This girl is scarily an updated version of Monica Seles.I was in awe and shock at her stupendous shotmaking.But not only that she plays just like Seles did before her stabbing.Im a complete fan of her now and her mirror Seles play brought tears to my eyes coz we as Tennis fans were robbed of The Seles talent and I really miss her now.

Cheers To Monica and all the best to Marion and her future!

BARTOLI, I CANT BELIEVE SHE WON, WHAT EXACTLY IS IT WITH HER GAME THAT THE UMPALUMPA COULDNT HANDLE.

I hated Bartoli at first but she really played well today. Such guts, unphased by the occassion and what a fighter! I loved her dad's expression when she was winning and then when she won! Disbelief! roflmao She is like Seles. I'm not a fan of the two handed style but she does it realll well. Lovely girl to, and her serve is really odd but I love it - no pissign around with 20 bounces there. :D Alos nice to see a good player who isn't 6ft odd and the width of supermodel doing well. :clap:

Haven't been a fan of her game (well, what I have seen so far) but I do warm to her on a number of fronts:

- She plays with guts and a big heart;
- She doesn't resort to gamesmanship that some of the top players do
- She isn't the tallest of players, and struggles with serve apparently in part due to being so small (a victory for the small folk)
- Finally, she does seem like a throughly nice, down to earth girl. No histrionics. Just plays to win and is impossible to dislike her on a personal front.

In terms of her game, well, I think I'll watch the Justine match when I have time. Anyone who beats Justine as comprehensively as she did in a deciding set of a semi final of a slam is deserving of respect.

Yep agree there. As you know I was slagging her off th other week. I eat my words now! :blush: Do watch the match, it is well worth a gander for set 2 and 3. :ok:

also she has the best grunt in the womens game, she goes 'whoop; :D

Brosnan gives Bartoli the licence to thrill

By Oliver Brown
Last Updated: 2:05am BST 07/07/2007

It is said sometimes that tennis is a travelling circus, an endless search for some form of personal elevation. So when Marion Bartoli entered the collective consciousness as a Wimbledon semi-finalist, we tended to perceive her only in cold, blank terms - as the world's No 19, as last year's winner in Quebec City. One hour and 55 minutes later, and with a defeated Justine Henin retreating off Centre Court in visible shock, we embraced her as a courageous soul, as a potential champion.

Bartoli, the underdog so beloved of the British, did not want for inspiration last night. A set down inside 22 minutes, her eye wandered over the grandstands and picked out Pierce Brosnan, one of her favourite actors. Strange, what a friendly face can do. One moment she was set to be consigned as a statistical footnote in record time; the next she was engineering an escape of which James Bond would have been proud.

Aptly, The World Is Not Enough is the Brosnan work that appeals to her most. Betraying a girly side that was entirely absent on court, she reflected: "I was focusing on Pierce Brosnan because he is so beautiful. I was just watching him. He was the only one - I said to myself, it's not possible I play so badly in front of him."

For father Walter, too stunned to be emotional, this 1-6, 7-5, 6-1 win was the fulfilment of a long, arduous quest. Eight years ago he was a doctor near St Etienne, but gave the career up to provide three years of savings for Marion to prove herself as a junior. He has been at her side for every one of the 16 years she has struck a tennis ball; now she has the chance to become only the third French ladies' champion at Wimbledon, after Suzanne Lenglen and Amelie Mauresmo. It is quite a sacrifice, and quite a payback.

The impact of reaching a grand slam final is seismic, in Bartoli's terms. Her final winner unleashed, she quietly folded away her rackets and towels, not forgetting the identity tag she has been wearing around her neck for the fortnight. One senses she will not be needing it much longer.

Wimbledon has witnessed a new Monica Seles in the making. Bartoli might not physically resemble her childhood idol, but the similarities in their styles are uncanny. At times against Henin she stood so forward on her returns that she was almost touching the service line, enabling her to pick off the world No 1's serve and legendary backhand at will.

That habit has a history - growing up in the Auvergne, the winters were so cold that she had to practice indoors in Le Puy en Velay, on a court so cramped there was no space behind the baseline. It was there she learned the art of getting in her opponents' faces, except she did it with single-handed strokes. But in 1992 her father watched Seles play Steffi Graf in the French Open final, and she began a long adjustment to the double-handed returns that proved Henin's undoing. "On a good day I can beat anybody," she declared. "And I proved it here."

She emphatically did. Henin is known for her placid, perfect poise, but this counted for nothing in the teeth of a Bartoli hurricane. The energy that crackled off the Frenchwoman's strings came seemingly from nowhere. As she surrendered the first set 6-1, expectations on Centre Court could not have been lower - the atmosphere was not so much flat as funereal. But the moment she re-applied herself, and began uncoiling herself into her signature double-handed backhands with abandon, she was a woman transformed.

Bartoli wanted this win with a palpable passion. She did what many had thought impossible - she made Henin, a champion with subtler and craftier defences than any in the women's game, look ordinary. She also left the Belgian with an emptiness, leaving her to wait for a first Wimbledon title and a career grand slam.

Blistering groundstrokes propelled Bartoli to the second set, but her encores in the decider were still more memorable. Added to her accuracy and power was a remarkable tenacity, never more vividly shown than by two winners in the fifth game. By the seventh, Henin was so broken that Bartoli could fire on pure adrenalin, and with a love-service game she sank to her knees in elation. A star is born.

roflmao I prefer a whoop to the shreik of an animal, harpie or bahshee.

i was at work all day today and didn't see the score until later...i was shocked. against my best hopes, bartoli has made a name for herself. well done :huh:

I saw the match on CC. Beautiful, really (I am a big fan f Henin's game and even more so now after seeing her live). Typicallly I did not give Marion any chance at first. Henin played really well in the first set and like in her last 3 matches Marion lost the first set easily. The match was decided at the end of the second set when Bartoli hit the ball hard corner to corner to win the set. We could see Henin was getting breathless and would lose her sharpness so much needed in her game. Once she lost the second, we could feel very much that JH had nothing left in the tank and despite some beautiful rallies and shots from JH, Marion was always in control after the 3rd game.

And i agree with your remarks about having 2 mature players no messing around with bathroom/injury breaks, refreshing.

Also the comparison with Seles is correct. In fact joko has a similar game too plus a serve. It is about hitting the ball hard corner to corner.

Did Justine tread on your foot a few years back or something? roflmao

All the snide comments about bathroom breaks and gamesmanship. :rolleyes:

It's not like Serena does that all the time, I've never seen her blub like that on court before. If you think she was faking then I really don't know what to say.

That actually made me spit out my drink :lmaao: :lmaao:

roflmao