by Tonight I played my usual Thursday night fixed-limit badugi tournament. These are a question of how and when, not if, I fail to make the money. Tonight I got pretty damn close – 22nd place, with the top 20 paying – but the eventual result was the same as it always is. Please excuse the cynicism.
Then I sat back and watched the semi-final between Krejcikova and Sakkari which I’d had one eye on during the poker. As the match entered the deciding set, Sakkari, all muscles, looked the stronger player and more likely winner. She had a match point at 5-3. When Krejcikova hung on to her serve, and then broke in the next game, the drama dial turned way up. Krejcikova then had three match points of her own, but Sakkari swatted them all aside, somehow, and it was 7-7. In the 16th game, after 3¼ hours, Krejcikova was the victim of a brutal, incorrect overrule on her fourth match point, but regrouped impressively to stagger over the line into the final where she’ll meet Pavlyuchenkova. Just imagine if she hadn’t. They really need Hawk-Eye.
Marion Bartoli, one of my favourite players, interviewed Krejcikova on court. The attitude of the eventual winner, who I knew next to nothing about, was excellent; I warmed to her greatly. I also learned that she’d been helped in her development by Jana Novotna, another of my favourites, who died very young of cancer a few years ago.
For me, it made a change to get excited about tennis, or any sport, again. Bugger the Olympics, by the way.
