ILE rolling non-slam Tennis thread

idk like celeb gossip writing p much?

hey tennis ilxors, any folks have strong feelings/experiences abt best tour events to attend in person? thinking abt planning a trip & would love it to coincide w/ a tourney. was considering rome clay cts in may. nb i live in east coast usa. thx

oof the pointlessness of that Bouchard fluff piece. It's going to be worse than Kournikova.

I've never attended any tournament apart from Wimbledon, the YEC and a couple of challengers, strangely. I'd willingly attend any tbh. Rome would definitely be high on my list (much more so than Madrid, which rarely gets raved about). Closer to home Charleston is meant to have a superb atmosphere etc despite the quality of the entry list not being what it used to be. Monte Carlo always looks special though Monaco generally seems hellish. Eastbourne always looks good, rain aside! And I'd definitely contemplate any Slam qualies, a ton of superb tennis and drama for free.

nadal not getting enough depth, been his problem ever since the french

waking up straight into a hilarious Chardy choke. Up *6-5 in the third set TB...back-to-back DFs, of course!

I will never go back to Queen's until Hewitt retires - ticket prices are £££ for anything after the 2nd round and avoiding him before then is near-impossible :( Shame as it's a great little venue. Lex I'd be up for Wim qualies this year if I can get time off!

yes I'll 100% be going so let me know if you do! It's a great day out.

thanks for this Andy: http://instagram.com/p/xlcLNbohpg/

lmaoooooo @ that set

Kaia desperately trying to choke from *5-0 up. SP at *5-0...horrible DF. SP at *5-4...even worse than DF. On her fourth SP Ivanovic stops to challenge a ball that was obviously in to hand the set over anyway.

i'm not watching but lololol Federer is a set and a break down to... Millman?

or is the score thingy reversed, I don't even know

Pironkova has to play qualies in Sidney. Hopefully the courts are as fast as they were last year...

Hard to believe Fed nearly lost two nights ago. He was very good just then against Dimitrov. Though Dimitrov's second serve and backhand where craptacular, so, that.

Meanwhile Serena is totally puffballing v. A-Rad at the moment. I didn't see the Bouchard match but if she played like this then I can totally get that.

Serena just hit a serve at 103km/h. I mean, at least hers are going in. This match is very bad and I am going to pretend it's not happening.

Things that are funny though: Rennae Stubbs shading Sabine Lisicki.

Oh and the Hopman cup mixed turned out to be hilarious. I went out for some drinks in a hipster bar across the street from me (oh my GOD, I can't believe the sorts of people I now share a suburb with) to avoid watching Sharapova/Ivanovic or Isner/Janowicz, and got back at the right time, and it was a treat.

Serena squealing and looking terrified any time Janowicz got a first ball in. Radwanska actually being a servebot after the nightmare that was her serve in the first half of the singles. Isner's physical incapacity to deal with low balls at the net being hilarious. Radwanska basically telling Janowicz what to do because he's obviously too stupid to deal with it.

Then during the commercial breaks bathing in the pleasure of seeing Hingis. Bitch's inside-out forehand, still got it.

Fed/Raonic match was of absolutely superb quality. A real pleasure to watch sustained big hitting and good rallies.

Gavrilova played super-well against Bencic, who completely dissolved in a fit of temper in response

Happy Federer came through that one.

Oh yeah, and pleased that Aga got some sort of win over Serena in her career, even if it was an unofficial match against Exorena. I know you can't extrapolate much from Serena's Hopman Cup form but she really did sustain some seriously bad tennis all week, disinterest would be the only positive.

Townsend losing in Hobart qualies to weaponless Soler Espinosa is a bad loss.

Shameful of the Sydney organisers not to give defending champ Pironkova a WC, hope she repeats the win from qualies again.

Yeah, that is definitely shameful. You can see the argument for not giving one to Azarenka, who also wanted one, because they'd already allocated them before the request as she only wanted it as a result of her R1 loss in the previous event, but not giving one to the previous year's winner is completely disgusting.

Would have loved to have gone but I have a stupid job this year. Grr. WHY. I might see if I can get to a night session or two as the venue is about halfway between work and home.

re: Serena's awfulness, I tell you, 13-1 on Wozniacki looks like very attractive odds. I am really thinking of putting a loose fifty on that.

I like Thiem's game a lot but this Struff match is demonstrating that off clay, he really can be smothered by power

the Giorgi-Sanders match is an early candidate for worst match of 2015

I know it's easy to mock Rodionova but her Twitter snark about Tennis Australia's favouritism was right. Can't believe they snubbed her for an AO WC in favour of utterly useless ITF journeywomen who'll never achieve even her modest career. Someone should tot up how much cash Rogowska's earned in SEVEN years of getting free Slam WCs just because she's Australian, despite a) never being ranked high enough to enter directly, b) never successfully coming through qualifying when she's actually made to play it, c) never reaching the top 100.

