Recapping the Draw

men's picks l women's picks l join the discussion

Ace McClay is away on assignment dissecting the draw of the Banja Luka Challenger in Bosnia/Herzegovina so I've been tapped to recap the tournament in his absence.

THE WOMEN:
Maria Sharapova proved she is much more than merely Oh So Pretty. She dropped just one set in winning her second major championship - shrieking her way past the top two seeds in the semifinal and final. Credit Mr. McClay for picking a Sharapova-Henin-Hardenne final - even though he had the Belgian taking home the hardware.

Outside the two finalists, Ace's picks were about as strong as an Elena Dementieva second serve. His other two semifinalists, Martina Hingis and Nicole Vaidisova, suffered second and third round losses respectively.

The breakout performance for the women was 19th-seeded Jelena Jankovic - grossly overlooked by the Ace man. She upset three straight top 10 seeds (Vaidisova, Svetlana Kuznetsova, Dementieva) in advancing to her first slam final four. Up a set and a break to Henin-Hardenne, she must've started thinking about her next blog entry and dropped the next 10 games. Expect to see more of this hard-hitting Serb in future majors.

Other noteworthy performances include Tatiana Golovin, who fell to the eventual champ in two tiebreakers, as well as Lindsay Davenport who made it to the quarterfinals before succumbing to Henin-Hardenne. Let’s hope we get to see Lindsay back next year.

THE MEN:
Isn't picking Roger Federer to win the U.S. Open similar to predicting a Williams sisters' withdrawal? So limited props to Ace for picking the winner, but I will congratulate my colleague for his Nikolay Davydenko call. Everyday Nikolay survived back-to-back five-set marathons before Federer took him to the wood shed in the semis.

Mister McClay's other two semifinalist picks didn't work out so well. Rafael Nadal was beaten by Russian Mikhail Youzhny, and by far his worse prediction of the tournament, Ivan Ljubicic flamed out in the first round.

Some of the players with the better-than-expected showings - Youzhny, Benjamin Becker, Marc Gicquel, and Jiri Novak - Ace wasn't exactly Nostradamus as none of the aforementioned were mentioned in his players to watch feature. 

If you think it is easy to critique one's prognostications after all the matches have been played, well then you'd be right. Have fun in Bosnia/Herzegovina Ace, see ya in Australia.