournament, both for the men and ladies.
So part 4 beckons......
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