Well, yeah. I mean, Rodionova scarcely deserves one, but that amount she does deserve one dwarfs the amount Rogowska does. Rogowska is pathetic. Can we please remember that match with Safina at the US Open? I mean, that was about the worst match I've ever seen at a professional level. At 3 main draw wins, her record only looks good next to Marinko Matosevic.

How is she 23? I feel like she's been losing in the first round since about 2002.

Time for Tennis Australia to give her the Bogdanovic treatment.

I watched that Fast4 thing and it was terrible and it was possibly rigged.

Can we please remember that match with Safina at the US Open? I mean, that was about the worst match I've ever seen at a professional level.

And that's her career highlight!

And the thing is Rogowska in turn still deserves a WC more than any other non-ANasty AUS woman. Rodionova's terrible sister and Storm Sanders, really? And you have some vaguely promising juniors but they're all so unproven, and none of them made a move in either your summer ITFs or the warm-ups.

Wimbledon instituting the 250 ranking rule for GBR WCs was such a positive step - plus the willingness to give WCs to foreign players. The AO bills itself as the Slam of Asia-Pacific but only reserves one measly WC for Asian players. Tanasugarn, who was the finalist in the Asian play-off, or Doi, who just won the HK 50K challenger, would both be better choices than Sanders or Rodionova Jr.

(To be completely accurate, the worst match I've ever watched was Cornet/Scheepers at Sydney three years ago.)

Looking forward to seeing where Giorgi/Sanders will fit into this, bless the Hobart tournament for archiving it for posterity

Radwanska: gone. Halep: withdrawn.

WIN THIS PETRA, I MEAN IT SHOULD NOT BE HARD.

Good decisions by Aga and Simona there to rest up for the AO. Petra should follow suit if she has any sense.

BZS dismantling Shanksur right now <3

meanwhile Watson extends her h2h vs Stephens to 4-0 in Hobart, except Stephens didn't even get a set this time. 63 61.

Back in Florida, the Nicole Vaidisova comeback hits another barrier: 17-yr-old former top 15 junior Anna Bondar of Hungary, in the first qualifying round of a 25K, 63 57 16. I don't see Vaidisova sustaining her motivation if she ends up having to shlep around these US challengers losing to college players and juniors for too long...

I actually thought Aga was showing some semblance of racquet head acceleration against Cornet, though her play could still have been better. Just saw the end and she was totally "don't care"

the Kerber/Gavrilova 3.15am finish was crazy, Gavrilova was just fried at the end. Hilarious on-court coaching call by Kerber, her coach was like "Angie it's 3am can we not do this right now, just play better"

Great tweet by Dasha afterwards https://twitter.com/Daria_gav/status/555049313806462976

Pironkova was so confident and brilliant against BZS. We need to treasure the two times per year this happens. If she defends from qualies again!

P3tra v Gajdosova was decent quality bashing, though Gajdosova totally fell to pieces after not breaking at 4-3.

Incredulous and so impressed that after staying out there til 3am last night, Kerber is still playing - and winning - at midnight today, having come back from a bagel set down.

Great to see Delpo's comeback off to a good start too!

You can totally see Kerber *fighting* again in the SF and then losing again to Pironkova.

You really can.

Kerber well on the way to a fighting win, that is to say, she's lost the first set.

bombshell

http://time.com/3694659/serena-williams-indian-wells/

woah

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B9UMnwOIcAAb9ip.jpg:large

Myskina on-court coaching Masha.. what a sight.

First caption that came to mind with that picture was "Good job. I could still have you killed."

For some reason they're all smiles

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/B9U5brAIYAAdZ7o.jpg:large
http://pbs.twimg.com/media/B9VI0F4CQAEusSs.jpg:large

It's been 10 years! I don't know why anyone is surprised. A few catty remarks a decade ago ≠ depthless hate 4eva.

How about that Petkovic, 12-10 and 8-6 in the third victories on back-to-back days to clinch the tie. Fed Cup MVP.

Victor Estrella Burgos in Quito, first Dominican to win an ATP title! His late-career blossoming has been pretty great to see.

mathieu is playing well v dimitrov

wow dimitrov ripped some winners @ mp down a la sharapova

that was Peak Niculescu against Flipkens there, no other player's game puts such a huge smile on my face. The slices, the lobs, the volleys, that ridiculous moment when she ran around her BH so far she was standing in the tramlines and just smacks an impossibly angled inside out BH winner.