Focusing On Wimbledon Third Round Matchups

Uh, Scoop, let’s not get too carried away with Gulbis. I’m happy to see him get into the 3rd rd of Wimby, but beating the Brit WC Clarke in 5 sets in the first round and then beating Dzhumur in 5 in the second round means one thing, Fritz or Zverev will put a hurting on Gulbis in the next round.

Now Baghdatis has been most impressive, beating Thiem in Rd 1 and losing 8-5 in fifth set against Kachanov. Big match for Qball. He should beat Monfils, but he’s 0-2 against the Frenchman who usually toys with clumsier players like Qball.

Jack Sock is No. 150 in The Race for this year, one spot ahead of Filip Peliwo. He’s coasting on the points he got from Paris and WTF at the end of last year but once those drop off, it’s back to Challengers for him.

I think with Spadea it happened right after he made the Olympic team in Sydney and he had been 18 in the world and he just started losing. There was probably–although Vince wouldn’t admit it–a lot of denial happening, like I should be getting to a slam semis (he’d just gotten to a slam quarters) and I’m losing in the first round of all these tournaments.

How about Fritz getting blitzed after going up two sets to one yesterday against Zverev.

This is how women’s tennis drives me crazy. I get on the Keys’ bandwagon and then she loses to Rodina? I’ve barely heard of Rodina. She’s 120 in the world. How can Keys lose to someone like this?

Only 3 of the top 10 women remain in the draw. Not sure what to make of that – except Serena William’s seeding seems pretty irrelevant now.

Maybe it’s the weather 🙂

Here’s a lesson Dan – don’t get on any player’s bandwagon in the WTA.

Keys is very inconsistent. She often makes terrible decisions on the court. I got off her bandwagon years ago, despite the way the American commies keep hyping her.

My two picks on the women’s side – Kvitova and Muguruza – are out, so I will go with Serena at this point.

Gulbis could be a tricky opponent for Sascha. Plus there’s the Latvia-Russia dynamic between them. Don’t be surprised to see the Russian go down.

Duke – who are you talking about ? There’s no Russian in that match.

My goodness, Serena is hitting harder than ever before. Does anyone else feel the same? She just blew Kiki off the court those last few games.

Interesting how both Williams sisters are playing Kiki at the same time.

Meanwhile Mannarino just wins matches. As Scoop would put it, he is one of the greats of this era.

Hartt – you’d have liked the Julia/Strycova match I think – apparently S did a fair bit of serving and volleying. I only wish I’d seen it. No highlights needless to say.

Q. Back to the scheduling. One of the matches that for me personally I thought was surprising being on Court 1 was Zverev versus Fritz today. Fabio Fognini at the French Open was complaining that the NextGen guys are getting court boosts at major tournaments. He was not very happy with that kind of notion, I won’t use his words. Wondering what your thoughts on that is and whether they’ve earned that right to be playing on Centre or 1 above three-time champions like yourself?

NOVAK DJOKOVIC: I mean, Fabio is my generation, born ’87. Obviously it’s hard for him to deal with the fact that he’s not young any more (smiling). Maybe we should make our own PresentGen, CurrentGen, or OldGen tour.

Jokes aside, I don’t see it as necessarily a wrong, so to say, bad decision from ATP to kind of promote the young players. I mean, the end of the day, I had this conversation with you guys for so many years, we don’t have new faces on the tour. It’s been the dominance of the four guys. You want to see new players.

Everybody was saying that the time is going to come, so it came. Now we have Zverev, Coric, Thiem that has been around, a couple other players. They deserve the attention. I mean, they’re trying to also make them big stars.

I don’t necessarily see that as a bad thing. Obviously when you are affected by that, then obviously you might dislike that a little bit. In general, if you see it, it’s good for sport. Why not promoting other players than maybe the big four guys that have been dominant on the tour. I think it’s pretty good thing.

