January 24

Days 5 and 6 at the Australian open are so bizarrely different, but day 5 definitely takes the cake for being more drama-filled and, again, bizarre. Day 6 is almost boring, considering the high level of play and buzz surrounding the first five days. It’s like the electrical supplies giving energy to tennis fizzled this Saturday.

For drama of the highest order, Kim Clijsters, the reigning U.S. Open Champion and comeback queen (being trailed by compatriot Justine Henin), was trounced 0-6 1-6 by Nadia Petrova. Petrova is a solid player and she played brilliantly, but no way will Kim have that scoreline – the worst loss in her career -  if nothing’s wrong with her that day. They say it was like she wasn’t in the court. Well, the reasons will remain speculations for now, but the thing is she had a bad day. That’s that.

Justine Henin almost went down, as well, losing the first set and got broken early in the second. But she rallied to take the match in the third. Svetlana Kuznetsova almost lost, too, as she played under the lights past midnight and with almost empty stands.  Rafael Nadal won in four sets, Juan Martin del Potro barely won, John Isner won big, and Jelena Jankovic was ousted.

That’s day 5. Saturday, however, gave us a totally different kind of vibe. The seeds rolled through to the next round and nothing really special happened, except for Marcos Baghdatis retiring from his match against Lleyton Hewitt and Mikhail Youzny wihdrew from the tournament.

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