Hey :wavey:

At 10.28am, Stijn (Fox on the board) and I arrived in Brussels-Central. After about 1 hour, we met Sarah (inkyfan) and then we took the 'metrobus'. We had some problems (we sat on the wrong one, at first :o), but we eventually made it to the busstop in Simonis. Then we took to bus to Ganshoren, where we arrived at the Charles Quint Tennis club :):yippee:

When we arrived, we saw that Kirsten Flipkens had already lost the 1st set (4-6) and she was also down a break in the 2nd set. Leslie Butkiewicz was really playing well, especially on the backhand side. She has a pretty powerful backhand, especially the crosscourt-backhand. Flipkens had to slice her backhand a lot, because she was often playing under pressure, due to Leslie's power.
Suddenly, a sweet young girl came next to Stijn, Sarah and me. It was Sofie (Fieke) :) We talked a bit and then she went back to her boyfriend.
At 3-5* in the 2nd set, Kirsten was down 0-40 on her service game, so Leslie had 3 matchpoints, but she worked them away brilliantly. Now the match had turned into a mental game. Leslie seemed a bit frustrated because of the 3 matchpoints she'd lost and because Kirsten started playing better (at one point, Leslie yelled: "always on the line!!" ;)).
Eventually there was a tie-break which had to decide the winner of this high-level 2nd set. Leslie started off firing from both sides and Kirsten didn't play as well as she had played the past few games before. Leslie immediately took a 5-0 lead and never looked back. After a funny ping-pong volley point, Leslie Butkiewicz won the match and went up to the net to kiss Kirsten. They both smiled, which was pretty cool. :)

On the other court, Argeri was playing Snajdrova. The only thing I remember from that match, was Argeri's screaming and grunting :o It seemed like a pretty good match though. In the end, Argeri showed her great fighting spirit and won the 3rd set 6-3.

After the Butkiewicz-Flipkens match, Belgian youngster Debbrich Feys & Frenchwoman (and ex-Belgian :rolleyes::p) Emilie Bacquet came on the court. Debbrich is a tall, slim girl, with a rather young face. She looked like she was only 15 to me. Bacquet is a small girl, with Venice-blond (so red/blond) hair.
The whole match was pretty boring, with both player making a lot of errors. Emilie is - maybe due to her height - more of a counterpuncher, while Debbrich is a more attacking player. Maybe that's why she hits so many errors, especially deep into the net... Even though Debbrich had won the 1st set, Emilie looked like the better player during the whole match. In the 3rd set, Debbrich came back from a break down, to win the tie-break and the match: 7-5 1-6 7-6 :)
I was sitting near a woman, (who I think was) Debbrich's mum, and 2 coaches of Debbrich and they didn't seem very satisfied with her game. She wasn't finishing points at the net enough and she wasn't fighting. Only the last few games showed us some of her fighting capability. Debbrich's mum said: "she's only fighting when she's down :( She never holds a lead. When she's leading she loses her focus and lets the other player come back into the match." She also said that Argeri was going to be tough for Debbrich and that her daughter only had a very slim chance against the Argentine :o

After that match, I had to cool down a bit, coz I'd been in the sun for too long and I started to feel dizzy + I had a horrible headache :(

The next match was a doubles match: Butkiewicz/Snajdrova vs. Font/Pous Tio. One of the Spaniards had very special hair, with beads :cool: ;)
Leslie & Lenka were the better players during the whole match, altho Anna & Laura made some amazing points too. The former were the power players, the latter the more "finesse" playerswith lobs etc.
One funny moment I remember (which I did see, because I'd been lying in the grass for some time due to some semi-fainting :o) was a bird-incident. A bird with a broken wing was 'walking' over the court from time to time and play was interrupted because of this. The umpire and one of the Spanish girls then chased to bird, which was hilarious to watch :D Finally, the umpire grabbed the bird and swang (swing past tense?) it over the fence :o:) After the 4 girls had stopped laughing, the match started again.
Butkiewicz/Snajdrova eventually won in straight sets: 7-5 6-2.

The last mach involved Russian Kondratieva & Belgian Evelyne Van Hyfte. In one way, the match looked like a challenger version of Hingis/Davenport ;)
Maria wasn't that powerful but she was a pretty smart player. Her serve and ground strokes reminded me a bit of Hingis'. Evelyne is definitely a power player, full force all the time. When she's on, she must be a delight to watch :drool:, when she's not...
I only watched the first 4 games or so, because it was clear I'd suffered a heat stroke :sad::sad: I just had to go home asap :(:(

So I said goodbye to Philippe, Sofie & Sarah and then Stijn & I went home.
I threw up a few times on the way home and the couple of hours I spent on the bus/metro/train were total misery (heck, call it "hell" :sad: ), but I'm feeling a bit better now.
Sorry I don't have a report of the last match :unsure:

Hope you enjoyed reading this :wavey: ;)

Btw, sorry for errors (grammar, vocab, typos etc)

On the other court, Argeri was playing Snajdrova. The only thing I remember from that match, was Argeri's screaming and grunting :o It seemed like a pretty good match though. In the end, Argeri showed her great fighting spirit and won the 3rd set 6-3.


It was bloody annoying, you couldn't tell the difference between her and a crying baby :(


Thanks for the detailed review, Bram! :kiss:
It's all coming back to me now ;)

Thanks for the report Bram, I could not have said it better myself :)

I especially liked the "young sweet girl" bit ;) :angel:

Leslie is really funny when she gets worked up and starts shouting things :) At a certain point during the first set, Kirsten asked the umpire for fresh water and the umpire sent for someone to go and get some bottles of water for the girls. So somewhere in the middle of a game, this guy arrives carrying bottles of water, which he puts on both Kirsten and Leslie's chair, but making a lot of noise while doing this. On top of that, the court was at the bottom of quite a steep hill, so the guy has trouble getting back up again so at that point he's at the centre of the attention. Leslie lost the point and the game and she yells "Do they really have to disturb us for water?"
I guess it's one of those situations where you had to be there to see the humour of it :)

The bird incident was funny too. The Spanish girls were constantly giggling and I really thought the umpire had killed off the bird when he threw it over that fence (luckily he hadn't) :)
(btw, the past tense of to swing is swung :))

The ball kids were also funny to watch :) Some of them were very young, about 6 I guess. So when this one boy was throwing a ball to one of the players, they nearly had to get down on their knees to catch it, because the ball boy was so small :) That particular ball boy was not very interested in the match either and at a certain point he actually started playing with the tennis balls :lol:

IMO if Evelyne cuts back on the number of unforced errors, she will be one to watch. She has so much power, but a lot of the time, she hits the ball so hard, that she just hits it out. But if she works on her precision, she can be a very dangerous player.

BTW, piccies of the QF's can be found here (http://www.wtaworld.com/showthread.php?t=79320) :angel:

Thanks for this report. I hope you recover soon from your heat stroke. Watching tennis while burning in the heat is a big pain! :)

great report :D

Thanks for the reports. :D
:o The umpire threw a bird?

Mooi verslag :bounce:

Van jou ook, Sofie ;)

Thanks for the report :D

Thanx for the reports ;)

Great Read from both of you!!! ThanX :kiss: :kiss:

Thanks for the report, Bram! :kiss:

I got dizzy and headache last Sunday during Molik v Zuluaga @ Fed Cup as well! :o It played Indoors but the match finished with 2 hours and 43 minutes! :o