I just watched the second set of the Marin Cilic v Stefan Kozlov match at the Queens Club. Kozlov is the 19 year old wunderkind via Macedonia and South Florida who took the tennis world by storm a couple of years ago when he reached a Challengers finals in California. Now Kozlov is older, ranked #149 in the world, but he has the same “steer the ball” forehand he’s had since he was 16. Watching Koz play Cilic and analyzing their games is almost unfair to the young American.

Cilic · Kozlov · Queens Club

Milos Raonic has floundered this year with subpar results, including today’s 76 76 loss to Thanasi Kokkinakis in the first round at Queens Club.

Earlier this year Raonic reached the final of Delray Beach but defaulted the title to Jack Sock because of a groin injury which he said was suffered in the semifinal win vs Del Potro.

ATP · grass court tennis · Queens Club · Raonic

Not every champion tennis player can get into the Hall of Fame but there are several candidates who curiously have yet to be inducted and enshrined into Newport. Let’s take a look…

Yevgeny Kafelnikov: The superb Russian won Roland Garros singles and doubles in the same year as well as the Australian Open, an Olympic gold medal, Davis Cup and also he held the world no. ranking. Kafelnikov’s achievements outshine those of Marat Safin who was inducted last year.

Moya · Newport Hall of Fame · Tennis

The Dan Markowitz fork is not bashful. When a young American player struggles, that fork has an eagerness to stick the player. Ask Ryan Harrison who was forked at least a half dozen times.

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There was a bizarre conclusion to the Sam Groth vs Bryden Klein second round Nottingham duel yesterday, and a most distressful decision was meted out for poor wildcard Klein by chair umpire Mohammed Layhani.

Groth was serving and leading 63 54 but down a break point at 30-40. Groth served and Klein netted his forehand return. As would be expected in such a tense situation of an important match for both Australian veterans struggling to improve their rankings, Klein could not hold in his frustration and chastised his error by calling himself “a stupid person.”

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I thought watching Jeremy Chardy today how I often have a hard time telling Chardy and Benoit Paire apart. I mean they’re both French, without looking at their rankings; I think they have about the same ranking; they both are tall skinny guys and even carry themselves with similar postures. I know Paire has a beard and Chardy does not: Chardy has a big forehand and Paire a beautiful backhand, but they still seem very similar to me, along with all the other tall skinny white Frenchman out there like Mahut, Bennetau, Herbert and maybe even Paul Henri Mathieu.

Chardy · French · Paire

Everyone in tennis is struck by how the younger #NEXTGEN players have struggled so mightily to make inroads into the ATP Elite pantheon – and marveled at how the older players continue to improve and maintain their dominant ways.

Agassi · Connors · Federer · Nadal

With 35 year old Roger Federer back and possibly playing 39 year old Tommy Haas in Stuttgart, the men’s tennis world finds itself in a spot its never been in before, it’s top five players are all 30 and over (Murray 30, Nadal 31, Wawa 32, Djoko 30 and Fed 35). This is quite amazing. Without putting in a call to the ATP media stat guy guru, Greg Sharko, I’d imagine this oddity, feat, wild occurrence, has never ever even closely happened before. The next five men in the rankings are all in their 20’s (Raonic, Cilic, Thiem, Nishikori and Zverev) before we get back to a 30-something player in Tsonga, but only Thiem (23) and Zverev (20) are 25-and-younger.

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While it may come as a surprise that 20-year-old Jelena Ostapenko is in the finals of Roland Garros, by way of today’s three set win over Timea Bacsinszky, the young Latvian has shown consistent career results in the glamour events.

Ostapenko won the 2014 Wimbledon junior event. In 2015 she beat no. 9 seed Carla Saurez Navarro at Wimbledon, losing only two games.

Ostapenko · Roland Garros

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Dominic Thiem obliterated defending champion Novak Djokovic 76 63 60 in a devastating performance which has to be one of the worst defeats by a title defender in recent Grand Slam history.

Thiem, the ATP World No 7 player, is now just two match wins from becoming the first Grand Slam major champion from Austria since Thomas Muster won in Paris in 1995.

French Open · Roland Garros · Thiem