Sock Smoked In Cincy

It was kind of a fluke he won that first set. It was unusual how off Chung was in that set.

Ferrer had said earlier that he would retire next year, maybe at Barcelona, although you have to wonder if this terrible slide down the rankings will get him to retire earlier than that.

But he has had a wonderful career, has made the best use of his talent, and that is high praise for any player.

Didn’t see it but heard the quality of the Sock match was beyond poor.

Kyrgios just doesn’t care. He forgot his shoes en route to the court. Showed Kudla little respect slapping around the ball and missing by a mile often. I think Murray may also be a bad influence on him.

As I predicted, Goffin ousts Tsitsipas. It was a must-win for the Belgian to avenge his D.C. loss.

Thiem drops out of Cincy. This has a major effect on the Open since a win by Djoker over Mannarino gives him a top-8 seed in NY.

Interesting comments by Svitolina on her weight loss. She told the media that she wanted to try something different. My opinion is it doesn’t work for her body but we shall see.

She also gave a revealing Russian interview talking about the weight loss and other topics. She named the 5 cutest guys on tour as Grigor, Lopez, Verdasco and then Zverev and Tsitsipas from the NextGen. She said one admirer once gifted her a private jet. And she said that her mother never taught her about sex.

Actually Scoop, Svitolina is still with the British cricket player Reece Topley so she is off the market. But she likes to do racy photo shoots and whatnot and enjoys the fact that men lust after her, as she mentioned in the interview.

How bad was Coco Vandeweghe? I don’t fancy her making a run in the Open.

You may be right Scoop. No evidence that Tapley is still with the Ukrainian.

Also Scoop, so true that this Keith Ellison story is not being covered by the media. Not surprising.

With all this talk about Jack Sock’s fall, another player who has fallen deep in the rankings is Andrey Kuznetsov, who was ranked No. 39 in 2016 and reached two semifinals last season, losing to Dolgopolov in Bastad and Warinka in Geneva.

Now he is ranked in the 600s. What happened to the Russian?

Serena’s living in a dream. She’s talking as though her career is just starting and she’s got it all before her. I suspect her colleagues don’t feel the same. Wounded lion. But from what I saw, a good match which put that dreary Montreal final in perspective. The WTA highlights showed all Serena’s winners 🙂

Kerber meets her old rival Pavs and I wouldn’t bet on the result. Angie’s only played one match since Wimbledon, she says she wants more matches but I’m thinking she could struggle to get them. She has such tremendous highs and then long lows and she’s floundering.

You get what you most want and for a while everything else seems nothing.

Serena’s living in a dream. She’s talking as though her career is just beginning. I doubt her colleagues see it that way. More like a wounded lion.

This was a good match though – put that dreary Montreal final in perspective. The WTA highlights showed all Serena’s winners 🙂

Kerber meets her old rival Pavs and I wouldn’t bet on the result. Angie’s played one match since Wimbledon and she’s struggling. She has such tremendous highs and then long lows where she flounders and her mental approach gets fixed in entropy.

When you get what you most want, everything else, for a while, must seem nothing.

Hartt – I caught a few highlights of Denis’ match after I wrote that, and no, it wasn’t straightforward but at least SS.

What happened to Felix ? Did you see the match ? I don’t know anything about Bemelmans except presumably he’s older and more experienced.

Don’t know what happened above ! I wrote the first comment which then vanished totally so I rewrote it and now both are there. It’s not self-importance I swear. Computers….

The second comment is better – I remembered the word entropy 🙂

I don’t think that Felix’s loss to Bemelmans is a big deal, because in this hyper-competitive day and age, the young guns aren’t “marching to inevitable victory, sweeping aside the rusty remnants of a faded age of glory” (to use bombastic language). As Federer said not too long ago, the “old fogies” will still be around for a few years yet. The age of the NextGen is still stuck in the “elevator of progress, going up and down”. Overall difficulty level on Tour is a quantum leap over the 1980s/1990s/early 2000s (early aughts?).

Donaldson pulls out of Winston-Salem and his U.S. Open is in doubt. He has a knee injury that kept him out of Cincinnati and his ranking will drop since he reached the QFs in Cincy last year.

I’d expect him to play in NY but the betting money is that he won’t win a match after this injury.

Duke – I wouldn’t be too hard on Svitolina – she’s still young and maybe a bit naïve and says and does things she may later regret. I’m sure she really wants to do better but it could take time and a re-arrangement of her priorities. I wonder if she is getting good advice re nutrition etc. The WTA is supposed to help in things like that, so we are told.

As far as the other women you admire for their focus go, they may indeed have private lives – they just aren’t talking about them to the media. Simona, Angie etc weren’t born yesterday. Their interviews are usually a yawn because they say only what they want you to know. Gossip starts from the odd comment dropped when someone’s not paying attention. Or something ill-advised on IG. You quickly learn. Petko, whom you admire, is extremely sophisticated in that way. She could run seminars 🙂

Scoop,

You keep looping/lopping DY together with The Koz. Come on, that’s ridiculous. DY
‘s won 123 matches on tour, The Koz 5. DY’s been as high as #39, The Koz #115. The Koz’s career at 20 is most likely over for being a top 100 player, DY at 29 beat Stan Wawrinka a couple of weeks ago. He might be #238 now, but I’ll wager you he’s back inside Top 100 by this time next year.

Looping DY with The Koz is like looping Roger Federer with Vince Spadea.

I don’t think it’s a given that Felix is going to be a Top 20 player. His backhand looked like a hole to me and we’ve seen what sub-par backhands (read Jack Sock) can do to a player’s hopes of being an elite player.

Haase with no regard for the NextGen as he beat Shapo last week and Zverev now.

If these guys can’t handle Haase, we shouldn’t expect them to contend for Slams.

Duke,

You make a good point regarding NextGen players, but I’m sure you wish you could stink your way to 124 wins on tour. DY’s too good to be ranked no 238. He’s the same age as Spadea when Vince came back from no 227 to no 19. I don’t think we’ll see DY get so high, but he’s not finished yet and he’s very talented.

Dan, must be nice living in the past. Fact is that DY, like Sock, is currently terrible. Of course, if we want to live in the past, only one of them is racist so there is that.

Oh Canada! Looks like we have another milos v Shapo showdown.

Muguruza goes out to Tsurenko and Kerber is losing 1st set to Pav and then the rain comes down.

Catherine is right. The coaching makes the women look mentally frail and in need of a male voice since all the coaches are men. I assume this idea was by a man who figured the women’s game was too feminine.

How do these women win Slams without the coach? It’s amazing.

People make it sound as though Felix has been doing poorly, and that’s not the case. He is No. 114 in the live rankings, by far the youngest in the top 200. The only other 18-year-old I can find is Kecmanovic, who is several months older than Felix and is ranked No. 196.

Felix won his first Challenger title at 16, and had 3 Challenger titles before the age of 18. Only Novak, Delpo and Gasquet have done that.

To compare him with Shapo, each won a junior Slam, and of course they won the USO boys’ title together. But Shapo has 2 Challenger titles, 1 less than Felix, and Denis was still playing Challengers last July, so it’s not as though he played fewer of them. When he turned 18 he was ranked about No. 178, so much lower than Felix at the same age.

Felix is still breaking records. Last June, when he successfully defended his Lyon title at age 17, he became the youngest player ever to retain a Challenger title. The kid is doing just fine.