Day 5 and 6 Aussie Open With The Eye

Sadly the eye Has departed Melbourne and Now back in the "land of the long white cloud" A week at the open is fantastic , battling watching matches in the heat 5 days straight is plenty to get the feel of the Grand slam and to watch most of the World's top tennis players.We started the day with an on court session at Ormond College our home whilst in Melbourne. Above right is our group Geraldine Prisk,Rhidian Scott ,Duncan Rollinson,Angus Rollinson,Josh Reddecliffe and Hugh Rollinson.Training started at 6 am Daily with myself and assistant coach Bernard Matze(Argentina) and went though to 7-30am each day.Then breakfast and off to Tennis at around 9am for a full day.All the juniors scouted autographs during the day and many prized signatures were captured.For me personally it was great to see the players up close.Roger Federer is the mystery man and does not practice on site where as most of the men Nadal and Murray are there daily getting down amongst the public and signing autographs at the end of their session,I wandered the outer courts and it was there I first saw the Canadian Milos Raonic who I have mentioned in a previous blog.He won yesterday against the 10th seed Mikhail Youzhny further cementing his potential and now will play David Ferrer and if he keeps serving like he has for the tournament will again cause another upset.Pictured below are a few snapshots of Milos I managed to capture.

Let me say something on the Sam Stosur match last night , a truly great player must play to their potential every round to win a grand slam alas Stosur always has that side which she cannot produce her top form each round and thus although she said in a post match interview last night she played well , I always have doubts for her to get through to the final because of the inconsistency in her game.The commentators give her too much hype , constantly raving that her serve is one of the best in the womens game.Come on guys!!!!! she gets broken far to much for that accolade.


Rafael Nadal stopped the last Australian Bernard Tomic in the Main draw singles, Tomic does show promise and is easily head and shoulders ahead of an ordinary pack of Australian up and coming juniors and players.If you look on my Ayers Rock picture I still thing those pictured on the Rock will come through to the last four. I feel like if have gone two five setters and look forward to a little slower day today!.


Here is a little piece I found on Raonic
 A native of Montenegro (his uncle is the vice-president) who has lived most of his life in Canada, Raonic spent his youth poring over tapes of Sampras matches and building a game that was similarly based around a monster serve—“I’ve got a good shoulder on me,” Raonic says. You could see that his serve, which Raonic believes is already among the game’s best (he’s really not that cocky), allowed him to take a Sampras-like approach to his match with No. 10 seed Mikhail Youzhny.


“I feel like I serve like probably one of the top guys on the tour," he said. "It allows me to play more freely also on the return games, because I know most of the time I will be holding. So it allows me to take less pressure on myself, whereas I feel it also puts more pressure on the other guy.” (Confident, yes, Raonic does seem to be that—call it the civilized version of cocky.)

Even when Raonic was broken in the second and third sets, which he was more regularly than he might have expected, he played borderline-risky, opportunistic tennis on Youzhny’s serve. Raonic prefers to rip rather than rally on his forehand, and he loves to go for an outright crosscourt winner on his return from that side. He also put two backhands smack on the sideline to break Youzhny early in the third set.

But as big as he tries to hit, Raonic says he has a plan. When one reporter implied that he was enjoying the youthful freedom to crack the ball with total abandon, Raonic quietly protested. “I was trying to do what I thought was the percentage play," he said, "or if I felt I had an opportunity to try something riskier. But I wouldn’t say I was really just letting the ball fly off my racquet, not knowing where it’s going.” Indeed, Raonic doesn’t just bash to bash or rally to rally. He hits with purpose and aggression, and has to accept the errors that come with that aggression.