Tuesday's Slices--7/7/09

Four things that happened today in the world of tennis that you may have missed:

1. Still struggling to recover from a shoulder injury that had him out for well over a year, American Taylor Dent took a nice step toward regaining his old form by securing a relatively routine 6-2, 6-1 win over Brazilian Marcos Daniel in Newport. The grass at Newport should help Dent's serve-and-volley game immensely, hopefully giving him the springboard he needs to get back into the top 200. The previous time Dent won a match in the main draw of an ATP tournament was way back in April. His opponent in that match? Marcos Daniel. When you got 'em, you got 'em.
2. The top two ranked Italians on the WTA Tour, Flavia Pennetta and Francesca Schiavone, met today in the first round of the hard court tournament in Bastad, Sweden. The #3 seed Pennetta beat recent Wimbledon quarterfinalist Schiavone 6-2, 7-5. It's an unfortunate draw for both in an otherwise soft first round. I cannot fathom why Pennetta came to Bastad this week in the first place, when there was a perfectly good obscure clay court tournament in Budapest to be played. No one loves obscure clay court tournaments the way Flavia Pennetta does.
   
3. There is something strange going on with the seeds in Budapest. Both Sara Errani (#7) and Lucie Safarova (#8) were served a bagel by their qualifier opponents. Even stranger, Alize Cornet (#2), who can only beat the traffic of late, managed to win her match over Galina Voskoboeva. I haven't seen photos, but I'm guessing Voskoboeva was playing without the use of one or more of her legs.
   
4. Small weeks for the main tours usually mean big weeks for the challenger circuits, and this week is no exception. The men haveThe women are in a $100k in Biarritz and a $75k in Zagreb, with some pretty nice fields at each (headlined by Lucie Hradecka and Rossanna De Los Rios, respectively). Cult fan favorite Zuzana Ondraskova picked up a nice 6-2, 6-0 win in Zagreb over the third-ranked Serb, Ana Jovanovic. In Serbian women's tennis, Jovanovic is only behind Jelena Jankovic (#6) and Ana Ivanovic (#11). Jovanovic is #229. That's quite the drop-off.

It's Her Party And She'll Cry If She Wants To

Today, Svetlana Kuznetsova celebrated her 24th birthday. Svetlana marked the occasion by giving an enormous gift to her opponent Sabine Lisicki, crashing out of the third round by the score of 6-2, 7-5, and allowing the young German to make the second week of a major for the first time.

As she is wont to do, the recent French Open Champion Kuznetsova played horrendously uncontrolled tennis at Wimbledon, regularly hitting shots that landed at the bottom of the net or feet wide of the doubles alley.

Kuznetsova has now lost to a player ranked below her at each of the last four Wimbledons. Even more embarrassingly, the two-time major champion has only registered one career victory over a seed at Wimbledon, an embarrassing 1-5 record.

To put that statistic in perspective, it's worth notingh that American qualifier Melanie Oudin today doubled Kuznetsova's number of career wins vs. seeds at Wimbledon by beating the #6 seed, freefalling Serb Jelena Jankovic. Oudin is in just her first Wimbledon, and is ranked well outside the top 100. Kuznetsova has played in the main draw of Wimbledon seven times, is ranked #5, and has been ranked as high as #2.

None too impressive, to say the least.