More mixed but why not women's doubles?

Not wanting to harp on the short changing of the public by tournament match schedulers but in fact I do want to.

Tuesday night was the first of two quarter final nights, and as such was to feature as the main event one of the men's quarter finals from the side of the draw on show for the day in question.

Understandably with one of the women's singles quarter finals played at night the day session would be a little bare so instead a doubles match makes sense as the second night fixture, in this case following the Djokovic/Berdych clash,

Logically a women's doubles match should be allocated the spot given that this was a quarter final night and that the women's doubles had reached that section in the draw.  However, in the infinite "wisdom" of the decision makers responsible for the Saturday night scheduling debacle,  a second round mixed doubles match was deemed superior value for the spectators, each of whom had invested significant money to attend the second Tuesday night session.

My beef is not anything to do with the players - each of the four that played tonight did so with integrity and displayed great skills while entertaining what remained of the audience.

However, there was a women's doubles match played earlier in the day between the Williams sisters and the top seeded Errani and Vinci which would have been perfect as the back up to the men's singles clash at night.

Clearly in practical terms not a good idea given Serena's singles commitments the following day, but then what about the missed opportunity of seeing our Australian pair of Ashleigh Barty and Casey Dellacqua play their quarter final at night on the best court in front of a big crowd?

I guarantee that if you wish to retain as much of the crowd as possible following the conclusion of the main event (if you choose to play it in that order) then the secondary match must have more meaning attached to it, and men's and women's doubles have that meaning far more than mixed.

Fortunately the Aussies won through on an outside court and are scheduled to play a semi final on RLA at night, but if they had lost, so to would have been the chance.

As far as the Mixed Doubles played tonight, in a fantastic performance by unseeded Australians Matthew Ebden and Jarmila Gajdosova, blasted out were the second seeded team of legend Leander Paes from India and his team mate Elena Vesnina from Russia, after the Aussies lost the first two games.  Straight sets 6-3 6-2.

The Aussies hardly put a foot wrong for the entire match especially dominant at the net volleying confidently from both wings.  Hopefully this sort of effort will boost the two of them in their singles efforts to come in 2013.