ILE rolling non-slam Tennis thread

Fitting that this historic WTA feat of all the seeds in a tournament going 0-8 in their first matches should be sealed by Shitra managing to lose to Brengle after bagelling her in 19 minutes

On the plus side, Vinci breaks the top 10 at the age of 32!

Haven't seen any of Delpo's matches this week but great to see some pretty easy scores and a deep run off the bat - final vs Dimitrov upcoming? Thiem/Nadal rematch in the Rio final looks likely too! Kyrgios trashing Gasquet 60 64, lol, maybe he'll make the Berdych match more interesting this time - Berdych was lucky to escape Zverev in R2.

Legit looking forward to the Strycova/Errani final in Dubai more than any other big final in ages. I think Errani might actually be my favourite WTA player right now. A true inspiration to those of us who can't serve to save our lives.

ive watched some delpo - hes playing ok, not doing anything truly great but not that youd expect that, the results are mostly the effect of moving well and his opponents mostly not doing much, chardy in partic played terribly for a lot of that match

SARA ERRANI <33333

Hahaha at Dimitrov losing to Rajeev Ram. He will never win a Slam. That rhymes, and is also true.

Just shows how when one guy is hoovering up ALL THE POINTS EVERYWHERE, the difference between being low top 10 low top 20 is not that much, and even at Dimitrov's peak ranking he was still a fair way behind the guys just above him.

Shame Del Potro will probably lose to a useless, dislikeable flake like Querrey here.

lol so much if del ray final is raj ram v querrey

i feel happy for jan hernych apparently into a challenger final in poland after i saw him destroy his knee last summer in person

cuevas/nadal has been.....interesting

lol @ cuevas unable to not hit slam overheads rt to rafa

2h 37m already & its going to the third ~~

vintage rafa for 1 pt there otherwise funny how this reminds me of his match almost a yr ago to the date, this is what nadal is now, its still entertaining tbh

rafa is def laboring v carreno busta rn

― johnny crunch, Thursday, February 19, 2015 6:58 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Haven't seen any of Delpo's matches this week but great to see some pretty easy scores and a deep run off the bat - final vs Dimitrov upcoming? Thiem/Nadal rematch in the Rio final looks likely too!

lmao @ how these assumptions turned out. Rafa can't even vulture the South American clay events any more, amazing. The Thiem loss might actually be weirder though.

Kyrgios played really well vs Berdych, he's been so much more disciplined this week than I've ever seen from him before.

First title of many for Kyrgios. Only a 250 but Pospisil, Gabashvili, Gasquet, Berdych, Cilic is a pretty impressive title run regardless (and without dropping a set). On his best behaviour all week I think. Remarkable the things he can do with his racquet when you'd swear he was completely jammed up on court. Takes over from Thiem as youngest ATP titlist!

Meanwhile in Doha, Pliskova lost in less time and won fewer points against Gasparyan than the Omani WC did against Vekic :o

SCHIAVONEEEEEEEEEE

https://twitter.com/alcalejon/status/701513545565999104

She looked just as elated to win Rio as she did when she won RG <3

Three years since her last title, 16 years after her first final (Tashkent 2000, lost to Tulyaganova!)

May the Italian veterans never retire

Wozniacki out of the top 20 for the first time since August 2008, and Konjuh is a set up on her...

Konjuh needs to play every point like she's MP down. So frustrating to watch her botch putaways until, from 2-5* down, she's reeled Wozniacki back to 5-5 - saved five MPs so far, four with amazing winners (one with a very Wozniackan volley error)

Finally Zheng Saisai's time to shine with her weirdo game. 75 61 over AO champ Kerber then a 76 61 hammering of Bouchard <3

I was going to say I was sort of hoping Bouchard might get a date with Kvitova, who, even in Peak Shitra mode should be able to take her but I'm quite sure she's now going to lose to Ostapenko.

Kvitova sacked her coach, hasn't bothered replacing him and is engaged. She's lucky she drew a fellow Czech to break her losing streak. Did you see her lose to Brengle last week? Absolutely hilarious stuff.

At least Wozniacki is still Slamless and out of the top 20. That's all Kvitova fans have now.

And everyone else is a mess. We knew that Halep's game and strategic approach were a mess but look at her proving that in addition to that she has less mental strength than 2016 Vesnina. VESNINA! Who chokes to Vesnina!

Anyway, Shitra just hit another two home runs to go down a double break in the third. It's nice to see Ostapenko getting back on track after her mini-slump!

In Radwanska's win over Niculescu, not only did she hit the ball somewhat hard (for her), she also.. wtf... serve-and-volleyed, what even... and even more weirdly, won a couple of points. Don't go trying that against a heavy hitter, Aga.

