I was at the Brisbane International yesterday for the day session, and I must say it's heaps better than going in the night, cos you get to see the players practicing and walking about (no stalking though :coughs:). Before the matches were scheduled to start, we found Marcos Baghdatis practising with Malisse - but I'm not sure if it's really Xavier cos his hair looks different and he's got a bit of a fat roll happening on his tummy.
Then, Clijsters came on to a court next to Marcos and began practising her power shots. Man, she was on some kind of form! Even Marcos wasn't hitting that hard :P I was busy being amazed by Clijsters' hard hitting that I didn't even notice Justine coming in from the other side. When I saw her I was like "OMG that's Henin!". She must've heard cos she looked up at me and smiled. She looked at us again when we got the camera out to take a photo and smiled again (....or at least it looked like a smile at the time, but looking back at the photo, it was more of a frown.... I blame the sun lol)
Story continued (+ my pics)... |
Justine looks fit as f#ck, like a tank. I thought she was kindof cute, but then again I'm biased. Whilst doing her stretches, she was continuously looking over at Kim. Kim also made a few glimpses towards Justine to see how she was faring. Sizing up the opponents eh? ;) At this point, I'd say Kim would win quite handily. During the practise session, Justine was often hitting balls long (especially on the forehand side) whilst Kim was just blasting winners left right centre. I know it was just a practice session, but Justine looked unimpressive next to Kim. However, Kim needs to "get it tOgEtHeR" on her serve, cos she had a massive fail when trying to hit the ball cans as target practice. She got like 1 out of 15 before we got tired and left. Afterwards we went into the stadium for the scheduled matches (Gasquet vs Niemenen; Ivanovic vs Dokic; Henin vs Petrova).
Gasquet is just the cutest thing in the world :hearts: He had a lot of crowd support in his match (which he won) and afterwards, we walked past him on the grounds. He was walking around with a smile on his face and looked so adorable :P :P Didn't get a photo though.
The Ana vs Jelena match was quite boring compared to Gasquet. There were just so many errors from both women! Ana's serving woes are still not over, with the ball toss going wayward at times. It was a lot better than what we saw from her last year, but still, you'd think she'd have sorted out the ball toss over the December break??! Apart from that, Ana looked good in that purple dress. She seems almost goddess-like with her glowing skin tone and pretty face (and some seriously nice set of legs... she's just so goddam hot!). The crowd were going for Dokic more, but Ana's vocal fans made up for it. I think Dokic can make a big run at the AO like last year (her form was up/down in the match, but I just know she'll pull it together).
Afterwards, we walked past Daniela Hantuchova. It seems like noone knew her, she was just walking by herself. Daniela looked more like a model than a tennis player. Walking around the other courts, we saw Lucie Safarova vs Anna Lena Groenewold and Casey Dellequa vs Karatantcheva. Unfortunately, Sesil is not as hot as I expected... oh well....
The last match of the day was Henin vs Petrova. Most of the Serbian fans had left the stadium by then, so there were a few empty seats. Justine got a huge applause from the crowd when she walked on court. The match itself was a bit boring with both players making a lot of errors. Justine's forehand needs a bit of work, but her backhand is just magic. Her retrieving skills were impressive - she'd often use defensive slice shots to get back into position and get on the offensive. Her volleys were also on song that day and she made good gets of some tough attempted passing shots by Nadia. I think she needs to come to the net more often. I was also quite impressed with Petrova's serve: so fluid and natural-looking. She just needs to get her head sorted out (as we all know....)
Photos: they're like 3MB each, so am trying to figure out how to resize em :/
Kim Clijsters:
Justine Henin:
Others: resizing photos is a b1tch, but will (try to) do if requested.
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