What if Roger Federer summoned his inner beast… The Rogimal?

Andrew, actually Elina was stopped by Halep’s amazing comeback at RG. But she has to be doubting herself now that these other women are coming up and Ostapepenko – or Alona as I shall refer to her hereafter – is a rising force. Alona looks nothing at all like the player I saw fall apart against CeCe Bellis at Stanford last year.

The U.S. male player who should be embarrassed is Sock. He’s supposed to be mixing it up at the Dimitrov and Goffin level. Instead those players are miles above him, while Thiem and Zverev have left him in the dust. What has Sock accomplished? Some meaningless 250 tournwy wins. Samimal took out Goffin, Thiem, Kyrgios and Nadal to win his second career 500 this year. Ask yourself if Sock could do that.

Anyone watching Tennys Sandgren v. Austin Krajicek from Winnetka? Sandgren leads 7-6, 3-4.

Angie will do ok in the future, perhaps win a minor title or two, but she’ll never be the player she was at her best in 2016. More mature, more insightful and so on, but not the same. The memories are never erased.
Has happened in other sports.

BTW my two Wimbledon predictions worked out – Nadal won’t win and Kerber’s lost No1. Not rocket science but I just knew Rafa wouldnt make it 🙂

Kerber’s proven she’s top twenty this year. Last year she was the consensus number one. Significantly worse performance. It happens. How could anyone expect her to pull it off again, she would have had to had a lot more help. Muguruza hired Conchita Martinez, Wimbledon champion, to guide her. Kerber would have had to make some major announcement, such as hiring Chris Evert etc or someone else, Henin, Aranxta Sanchez, etc.
This is all unlikely. Kerber this year is Pre 2016 never won a slam Kerber. It’s just the way it is.

To be fair most USA men played up to their seeding. If top 64 they made second round etc. Sock didn’t. Seems to be the right bar, play at your seeding level.

Regarding Federer against these younger players (and they are all younger guys compared to Roger), I thought Pseudofed’s tweet on yesterday’s match put it well. “Honestly, there is nothing more lovely on a sunny day than taking your child to the park to hit a few tennis balls.”

Or maybe Moya really did want to have time with his young family. He is not the main coach yet, that is supposed to happen next season. But at Rafa’s stage of his career, does he really need advice on how to do well at a Slam?

Is Radwanska getting married soon ? I know she planned to but must’ve missed the announcement. (no one sent me an invite – shame ! No invite to Andy’s wedding either – maybe it got lost in the post )

Other players have improved and Kerber has regressed. Her game is watered down enough that it looks like a worse version. This isn’t Kerber 2.0. This is Kerber version pre-slam 2015, where no one cared. Now like me sadly I only care enough to follow her nosedive rather than the non-event of her comeback, which doesn’t exist.
Konta has become more interesting. Coco has become more interesting. And Kerber has shrunk.

Catherine, a commie said that Aga is getting married in a couple weeks to her former hitting partner. Yesterday they showed him watching her match.

Oh dear Andrew I don’t lose interest in people as easily as that. Angie will always interest me because she’s a human being and has gone through ups and downs which are in themselves interesting, psychologically. Of course if she won the USO I imagine she’d suddenly become fascinating again, even to you.
(And I don’t think other players ever ‘feared’ Kerber – she doesn’t have that kind of personality)

Tennis is in some ways a very snobbish sport where only big wins matter. I don’t see it that way.
Angie probably won’t be doing that much winning in the future though so I won’t be mentioning her here much either. Not that Konta will take her place – she seems to me flat and uninspiring however many tournaments she racks up. I even find it hard to recall what she looks like.

I hope Simona beats her. I fact I hope Simona wins the whole thing.

Can’t say I expected Venus to straight-set Alona like that. Didn’t see much of it but looked like Venus certainly outserved her.

Would love to see her win it now.

Catherine, I think that Boris Becker declared bankruptcy in order to evade his financial obligations, probably because he does have the money to pay up, but doesn’t want his capital & assets to be known (the closest example I can think of is Bjorn Borg, who also declared bankruptcy in the late 80s/early 90s, but it was rumored that he had the vast bulk of his fortune in the Channel Islands; possibly Guernsey or Jersey, because he never seemed to be out of cash, or out of any means at all). Borg got into business after the end of his tennis career, and he had a few failed companies under his belt (remember BBDG — Bjorn Borg Design Group). Now, he has the much more successful Bjorn Borg line, but those business failures rubbed a lot of businessmen the wrong way (they put their reputations on the line for Borg when he opened his big office in Fifth Avenue back in the day). All this from the Swedish documentary on Borg.

