dinara vs serena

Interesting women's singles finale set up: Dinara playing Serena. Both are giant ladies and both have an older sibling who is also pretty much successful. Dinara Safina is Marat Safin's sister, and Serena shares her many winning trophies at home with Venus Williams, who apparently will be playing together side by side in the women's doubles final match. Quite a consolation for Venus and rather kind of Serena to ensure that both sisters will be coming home loaded with trophies in their cargo luggage. They did it before too in Wimbledon 2008 and that time it was Venus who marched on to become the women's singles champion and took her sister along in the doubles to score another winning trophy.

Dinara has yet to play a mixed doubles with her older bro , the handsome man Marat but that could be arranged as one of the ways for Marat to lift up a trophy once more. His sister has been a finalist in Roland Garros 2008 and a semi-finalist in 2 grand slams of late and Marat has not been seen bagging one since his last win at Australian Open 2005. And recently, he was ousted by Federer in the 3rd round match in a straight set.

We will see who will be facing Federer in the final soon: Fernando Verdasco or Rafael Nadal. Both Spaniards were team mates winning the Davis cup last year. One prefers a Serbian lady over his own kind (thus sharing the same fascination as Fed) and defeated the runner up of the Australian Open 2008 in 3 sets to 1 while the other has been crowned the 2008 men's world champion winning two grand slams out of four and a semi-finalist in the remaining two grand slams. The latter has been noted as the only man so far who has outwitted Federer with a record of 12 winnings over 18 matches to date.

They say its a mind game. Federer probably has sent a very important message and a warning to Nadal the day he beat Argentine Juan Martin Del Potro in the quarter final in a straight set 6-3, 6-0, 6-0, thats 2 bagels already. He's older but he aint gonna give it up that easily just to meet Nadal once again (if Nadal wins in the semi of course), repraising their infamous rivalry on tennis court in hopefully another mindblowing match come Sunday February 1st, 2009. Whoever will the opponent be, Federer sure is hungry to snatch the first place again and perhaps redeeming himself from his dismal achievement in 2008.

And I am actually glad Djoker could not make it to the final despite his presumably initial target to repeat the same success he had in the same grand slam last year. He chose to retire at the 4th set having lost 2 sets to his new "bitter" rival, Andy Roddick in the quarter final complaining of insufficient rest and trouble to get used to the hot weather (yadiyadiyada). He is a great player no doubt but his presence can be a bit dull. He should learn a trick or two from Andy Murray on how not to bore the audience in the stadium and in front of the tv screen.

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Thanks to Sales09 who has informed me that Dinara did play a mixed doubles with her bro at Hyundai Hopman Cup Perth prior to the Australian Open tournament what was touted as the most volatile pairings. They took the runner up place in the final.