Every
game needs characters who add color …. Bethanie is one. Bethanie Lynn Mattek-Sands is an American professional tennis player who
competes on the WTA Tour. She lives in Miami, Florida, trains in Phoenix,
Arizona. In doubles, she has won fifteen WTA Tour titles most notably the 2015
Australian Open and French Open 2015. Here
is her dash of color pronounced !
I have today posted
on the little known World No. 43 Roberta Vinci doing what many thought was impossible, taking out
No. 1 Serena Williams and ending her Grand Slam quest in one of the greatest
upsets, beating the American, 2-6, 6-4, 6-4.
Vinci had reached a career-high singles ranking of No. 11 in 2013. With her victory, Vinci became only the third
unseeded women’s singles player in the Open era to reach the US Open final. The
other two were champion Kim Clijsters (2009) and finalist Venus Williams
(1997), who have combined for 11 Grand Slam titles.
This
player from Switzerland is a real champion.
Partnering formidable Czech
Helena Suková, she won her first doubles Slam, in 1996, at Wimbledon, at the
age of fifteen. A year later she became the youngest Slam singles champion
ever, by winning the Australian Open, and soon she was the youngest top-ranked
player in history. But her reign at the top of the women’s singles game proved
to be short. There were injuries
(leading to two ankle surgeries), and there were powerful players pushing her around the court. It was her doubles game
that was truly something else in the late nineties—displaying her instincts for
court positioning and shot anticipation, and her array of sublimely killing
volleys. In 1998, with two different partners, she won the doubles Grand Slam.
It is - Martina
Hingis who spent a total of 209 weeks as
world No. 1. She has won 19 Grand Slam
titles, with five singles titles (three at the Australian Open, one at
Wimbledon, and one at the US Open), ten women's doubles titles, winning a
calendar-year doubles Grand Slam in 1998, and four mixed doubles titles. Hingis
set a series of "youngest-ever" records, including youngest Grand
Slam singles champion of the 20th century and youngest-ever world No. 1 in both
singles and doubles, before ligament injuries in both ankles forced her to
withdraw temporarily from professional tennis in 2002 at the age of 22. After
several surgeries and long recuperations, Hingis returned to the WTA tour in
2006. She then climbed to world No. 6 and won three singles titles.
Widely considered
an all-time great, she was named one of the "30 Legends of Women's Tennis:
Past, Present and Future" by Time in June 2011. In July 2013, Hingis came out of retirement to
play a doubles tournament, partnering Daniela Hantuchová in California, She
played doubles with Sabine Lisicki, whom she also coached briefly in 2014,
until Wimbledon. After that, she partnered with Flavia Pennetta and now has Sania
Mirza as partner. She has also won three Grand Slam mixed doubles titles
in 2015, partnering Leander Paes.
Today at US Open,
she won again - It was the third mixed
doubles crown of the year for Paes and Hingis, who defeated Daniel Nestor and
Kristina Mladenovic in the Australian Open final and beat Alexander Peya and
Timea Babos in the Wimbledon title match. They are the first team since 1969
and second in the Open Era to capture three of four Majors in a calendar year. Today, Hingis
and Leander Paes beat Mattek-Sands and S Querrey 2-1.
Infact,
there was no 3rd Test – it was a tie-breaker – not the regular
set. US Open “coman tiebreak” which is identical to the regular tiebreak
procedure except that the players change ends after the first point and then
after every four points, and at the conclusion of the tiebreak. If it is for the Set Tiebreak: First to win 7
points by 2 points wins the set. For the Third-set Match Tiebreak: First to
win 10 points by 2 points, wins match. The player whose turn it is to serve
shall serve the first point from the deuce court. After this, each player/team
shall serve alternately for two consecutive points.
Getting back to the
match, Indian tennis ace Leander Paes clinched his 17th Grand Slam crown by
winning the US Open mixed doubles title with Swiss partner Martina Hingis. The
fourth seeded Indo-Swiss pair defeated unseeded Americans Bethanie Mattek-Sands
and Sam Querrey 6-4, 3-6, 10-7 in a tricky final, which lasted for one hour and
seventeen minutes on Friday. 42-year-old Paes now has nine mixed doubles title,
surpassing compatriot and former doubles partner Mahesh Bhupathi, who has
eight. Paes has now won 9 titles in mixed doubles.
Hingis perhaps can
have one more …. No. 4 seeds Casey Dellacqua and Yaroslava Shvedova advanced to
Sunday’s women’s doubles final after rallying to beat Anna Lena Groenefeld and
CoCo Vandeweghe, 6-7, 7-5, 7-5, on Friday.
Top seeds Sania Mirza and Martina Hingis stayed on course for their
second Grand Slam defeating the Italian 11th-seeded pair of Sara Errani
and Flavia Pennetta 6-4 6-1 in 77 minutes.
In these
tournaments, there is no rule on the use of hair dye and and Bethanie perhaps made full use of this omission by adding a
pink streak to her blonde hair. Bethanie
is famous for adding to fashion flair to her play and has previous poked fun at
the Wimbledon dress code by turning up in 2011 wearing a jacket covered in
white tennis balls.
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
12th
Sept. 2015.