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| 27 Jun 2001 | |
| The Road to Wimbledon |
On another scorcher of a day at Roehampton it was the boys turn to throw up a big surprise in the match between No.2 seed Gilles Muller and the No.13 seed Todd Reid. Reid played last week at Thames Ditton and reached the semi-finals and the practice on grass certainly seemed to pay off.
Reid blasted into the lead taking the first set 62. Muller never seemed to get into his stride and couldn’t get his big first serve working and Reid looked absolutely unstoppable when he went into a 5-0 lead in the second. Whether it was the fact that he was staring a very heavy defeat in the face or that he just began to find his rhythm, Muller started to make a mini comeback when he won his own serve, then broke Reid and held his own serve again to get back to 5-3. However he had left himself too much to do to really have a serious chance with Reid continuing to play well. Reid held serve and moved into the quarter-final 62 63.
All of the remaining seeds in the boys draw again moved through to the quarters without incident with top seed Janko Tipsarevic (YUG) looking in great from, he has yet to drop a set.
The girls draw is looking very low on seeds but the four that had made it through to the second round again progressed.
One of the matches of the day was between Dinara Safina (RUS) and Joanna Sakowicz (POL). From the outset it promised to be a pretty evenly matched contest, both girls are tall and powerfully built with strong ground strokes. Sakowicz took first blood taking the first set 64, but Safina fought back to even the match at one set all 61. So it was back to square one at the beginning of the third set. Sakowicz started badly serving a double fault and going 0-40 down, giving Safina three break points, of which she needed only one.
To Safina’s obvious disgust which she verbalised in both Russian and Spanish (she lives in Barcelona) she was unable to confirm the break and Sakowicz broke back. Safina was then verbally warned for racket abuse after throwing her racket to the ground twice (if you didn’t already know he was her brother you would probably guess that she is related to the famous racket smasher, Marat Safin.) The following two games went with serve and again a double fault let Sakowicz down after a long deuce game thus giving Safina another break. This time Safina held serve to go into the lead 4-2. It was then Sakowicz’s turn to hold serve and with a great pass and a very cool drop shot she again managed to break back and even the match at 4-4.
At this stage the match still looked like it could go either way, however when another break took Safina into the lead 5-4 it looked like it could be all over for Sakowicz. The Polish girl obviously was not prepared to give up the fight and immediately broke back, to which the Russian replied with a further break taking the match to 6-5. Not to be outdone in any stakes Sakowicz then received her own verbal warning for racket abuse and this proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Serving for the match as she had done at 5-4 Safina seemed to remain the cooler of the two (if that was possible in the blazing sun) and played a fantastic service game, including an ace at 30-0 to eventually go on to win the match 46 61 75.
Day 4 sees the start of the quarter-finals with all those remaining in the draw hoping for the perfect preparation for Junior Wimbledon.
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