The Massacre

by Savannah

Ana Ivanovic #5 seed. Gone.
Angelique Kerber #9 seed. Gone.
Lucie Safarova #16 seed. Gone.
Carla Suarez-Navarro #17 seed. Gone.
Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova #23 seed. Gone.
Svetlana Kuznetsova #27 seed. Gone.
Sabine Lisicki #28 seed. Gone.
Belinda Bencic #32 seed. Gone

The bottom half of the women's draw has been decimated. Like them or not you expect to see the likes of Ivanovic, Kerber, Safarova, Suarez-Navarro and yes, even Lisicki, winning a round or two and in the case of Ivanovic and Kerber maybe making it to the second week.

Day 3 play will feature matches between the following players:

Lucie Hradecka and Polong Hercog
Lara Arruabarrena and Yanina Wickmayer
Caroline Garcia and Stefani Voegele
Carina Witthoef and Christina McHale
Irina-Camellia Begu and Katerina Siniakova
Yaroslava Shvedoa and Monica Puig
Klara Koukalova and Julia Goërges
Kristina Mladenovic and Bethanie Mattek-Sands

The highlighted players are the seed slayers.

What does this mean? Bencic and sadly Kuznetsova are the only ones I wasn't surprised to see go out early. Some were saying that Kerber's back was bothering her. She seemed able to bend and move pretty easily. I have no idea what happened to Safarova. I didn't see her match. There were many who thought Ivanovic would go far. I didn't watch her match either. Instead I watched the despair of her fans on Twitter.

I'm wondering how the WTA will spin this? The old "depth of women's tennis" meme will surely be dusted off and dragged out. The flip side of that coin is the weakness of women's tennis. Two top ten seeds. A total of seven top twenty seeds wiped out in one day from the bottom half of the draw. Everyone will be watching to see how the top half of the draw shakes out. With some of the most absurd match scheduling I've seen in a very long time the matches everyone wants to see are on outer courts. I don't know if the Australian Open is like the US Open where if you have a ticket to Ashe you can go anywhere else on the grounds. Day 2 is a Grounds Pass kind of day. The folks who paid good money for seats in Laver paid more for their Grounds Pass than they should have.

End Note

Now we can officially say "Congratulations" to Li Na and her husband Jiang Shan on the pending birth of their first child in the summer. I guess they wanted her to make her announcement during the official opening ceremonies and that is why she danced around what was obvious to everyone at the live draw. Best wishes to the expectant parents.