Dan M
As I sat through most of the five hours and 53 minutes it took for Novak Djokovic to finally dispatch of Rafael Nadal in the Aussie Open finals, advancing through dead moments between points with my nifty DVR remote (at one point in the match, a graphic showed that Djoko was taking 30 seconds between points while Nadal was pinching, dribbling, shifting for 33 seconds), I asked myself, “Is this entertaining tennis?”
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Ivan Lendl told Andy Murray that in the big moments of a match, he wasn’t going to tell him what shot to hit. Andy’s the one on the court, he’s the one that has the juices flowing, and just like Tony Roche once ago told his charge, Lendl, to go with his feeling, Lendl has told Andy to go with the feeling. Murray apparently went with the wrong feeling in his semi-match with Djokovic.
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If Anyone’s Picking Federer in Tonight’s Match, They’re Crazy.
19 Comments · Posted by Dan Markowitz in Bios, Dan M
It’s the 27th meeting between Roger and Rafa (Rafa holds the 17-9 advantage–which really is 17-5 if you didn’t count indoor encounters–7-2 in slams and won the last four contests in slams; Roger hasn’t beaten Nadal in a slam since Wimby 2007) and if anyone thinks La Fed has a chance of winning tonight, they’re loco.
Jackson Browne had a song in the 70′s called “The Pretenders” and it opened with the stanza:
I’m going to rent myself a house
In the shade of the freeway
I’m going to pack my lunch in the morning
And go to work each day
And when the evening rolls around
I’ll go on home and lay my body down
And when the morning light comes streaming in
I’ll get up and do it again
Amen
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Scoop, I Don’t Want To Say I Told You So, But I Did
22 Comments · Posted by Dan Markowitz in Bios, Dan M
Before the tournament, you were touting Monfils after he beat Nadal in a warmup tournament to Aussie O. And then Gael goes down to Kukushkin. You will never learn never to put your money on players like Monfils or Gasquet or Murray in slams.
Then you built up the Federer-Tomic match, saying you thought it would be a Battle Royale (I said right away it was a straight set match for Fed).
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Throughout the first set last night against Lleyton Hewitt, Milos Raonic looked like the Second Coming of Pete Sampras. His first serve was exploding into service boxes at 141 mph, usually out of the reach of Hewitt’s racket and strike zone. His second serve air-bombed in at 120+. Patrick McEnroe was raving about Raonic, the easy power of his shots, his ability to finish points at net, and his quick little steps on his footwork.
I like Dolgo. He’s fun to watch, obscenely talented and has great hands. But I hear Scoop talking about him contending for a slam and not only has it not happened, I just don’t see it happening. Dolgo has a lot of firepower, but his first serve percentage last night was in the 40′s (45% to be exact, he did serve 22 aces) and you can’t be a big-time player when you slice your forehand return of serve the majority of times.
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Where Have All The Americans Gone? The Tennis Channel Is Back. And Has Djoko Gone Mad?
7 Comments · Posted by Dan Markowitz in Bios, Dan M
In the old diddy by Pete Seeger, “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?,” the folk singer intones:
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the flowers gone?
Girls have picked them every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?
There used to come a time when the Knicks played the Michael Jordan Bulls in the 90′s, or heck, when any team did, when Jordan would suck the life out of Patrick Ewing or Charles Barkley or Clyde Drexler. It usually didn’t come with a wicked dunk, usually it was just one of Jordan’s text-book moves, creating space off the dribble and lining in a jumper. Air Jordan had supreme confidence, he was ridiculously fit and no one could touch him in the clutch or when the competition got red-hot.
71-0 in slam first-round matches, he goes out and maims Alex Kuznetsov and then goes into minute detail of how his knee locked up yesterday and he could barely move. The inability to move his knee, the pain, the MRI. Either Nadal’s body is at the point of seriously breaking down, or the Spaniard is one of the greatest alarmists in professional sports. Kobe Bryant is going to Germany to get blood-spinning, he’s getting shot up with pain-killers for his wrist before every game, and the guy goes out and scores 40 most every game and doesn’t tell horror stories, afterward. Don’t cry for you, Rafael.