4 weeks ago Kyrgios got completely schooled by Berdych, now he casually dominates him

ooooooooh we're nearly on for a Wawrinka/Kyrgios rematch

Vinci/Radwanska was such a treat, so many delightful cat n mouse points

yeah that was probably the best match i've seen this year, some unreal points from both

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B76v1XZZjSo

The most popcorn revival in men's tennis ends with a second straight retirement

thiem is leveling up

great tiebreak rn marcos/stan

15-13 stan!

I was watching Ostapenko/CSN, Ostapenko was on fire for a set and a half until inexperience kicked in and CSN just dug in grittily. Third set was really high quality. Ostapenko is the real deal tho

PEAK racquet smash by Thiem in Davis Cup

https://www.facebook.com/bolamarelapt/videos/992789044139013/

5th set bryan bros v hewitt/peers rn

hahahahahahahahahahaha Wozniacki got straight-setted by Watson

Sharapova announcement on monday. Speculation naturally goes in one direction. I should've expected it to happen soon, but I didn't. More devastated than I expected to be. Ugh. I know this persistent arm injury must be demotivating, but still..

I want a goodbye season ;(

I assumed a new business venture before retirement - surely not before the Olympics? Unless it's health-related but she looked fine at the AO.

Murray/Djokovic lots of fun right now, Djokovic having a slipping-sliding nightmare vs Kukushkin. Bouchard/Svitolina was pretty terrible quality.

She\s played four events since Wimbledon, announced out of IW because of arm injury. Maybe if message = can't make RIo, then she decided it was over.

I guess I can only envisage it being retirement if she's suddenly lost motivation (and she seemed to be as up for the fight as ever at the AO). She's seen enough retirements and unretirements and comebacks to know that she could take a year, even two out and still contend for big titles in her early 30s at least. Her health isn't forcing her into retirement at this stage unless it's definitively preventing her from physically competing ever again, like Henin's elbow.

She also seems pretty enthusiastic about promoting the presser on social media etc, this doesn't look like a sad announcement.

But yeah, what else could be so big that she'd go to this trouble? Not surgery, not taking a few months out, a new business venture would have to be huge. Maybe she's coming out.

I think she's announcing that she played a pro set vs Serena in an underground car park at a secret location and she won it and she's releasing the footage through her own video streaming service.

ah the dope show

man the twitter era is not one to have your name linked to doping in any way.

I was in the pub with another tennis writer (we were going to the JoJo gig, lol) bent over his phone listening to the presser and when she said "drugs test" we both just yelled FUCKING HELL for the next 10 minutes

PEDs are such a grey area in terms of ethics and sportsmanship - weird mental gymnastics needed to think that enhancing your performance in this particular way is perfectly legit in 2008, 2012 and 2014 retrospectively but in 2016 it's DOPING. Makes sense in terms of fairness I guess, in that the whole tour could've been on meldonium in 2014 (maybe they were and just read their damn emails!) and it'd have been a level playing field. Morally how much of enhancement is it before it crosses the line?

I mean, I'm in complete disbelief that she and her team failed to notice its addition to the banned list. It was on the monitoring list for the whole of 2015. Looks like athletes were warned repeatedly and loudly about this change.

(I also don't believe she was taking an obscure drug she had to source from a country she didn't live in for her stated, fairly standard health reasons, including diabetes she doesn't even have. lol but you could still shill horrible candy to kids though)

I have no knowledge about how this substance works and to what medicinal purpose. Motivation for taking it isn't really important pre-ban, anyway, if the powers that be OK it then it's OK. But it's obviously hard to understand how this info was 'missed'. At the same time if the warnings were picked up, surely the knowledge that it would be specifically tested for in grand slams coming up in the new year would be obvious to anyone. It's bizarre. Or stupid. Being who I am I still hope that, although there's obviously no buffer period where you get out of jail for taking a substance that's just been banned, the punishment is limited to a year. Regardless, you fucked up. I was all weird un-specific emotion after that press conference because I prepared for one big bad thing and got another, very different one. There was still some relief, to be perfectly honest. PR wise I'm not sure how the pro-active strategy will play out.

There's still a grey zone when it comes to some things taken as medicine. One thing that comes up relatively often is asthma medicine. Recently, the best female cross country skier in the world uses it and some contenders voice scepticism.

I don't think kids will spend 10$ on a few pieces of candy. More like adults with weird sugar fetishes.

It's an anti-ischemic, so it increases blood flow (for angina patients). I'm not entirely sure what benefit it would be to someone with a magnesium deficiency or a family history of diabetes (like MS). It's pretty clear what benefit it would have for an athlete (in simplistic terms, at least). Seems like a weird prescription.

It's manufactured only in Latvia and has never been approved by the US FDA, so I guess that explains the lengths to which MS had to go to get hold of it.

This is a bit like McEnroe's "I didn't know the rules had changed" DQ vs Pernfors at the AO. It's kind of your job to keep on top of the rules. Most other things are taken care of for you, you big babies.