the championship worth watching

I caught the ladies singles final just as when Venus was hanging tooth and nail out there..
I rushed home from office .. and oh boy was it worth it...

the sheer tenacity with which Venus was hanging in there...
fighting her own unforced errors.. breakpoints.... matchpoints...
( as I am writing this England and Australia have managed to make the final a nailbiter..)
and thru all this Davenport was hurtling thru her service games with not much of a problem..

then came that one point which started the tide in Venus's favour...
there is always one point or one moment in every game, where one really starts owning the opponent...
and that point came in final set with 29 stroke rally....
at the end of which davenport was left hanging her head and grasping for breath...
this was the longest ladies singles finals... 2 hrs 45 minutes....
and I guess this longest wait before winning her 3rd... and I think most cherished wimbledon was well worth for Venus Williams...
I think at the end of it.. Venus deserved it more for hanging in out there and fighting with each stroke...
I haven't been Williams fan before but I think now she looks like a born again player these days..
but her post match antics are somehow hard to contend with.. its like a kid let loose out there....
uncontrollable joy is so much in contrast to the focus and concentration during the match....
kinda jekyll and hyde in a good way....
so one dark horse has won.... ( no pun intended)...
tomorrow is another day when Roddick will have to come out with not only the kitchen sink but the whole household to try and make it 2 dark horses for the course this year...

(England needs 3 to win in 1 ball and they lose 1 runout wicket..... :) )

Tennis & samba

I guess this week was blessed one....

haven't seen Brazilians play with such flair and abundance in a long time...
Argentines looked like a second grade team for some time there....
I think Ronaldinho has been a quiet, unassuming and above all noncontroversial influence on world football in last few years...and this tournament establishes him as leader of his troops as well

then there was women's tennis in wimbledon...where after many years...Tennis took centrestage instead of glamour...

the grunts for the first time were a bearable accessory to tennis as they really accompanied some awesome accurate hitting as well... then there was our Asian tennis (sensation) player Sania doing her thing... I guess her passing first round qualifies as achievement in Indian women's tennis these days...

for the first time Venus Williams didn't look like a tall helpless bird trying to find right trajectory.... against Sharapova she looked like monk in meditation, unleashing those ruthlessly accurate winners.... from the second game onwards it looked like Sharapova was up against something that was beyond tennis....

and in all these big names.. I happened to see some games ( before the power cuts and star sports combined to give this match a miss halfway down) of the match between Serena Williams and Angela Haynes...this young girl looks like someone from those hip hop dance videos.. with no fear at all of ranking and power of the opponent's shots.... she was not only trading punch for punch with Serena but at times looked like really going one up on her...

Men's Tennis, I guess in all this women's tennis thing I have hardly any recollection of men's version, as Federrer express seems to be heading to his final destination and with usual suspects of Hewitt and Roddick lined up to derail it....