Maria Wins, Melzer almost does, no equal prize money this week, and other press room musings

Maria Sharapova held off a spirited charge by Sara Errani 75 75 in a quarterfinal match. # 8 seed Errani, wearing Nike shoes and attire now, had a couple of set points in the second set but Maria, like a machine, locked down and turned off the unforced error button in her game. When Maria is hitting her spots, like she was at the end of the second set, she will take down any player.

After the match I asked her if any other sports champion reminded her of herself? “That remind me of me? I personally always admired Monica Seles but I don’t know, every individual is different. They’re unique in their own different ways. They have their own special qualities and strengths and weaknesses – and we all do – but I don’t think anyone is really the same.”

Jelena Jankovic is the #22 seed and she is a set up and 3-3 now with Roberta Vinci. JJ has been quiet for a long time in big WTA events but it looks like she is rejuventating. JJ beat Petrova, Cirstea and if she can make semis vs. Maria it will be her first quality result in quite some time.

JJ, is flashy as always, she’s sporting a custom JJ racquet bag, a pink and white outfit, along with New Balance shoes.

By the way, did you know the women are actually earning more money this week than the men? First round women make $8425, men earn $8370. WTA winner gets $724,000, the ATP champ wins $719,180. Add this to things that make you go, ‘Hmmmm.”

Dimitri Tursunov is still here on the practice courts, Julien Benneteau is too.

An usher told us that one player on Saturday on grandstand was having a bad day and said loud enough to the crowd to hear, “I shouldn’t have gone out last night.” Laughter erupted and the player lost this match. But the usher can’t remember which player said this. Pro tennis tournaments are like a blur, everything blurs together when you are hear every day.

Jurgen Melzer won the first set from David Ferrer 64 this afternoon and was actually even for a while in the second, but then he seemed to run out of gas, as most people do against the tenacious Spaniard. Ferrer won the second set 63 and got a bagel in the third. Melzer was coming off two three set wins vs. Berankis, Ramos and Kamke, also a 63 64 win over Granollers. Good week for Melzer who was here with his coach and dad.

Got to hit today with my buddy Kenny Evans on court seven but we got bumped at 10:30 by Almagro who let us finish up to 13-12 in a 21 game. We then moved a couple of courts over, next to Sharapova, and finished our games until Justin Gimelstob bumped us, he was hitting with some juniors who were with John Eagleton, a coach from South Africa.

These courts are really slow and gritty, about as slow as any hard courts I’ve played on. I like slow hard courts a lot and was able to win 3 out of four baseline games with Kenny, who plays at St. Thomas, an NAIA school. By the way, Kenny is a fashion maven, he was actually wearing a huge afro during a couple of the games, attracting some curious onlookers. He later used the wig as a prank with the media staff. Kenny’s a good dude and a tough player.

Waiting for the Sharapova press conference I asked Peter Bodo for this three favorite tennis books, he said Open by Agassi, Handful of Summer and also his own Courts of Babylon, not to toot his own horn, of course. I haven’t read that but will make a point to this summer, for sure.

I can’t believe this one reporter is actually complaining to the media staff that his TV monitor volume does not work and he’s haggling someone from Sony to come to his desk and fix it. Are you kidding me?! I mean, they treat us like kings and queens here, free food, happy hour every night, beer and drinks on the house. Dude, just get up and go down a couple of flights of stairs and go to the danged press conference!

Saw Patrick McEnroe with his daughter they were having lunch together. If you’re interested, she was eating pasta and Sun Chips. Kenny met Chris Fowler and was ecstatic about it. Said Chris was even nicer than he could have expected or hoped. Fowler is super super cool and nice, just like he is on the air.

Maylene Ramey, from Destination Tennis on The Tennis Channel, was here for a couple of days, she sat right next to me both days, we got to chat a bit, she is working on some projects, like Tennisfansunited.com, unique features with pros, also she does a dating column for a magazine and she would like to do a dating/relationship book too. She said her favorite interview subjects were Novak Djokovic, who made her feel a little star struck, and also John Newcombe. Let me tell you that Maylene Ramey is just as bubbly and attractive as she is on TV.

With Fed and Nadal absent, so have been a lot of the usual ace media scribes like Tom Perrotta, Steve Tignor, Jon Wertheim, Bud Collins, Neil Harman. Robby Koenig and Jason Goodall are here though.

I’ve heard some really interesting stories this week. I can’t wait to share Dominik Hrbaty’s memories of the Davis Cup match he had with Rios and Tursunov’s observations about playing and being a peer of Roger Federer, but they’re too long. Stay tuned.

Maria relates with Seles

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