ILE rolling non-slam Tennis thread

this match is so so bad

cannot believe Kei managed to win that set

never want to see anything like it ever again

You probably won't in the next 90 minutes or so, because he probably will drop in a hole quickly.

Ugh why am I waiting up to watch Petra probably lose in the most frustrating fashion to Ma$ha AGAIN ffs.

I think Petra will win!

wtf there's a huge wide-ranging broadband outage and I can't watch this and am reduced to using my phone to get updates. Why could this not have happened when there were no streams grrrr

siiiigh @ everything that transpired from 4-2

Thanks Kvitty for finally giving Masha some confidence ;)

kei and ferrer at 9-9 in the 3rd set tiebreak. kei saved 2 MP already on ferrer's serve!

and he wins 11-9! good tournament for him.

What a ridiculous MP for Nishikori to win! Dominated the rally then shanked two shots that still landed in, then Ferrer hit a UE anyway.

92 combined UEs, lol. Good to see Nishikori winning ugly, I guess.

*glances at scoreboard*

*does not re-open Petra/Ma$ha stream*

Don't know why I didn't subscribe to tennistv earlier.

Nice win for Dolgopolov over Stan, who really caved in at the end. Glad to see Dolgo finally being consistent...

6-2 vs. the top 20 in 2014 for Dolgo

nice way to bounce back from the mess vs. Lajovic too

he'd better beat the Isner/Berdych winner

yeah hopefully berdych loses soon because I don't want to see another Nadal-Berdych match ever

Federer's dropped only 18 points on serve in three matches (faced one BP). Looks like that racket is working out for him.

really entertaining match this. also even though i'm expecting Nole in 2 and it could be a total mess i still can't wait for Nolandy

that crosscourt backhand winner by Andy :)))

Domi makes the top 10 <3 Third Slovak in history to do so after Habsudova and Hantuchova.

Federer and Miami are a bad mix.

Nishikori way more offensive this year, good to see.

whoa would never have expected a win over in-form Fed after the mess of a match vs Ferrer. Happy for Kei! Sad I missed it.

it's pretty weird that Nishikori and Djokovic have only played twice ever (and split wins!) (Nishikori's came at the end of 2011 when Djokovic was running on fumes generally)

Nishikori's aggression levels have gone up but I'd like to see them go up more, he still lapses into passivity during matches - against Ferrer he was content to engage in so many nothingy BH-to-BH rallies, but he at least seemed to recognise every so often to step it up.

another h2h that made me laugh was re: Keothavong comparing Cibulkova's pomes with Ivanovic's ajdeeeeees on her BT Sport commentary. Turns out she's 3-0 against them combined. (Keothavong has wins over eight of the current top 20, which just seems incredibly bizarre.)

mm this is like last year's final in a microcosm, so far

Sharapova peaked and then Serena woke up

She's been competing believably the last 3 out of 4 times they've met but in the end what good is that.

she's competing amazingly even now, even after blowing the first set

This is why I don't get the argument that it's all mental - if mentality had anything to do with it Sharapova would be completely beaten down by now. It might be mental in the sense that Serena's mentality is strengthened but it's basically a match-up issue.

Eh, they've met so many times even if it's a poor match-up she should've won one of the many times she's had a shot or serena's had a poor day. She often does break down after some crucial point goes against her. Of course it's a bad match-up as well but Serena's lost agains journeywomen with similar styles.

Also screw that game going that way just now, agh.

never got the sense that it is that much of a mental thing, i'm sure the h2h plays on Maria's mind but at the same time she always seems pretty good at shaking off the losses and her attitude towards it seems pretty balanced generally. Serena obv still LOVES beating her though

love Maria's outfit btw. if i want her to ever beat Serena then it's when she's dressed like this

Welp. Lots of very short points in a row for Serena

I'm not a Raonic fan, but I really think he's on the verge of breaking through. He's much more aggressive from the baseline with Ljubicic. Needs to stop having these matches where he has like 7 DFs.

also he apparently lost like 15 pounds. He always was a little chunky.

Cibulkova murdering these returns, wow

Nishikori w/d :((( And the other SF is...not really worth watching.

and, ha, Nole's second w/o of the tournament. Not a good look for the ATP

lol @ men's tennis

fun fact that I discovered last night though, and one that I can't believe I didn't know before -

in the 1997 US Open women's final, 16-yr-old Martina Hingis beat 17-yr-old Venus Williams
in the 1997 US Open girls' final, 18-yr-old Cara Black beat 17-year-old Kildine Chevalier

Playing that junior final must have felt so anticlimactic even for the participants. Black still went on to about as great a career as someone with her build could have had though. This was the only time the senior final was younger than the junior final that I remember (maybe in the early 80s or before?) - the only other all-teenage Slam finals since I started following tennis were Roland Garros '97 (19-yr-old Iva Majoli d. 16-yr-old Martina Hingis) and the US Open '99 (17-yr-old Serena Williams d. 19-yr-old Martina Hingis). Respective junior finals were 15-yr-old Justine Henin beating 18-yr-old Cara Black and 15-yr-old Lina Krasnoroutskaya beating 17-yr-old Nadia Petrova.

The entire "tennis is dominated by older players now" trend is fascinating to me, not least because the causes are still so up for debate - so many factors but so many anomalies clouding the debate as well (ie, you can extrapolate little from Li Na's career trajectory). Increased physicality and training for 30-somethings, sure, and people talk about AER on the women's side - but we've had teenage prodigies post-AER, it's just that they all burned out or stalled for disparate reasons (Vaidisova stopped caring, Karatantcheva had the drugs ban, Golovin was chronically injured, Larcher de Brito stopped growing, Paszek...I think she had ill-timed injuries?). Dearth of junior talent because with the economy athletic kids are pushed towards a stable wage in a team sport? And just as that seemed to become the status quo, along come Bencic and Konjuh, 16-yr-olds who are winning at Tour level already.

It's so weird how last Aug I'd have given Li a decent shot at beating Serena anywhere, one of the few I felt could actually do that. Since then Li's gone up a level, won another Slam, reached the YEC final etc, but I'd now give her LESS of a shot, because of the nature of their last two matches (embarrassing herself at the USO; and at the YEC, peaking against a subpar Serena and still getting bagelled in the deciding set)

Like, before Li would always play Serena close but today I expect a very straightforward match.

Li is bossing Serena around really impressively just like in the YEC final. This is the kind of match that turns on one point, after which Li will fail to win a game, and in a few games' time we should see that point

whoa Li Na chipping and charging successfully off Serena's second serve at deuce

and that was just after Serena got back to deuce from 0-40. A really well-timed tactic to stop that momentum shift in its tracks.

Fuck's sake. Didn't even get the set this time.

My god that dropshot. 10 feet over the bet

*net

Serena peaking now, Li...the opposite. Every fucking time.

yeesh that challenge