Emmys: Beef, Succession and The Bear were the big winners at the recent Emmy Awards. Beef was my favorite show of 2023, and it won best Limited Anthology Series, Best Director, and Best Actor and Actress, Steven Yeun and Ali Wong all under the Best Anthology category, takinga total of five awards! I knew Succession, for its final season would do well, and that they did, taking home six Emmys, including Best Dramatic Show, Best Actress and Best Actor. The Bear, which I haven't seen, but apparently the Emmys loved this dramedy, as it also took home six Emmys. Elton John won an Emmy for his farewell concert special, and with that win, has now become the 19th performer to get the EGOT: Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony! Congrats Elton on joining an elite club of talented artists! Australian Open-Grand Slam- I'm going to do notable happenings here as week one of the AO started, and there are way too many players to keep track of, so randomly, here we go! Also, there is that 22-hour time difference! I should note that the Australian Open is the first of the Big Four Slams in tennis, with the other three being the French Open, Wimbledon, and the U.S. Open. In her first return to Grand Slam play, Naomi Osaka was knocked out in the first round. Third-seed Daniil Medvedev ended up playing the 3rd latest Slam finish, beating his opponent in five sets in the 2nd round, and finishing the match at 3:39 am Sydney time! He thanked those few fans that remained, adding that he would not have blamed them for leaving a match that went so long until literally the next morning! Medvedev had a much easier and quicker time defeating his next opponent to make it to the 4th round.
Another quirky but fantastic oddity: Recently, I was explaining how tie-breakers work to a friend. As a general rule, first player to get to six points and win by two wins the game (ex: 6-4), If a player cannot beat their opponent by two points, the game continues until that mark is met. Well, Anna Blinkova and third-seeded Elena Rybakina decided to push that rule and themselves to the limit, with Blinkova upsetting Rybakina in a 3rd set 22-20 tie-breaker that lasted 32 minutes, setting a Grand Slam record! At one point, even the umpire was having a chuckle over the madness of the back and forth between the two competitors, and the fans were gasping and loving it!
Other AO notes: Number one seed on the women's side, Iga Swiatek was upset in the fourth-round, and with her ouster, there are no women from the WTP Top Ten left in the Australian Open.
In a bit of an upset, Britain's Cameron Norrie earned the biggest major victory of his career on Saturday, reaching the Australian Open fourth round for the first time with an impressive victory over Norway's Casper Ruud.
Novak Djokovic, Carlos Alcaraz, Alexander Zverev and Medvedev look to be on a collision course going into the final "Sweet 16" week before the finals. American Tommy Paul was upset on Saturday, leaving only Coco Gauff and Tyler Fritz as the only Americans going into the final week.
Dipping into the Final 16, we will have a head-to head match-up between Andrey Rublev and a very hot Jannik Sinner coming up next! I'll update this and other notable matches of the Sweet 16 later in the week, as we narrow down to final eight, and then the finals.
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