ILE rolling non-slam Tennis thread

6-6!

And a good one too but Henin hit an awesome angle there.

Oh dear, a double fault from Justine - she's been hitting those on all the wrong points.

wow

Wow, that was kinda epic. I mean it was junk from 4-1 in the second set, but then back to life and it's a shame that some of the dodgiest calling came during some of the best play. I loved the look of Kim's game when she was just smacking the shit out of the ball.

Ah, that's that. Well, I didn't see any of it but I suspect we'll get a few all-Belgian finals this year.

that was an enjoyable match! apart from, like, the ending. kim's epic choke was hilarious after she completely dominated the first half of the match, some of justine's play in the third set was exhilarating but not her inability to execute when trying to close it out. her closing has been rather unimpressive this week actually, hopefully that's something she'll get back into the swing of. those double faults ughhh.

v likely serena/justine match as early as the second round next week! if justine gets past martinez sanchez...

Is Laura Robson is getting more out of the Hopman Cup experience than Andy Murray? Murray supposedly skipped a defence in Doha to get three guaranteed matches in Perth but he's won them all so easily it's barely been a workout. Robson's lost hers, as expected, but it'll be a while before she plays people of this calibre again. They've won all their mixed and they're in the final!

eh, winning doha didn't do murray much good when it came to the AO last year - may as well try switching his preparation up, with less pressure but still guaranteed multiple matches.

so Rafa would've just crushed anyone then. has just bageled Kolya. O_O

ok scratch that - pretend that first set didn't exist and this was basically the best men's match i've seen since... Kolya-Djokovic in Shanghai? Just beautiful angles and shotmaking.

And KOLYA! Amazing comeback. *in awe*

Two tournaments in a row now where he's beaten both Nadal and Fed on the way to the title.

ok scratch that - pretend that first set didn't exist and this was basically the best men's match i've seen since... Kolya-Djokovic in Shanghai? Just beautiful angles and shotmaking.

how did u guyz watch this stuff - is it broadcast in the uk?

it's broadcast here in malaysia, but you can always try atdhe.net, livescorehunter.com or fromsport.com - these places usually have loads of live streams.

Pretty bleak day in Sydney and I was too pov to get tickets to centre court (well, I could have but I didn't really care who was on, my friend I went with IS broke..) so just got a ground pass. Gasquet v POTITO STARACE was good fun! Starace was hitting some gorgeous backhand passing shorts but Gasquet served really well and looked really calm - whereas Starace was a veritable "La Linea" by comparison (and with white lines on a blue court, kind of looked like it too) yelling out oaths left right and centre, especially because he blew the second set tie-break and he knew it.

Then saw Benneteau vs Leonardo Mayer, a new name to me, and one I don't know that we'll be hearing again. Terrible match, really, Mayer has a crap serve and no real weapons at all and Benneteau charged out to a big lead, surrendered a break but was in control for most of the first set, then had two lapses - going down a break, then getting it back in fine style, then playing an iffy tie-breaker to lose before realising that he's not completely rubbish and bagelled in the last set.

Then some fun doubles, tho less so because Aspeli, one of the players, was clearly being carried by Paul Hanley, his partner whereas Huss and Ball were a much better and slightly more even team - Huss hit some sweet angles with the volleys and overall this was great fun to watch, though not as fun as last year, and srsly the no-deuce thing is totally shit.

The umpire in the Mayer/Benneteau match was great, though I can't explain why, it was just the way he said the scores, he was really getting into it... like 00-15 was like "Whoa, you're gonna break serve", such was the enthusiasm.

In honour of the vanquished:

http://www.furanes.net/images/potito.jpg

And Gasquet, teasing me with his ass:

http://www.furanes.net/images/gasquet.jpg

(cropped to hide the fact that my action shots were shit)

shame that mayer's no good - he's had some interesting results over the past year.

silliams/caravane sounded like a good match! have high hopes that caravane may be coming into her own this year. she's not the fastest player, but her ballstriking ability is fearsome.

i also find it hilarious that 39-year-old mrs. krumm managed to beat petrova and take azarenka to a 7-5 final set.

Diva vs Silliams is on now. Diva is UP A BREAK! Let's get excited and pretend that a) such things are significant in women's tennsi, and b) Diva is someone else entirely.

oh dementieva, peaking before the slam as usual. let's enjoy this now as she's prob going to lose to Henin in the second round of AO (draw out this morning).

Diva won the first set! Not on her own serve obv.

Diva's serving fine, btw, and just hit a lovely ace!

Also hyper-partisan TV commentators need to stop making excuses for Silliams already. 6-3 3-0.

I mean OK, Serena's playing shit, but still, nobody puts asterisks on Serena's wins when she gets it because some scrub or Russian chokes against her, it's unfair that people keep doing the converse.

reprise of last year coming up, then?

ok lol @ those two "smashes" from serena. she just wasn't even trying to put them away.

