Tennis Shockers: History Repeats Itself, Twice!

At the Sony Ericsson Open tournament in Miami the much vaunted "Serenapova" showdown which pitted reigning Australian Open champion Serena Williams versus reigning US Open champion (and #1 seed) Maria Sharapova ended up with a repeat ending from their last match: Serena Williams in a blowout. This time the beatdown was even worse than in Melbourne, there Sharapova managed to win 3 games, in Miami she only managed two: 6-1, 6-1 in 58 minutes. Clearly Sharapova is suffering a case of the dreaded serving "yips." She had no aces and 8 doublefaults today although her service percentage was 67 but the average speed was well below 100 mph. Serena's service percentage was only 58 and she had only 2 aces to one double fault (but she must have had at least a half-dozen service winners). Serena's average serve speed was a muscular 109.6 mph. Serena had 16 winners to 15 unforced errors (+1) compared to Maria's 8 winners to 16 unforced errors (-8). Serena improved to 4-2 against Sharapova and has now won the last 3 encounters with the Russian. After the match Serena raised one finger, indicating she intends to be or she already considers herself to be?) the #1 player in the world. She will play Nicole Vaidisova in the quarterfinals tomorrow, a repeat of the Australian Open semifinal. Will history repeat itself again?

And this was not the biggest story of the day! World #1 Roger Federer played Guillermo Cañas for the second time in 10 days, and having lost in straight sets to the Argentine at the Pacific Life Open the Swiss player was clearly looking for revenge. However, history repeated itself! Federer lost the match 6-7(2), 6-2, 6-7(5) despite leading 3-1 in the final set and having a "gimme" overhead at 5-5 in the tiebreak to set up match point. Instead of letting the high overhead bounce, Federer hit that overhead into the net, setting up match point for Cañas who grabbed the opportunity with a 125 mph service winner to seal his second consecutive defeat of the World #1 in under a fortnight. Federer had 58 winners to 51 unforced errors (+7) to his opponent's more modest 19 winners to 14 errors (+4). Cañas improved to a lifetime record of 3-1 against Federer as well as 2-0 for the year, while Federer is 14-0 against the rest of the ATP tour. And this is before the clay court season which starts next month, which is widely regarded as the Argentine's best surface. These two defeats have to put once-unthinkable thoughts into the head of Andy Roddick and Rafael Nadal as they contemplate 2007's remaining Grand Slam tournaments in Paris, London and New York.