Would you prefer if there was bad blood between Rafa and Roger?

You just want drama. 🙂 I think there is tons of drama in the matches themselves, and the enjoyment of watching these two amazing players being pushed to play their best against each other.

Each of these two players can appreciate how great the other is in a way that no one else truly can. I think that the genuine respect and liking they show for one another adds to the story, not detracts from it. There is enough antagonism in other areas of our world, so I am more than happy to have an escape from that when watching tennis.

Off topic but this is newest thread.

I noticed Pat Cash with Coco in Fed Cup. Is it usual for personal coaches to be around at Davis/Fed Cup ? I’ve never seen them before but maybe I wasn’t looking.

If every player’s coach turned up you’d have pretty big teams I imagine 🙂

Yes – I wanted Belarus to win but that is a big ask without Azarenka.

I was interested to read CoCos comments about her first match – she said she was ‘using the emotion of the crowd’ or something similar. I think CoCo listened to Julia Goerges and figured out she could do the same thing. She wouldn’t have thought that up on her own 🙂

Doubles news: An upset at the WTF. Harrison/Venus just won over Kontinen/Peers in SS, 6-4 and 7-6 (10-8). The US/New Zealand team has been doing very well. Maybe Ryan Harrison has a future in doubles.

Lol, did not mean to put down Harrison. Meant he could do well in doubles along with his singles.

Fed just had a fairly straightforward win over Sock. Jack did not play that badly, outside of too many DFs, and did get it to a TB in the 2nd set, but Fed was not really pushed in the match.

It looks like the US has a good chance at taking the Fed Cup. The American doubles team of Coco and Shelby Rogers won the first set. It is on serve in the 2nd. At least the doubles is not a dead rubber, as it so often is for Fed Cup.

Nope, I like the Roger-Rafa rivalry as is. There is no need for trash talking and bad mouthing. We have too many few examples of that. Having it the other way is rarer and so I like it, not to mention it sets a good example.

On a totally different topic, some time ago we were talking about players who hung in there, year after year, even when they weren’t getting good results. Filip Peliwo was mentioned. I have to admit I had totally given up on Peliwo, he was a very successful junior who seemed unable to make headway as a pro. But by beating Kudla in the Knoxville final today, Filip will finally make the top 200. He is now at No. 195 in the live rankings, just 1 spot ahead of fellow Canuck Brayden Schnur. Peliwo went up 84 spots, his ranking was so low he had to qualify for Knoxville.

Peliwo is now 23, will turn 24 in February. I know not all successful juniors make it to the pros. (Filip won 2 junior Slams and made the final of the other 2 in his last year as a junior.) I could never understand why his pro career was so very poor, not even making the top 200. Now that he has finally achieved that, wonder if this is the start of moving up the rankings, or just an aberration.

Fedal simply don't have the personality to insult each other. The harshest it has ever been is when Rafa publicly criticised Federer for not backing him up about the ranking system changes or something when they were both at the players council. Aside from that, nothing bad verbally ever came out no matter how heated their matches got.

btw Sampras was low key but he did have a go at players other than the Agassi incident, like when asked by media about difference between him and Rafter and he said the difference was '10 majors'……Pat Rafter was the classiest of them all and never trashed anybody, in fact coming from poor family he donated all his USO prize money to charity, that is an unbelievable level of generosity.

well it isn't classy to insult Rafter, who is a real class.

We talk about various players being ‘boring’ etc but we’ve really no right to say this kind of thing – we don’t know them personally, in their private lives away from the court. They may be far from boring and just not extraverted or given to expressing their feelings to the press etc or wearing their hearts on their sleeves and being otherwise accessible to everyone.

Players who are outgoing to the media are always popular; same with those who scream and yell and smash their rackets.

The unspoken rule, what happens in the locker room stays in the locker room. There is no way one can justify that as classy when you insult in public. Fed yelled at Djokovic's parents for a reason, maybe they yelled too loud or whatever, but it's fair and square as it's all on court. Racquet thrower he was, long time ago, but i can't see that it's really unclassy as it's not the least bit mean-spiriited. But to directly trash another's career with such verbal venom is very mean spirited, simple as that.

Hartt – yes, from what I saw of Sampras I liked him too. I admired his style and his total concentration on what he was doing.

You can usually tell when people are acting up on purpose. Eg, I noticed Kerber smashed her racquet in Zhuhai, a unique occurrence for her. That was a genuine moment of frustration and not a performance put on in order to seem more ‘interesting’.
Serena’s smashed a few but I’m pretty sure she knows smashing racquets is expected of her 🙂

If you want to talk about the biggest arguers in tennis you need to talk about John McEnroe. We always used to watch him play. He was always arguing with the umpire. His main catchphrases were "You cannot be serious." & "That wasn't out. That was in." He always used to throw his racquet too. I used to find his arguments almost as entertaining as his game.

You can’t judge the pre internet, pre tennis channel eras. Nowadays, you can see every match, read every transcript from pressers. Tennis players are brands now, before, they were just Tennis players.
A guy like Vitas G, would have been extremely popular in the internet era, he owned NYC nightlife, stylish game. The Swedes from Borg on,were grabbing Majors, they never threw rackets, argued with umps, or linesmen. Connors and MAC were not the norm, and the contrast with the well behaved grew Tennis in the late 70’s into the 80’s.

Joe – The main difference is that today we’ve got more information, too much, saturation level. And Vitas was a brand, believe me – so was Connors, so was McEnroe. Borg – what was Bjorn if he wasn’t a brand ? So was Chris Evert come to that.

In the days before information overload players stood out more.
Yes, you can read every transcipt but so what ? Read too many and you’ll find your brain going numb.
Fame, in all areas, means something else now. And as I’ve said before here a while back – maybe Andy Warhol was right.

I remember hearing about this back in the day. Capriati, as we all know, had some substance abuse and anger issues. Remember when she and Serena Williams would get into it? I used to scream at the tv, "HOT DAMN! GIRL FIGHT!" LOL! :lol6: (SInce I'm a woman this was ok. But…for the record? It's NOT ok if a guy does it! LOL!) Anyway…CapriatiSerena was an interesting matchup to say the least. Back in the day when Serena had actual rivals who could beat her and not all of these mediocre players who couldn't even tie Justine Henin's shoes. Sadly the current state of women's tennis is the future of men's tennis without the Big 4. Lots of average players playing average, boring tennis.

Busted – they’re not all boring, or mediocre. It wasn’t all a Golden Age back in the day either. And Serena’s got better over the last few years. The others haven’t got worse.