By Rosangel Valenti, TW Contributing Editor
Good morning. This is the Tribe's daily post for discussing the tennis that's taking place at the ATP Masters Series event in Hamburg, and also the WTA event under way in Rome. By the time you read this, I hope to have arrived in Hamburg to see the day's events at first hand.
Match Choice:
Today's Order of Play involves the Top 3, so there's plenty on offer. From a personal perspective, it will surprise no-one that the match I'm most interested in involves Rafael Nadal versus Potito Starace. Nadal dipatched Starace in straight sets in Barcelona two week ago, and has never lost to him. His recent win occurred before the blister problems that hampered him during his loss to Juan Carlos Ferrero in Rome, however, so today's match should provide some kind of test of his current level test. From a neutral perspective, however, my match of the day is Marat Safin versus Tomas Berdych. Just a month ago, the two had their only encounter to date, in a Davis Cup match on clay, and Safin came from two sets down for the first time in his career to beat Berdych. I wish I had seen the match. The Czech has been suffering some injury problems (his ankle). Safin, meanwhile, is attemptimng to win four matches in a row for the first time in more than a year.
Player of the Day:
Yesterday's player of the day, for me, was Carlos Moya. He has not been having a good year so far, but rallied from behind to beat Julien Beneteau in a third-set tiebreak, after breaking the Frenchman when he served for the match. Besides, I know there are those in TW who would like to see a picture of Carlos today, even unshaven. While Andreas Seppi put in a strong showing against Ricchard Gasquet, controlling many of the rallies from the baseline,
Weather Report:
Hamburg, for the third day running, is expected to be sunny, with minimal wind. Rome, yet again, is expected to be plagued by heavy showers - the weather forecast for the enire week there is dominated by rain.
As always, enjoy the day's tennis.
Note: for anyone interested, I have finally uploaded some of the photos from last Saturday's Rome semifinals day. Most of them aren't of the semifinalists, of course, given the brevity of those truncated matches, but there are some pictures of the venue, and Goran Ivanisevic looking badly in need of a haircut, among others. The link is here.