Agree, there is a void with no highlights and ESPN has changed it up with that paid for streaming unless you sign up for the 7 day free trial, which everyone is doing and dropping after 7, I guess they hope most forget to drop after the 7

Dasha Kasatkina just won her match over Barty. Ash started off very strong, and Dasha was having her DF problem, but Dasha finally played better and took the first set. It was fun to watch 2 women players who both have a BH slice.

The video for my stream died in the 2nd set (and it was even a “legal” one for a change), so I did not see the rest of the match. Apparently Ash’s level dropped. In any case, Dasha got the win, much to my delight. She made her seeding, which is better than a lot of the women!

Hartt- I can see slice making a big comeback – maybe everyone’s been listening to Scoop 🙂

As I said above I have reservations about Ashleigh – she’s not making the progress you’d expect.

Milos had to finish his match against Dennis Novak today. Yesterday he was off, not making easy shots and getting very frustrated. Today was the exact opposite – Milos was at his best. He served well, but also returned very well, was effective at the net and made some terrific DTL winners. The commies seemed very surprised at the difference and thought that this Milos had a good chance at winning the title.

Nine of the WTA top ten seeds are out before the second week. I can’t think of any explanation at all.
Serena will cruise this.

Wimbledon is smart to protect its assets and not show highlights or much coverage. That’s why its ratings suck and the World Cup is destroying it.

Cibulkova showed Wimby what fools they were not to seed her with this run. She is proving her detractors wrong.

Osaka was pulverized by Kerber in a horrible effort and bad advert for women’s tennis.

I really believe the seeds tumbling is due to Serena’s presence. Subconsciously, the other women know they cannot compete and they fall apart being mentally fragile in Serena’s wake.

I honestly don’t think highlights on Youtube have any effect on ticket sales, and who would watch highlights when they might have the opportunity to watch the whole match ?

Many people who watch highlights don’t live anywhere near where the tournament is played. They live in all sorts of different countries. I think it’s a silly selfish move and just driven by commercial greed. But what isn’t ? The AO by the way had good highlights and I doubt the tournament suffered much. Probably the opposite.

I think Angie has her eye on the Rosewater dish. Very confident win.

The women’s draw next week isn’t going to set the Thames on fire but I’m not sure I think the mass exodus of seeds is down to Serena’s presence. It’s something more complicated.

Women players do too much, a lot of stuff which is only distantly related to their performance on court. They’re forever being marketed, displayed, dressed up, interviewed, followed on social media, pressured to have a presence everywhere, – be available, be distant, be sexy, be ‘athletes’. I’m surprised they have a moment to play tennis with all these distracting and peripheral activities.

We can’t go back and dis-invent Twitter and Facebook etc but I think the WTA could remove its sticky fingers from the pie and stop behaving as if every single thing a player does is noteworthy and can be used to sell the game. I once heard some advertising genius refer to Carling Bassett as a ‘marketing mantel’, as if that’s all she was. Not surprising she retired early.

Men players don’t have these problems. Life is a lot simpler. ‘See ball, hit ball’ and then go out and lead their own lives.

There’s a lot of rubbish associated with women’s tennis and I blame the WTA. I always have, even back in the day when it was just a set of initials. Too many people running around getting paid for doing nothing.

Playing pro tennis at a high level is a difficult job.
The pressure to be always in the limelight doesn’t make it easier.

Just my thoughts. Oh, and some people prepared for Wimbledon sensibly and some people didn’t. They know who they are.

Scoop, Evert (before today) called Hsieh a “club player,” and got a tremendous amount of grief for her comment. Presumably she has changed her mind about that.

Spot on Catherine. Social media impact to athletes in general is more negative than positive. Certainly there are positive examples but overall I am not a fan of the impact. One of my favorite players is Cibulkova (yes, ok, I have a crush too) but she is such a warrior and her passion for tennis and competing really shows through. That’s what tennis players need more of and less concern for their ‘brand’ or entourage. And congrats Hseih!

Kei Nishikori won over Nick Kyrgios in SS. As Darren Cahill said, Kei was the better player and wanted it more. It’s great to see him back playing well.

The officials must have been super relieved that the match finished just in time in terms of the light.