ILE rolling non-slam Tennis thread

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.

Yeah, it's not like she had some rare conditions that needed rare drugs. AFAIC, she's taken steps to find an alternative to beta blockers which hadn't (until now) made it onto the banned list. And then never noticed when it did. Oops.

seems insane to me that she says shes used it for ten years

http://espn.go.com/tennis/story/_/id/14935076/dick-pound-says-sharapova-was-reckless-description

It's been interesting watching the fallout, she seemed to have elicited sympathy for about...a day, before everyone started prodding her story and realising how much of it made no sense. The authorities, media and sponsors are all dragging/dropping her.

One thing I'm seeing really conflicting reports on is how much of an effect meldonium actually has - have read articles claiming its PED properties (plus the fact that WADA have banned it), but have also read articles saying it's a very common over-the-counter drug in Russia, Ukraine etc with very few of those properties that a lot of people take like a nutritional supplement. (That brings up the not-implausible possibility of its ban being politically motivated: WADA's own reasons are less "this drug has unusual/harmful effects" and more "loads of Russian athletes are on this thing that no one in the west has heard of, it MUST BE BAD")

lol dodig -https://twitter.com/Tennis_Now/status/708386719989518336

gosh, Kiki went all the way in

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/mar/12/kristina-mladenovic-maria-sharapovapa-cheater-tour-simona-halep

all these years of declaring herself above the concept of friendship, really unsurprising that so few have Sharapova's back right now

(Muguruza is such a gigantic disappointment this year. Third straight year where the previous year's breakout young player totally collapses, what is wrong with them?)

fratangelo!

enjoyed Zverev/Dimitrov last night. Next Big Thing mantle officially passing down a generation, the moment everyone can stop pretending it'll happen for Grigor. Zverev's BH motion is so smooth and concise, about as aesthetically pleasing as a 2HBH can be and he's so much improved from last year. And he really doesn't play like his height! Can't remember any other player as tall as him who was as good a mover and as happy to rally.

end of Bondarenko/Tsurenko was riveting, Tsurenko cramping but still saving five MPs. So many brutal rallies in the TB.

end of this murray/delbonis match is real bizarre

hope thiem/sock can become a rivalry for yrs to come

why does Thiem hit so much to his FH though

Ryan Harrison: "that was a foot out. Are you kidding me? This is why I don't play Challengers. I'm not playing one ever again."

ryan settling for a life on the futures tour, i suppose

lmao Ryan you're ranked 168, you've had two direct entries to ATP MDs in the past year and you haven't been ranked in the top 100 since 2013, good luck with your Challenger boycott

well done ARad on getting back up to #2 which i did not see coming in september last year.

the game Zverev played to break Nadal for 2-0 in the third >>>>>

zverev is the real fuckin deal

oh my god, the game Zverev played serving for the match...from MP up...

oof but he really choked tryna close at 5-3 3d set there

yeah but it went from a bit wobbly to TOTAL FUCKING COLLAPSE at MP

and Nadal hysterically fistpumping in response like his last name is Sharapova -_-

the collapse continues, two DFs to hand over another break at 5-5

rafa does win like this a lot but zverev is really lost now god

15 of 16 points lost from MP up, most with horrendous UEs or DFs.

Nadal's celebration is ridiculous in context

UGH and if this derails Zverev's season -_-

this Serena/Aga match exceeds quality expectations handily. Radwanska had several points to go up 5-2 in the first set, loses it 4-6. Serena then wins 12 of 13 points to open set 2, but now Radwanska is serving for it at 6-5!

Godlike run of winners from Serena to win it in two anyway.

Djokovic/Tsonga was woeful quality last night

Nishikori completely crumbled after missing points for a double break against Nadal, why couldn't Zverev have just put away that volley???

Waking up to find Aga had managed to take 10 games off Serena counts as a win