19-year-old tennis star Sloane Stephens became a Brent-Musburger-style overnight sensation when she upset Serena Williams at the Australian Open, gaining almost 40,000 Twitter followers in one night and earning congratulatory tweets from Shaq, Dirk Nowitzki, singer John Legend and more.

Serena’s response to the upset was pretty predictable — at one point she angrily broke her own racquet — but a quick look at Serena’s Twitter reveals why she might’ve been in a bad mood, and why she might’ve not been at 100% going into the match. I don’t want to overstate it, but it looks like her ankle ate the three-course meal chewing gum from Willy Wonka’s factory.

A pic of the swollen ankle is below. Warning: it may give you The Klumps flashbacks.

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ESPN put up a piece this morning analyzing Rafael Nadal’s Australian Open semifinals win over Roger Federer, attributing Federer’s 6-7 (5), 6-2, 7-6 (5), 6-4 loss to everything from inability to consolidate break lead to being bored because the fireworks went on too long. It touches on everything short of “Brooklyn Decker was supposed to stick around and watch but didn’t, and both guys were sorta sad”.

What it doesn’t touch on is that the best moment of Federer/Nadal (“Federal”?) involved neither Federer nor Nadal … at least not directly. That goes to the unnamed ball boy and his amazing Cal-Ripken-Jr.-in-his-prime snag of an errant ball in the above video, courtesy of On The Go Tennis.

The best part is either the roar of the crowd (who are used to excitement, but “tennis excitement”, which is completely different) or the fact that when he makes the catch he goes right back into the ball boy squat with zero theatrics. That’s a kid who knows how to do his job with style.

That guy gets it.

Things started off well for Andy Roddick at the Australian Open, as he won his first round match over the Netherlands’ Robin Haase 6-3, 6-4, 6-1. But then America’s most decent men’s tennis player and best guy who married up got a little greedy. Roddick was pulling double duty at the Open, teaming up with Serena Williams for today’s mixed doubles action, and the pressure was just too much for his already injured hamstring.

Yesterday, Roddick retired during the third set of his match against Lleyton Love Hewitt, and thus ends our time with Roddick’s wife, Brooklyn Decker. Blah blah blah, Roddick was upset or something.

“It’s frustrating; it’s discouraging,” Roddick said after the match. “You know, your sensible mind says to have a sense of perspective. You still have it pretty good.

“The competitor in you feels terrible and wants to break stuff.”

(Via the New York Times)

You want to break stuff? The only joy of my Monday mornings after a tennis tournament is looking for pictures of Decker. Now I got nothing, except for that banner pic and some random pictures of her modeling different weird hats earlier this week in Australia. Even worse, I was all set to use my favorite GIF come Monday…

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if you don’t understand why he’s doing this, then you don’t understand tennis.

That’s a comment from YouTube user thefinnman92, describing this video of Cyprian tennis player Marcos Baghdatis destroying four consecutive tennis racquets between sets to help him emotionally get through an impending round two Australian Open loss to Stanislas Wawrinka. The lesson here? I don’t understand tennis. Also, it sucks to lose anything to a guy named Stanislas.

Not that I don’t understand losing control of your good mind and Nard-dogging a hole in the wall, but those things are expensive. Maybe when you’re the 44th best player in the world they send them to you in the mail with samples of Tide. Regardless, as a longtime baseball fan my first thought when a pitcher wanders into the dugout and starts lobbing Gatorade coolers and whipping bats is to side-eye the hell out of him and cut him from my fantasy team before he breaks his hand.

Set analysis courtesy of Bill Hanstock at SB Nation:

Baghdatis went on to lose the match in four sets, 7-6, 6-4, 5-7, 6-1. I can only assume that the final set was 6-1 because Baghdatis was out of racquets and had to go bare-handed.

/cuts Baghdatis from tennis fantasy team

People have been discussing what’s missing from men’s tennis for some time. Some say the speed of the game has taken away the game’s nuances, while others blame the absence of a consistent American challenger. But yesterday during the Australian Open, we realized that all the sport needed was MORE BIRD ATTACKS!

In today’s semifinal, the birds began to — as Chris Fowler called it on ESPN — “dive-bomb the court.”

Yesterday, McEnroe blamed it on the darn Indian Myras, but today, it was certainly the seagulls.

–Press Coverage.

Seagulls aren’t really that dangerous. How threatened could Andy Murray and David Ferrer be from a creature that’s commonly outsmarted by clean windows? And besides, THOSE GUYS ARE IN AUSTRALIA. That had to get past all of the crocodiles and kangaroos just to get to the match, and they’re gonna freak out over a couple birds. Those guys are worse than soccer players.

Run for cover, boys. You’d hate to end up like this guy: Read the rest of this entry »

In case you don’t feel like staying up late at night to watch the Australian Open (which I have no problem doing), some crappy history was made by America this year. Andy Roddick couldn’t win a set against Stanislas Wawrinka (I’m not going to pretend to know who that is or how to pronounce it), as he lost 6-3 6-4 6-4. It’s the first time there hasn’t been an American in the quarterfinals since 1987, and also, for the first time, there is an all-Swiss quarterfinals with Roger Federer and Wawrinka (edit: I’m stupid. See comments.). Psh, who cares about Switzerland anyway?
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