Day 1 of the Australian Open

Rain and an upset were the stories of the Australian Open on Day 1.  On and off, then finally On rainfall postponed many of the outer court matches for almost an hour to begin the day.  After a short delay matches were being played, with an occasional rain delay.  Later in the day, the rains once again fell which led to many of the matches being postponed or cancelled.  Laver and Hisense arenas both have retractable roofs, so play was unharmed and continued as scheduled while the rain fell outside.

The big story on the court was the upset loss of Maria Sharapova to the hands of fellow Russian, Maria Kirilenko.  Sharapova displaying her new Nike dress, was run ragged for over 3 hours by Kirilenko, who matched groundstroke for groundstroke with the #14 seeded Sharapova.  Sharapova's loss comes with a bitter-sweet taste in my mought.  Sweet, because I personally don't like her all that much.  She seems to have this "my shit don't stink" attitude, and she believes she is more special than she really is.  Her tennis talent is good, but not all that outstanding.  Then like a lot of these female tennis players they think they are talented fashion designers.  All I can think back to is how Sharapova did a bit with NFL quarterback Matthew Stafford and she acted like "I'm the shit, so take my advice.  If you don't, you'll be a total moron."  Give me a break, Maria.  Your arrogance during that TV bit and your basically running off the court without any acknowledgement was pretty classless.  So thank goodness, I won't have to see you on ESPN any longer.  Two weeks of Pam Shriver's complaining is enough.  The only bitter thing about Sharapova losing is I had her in the quarterfinals in my bracket.  I guess the tradeoff is worth it in the end.

Radek Stepanek was the only seeded player on the mens side to be upset on day 1.  "Dr. Ivo" Karlovic used his big serve to keep Stepanek off balance and pull off the mild upset.... The other matches went pretty much as planned.  Nadal, Murray, Clijsters, Henin, Dementieva, Roddick, Del Potro, Kuznetsova, Fernando Gonzalez all advanced with little trouble....  #27 seed Alisa Kleybanova ended Aussie fan-favorite Jelena Dokic's run before it could start...Dinara Safina didn't look dominant, but did get the job done against Rybarikova to advance to the 2nd round....Flavia Penetta, Kateryna Bondarenko, Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez and Ivan Ljubicic are other seeds that won their 1st round matches.

Almost half of the scheduled Day 1 matches are still yet to finish due to the rain so day 2 will be a busy one, with Federer, the Williams sisters, and the great David Ferrer in action.  Can't wait to see more Pam Shriver, I'm counting the minutes down.