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by Priya Prasad The weather in Palermo continued to become a little less brutal for the players, and the humidity saw a drop today although the sun continued to extend its rays with incredible generosity. Not that Maria Elena Camerin got the chance to add any colour to her perfectly bronzed skin. The pair was off the court in 55 minutes, Gala Leon Garcia dropping only 1 game to win 6-0 6-1. For the Italian, it was home for a couple of days and then off to France to join Giulia Casoni, Adriana Serra-Zanetti and Roberta Vinci to form the Italian Fed Cup team. Asa Carlsson also had an easy match against Rossana de Los Rios, looking calm and confident in a 6-2 6-3 win. The Swede had been walking around the grounds, watching a couple of matches here and there and moving silently through the crowds with a friend of hers, in stark contrast to the Italians, Spaniards and Russians. Nearly three hours had been allowed for Francesca Schiavone's match against Ludmila Cervanova, and the allocation had been just right. It was a drama-filled match which Cervanova was fortunate to not find herself paying a fine after. The Slovakian had lost the first set 6-3, but was determined not to let the extremely partisan crowd get their satisfaction. Serving for the set at 5-3, she hit was she thought was an ace, and went to her chair to put everything behind her and concentrate on the third set. Francesca didn't like the call and asked for a second opinion, at which point the "ace" was deemed a fault. Understandably distressed, Ludmila argued the point extensively, and when the chair umpire failed to reverse her decision, had a few choice words for her. Sure enough, a warning was given, of which Ludmila questioned the reason. When told that she had used inappropriate words in English, she denied it, much to the amusement of the entire crowd that had heard everything. From then on, the crowd became even more partisan, cheering Francesca's points a little more loudly. Justly enough, Cervanova got the next game to even the match up at 1 set apiece. The third set however was very up-and-down. Francesca, displaying enviable fitness and still bouncing around on her feet to get herself going, became very charged up, and started to play an fully aggressive game. On the other side, Ludmila interestingly displayed an I-wanna-get-the-hell-outta-here attitude one point and a there-take-that attitude the next, much to the frustration of her coach. It seemed that Ludmila would get motivated when she fell behind, and the minute she evened up the score, would simply throw it away in the blink of an eye, whether it be a lazily (or nonchalantly) attempted drop shot that lands in the bottom of the net or not even attempting to run after a wide-angled shot. She fought hard to save the match, evening it up at 5-all, but had a constant black cloud hovering over her, and even her coach had to shake his head in puzzlement. Having worked so hard for the last 2 ½ hours, no one but her knows why she threw the next 8 of the 9 points away, and sent Francesca Schiavone into the quarterfinals, where she will meet dark-horse Asa Carlsson. In the final match of the day, Tathiana Garbin became the second Italian to make it into the quarters against Virginia Ruano-Pascual, winning by a comfortable margin but looking very vulnerable on court. Virginia started the match by throwing everything at the Italian's backhand, pressuring the weaker wing and having much success, even getting the early break. The fifth seed managed to put more into her backhands tentatively, top-spinning her single-handed backhands more instead of constantly slicing and merely blocking them back as she tended to do earlier this year, and despite coming up with quite a number of mis-hits, didn't let that discourage her. Gala Leon Garcia watched intently as her quarterfinal opponent came back from a bad start to both sets to take the match 6-3 6-3, and will surely take the same approach as her countrywoman. In doubles action for the day, second seeds Ana Isabella Medina Garrigues and Maria Jose Martinez struggled against qualifiers Maret Ani and Laura Dell'Angelo, but eventually came through 6-4 7-6(4). Maria Emilia Salerni continued to struggle, and made too many errors in her match with Alexandra Fusai against lucky losers Tatiana Kovalchuk and Maria Geznenge, who took the fourth seeds out of the tournament. The score: 7-6(2) 2-6 6-2, a pattern that is becoming a little too familiar for the Argentine. In the other matches, Asa Carlsson and Sylvia Plischke moved past Cristina Torrens Valero 6-4 7-5 to move into the quarterfinals, Eleni Daniilidou and Caroline Dhenin scored an upset over Sandra Nacuk and Tatiana Poutchek winning 6-1 2-6 6-2 (will meet the top seeds Garbin and Husarova next), and Emmauelle Gagliardi and Gala Leon Garcia defeated Evgenia Koulikovskaya and Nadejda Ostrovskaya to set a date against second seeds Medina Garrigues and Martinez. |