And On To Wednesday....
by Barry Wood

Okay. The rest of the week can be cancelled, because there is unlikely to be a better match than that between top seed Agnieszka Radwanska and 2006 Bangkok champion Vania King.

King, who is American, served for both sets but won neither as Radwanska, who is Polish, won 7-5 7-6. There was tremendous tennis from both players, with furiously contested baseline rallies. You would not have wanted to get in the way of many of the balls they hit, because you might not have survived.

"It was a very good match," Radwanska acknowledged. "I was playing last week indoors so I was a bit afraid about coming and playing outdoors in the heat. It's very difficult to change the surface, but I'm good. It was very close, especially the first set. I was down three set points, and I'm very happy that in the important points I did a little bit better and that's why I won."

While Agnieszka was winning, her younger sister Urszula was giving her opponent Andreja Klepac all the encouragement she needed by bemoaning almost every point she lost by squatting, banging her racquet to the ground, arguing calls, talking to herself and appealing to the heavens at the injustice of it all. The Slovene no doubt enjoyed Radwanska's distress and went on to win 7-6 6-2.

Second seed Casey Dellacqua came first against Japanese qualifier Akiko Yonemura, winning 6-2 6-3. The score sounds easy, but it was a little more difficult than that for the Australian who recently reached the fourth round of the Australian Open.

"She actually played really, really well," said Casey. "She'd had qualifying matches and that helps a lot. The courts I feel are super quick. It's really hard to get used to the pace because last week (at the Fed Cup) in Bangkok I felt the balls were really heavy and it was really slow. I had to hang in there and she was hitting a fair few winners, and I just had to make sure I kept the ball in court and I got a few errors out of her.

"I'm feeling pretty confident (after the Australian Open). But I'm feeling actually quite tired. My body's breaking down a little bit. I haven't stopped since Gold Coast really (first week of the year). I played there and Hobart and the Australian Open and went straight to Fed Cup and had six matches in three days there. It's pretty tough, but this is my last tournament and then I have a few weeks break so I think this week it's about giving it everything and squeezing every little bit of energy out of myself and trying to get as far in the tournament as I can."

When you're a bit run down and need to re-charge the batteries a bit, then Pattaya and the Dusit Resort is the perfect place to be.

"It's lovely," she said. "A great resort and I feel pretty relaxed. I've been in the pool and on the beach. It's been really lovely, actually just what I needed. And I love Thai food, and even around the world we try to get to a few Thai restaurants. I'm a big fan of the beef red curry, not too spicy though."

Now, the Thai players. While Tammy Tanasugarn won easily on Tuesday, her fellow Thais did things differently on Wednesday. They lost easily instead. Neither Noppawan Lertcheewakarn or Nudnida Luangnam did much to bother the scoreboard, with Noppawan going down 6-1 6-2 to Israel's Tzipora Obziler and Nudnida losing 6-0 6-1 against Russia's Vesna Manasieva.

Tzipora had so little to worry about with her opponent that she worried about the court instead. At one stage she asked the officials to check if the surface was too soft, but when they did a bit of foot-pressing nothing happened. No holes appeared. Not as strange as it sounds, because courts can break up sometimes. Rebound Ace in Australia has done, and clay courts are often repaired during a match.

Nudnida found it necessary to go off the court and change her shirt after the first set, even though she hadn't been out there long enough to work up a decent sweat. And despite the ease of the match, Vesna was shrieking so loudly she could probably be heard halfway across Pattaya Bay. I can't imagine the noise she'd make if she was actually having to work hard.