Second Year Blues

Oh, glorious nation of Kazakhstan, you are making me a bit sad. After your awesomeness last year, you have had some second year blues.

First, we lost Shvedova. She is injured, which maketh me sad, and I hope she gets well soon, because I like her style. She's been replaced by Sesil Karantcheva, who had about four seconds to get acclimatised, and who had to play Justine Henin the second she got off the plane. Unsurprisingly, she lost in straight sets - though she did make a good show of it.

And then Andrey Golubev - my beloved Andrey Golubev! - went and lost to Ruben Bemelmans.

Now, I am very fond of Bemelmans. I wrote a post a few days ago which was all about how much I love him. But Andrey! my Andrey! whom I have adored for this one year past! This was not a good result for him.

This was the match in his group that you would expect him to win. I expected him to put up a good fight against Djokovic, but to lose eventually. I think he has a solid chance against Hewitt. But I expected him to beat Bemelmans. I expected him to do that.

Now, this is a great result for Bemelmans, who is definitely going into my stable of future stars, and on that count, I am very pleased that he just claimed a top thirty scalp when he is ranked so much lower. But did it have to be my beloved Andrey?

Oh yeah, and Serbia totally hammered Australia. The Hewitt/Djokovic match was a lot more competitive than I thought it would be, but it was still straight sets. But it was eminently watchable. Molik/Ivanovic...? not so much.