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BOBBY MOTUS
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Saturday, January 28, 2017
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Stage set for ‘vintage’ Australian Open finales
BEFORE the tournament began, both top seeds in the men’s and women’s draws were heavy favorites to figure prominently up to the later stages. But they were felled, lower ranked players moved up and vintage stars resurrected from hibernation. The Final Four had stars who hugged the tennis limelight a few years back.
For the 22nd time, Swiss tennis precision was displayed on the hard court by No. 4 seed Stan Wawrinka and No. 17 Roger Federer, of which the latter disposed of the former in an exciting 5-set match. Head-to-head, the Fed Express has 19 wins over Stan the Man, who has won only 3 times against Roger. The last time they met at the Australian Open was in the QF in 2011 where Federer defeated Wawrinka in 3 sets.
As I write this, Rafael Nadal, seeded at No. 9 is still to play against 15th seed Grigor Dimitrov in the other semis match. They will be meeting for the 9th time in their careers. Nadal has an 8-1 edge over the Bulgarian and it was during the quarterfinals of the 2014 AO that he made Nadal work hard for a four-set victory. The 25-year old’s only win over Rafa was at the QF of last year’s Beijing Open.
On the women’s semis, a novelty of some sort happened. The 3 oldest Australian Open quarterfinalists in the Open Era history played on court on the same day. Venus Williams at 36 has the distinction of being the oldest followed by sister Serena at 35 and un-seeded Mirjana Lucic-Baroni at 34.
No. 13 Venus disposed of wildcard entry Coco Vandeweghe who was 11 years her junior. Serena, the No. 2 seed easily disposed of Lucic-Baroni, who was in her first final four appearance in any of the four major grand slam tournaments since her 1999 Wimbledon QF. It was cute of Lucic-Baroni, with a rosary around her neck, doing a selfie after the match, just savoring the rare moment.
The tennis gods figured to stage a retro AO finale because at the start of the tournament, the final pairings were a remote possibility. A Serena versus Venus finals is scheduled today and a vintage Nadal-Federer showdown is taking shape which we hope to witness tomorrow. It’s been a while since we last saw them square off at the Australian Open or in the three other majors. It was 14 years ago in Melbourne when Serena defeated Venus for the AO women’s title. Nadal and Federer had a more recent AO meeting when Rafa won over Roger during the semis in 2014.
Serena is aiming for her 23rd majors title while Venus has 7. Nadal won the AO in 2009 and has 14 major titles to his name. Federer won the AO in 2004, 2006, 2007 and 2010 and is shooting for his 18th majors. Wawrinka was the 2014 AO champion, winning over Nadal. He won the 2015 French Open and the 2016 US Open for 3 major titles.
All 8 semi-finalists were assured of 900,000 Australian dollars each, that’s why the later stages of the tournament was full of emotions. Consider a crying Lucic-Baroni upon winning her QF match. Likewise, Wawrinka exchanged some heated words with Jo Wilfried Tsonga during a break in their QF match. These are elite professional athletes and they are damn sure playing for money.
All losing players in the qualifying rounds also get compensated. From A$38,500 last year, first round losers now receive a check for A$50,000, a 30 percent increase from the previous purse. Novak Djokovic, the dethroned AO champion who exited in the 2nd round received A$80,000. That’s why these tournaments are called the majors because major money is given away.
Minus all the whining, flopping and blaming everyone and anything except himself, I will call Serena the LeBron James of tennis. She is so durably efficient that she can easily win over the lesser ranked male tennisters.
As finalists, Serena, Venus, Roger and whoever between Rafa and Dimitrov advances are sure to get A$1.9 million. Two of them will be the new 2017 Australian Open men and women’s champion and will be receiving the top prize of A$3.7 million.
And by the way, expect to see all those bright fluorescent footwear and apparel your idols wore in your favorite specialty stores in a few days./PN
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