Seems so. Serena IS sore and not moving well but she's also hitting badly, so, meh.

serena couldn't have given less of a shit about that. sad!

Shame she's due to play Justine so early. Lovely backhands this game.

GRR COMMENTATORS mentioning Silliams' high unforced error rate. "Well, really, they're forced errors because she has a knee injury so she was trying to end the points more quickly, so went for her shots more." = THIS IS STILL AN UNFORCED ERROR.

took a look at the men's draw for indian wells & im kinda pysched. henin looked good as well

charity exo Hit for Haiti on now w/ Henin, Davenport, Graf and Navratilova, dudes - Fed, Sampras, Nadal and Agassi - coming on later. should be fun.

(btw Henin... Dulko?!)

My CPU, fed many results, suggests we should possibly keep an eye on Claudia Giovine of Italy.

If Google translates correctly, it appears she is the cousin of Flava Flav Pennetta btw.

helloo Mario Ancic. got mono, went to law school, got mono again, got hot(ter).

lol @ djokovic. lol @ this tournament so far really!

hope lex watched ag rad beat the girl who beat henin 6-1 6-0

i haven't seen any of this tournament, the results have been hilarious though. clijsters going up 4-0 in the deciding TB vs kleybanova, then losing 7 straight points? sweta losing her opener, then tweeting "fuck the haters" and "only god can jurge [sic] me"? ivanovic losing her opener and falling out of the top 50? li somehow losing to elena fricking baltacha?!

and the sampras/agassi rivalry extending to "who's the biggest douche", too - loved how roger and rafa just stood there looking completely baffled at these two old men acting out.

i guess agassi won the biggest-douche competition, sampras unsurprisingly missing a humour trick by failing to make a roids joke

ha see, I think Sampras won the biggest douche competition (as he did when they were still active pros OH SNAP) by failing to have a sense of humor

yeah when he couldn't think of anything to say or do except aim a serve at andre like some neanderthal, that was so typical. but he could've made a meth/roids joke and didn't! open goal missed.

also loved fed going "PLEASE SAY SOMETHING RAFA"

That was fairly uncomfortable viewing. Agassi doing the roast/variety-show banter and Pete completely not getting it. Sampras probably thought of a drugs joke and figured that would've sent the whole shebang well over the line into unpleasantness. Bit like seeing Joe Bugner or someone have the piss ripped out of them by some club comic in the '70s and getting a mock uppercut in response.

it was sooo awkward. i watched the whole thing and the mood completely changed after that happened.

sveta's twitter is a lol-goldmine btw - love her so much.

and nicole vaidisova has just announced she's retiring. at age 20. to marry Radek "the sex" Stepanek. :/

oh nicole. :/ indeed. also dudes like 35 or smthn?

lex if its around parts of the sharapova/zheng match were really good! other parts were... less so.

nicole :/

though tbh this makes no concrete difference to anything at all really, she may as well have been retired for the past year. and you just know she'll do a comeback in two years, after the divorce, and it'll probably go much the same way as dokic's and lucic's (1% results that hark back to her glory days, 99% first round losses). i really think i'm going to put some £££ on that.

http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/tennis/news/story?id=5001478

^_^ ^_^ ^_^ ^_^ ^_^ ^_^

I don't dislike Federer at all but this is making me super happy.

boo. I liked the dude a lot once but then i was unfortunate enough to have met him while working at the KL tourney last year and, without getting into details, the guy was basically a douuuccchheee.

Not a surprising result though, he's been slowly climbing back into form and Fed's been shanking forehands all week.

Watching some of that Aga/Nada vs. Fed/Sam joke match right now. Nice to do spmething like this every once in a while

Nadal has a semifinal game today right?

sad to hear baghdatis's genial persona doesn't hold up IRL.

yeah it's nadal/ljubicic and roddick/soderling today.

http://www.tennis.com/spotlight/2010_03_25_sony_ericsson/index.aspx?photo=01

lol at many of these

not that often I have something nice to say about Andy Roddick but I'm liking him today. His comments on Wayne Odesnik, who was caught smuggling HGH into Australia:

Q. Sorry to be a rally killer, but I wanted to hear your comments and thoughts on Wayne Odesnik.
ANDY RODDICK: If he pled guilty, which it looks like he did, there's nothing worse than that. I'm normally the one to give people the benefit of the doubt.
If that's the case, what we read today, that's just plain cheating and they should throw him out of tennis. There's just no room for it. I don't... I was shocked. I was surprised. You know, we don't need stories like that. You know, I know that's the minority. If that's the case, I have zero sympathy.

