Last year was not such a great Australian Open (AO) for me. The men's side was pretty predictable and the women's side had a funny occurrence where 3 or 4 women tried to exert their dominance by beating up harshly on opponents, only to fizzle out early in the second week. This years AO was pretty traumatic as well. It was like a that M Night Shyamalan movie "Signs." Meh for 3/4 of it and then it was exciting.
Usually in a slam tournament, the first rounds are very exciting. The middle players hovering between 10 and 20 ranks run into each other. And there are so many matches going on you get to watch your favorite player. With the internet streaming and cable packages, you can watch all your favorite matches and not get stuck to the main stadiums. I love Federer and Nadal and Serena and all that but in the first rounds they beat up on their opponents. Good for them but lousy for entertaining tennis. Even when I was actually there I fell asleep in the main arena.
THIS year however, there was a killer heatwave for the first week AND a lot of players injured themselves training for the tournament. 140 degrees on the court is no joke! Spectators were getting treated for heat exhaustion, Canada's Frank Dancevic almost fainted, Bernard Tomic, John Isner, Philip Kohlschreiber all had to retire out of matches, bottles were melting on the concrete. I live in Atlanta and I have never seen a bottle melt. The AO is normally know for intense heat and this year it was WORSE than that!. At any rate, intense heat usually zaps players energy badly. So most of the outer court players sucked it up.
The survivors of the first couple of days then had to keep playing. It was like watching old men and women play after they jogged 10 laps around the courts.
Then in the second week the toll of the heat started to get to the top players. We saw Serena fall to Ivanovic. Azarenka fell to Radwanska. Sharapova fell to Cibulkova. Djokovic fell to Wawrinka. Kerber fell to Pennetta.
All leading to the finals between Li Na and Dominika Cibulkova for the women and Raphael Nadal and Stanislas Wawrinka for the men. With Li the victor over Cibulkova, no surpise, and Wawrinka the victor over Nadal, BIG SURPRISE.
I think that the big story of the tournament was all the new, high profile Coaches everyone got. Roger Federer had Edberg, Li had Carlos Rodriguez (Justine Henin's old coach), Sloane Stevens had Paul Annacone (Federer and Sampras' old coach), Djokovic had Boris Becker, Kei Nishikori had Michael Chang. Sabine Lisicki got Martina Hingis. Wozniaki picked up Thomas Hogstedt (Sharapova's old coach). It is getting to be a little chic to have these guys in your corner now. It will be interesting to see how these players do later in the year.
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