ILE rolling non-slam Tennis thread

super-interesting interview with Giorgi's dad

http://www.spaziotennis.com/2015/06/sergio-giorgi-i-love-brilliant-madness-cannot-stand-commonness/

there's a new ATP challenger/WTA itf pro tournament happening in my home town this week!
never knew what to make of papa Giorgi but that's great. like the stuff about using other sports to prepare and him defending Errani & Schiavone

Ilkley?! Some good names left in both draws, I'd be tempted to pop down.

wish i could but i'm not at home rn. apparently cats keeps running on the courts <3

Federer beats Karlovic in two in Halle semi without ever having a b-p and only forcing deuce once. Grass court tennis LOL. Kei withdrew hurt vs Seppi :/

Simon currently trying to pull off the same trick vs Anderson (32 aces and counting) at Queen's.

Seppi reaches his first 500 title when Monfils retires in the QF and Nishikori retires in the SF...

Kerber's 6-0 h2h over Lisicki is one of my favourite in tennis. Lisicki is more powerful and will hit more winners but is control of fuck-all in that match-up, Kerber just reads her game so well.

Poor Robson. Only gets 1 game off Gavrilova. Tough draw for qualies after so long off, but really, as hard as she hits and as nice as she seems to be, she was never going anywhere near the top 5 and if she were non-Anglo we'd have heard far less about her. Not all hype but mostly hype - the UK hasn't had much in the way of decent female players in aeons, but the WTA is stacked full of tall, slow moving girls who hit the ball hard and she wasn't that special. Even so it's hard not to feel a bit sorry for her!

im going to newport tomorrow, think the lineup is sock v jan hernyck (??) then dustin brown v ivo

im p psyched shd be cool

live Dustin is always good, hope he wins

meanwhile Tomic lost R1 and got arrested in a Miami Beach hotel room yesterday

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/tennis/33559994

hernych injures his knee at 1-0 1st set and has to resign :(

ivo also killed brown in like an hr

dam watched the replay of that jan fall & that shit hurt MY knee

fucked up i feel bad for him too

lol im rewatching sock/ivo (which is amazing btw omg go watch it) "there's no way thats a let" - sock

i could watch jack take blind swipes at returning ivos serve literally all day and be so entertained

tough loss for sock, ivo is going to DESTROY ram unless something bizarre happens

murray/mahut second set has been v entertaining

damn i mean simon not mahut

GBR in Davis Cup is still a one-man team, lucky for them Murray had enough in the tank for that.

Title number two of the year for Anna Karolina Schmiedlova in Bucharest :) Really thrilled with how far she's come since I saw her in Wim qualies in 2013. Great revenge too, she lost to Errani in her first final in Feb and now beats her with brilliant BH angles.

This week's WTA titlists, Schmiedlova in Bucharest and Larsson in Bastad, are only the 3rd and 4th women to win titles in 2015 without dropping a set. The others - obviously - were Watson in Hobart and Pereira.

On the ATP, the men who've done it in 2015 so far are Wawrinka in Chennai, Gasquet in Montpellier, Federer in Dubai and Nadal in Buenos Aires. Only Federer had to win 5 matches, the others got R1 byes.

props 2 raj ram, i def underestimated his return game vs ivo

Benoit Paire into his first final in two-and-a-half wasted years in Bastad. Cuevas threw such an extended tantrum at the end of the first set

I tuned in with Schmiedlova leading Stosur 5-2, cue total collapse :(((((

good work by thiem to push monfils to tanking the 3d set

that was a fun match. Monfils didn't really totally tank though...just a terrible blip for a few games. He was incredible in the first set, huge kudos to Thiem for not only hanging with him but rising to meet his level. Great shotmaking by both.

yea tank isnt fair, he stopped playing down 2 breaks in that last set but that is understandable i guess

berrer has played tomic p tough

nadal playing doubles w/ some 18 yr old vs bolleli/fognini is kinda fun to watch

donald young wins one (1) match!

duckworth/nishikori is surprisingly hi quality!

10-8 in the tiebreak, duckworth!

Hyeon Chung's forehand looks pretty damn huge

sort of like Tomic's forehand when he bothers to hit it hard

kimiko <3

only way sock/gasquet could be better is if it was best of 5 sets

zverev/cilic is p good

cilic/kei semi is good

Radwanska/Kerber is really good. Divine cat-and-mouse point won with perfect drop shot pickup and lob by Aga :D :D :D

it does seem crazy a qtrfinalist only wins $35k @ this dc tourney

i get distracted looking at how long isners legs are

lol i never saw his pic from espn body issue, he looks 100% like a centaur fyi

isner in like baseline rallies is something 2 see

6-6 tiebreak, isner serves an ace @ 141 mph

this is a super pressurized tiebreak

h8 isner but good on him there

cant fuck w nishi in deciding sets

Muguruza following in the new generation's tradition of playing very badly following Slam breakthroughs. Down 5-7 0-5 to Tsurenko, albeit Tsurenko is on an 8-match winning streak and hit an absolutely breathtaking FH to go 4-0 up (and elicited an equally breathtaking racquet demolition job by Muguruza)

are we done talking about the trials and tribulations of Eugenie Bouchard or is there still a little schadenfreude left to be wrung from the current state of her career?

When I saw that result I was super-happy for Bencic, the superior talent, who will hopefully beat Wozniacki for the third time this year tonight.

I guess at some point Bouchard will get it together and settle into the Hantuchovan 10-30 career her talent merits but she's done a fine job of quelling the intolerable hype by herself, and a lot more definitively than I expected.

Stephens FINALLY won a title while I was on holiday, I see? As did MARGARITA GASPARYAN! The one-handed BH lives!

Kerber has maintained pretty much the same level since 2011 but every year she does it in a different way. 2011-12: Slam SFs, a couple of tournament wins. 2013: unspectacular consistency everywhere. 2014: a bunch of big, close WTA finals, all lost. 2015: now winning those close finals but underwhelming in Slams

The Stephens match was actually really respectable/impressive. I was very surprised!

over Stosur or Pavlyuchenkova? former looked more impressive on paper (amazed Pavs got to the final at all)

Stephens has been playing really well for a few months (judging on what I saw on clay & grass). Her BH actually looks fixed, nowhere near the liability it used to be. Back in the top 20 by the end of the year IMO.

Stosur imploded; all Sloane had to do was get the ball back over the net and Sam took care of the rest. Against Pavlyuchenkova, she was dictating points and hitting shots that looked intentional rather than magic happenstance, which was my overall impression of her game before this tournament. I agree, if she keeps this up she is going to be the #2 American by the end of the season.