Q. Your feelings are just as strong even though it was a possession and not a positive test?
ANDY RODDICK: If you have a possession, you know you're not supposed to have it. You're not supposed to be anywhere near it. You're not supposed to know about it. You're not supposed to smuggle it into a country. If you have I mean, if you caught your sons or daughters and they possessed some type of drug, they're guilty of probably using, as well, correct? You know, I don't see the difference. If you have it and it's not enough to you either have it to sell it or you have it to take it. So either way, it's not the play. It's no good.

Q. How well did you know him?
ANDY RODDICK: I know Wayne a little bit. I mean, I wouldn't say we're friends. He used to train in Austin sometimes. You know, I don't think we ever really did much together. But it's just normally when this has happened in tennis it's been someone that is like I don't really know at all. To have it be one of our guys and for us to lose a guy in the top 100, it makes me a little angry, you know. I don't you know, I don't want that stigma attached to our country and to our players, so it really pisses me off.

Q. That's the thing, the average person sees this in the paper tomorrow and they think...
ANDY RODDICK: That's what makes me angry. We have the most in your articles that you will write, I hope that they're at least researched to the point where we have the most stringent drug testing policies in sports. We're up there with the Olympics. We can't take Sudafed because something will come up. We have to be accountable for where we are I have to send in my forms next week to tell people where I'm gonna be for the next month every single day. If my wife and I want to drive for a day trip somewhere, I have to call in and say, We're going here, here, and here and provide an address. So I hope with the articles that they will at least acknowledge that. The ATP and the powers that be in tennis have done every single thing possible, you know, with the exception of assigning a person to follow each person around 24 hours a day and sleep with the person, to mitigate these problems, you know.

Q. So you do not think there is a problem in the sport?
ANDY RODDICK: I don't see how there can be. I mean, unless everybody's packing vials of stuff in their bags and smuggling it into countries, which I don't God, I have a hard time believing that, you know. You know, I think HGH is the one in every sport where I hope they come up with a test and I hope they start just slamming guys. I hope when they do come up with a test for it they don't tell anybody and they just implement it and start picking people off.

Q. There actually is a test, Andy, but it's not used in tennis.
ANDY RODDICK: Well, the sooner the better. I think they should use it everywhere. You know, I just hope that I wouldn't be surprised if there is a test out there that we're gonna be the first to come fly with it. I hope we do. I hope this will move it. There's no room for it. We don't need it. We don't need that stigma. I take a lot of pride in what we have to do on a daily basis and how responsible we have to be for, one lack of a better word for one jackass to ruin it for the rest of us.

http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/tennis/news/story?id=5047894

<3 Cake:

Now 19-1 this year, Venus is bidding for her third consecutive title after winning at Dubai and Acapulco in February. She's dominating while Serena has been sidelined with a left knee injury since winning the Australian Open two months ago.

The knee must be better, judging from the shoes she wore while watching the semifinal from the front row.

"She looked really amazing," Bartoli said. "I said to her, 'It's not fair you're dressing up so nicely. I'm going to watch more what you're wearing than the ball.' ... She had a red dress and some really, really, really high-heel shoes, maybe something like 14 inches.

"I think she can manage to walk pretty well. I think from wearing those kind of shoes, you don't feel that much pain in your knees."

sweta's twitter has become a goldmine of legendarily baffling stuff http://twitter.com/SvetlanaK27

I hAve bold by made by givory!nice one)))
8:15 PM Apr 10th via Twitter for BlackBerry®

All expencive cars I have so many,ppl will thik I m spoiled
6:32 PM Apr 10th via Twitter for BlackBerry®

I m in love with carsssss!i have a big garage!so anyone wants to give me some feel more then welcome!))))
4:33 PM Apr 10th via web

i got stoped for speeding((((( i was racing a litle bit)))) by the way -i won!)))))
8:35 PM Apr 7th via web

Happy Eastern to everyone!
4:12 AM Apr 4th via web

if u see me with a bruce on my forehead a size of my head!who is following me would know from where i got it !heheheh
12:29 AM Mar 21st via web

i want to fly to cosmos ...what do u think???
5:34 AM Mar 14th via web

# i m russian so what>
4:35 AM Mar 14th via web

guys i dont drink just for info!
4:22 AM Mar 14th via web

all u are the best best off all!god is the jurge!
4:21 AM Mar 14th via web

gusy u r geate ll who are not haters! before i didnt understand who was haers but now im~!
4:20 AM Mar 14th via web

only god is our jurge! thia is my tatoo and its true guys,no one can jurge no one so relaxxxxxx
2:06 AM Mar 14th via web

i love all kind of music,from rapers i love snoop,50 and T.I those guys are the best for me!i like rihana as well ,mary J.Blige,ne-yo,pitbul
3:10 AM Mar 8th via mobile web

what on earth does she think parentheses do grammatically?!