Coco vs Osaka AO Analysis

Great discussion here all, thank you.
Go Coco! Go Milos!

Scoop, I will hope Eurosport tv has included some of the Fucsovics match.
Silly I know, but I like him Just because of his “nightmare for commentators” name !

Gauff played how Osaka should. It’s indisputable, she wants this.

Huh? Serena Williams didn’t play badly, Wang played exceptionally, and right down the center on a lot of shots (preaching this to the wind!). I think Serena Williams is accustomed to winning these very early rounds, whether by a few balls or not. She’s had nine lives in a lot of tournaments. Given she made two of the last five finals at slams I don’t think she needs a rigged draw at all, just some good fortune.

That’s always possible, just less likely as the tour is extremely competitive now. Wang is similar to many players and if that is who Serena Williams is struggling against then that’s going to make for some tough losses, early or late in a draw.

Anyways. Serena Williams has plenty of game and plenty left in the tank. But it’s getting harder for her to win when she’s in position to do so, so that makes it a lot harder to win slams.

No one should feel sorry though, Serena Williams is a 23 time slam champion and among the greatest to ever pick up a racquet. If not the greatest. That’s pretty surreal. That the standard now is for her to get 24, 25 slams or bust is way off, especially because we celebrate a player getting one at all.

Cheers to Scoop. Primal, elemental desire, which drives Djokovic, Serena, Nadal, Federer, matters a lot. And there is something that happens on a court when one player makes an adjustment that disrupts the other player’s flow.

I really missed it for Gauff. That core red hot desire, once summoned, was going to be hard to ice. And Gauff summoned it, Cirstea noticed it, didn’t match it, and that was that. Same thing Djokovic did in hitting his ridiculous shot back in 2010 on match point down against Federer. Yes, Djokovic had to be able to hit that shot and had practiced it his whole life.

But he also had to be dialed in to do that. And he was.

So good for making that a big deal. It is. Without that red hot desire in a hard match these kinds of wins are hard to get. It’s a hard sport.

Sandgren is a tennis player. Sadly players have been too cavalier with their social media feeds. I don’t agree with a lot of things players say – but why should I even know any of this?

Why should I care if Mladenovic has a public shaming of Bajin? Again, this is stuff that’s unnecessary to know. It’s fun for entertainment value, gives me a sense of what the coach-player thing is, but it’s a little bit performance oriented.

Some players just play it smart. They post whatever their latest IG photo is and keep it there, at that level. E.g., you don’t know me, and this is what I want you to see. If you’re interested in my tennis, watch my matches.

As Bouchard has said before her “followers” can’t get enough. My feeling is the opposite: we don’t deserve it, and we probably don’t need it.

Andrew – Kerber posts on her twitter (or her manager does it for her) when she wins or when she’s doing something nice like buying a new necklace. When she loses there’s dead silence. Any one with half a brain who follows her (not me)knows what they’re getting. Or you’d hope so.
Nasty comments are also hastily removed. For Serena’s social media that’s a full time job. Lots of nut cases out there.

“Querrey does fine”. I think we’ve seen this one-size-fits-all way of looking at a player as a bottom-less pit. Go too technical and miss the passion. Focus only on the passion, and miss the holes in player games or fact that tennis remains a game of match-ups (as far as we all know it may be that Cirstea’s game is a ringer for Osaka’s and Gauff, now seeing a similar style played twice in a row, took advantage).

Who knows. Tennis is a bag of tricks anyways.

The things we revered in Pete Sampras, acknowledge stone-cold player assasin, are no longer revered or prized today. The passion McEnroe said Raonic lacked was no match for his ability to hold it all together when it counted against the passionate Tsitsipas.

There’s no theory that works for why one player does well and another does badly.

My thing is preparation matters and then competing during the match. It’s simple, pretty durable way of looking at the sport. Factor in the last time they played, any improvements made, any momentum going into the match, how well they are playing at the moment, then roll the dice and predict away.

