Blogging the JP Morgan Chase Open: Serena!

Serena, showing her best assets	Serena prepares to hit ball right at me!

Thursday night I attended the now-controversial Serena Williams-Daniela Hantuchova match at the JP Morgan Chase Open at the Home Depot Center on the campus of Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson, CA and took some of the pictures above with my new Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ1 10x zoom digital camera. I'm still getting used to using it to take pictures. Thankfully, I had some of the best seats in the house: Second Row, Section 2 -- about 16 feet behind the baseline. It was a very exciting match. Serena initially started well, Hantuchova started with a double fault and was down 0-40 in her first service game. But three unforced errors and harder serving by Hantuchova got her to the crucial hold of the first game. Serena looked like she was doing fine in her first service game, although her service percentage did seem low. She ended up losing that game, thanks to the first of what turned out to be four net cords favorable to Hantuchova in the match. It was all downhill from there, and it got scary when at 0-5, 15-0 Serena stumbled and fell to the court stretching to return a ball which had skipped off the edge of the sideline. The chair umpire was ut of her seat and over to Serena by the time she got up. She got up quickly afterwards but it was clear that she was testing her left foot and not running for shots. It may have actually helped her to focus on putting a bit more on her serve because she won her first service game with an ace and two service winners. Hantuchova who was serving well, with a high percentage in, easily served out the set 6-1.

Serena called for the trainer and got her ankle taped during the set changeover. She then opened up the second set by getting her serve broken. However, she broke back immediately to level the second set 1-1. Serena quickly jumped to a 4-1 lead and held on to even the match by winning the second set 6-3.

The third set was pretty even, though Hantuchova's first serve percentage plummeted and Sereena's second serve was rock solid. She was able to get a crucial break of serve in the seventh game, leading to a 4-3 advantage. Then, despite whiffing two easy game points in her service game and facing a break point (which she served a service winner on) Serena was able to hold serve to maintain her one-break advantage at 5-3 at which point Hantuchova's serve really got shaky and Serena won the match on her second match point. Final score: 1-6, 6-3 6-3.

It was very exciting being that close to the action at a women's professional tournament match. We were close enough so that we were having direct interaction with Serena, which is why she hit the ball right at us (unfortunately neither of us caught it). The Home Depot Center is a fabulous venue for tennis, there really are no BAD seats in the arena, but definitely some seats are better than others.

UPDATE: Since I started writing this post, Serena played her quarterfinal match against Meghan Shaunessey, which was another 3-set thriller, this time, almost 2 hours, 40 minutes long (the Hantuchova match was a mere 108 minutes long) in the blazing Southern California heat, eventually winning 6-7(4), 6-1, 6-4. Serena played extremely well, ending up with 15 more winners than errors(!) and 12 aces to 1 double fault! Shaunessey played well also, though struggled mightily with her second serve, double faulting on both set points that she lost, the last of which was also match point. Serena plays Jelena Jankovic tomorrow and is now considering playing one more tournament (either Montreal or Pilot Pen) before the US Open starts on the 27th of the month (with me attendance during the first weekend!)