Change The Laver Cup Format

Laver Cup should do what the NBA all star game did, 2 captains select teams from the pool. For example, Fed and Nadal captains, flip a coin for who gets first pick. Captains select their team one by one. Or the coaches select their teams from the pool.

Hard to read? Are you giving Osaka credit for winning, sounds like a lot of added pressure on her to save the tournament..
Who is Kyrgios’s rival? Stan? Play Sock? Youre kidding? Tsitsipas/ Medvedev, and Zverev, might be a nice exo in Europe, not raising a blip on the” Event” meter here..FAA maybe down the line if they become rivals…Theyd have to add Coco vs SW to the bill.

Biggest takeaway from Laver Cup..Thiem is probably closer to 5’10 than his listed 6’1…😊

Bad losses for him too

Scoop – Simona apparently has a boyfriend, some 40 year old businessman from Macedonia and she was pictured on holiday with him after Wimbledon, so whatever her relationship with Cahill is it probably isn’t that. She also has two parents and a brother so it’s not a kind of father substitute or anything. Neither is it a relationship she’s hiding. She speaks very openly about Darren, really as though he’s a relative and a mentor, not just a coach. If she didn’t talk about him herself then we’d probably not be expressing our views either.

Some players are very closed about their private lives and I’ve always thought we should respect that, so I’d never get into gossip about them – but as I said Simona is quite open and this may be her way of avoiding gossip. So we should probably leave it like that.

Scoop, how many unsubstantiated rumors are you holding these days? Glad you are keeping the integrity of the sport in place – to me the no/nos are gambling, steroids, and abusiveness E.g. tennis parents that abuse tournament officials, players that throw towels at ball kids or who are mean to them, over abusiveness of refs and lines people just trying to do their job. Number one and two gambling and steroids, then case by case on other stuff (is the linesperson thing constant or a one time thing? etc).

I read on some absolutely untrustworthy source about a Bajin rumor past Wimbledon (not this one), that kinds of feeds into his the guy has some personal problems he might want to get some help with, aka if a coach has no personal life they do the best they can (and not just the rumor of the Sofya girl, which is also unsubstantiated).

Anyways. Not to drag anyone’s dirty laundry here through the comments board. I know players enjoy the co-ed tournaments more but I don’t want my mind to race ahead too far because I’m here for the tennis.

Kyrgios greatest rival is “You’ve got to be kidding me”. His rival is Kyrgios. The guy is the craziest player on court since the Nastase era.

Brilliant player at times. But usually outclassed by most players he loses to and most players he beats, with on occasional unbelievable you can’t be serious never seen that kind of sterling play before may never see that shot again kind of tennis.

That has a place in the sport. But he has no rival, only peers that wish he cared more about the game than himself. Yours truly as well. But as I see more tennis and the years go by, I say: I’ve seen it all in the sport and there are some things I don’t think we’ll see

One of them is Kyrgios winning a slam or caring much more about the sport. He and his brother are apparently the same on this stuff, both willing to get into fights for no reason.

This Kyrgios wasn’t the 17, 18 year old that burst onto the scene back in 2013. This is all grown up Kyrgios, love the spotlight hate the sport Kyrgios, wish I were a pro basketball player Kyrgios, you’ll never see me put my best effort out there because I’m afraid I’ll lose Kyrgios. Love the money, love the women, hate the price.

Kyrgios, put it this way: Australia should have two top ten players and one top fifteen player – Kyrgios, De Minaur, Tomic. Kyrgios should be making semifinals or quarters at every slam – he has two grand slam QF in 2015 Australia and 2014 Wimbledon. Those are both four to five years ago and receding fast into history.

The Aussie greats should figure out why their men are such problems on tour. Tomic and his father, where for Tomic the goal is to lose every time, maybe as revenge for being forced to be a pro player.

Kyrgios loves the spotlight hates the sport. Not sure what to do with this guy.

De Minaur, the only one with a decent head on his shoulders.

The Kokki, whose body can’t handle the sport. The most unfortunate case – good Berdych like player with a nice game, long and strong.

Sascha Zverev played great in the match TB and deserved the win for Team Europe. As a Milos Raonic fan I was very disappointed, but at least Milos seems to have gotten through 2 matches without getting injured, so that is a minor miracle. And Team World nearly pulled it off this year.

From what Cahill has said, his daughter thinks of Simona as one of the family, so perhaps that is the best description.

Scoop, your scoops are explosive. I’m glad you’re not dispensing the dirt and opted for not blowing up players careers. Nadal would survive any major news piece on whatever if he truly did have some kind of rendezvous as you’re saying (which would be like a lit stick of dynamite to his family), and the timing of it would coincide with Nadal losing Uncle Toni as traveling coach given Toni defacto retired in February 2017.

Toni was task master of task masters and kept Nadal away in a protective bubble from the forces beyond that cocoon. Toni take was you’re always going to be grateful for the chance to play pro tennis and you will act like it.

I did notice the very positive comments from the fading Canadian of 2014 fame on Nadal a few years back with a Google search, but nothing that sets off alarm bells.

