Good News And Bad News

The good news is that the bull has been awakened, Nadal played a good and competitive match.  I know I was talking about him lassoing his opponents into submission with his forehand but I forget how good he is on the run with his backhand passing shot when opponents are up at net.  He showed this strength a coupla times throughout his match with Bellucci.  He made up for not closing the second set out the first time at 5-4 by breaking in the next game to go up 6-5 with a backhand passing shot that gave us not only a "Vamos!", but some serious fist-pumping.  You can tell he wants to regain his title as the King of Clay badly! :)  Check out the highlights here. Choose Highlights > May 31, 2010 > Highlights - Day 9 Part. 3.  He is set to play his countryman Nicolas Almagro in the Quarter Finals.

It also seems that the watch thing is not an anomaly, he wore it again throughout the match...

Serena is back to killer form and wasted no time with a straight sets win 6-2, 6-2, breezing into the Quarter Finals to face Samantha Stosur, the woman who cut Henin's bid to regain this title, post-retirement, short. It will be interesting to see if she will continue to upset top players - Stosur did this at the Aussie Open too.

I was wondering where Gulbis was, after his match in Rome against Nadal, I thought he would be a real contender and could cause a few upsets, spicing up the mix.  However, he pulled out in the first round due to injury, which is why there has been nothing on him. I wonder if he played out of his skin against Nadal and this setback is a repercussion.  He notched around 50 winners in that semi-final and still lost.  It always amazes me how people continuously play out of their skins and still lose on the clay to Nadal.

The bad news is that Essien is not going to play at the World Cup.  However the team is optimistic.  They were able to go to the Africa Cup Finals without their best players and were runners-up, so there are people to step up to the challenge.