Does my method work? NO. This is a competitive sport and the WTA is as competitive now as it was way back in 1990-1991 when Graf’s dominance got rocked and she was then living in a world where she made her competitors better. Same thing Serena Williams faces. She should recognize what she’s encouraged – a full on totally competitive tour.

That still somehow manages to have scores of 6-0 6-1 in the final two sets of WTA three set matches.

Yeah, no one can predict much of anything, passion or not.

As Agassi once said, if you could phone it in it wouldn’t be pro tennis.

The Gauff express continues to roll on. She really is something.

Having said that, Naomi was plain awful. I just think mentally she doesn’t have it all the time, we have seen it before. Like Catherine says, it could be the coaching or her rapper boyfriend but she doesn’t have the killer instinct of Andreescu or Gauff. In hindsight, look at how she reacted to the crowd after beating Serena at the Open and ask yourself, would Gauff or Andreescu behave like that? Naomi is going to have to find another gear to compete with these gals.

Sandgren is a dominant force and he will beat Fognini and either Fucsovics or Federer. I think Novak will be too tough for him in the semis.

I was glad to hear that Coco Gauff is anxious to meet Rod Laver. That shows proper respect towards a tennis legend.

Scoop – ha ha my anti-Christmas card list, it’s probably a lot longer than that. Not sure what Schuettler’s doing there – he just didn’t have much to offer as a coach. I have no feelings about him at all.

We don’t know what’s going on in Naomi’s mind. It’s a bit arrogant to assume we do. I suspect some people around US tennis did a whole lot of projecting and annointed her Big Bad Osaka when she’s clearly far from that and now they’re reversing as fast as they can and looking for someone to blame.

Got my Tennis Tonic innoculation. Wow, Tennis Tonic. I guess it has its place in the sport, they know their audience and pitch. Not the place for serious tennis!

Does once again give me a sense of the enormous marketing machines that the players themselves are manufacturing. Going all impolite here: if you’re promoting your latest vacation to all of your followers, and all of this is at the expense of practice time, my guess is your serve/backhand/something in your game is probably a little worse than it should be 🙂

If a player’s words matter, Osaka said Gauff was serving better, and Gauff said she prepared for Osaka’s pace. So if the match-up is different featuring the same players (the same players, where one player’s game is the same and another’s has changed), the result’s going to be a little different.

This is a good thing for any player to learn. If a player loses a match against an opponent, but throws them a different look the next time they play that the other player didn’t anticipate, it’s uncomfortable.

And as we all know, if you want to disrupt any player’s momentum, throw them something they weren’t expected. It’s going to be less pleasant. They are going to have to work mentally while also dealing with the feeling of “why is this happening, this didn’t happen last time!” and then put themselves down.

And you got them.

So this is a good move on the Gauff end. They prepped and that prep paid off.

Bad scouting ? Blame Fisette. Were Osaka’s team all born yesterday ?

Maybe Wim forgot there’s no occ. And, BTW, I knew that Gauff was serving better.Now how did I find that out?

I am not born with the mentality of a champion. OSAKA

During the press conference following her match against Coco Gauff, Naomi commented:

“I don’t really have the champion mentality yet, which is someone that can deal with not playing 100 percent. And I have always wanted to be like that, but I guess I still have a long way to go.

It’s just something that I think some people are born with and some people have to have really hard, trials and stuff, to get it.”

That says it all really.

Scoop, ya wrote a book on Rios, who has zero slams. Yet few had his artistry (which now only appears in the games of players such as Jabeur and Muchova, and occasionally in the forehand of Nishioka).

Gasquet will not win a slam title unfortunately, but he did have one of the more self assured one handers in tennis history.

I guess though if you’re not going to win something big, at least make it interesting out there. Don’t be anonymous cannon fodder. At least well remember Gasquet for his one hander and his excuse to get out of his suspension. And it is my favorite excuse.