Goodbye Mommies

It was a poor day for the WTA mommy's. Both, Sybille Bammer and Lindsay Davenport seemed to be in all sorts of trouble playing their second round matches. While the wind, that was causing some problems during the day session, seemed to settle, the expirienced players couldn't gain any advantage. Bammer lost convincingly against the rather unknown qualifier from Taipei Su-Wei Hsieh 2/6 0/6.
Davenport could rescue only two more games than the Austrian playing in an sold out Rod Laver Arena against Maria Sharapova. The final score shows exactly how the match went on. The Russian started off all guns blaising against the 31 year old American veteran racing out to a 5/0 first set lead. The second set seemed to be a much closer affair, but at the end it was again the Russian starlet , who could win the deciding points and capture an impressive 6/1 6/3 victory.
Before the tournament has started Lindsay pointed out there were only about 5 players, who she didn't wanna meet in the first rounds. You can saftely say - Maria Sharapova was one of the names on that list.

Other interesting matches that caught our eye included the no. 15 seed Patty Schnyder against home crowd favourite Casey Dellacqua. On paper it was clear , who was the favourite 4 this one. Schyder a former semifinalist at this event seemed to have the match under control winning the first set 6/4 and going a break up in the second. Having reached at least the fourth round the last 5 years at the Aussie Open Schnyder looked 2 be heading towards a comfotable victory. The feisty Australian had other plans. She made up the deficit in the second set and since than was the dominaiting force in this rubber. Schynder fought hard saving several break points, but at the end was punished for her to casual style of play losing 6/4 5/7 6/8 to the joy of the partizan crowd.

Another seed who didn't have it all her way was Tatiana Golovin. The Frenchwoman had a tricky opponent in her compatriot Aravane Rezai, who is somewhat known for her big wins. This time once again she didn't show any signs of fear completely dominaiting the match and after a letdown in the second set came out the winner at the end. You have to give credit to Rezai for sticking to her guns, but at the same time it's some sort of a warning sign for Golovin, who still is waiting for a major breakthrough at a Grand Slam event. She's got the potential, but very often her backhand seems to let her down not being able to produce any juice on that wing.
Others who made it through on day 3 include Henin, Vaidisova, Schiavone, Jankovic, Mauresmo, Dementieva, Peer, Azarenka, Razzano, Sugiyama, Vesnina and Serena Williams.

~jachal