Lu seems to have gotten over the loss yesterday after befriending a wombat
It was quite a devastating loss for Rendy Lu Yen-hsun yesterday. After bageled the 'injured' Gael Monfils in the third set, it seemed like Lu had the ticket to the third round in his bag. He also twice forced Monfils to hold to stay in the match. However, Monfils who double faulted 23 times converted his fourth match point to win in an ugly fashion.
Sexy Seppi
It wasn't an easy match for Italian Andreas Seppi either. After enduring a 4-hour long match against Denis Istomin, Seppi cooled down at the Garden Square fountain on-site at the Australian Open while doing an ATP photo shoot.
Stephens and her grandpa
Meanwhile, Sloane Stephens who is currently world no. 25 said the reason why she likes winning at the Australian Open is that her tech-savvy grandparents can keep watching her from the States.
"My grandpa texted me," the 19-year-old Stephens said. "He said they stayed up again to watch me 'on the machine' as my grandpa calls it."
Murray defends tennis over Rochus doping claim
On a more serious note, retired Belgian tennis player Christophe Rochus recently gave an interview to a newspaper in his home country claiming that doping was widespread on the ATP tour.
“There’s a lot of cheating,” he said. “Simply, people don’t like to talk about it. I simply would like to stop the pretending. This hypocrisy is exasperating.”
He suggested that the authorities might as well give up and legalise performance-enhancing drugs.
However Andy Murray hit back at Rochus doping claim.
"I would say that is far from the truth," said Murray. "Anyone can see the amount of hours of training and practice that go into what we do and there are other sports that are endurance-wise far more challenging than tennis."
"The guys can't play five or six hours and then come back the next day and run around like a rabbit.
"When guys play five or six hours in the slams, like we often do, we have a day's rest. I was told that after our match last year here, I was told that Novak, on the day off, didn't practice, didn't hit a ball, didn't get out of bed till three o'clock. Providing you put the work in, it doesn't mean it hurts any less when you have to play a couple of days later after a five-hour match, but I would not say it is impossible."
(Images via Rendy's FB Fanpage, ATP website, Sloane Stephen's Twitter page, Zimbio.com)
