Halep breaks back ( 8/20 converted ) with Kerber now having had at least one MP there. 6-6.

indiana wrote:

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Simona Halep seems to have gone rather well since her epic L32 match vs Lauren Davis. I wasn't expecting her to so ease through against Osaka ( well more stand vs Osaka ) and then Pliskova,

I wonder if going over on her ankle in R1, doing whatever to her ligaments and taking whatever pain killers, has been a good almost distraction from the self doubting that can plague her. It's a separate real thing to battle through as against battling her head, if probably not a recommended way to deal with it!

Impressive stuff.

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With bells on !

Halep wins 9-7 in the final set with ( like Kerber ) no spare day between her QF and SF.

And one of the top two ranked players will win their first Slam !

Looking forwards to it!

The highlights package which I found for Halep/Kerber was 20 minutes long, and fantastic to watch from start to finish. Kedders/Cilic 10 minutes.

I personally would prefer to see both sexes play bestof3 sets for the first 3 or 4 rounds of a Slam, then bestof5 sets in the second week. (Having said that, my main concern is that there is potentially very little tennis on display on the women's SF and Final days, if matches are wrapped up in two quick sets; and on AO SF day today, Halep and Kerber have just served up a feast.) (Though I didn't actually see it live, as a women's 3-setter wasn't considered sufficient fare for the primetime slot, and I was asleep. The men get 2 consecutive days of the primetime 5-setters - would that change if the women were playing best-of-5 at this stage?)

Pleased that either Simona or Caro will escape the "Number1 but never won a Slam" label.

wimdledont wrote:

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The highlights package which I found for Halep/Kerber was 20 minutes long, and fantastic to watch from start to finish. Kedders/Cilic 10 minutes.

I personally would prefer to see both sexes play bestof3 sets for the first 3 or 4 rounds of a Slam, then bestof5 sets in the second week. (Having said that, my main concern is that there is potentially very little tennis on display on the women's SF and Final days, if matches are wrapped up in two quick sets; and on AO SF day today, Halep and Kerber have just served up a feast.) (Though I didn't actually see it live, as a women's 3-setter wasn't considered sufficient fare for the primetime slot, and I was asleep. The men get 2 consecutive days of the primetime 5-setters - would that change if the women were playing best-of-5 at this stage?)

Pleased that either Simona or Caro will escape the "Number1 but never won a Slam" label.

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 I've changed my mind about the question of 5-setters for women. On reflection, it seems to me that this is asking too much, due to the extra energy and effort expended by the women in the course of many/most points. Halep and Wozniacki contesting a game where there are several points which go against serve, decided by a dozen or more shots, covering the whole court, is an entirely different scenario to say, an Isner/Ivanisovic, where almost all games are decided in 4 points, with movement restricted to shuffling from one side tp the other of the service line.

Both of the womens finalists were clearly severely suffering with exhaustion by the end of the final; Halep apparently spent 4 hours in hospital afterwards...

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/jan/28/australian-open-simona-halep-hospitalised-dehydration

...expecting them to play any longer is unreasonable, and potentially unsafe.