Thursday, January 17, 2008

Round 3

The third round tips off in about 20 minutes, and there are some delicious matchups. On the men's side, there's Aussie favorite Lleyton Hewitt vs Marcos Baghdatis, Novac Djokovic vs Sam Querrey, and David Nalbandian vs Juan Carlos Ferraro. For the ladies there's Elena Dementieva vs Shahar Peer, and Venus Williams vs Sania Mirza from India.
Now Mirza is an interesting story, and clearly one tough lady. She's a Muslim from India, and in 2005, because of the attire she was wearing on the tennis court (standard female tennis gear), a fatwa was issued against her. I'm absolutely serious, I remember reading about it in Tennis Magazine, and wikipedia.com has a well-footnoted paragraph about it.
Mirza was unfazed by this ruling and, while still wearing her regular garb, has risen to #31 in the world. If flying in the face of a fatwa weren't enough, she is doubles partners with the aforementioned Shahar Peer, who is Israeli. They even won a title together in San Jose last year at the Bank of the West Classic. Tough as nails that one.

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