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New York doubles success

3 September 2008

Today Lisa and I won our doubles quarterfinal, which was great, and now we are looking forward to playing Katarina Srebotnik and Ai Sugiyama in the semis. Obviously it was disappointing to lose to Venus in the first round of singles, but I still took a lot away from the experience. I've never played a night match here on centre court and the atmosphere was amazing. We also won our first round of mixed and now I am in the doubles semi with Lisa, so it's been a great tournament so far. We played well this morning and hopefully I'll have a day off tomorrow. It's been really great to have Mum and Dad and my brother Dominic here in New York. They always come and watch me play the Aussie Open and usually at one other tournament during the year, but this is the first time they've seen me play since the Aussie Open in 2007. I haven't seen them in four months, so it's great to have them all here and have their support. We are staying in an apartment so we have been able to have a couple of family dinners, which has also been fantastic. Most days I have either practiced or played in the mornings and had the afternoons free to spend with them and even do a bit of sightseeing. Yesterday we went to the Bodies exhibition in the historic seaport district and that was pretty amazing and a bit confronting. We've also been to some nice restaurants and I'm looking forward to doing a bit of shopping and taking them to see the Statue of Liberty. I've been to New York a number of times so I'm happy to do whatever they want. I've really loved working with Dave Taylor (AIS Head Women's Coach) and I don't think there is a coach out there who works as hard as he does. We are working on all the usual things. My first service percentage needs to get better so it's a bit like the old days, just hitting buckets of balls and going out there and spending time on it. The highlight of my year so far was making the two finals at Wimbledon. I've never been in finals there before and to experience two in two days was amazing. To win there was wonderful and a great way to end the European season. The Olympics in Beijing was also amazing. Dave and I arrived a week before I had to play so we got to look around and see everything in the village. It was tough to come up against Serena first up - I couldn't do anything about her, she just played too well and it was disappointing to lose in the doubles. But I really took full advantage of being there and having the Olympic experience. The dorms were set up on nine levels, we were on the top with the swimmers and the basketballers and later the track and field athletes stayed below us. We were going in and out of the same doors all the time so we were always bumping into them and sitting down and chatting to them. I found it so interesting to hear about what they do and have so much respect for all these guys who do their sport for the love of it and make no money at all out of it. They put in just as much, if not more, than many pro athletes. I will definitely keep in touch with lots of the athletes I met, it's really cool to have another network of people, and maybe some of them will come and see us at the Aussie Open. It's really easy to keep in touch through Facebook, and with many of them based in Europe you never know who you are going to run into. After the US Open I have another five tournaments for the year, finishing up in Austria. I'm really looking forward to heading back to the Gold Coast in November for a couple of weeks holiday, before the training starts again. We'll probably start with some physical training and then I will get back into hitting a few weeks later to prepare for the Aussie summer. Sam Stosur in New York

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