Scoop –
I think you’re right and I remember trying to say something like this before in a way that wouldn’t seem hurtful (as if she’d read it !).
She’s from Northern Europe, a bit cool, a bit remote, on court, her clipped German accent creates a bit of distance in interviews. She doesn’t give much, we don’t feel we know too much about her although she does a lot of social media and seems outwardly friendly and co-operative.
I’m not sure this lack of crowd appeal affects her performance – she might feel uncomfortable surrounded by mass adulation etc and I suspect she won’t mind reliquishing No 1. A self-contained person perhaps.
She’s popular in Germany and that’s probably enough for her. No idea how fellow players see her.
Coming from a similar type background I can identify with this and the absence of the Angie X factor doesn’t bother me at all. I just wish her career had worked out better lately – and had not encouraged some followers to underrate her as a player and be dismissive of her as a woman.

So it’s Konta, Muguruza, Venus, and winner of Rybaricova-Coco?
Wow.
Halep’s departure was never in doubt. She did well to make the quarters. She’s had a strong two slams. And look at it this way: her rival Ostapenko didn’t make it any further also.

Who else was a bad number one? There have been several. Being the Queen is great, but everyone wants your crown. That’s the issue. Once you get there it’s like ugh I have to do this too? Demands on the top player are heavy.

Well, we don’t know about Kerber’s practice and routines etc,or staff, we’re just guessing. I don’t think Scoop meant that Angie lost that match because she didn’t have a cheering section – it’s a more general point. Popularity helps – ask Serena. And if you play poorly for a while, go out in the 1st,second round a lot, then you don’t get match practice.
Angie said she’s learned ‘a few things’ in the past months but no one asked her what they were. Might have been interesting.
I think Pliskova will be next No 1.

Becker did have a place in Miami that he turned over to his ex-wife Barbara, and he’s good friends with Luis Garcia Fanjul (who may or may not be related to the prominent Fanjul family), so I wouldn’t be surprised if he decided to buy a place there again.

Kerber, Kuznetsova have a lot in common as two time slam champs. Both hall of fame first ballot entries in the future no doubt, and both also not having significant runs at or near the top ranking (Kuznetsova was #2 ten years back). Kuznetsova, not super popular either, certainly has a top game, but like Kerber so inconsistent.
It’s a hard sport. For what it’s worth both have exceeded their counterparts. Kuznetsova has beat out Myskina and Kirilenko and most Russians from her generation. Kerber exceeded Lisicki, arguably her more popular countrywoman, and others from Europe like Ivanovic, Pennetta etc. She’s proven hard work pays off.
Just that now that she’s gotten to the top it hasn’t been a notable tenure. Some of her old habits, as with Djokovic, crept back into her game. Hard sport.

Becker has friends in many bankruptcy friendly places in the world it seems and I’m sure his money problems will turn out to be just temporary embarrassments.
There was an interesting piece in one of the papers here on why Boris is more popular in Britain than Germany these days – it’s that British sympathy for a loser 🙂

Simona will win a GS title when she learns not to be so polite and satisfied about losing and stop the Pollyanna act which Cahill appears to encourage. She also needs to beef up her serve considerably – get a serving coach ?

Pliskova will have a better time at the top than Angie did. Life around her will be calmer. And I wonder if Kerber’s experience might say something to any player, man or woman, who wants that position above all else.
‘Remember what it took to get you there’.

Halep makes shrewd decision, hires Novotna for serve, Navratilova for volleys, Henin for strategy, and Evert for mental toughness. Coaching contract excludes on court coaching. She also drops by Macci academy on occasion, which convinces her to “hit harder”
The above will never, ever, ever happen.

Well gee Andrew – that lot’s going to cost Simona something but she could earn it back in triple Grand Slams 🙂
No, it won’t happen – Simona will keep racing around the baseline, reaching winning positions and then throwing them away, and follow up with ‘Big Hugs’ from Cahill as a reward.
So you can see I’m a trifle disillusioned.

Hmmm – that was a bit premature – and what is it with hips ? Murray apparently hampered with one today.