Kim Clijsters Completes Semifinal Line-Up in Madrid, Ousts Dementieva
Posted by Aaress Lawless on Nov 10, 2006 | Print
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Kim Clijsters is through to the semifinals of the Sony Ericsson Championships in Madrid after a straight sets 6-4, 6-0 win today over Elena Dementieva.
Clijsters, who has won the Championships twice before in 2002 and 2003, was forced to play a slightly harder match today than her 6-1, 6-1 victory over Svetlana Kuznetsova yesterday.
Dementieva played her best tennis of the Championships during the first set, and pushed Kim to a tough 6-4 opening set win. Unfortunately, Elena’s game self-destructed in the second set and she fired her ninth double fault on match point.
Kim needed to win just one set of her third round robin match to secure the final semifinal berth for tomorrow. She will play world number one Amelie Mauresmo for a spot in the finals on Sunday.
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Sapphisto | Nov 10, 2006 | Reply
Is it Amelie vs Kim?? I thought the #2 from one group played the #1 from the other group, meaning Amelie is up against Shriekie?
And related to the semis and final - Versus is showing really implausible “Live” broadcast times for these matches, and I’m worried about missing them.
Help?! I actually have places to be this weekend, and I thought if they were being shown “live” I could catch the matches on tv, then go off & do my thing, so to speak. But if they’re actually “live delayed” and the times are wacky, then if I set the VCR and go out, I might be completely SOL….
*sigh* Why couldn’t we have Eurosport? And thank god for Poldame!!
Aaress | Nov 10, 2006 | Reply
Yep Sapphisto - I thought the same thing. Apparently, the powers that be did not do all their math correctly before announcing that Justine would finish at the top IF she took a set off of Amelie.
I’m not wanting to gripe too much about the Tour’s mathematical formulas, but goodness knows you would have to be a math genius to figure the round robin stats out - and a math genius I most certainly am not!
Anyway - Amelie is at the top of the yellow, Maria at the top of the red group, leaving both Belgians as the underdogs.
I’m actually working on figuring out the whole VERSUS television “LIVE” scenario and I’ll be mentioning it in tomorrow’s preview - which I should have done real soon.
Sapphisto | Nov 10, 2006 | Reply
You rock, as always, Aaress!
And as for the mathematics of WTA tennis… I think basically it helps if you know whatever arcane formula they’re using!! LOL, it’s a little like that incredibly stupid ad on tv these days for Drambuie (the “secret recipe” and all that). That ad is a pet peeve of mine - first off, the guy in the first ad was English, and second, they can’t well pronounce Drambuie!!! And third - SODA???????? Yuck, ugh, blech and other exclamations of disgust and disbelief.
LOL, I’ll go look at your Saturday preview now - and thanks again!
Aaress | Nov 10, 2006 | Reply
Thanks! Actually, I’ve not seen that ad. Maybe it hasn’t hit the southern markets yet.
The weekly ranking system is hard enough to figure out, but in order to understand the round robin (sets, games, percentages) formula you need to have a PhD in advanced mathematics! According to the broadcasters on Versus, poor Kim Clijsters had no idea that all she needed was a set to enter the semis.
Thankfully, we’re back to sudden-death elimination - now that I can deal with!
Sapphisto | Nov 11, 2006 | Reply
No kidding….