That said I’m not one to know the rumor mill and I have no idea what comes out of the locker rooms of those in the sport. That could explain why Kyrgios has no problem hitting a ball at Nadal. But Kyrgios has so many problems it’s hard to know how many scores he’s settling when he plays.

Why no Goerges rumors…these men have so so taste 😉

Andrew – I’m not sure Kerber will like to go on losing in the first or second rounds, but as you say (I think) that’s her choice. A player like Petko eg seems quite happy with the way things are, while she’s developing things off court. Just can’t see Angie in the qualifying. Not when she can remember being No 1. So
the morning might come when she’ll wake up and say, I’m not doing this any more. Or she may get a coach, tidy up a few things and stay around as long as Stosur.

Hard to let go of the glamour though, and know the phone’s going to stop ringing by and by however many millions you’ve got. Or even if you’re Genie B.

It’s in Boston so Kyrigos can play where the Celtics play, this may be motivation for him to have a decent year so he’s the marquee player next year.

Second, Canadian and rumor mill tennis media would eat that up. Not sure if I’d be surprised or not, but these are players that cultivate their image carefully, so it would smash things up quite a bit.

Genie haters would be out in full force. Nadal protectors would be out in full force. This would be front page stuff, all over the tennis airwaves. If it’s true they kept it under lock and tossed the key into the gutter.

At least Goerges’ physio gets it. He must be beside himself. As in how did I luck out 🙂 Poor Azarenka and her physio didn’t work out, same for Henin who blew up her marriage as she was like dude, you do nothing! That seemed like one of the better stories, the Henin reconciliation with her family.

Yeah this sounds a lot like the books of years past. As much as the tour changes it does not change at all.

Hartt, I’m not trying to get anyone to care at all. I care a little – Nadal has been promoted as the most humble man in the world. He’s a generous man. He is essentially good. He gives everything he’s got on the court. All fine, all dandy.

If it’s yeah, know what, the Nadal/betrothed relationship is kind of rocky because X,Y,Z, then I say we’ll, that doesn’t sound like Nadal’s the most wonderful person that has ever graced the Earth. Sounds more like a guy that has problems just like anyone. That isn’t immune to the perks of being on top of the world. It tarnishes things a little.

What if it were worse?

Re, Agassi, I was disappointed to learn of the man’s struggle with crystal meth. That’s some bad stuff, kills people. And Nadal had some harsh words for Agassi, too. But now that Nadal’s had a full life on tour, why wouldn’t he also have to endure some friendly fire for being a little less than what we see him to be?

As for the truth of it I don’t know and won’t speculate. But it does lessen my opinion of the guy if it’s true, only because he’s been the ultimate warrior and beyond reproach. The Spartan warrior. He might be the Spartan warrior who has lucked out and kept things under the rug. He might not be.

So yeah, lessens my opinion if true. Djokovic’s oddness did as well and his wife, who was superfan number one, is now launching all sorts of Jelena products. That’s a little odd but, shows they are people. Not all is rosy. Still a great champion, but lessens my opinion if true.

As for the Canuck, I’ll leave it at she definitely prefers happiness over success 😉

I don’t think the big outlets promote the tour – I think they don’t have the space to go into exposes etc. Sports Illustrated has cut back its coverage of the slams significantly and it’s hurt the sport. ESPN does good pieces on the matches and can’t get around on other issues.

I’m generally about the play. But sometimes there are stories beyond the stories that get at hey this is why Djokovic was off the tour for two years, Jelena was beating him with a broom everyday etc. That never happened but it would be relevant to why some player went from number thirty to number 230. Harrison has some kind of story, he may have problems that no one knows about. He is sporting the crazy beard again.

Noah Rubin talks about this. I know some folks hate his blog and thinks Rubin may be fishing for an exit from the hard way too hard tour, but isn’t Rubin doing something right on tour by saying listen the tour has a lot to it, it’s not just look at that forehand?

But are these EX coaches, or EX agents, or EX hitting partners? Hope these scoops arent coming from people with their own agenda

I was skeptical of Rubin’s blog and I suggested here at TP that he was looking at his post tennis career with the project and publicity. Then I looked at it and say now, this is a public service. Rubin cares about his fellow players welfare. He doesn’t want to see promising player careers cut short and he doesn’t want to see players destroy themselves on or off tour. He saw the drug and alcohol problems, part of any sport and society, as well as the tanking and mad scramble to schedule flights for tournaments. Aka tanking to play other tournaments. Tanking because they were exhausted.

That’s a public service and interest in his fellow players lives. Rubin may yet have something as special in his career as a slam, which is a nice insider account of the tour that actually helps players.

I am not saying tennis coverage should just be about backhands, etc. I enjoy stories that go beyond that, which is why I’ve often said how much I like Scoop’s Biofiles. And I read Rubin’s posts. What I’m saying is I don’t care about a rumour (and it is a rumour) that so and so spent the night with so and so. That is simply none of my business.

In fact, I wish there were more in-depth articles about players, where we got a better idea of their personalities – especially pieces about players who aren’t as well-known as the top stars. But I want to read about facts, or at the very least, informed opinion, not conjecture.