ILE rolling non-slam Tennis thread

wow this djokovic/grisha tiebreak was insane

please win grisha

he did it!

that was so great

WTA Year-End to Singapore.

oh YESSS... just a few hours' drive away for me! :D

unnnghhh I can't believe I missed yesterday's match, nothing about it made sense at all. Grisha choked for the set AGAIN but still won the TB after saving SPs? I went out at that point but all I saw on Twitter was Nole winning the second amidst DRAMA and Grisha cramping, and everyone saying the third set would be a formality, which it...wasn't?!

Anabel Medina Garrigues becomes just the seventh player ever to bagel Serena.

(AMG's career record against top 10 players is 5-41. Of those five, three were retirements)

You know it's going to be 5-42 soon enough. She can't close it.

That pass that would have given AMG two MPs...

The inevitable.

For posterity, all of Serena's bagels in her career:

Q1 Indian Wells 1997, l. Alexia Dechaume-Balleret 46 06
3R Roland Garros 1999, l. Mary Joe Fernandez 36 61 06
SF Dubai 2005, l. Jelena Jankovic 06 34 ret.
F Miami 2007, d. Justine Henin 06 75 63
1R Zurich 2007, l. Patty Schnyder 06 03 ret.
RR Doha YEC 2008, l. Venus Williams 75 16 06
QF Madrid 2013, d. Anabel Medina Garrigues 63 06 75

great trolling by andujar this week

Excuse me, I have to go onto Tennisforum for some quality schadenfreude. Five games. Best clay-courter going. Pah!

never gets old

Sure, but let there be no doubt that she plays a lot lot worse against Serena than other players the rest of the week / season. There's no excuse for that kind of hyper impatient game and it's all mental. She may lose anyway but not in such a pathetic fasion.

Oh well, so far the results are mirroring last clay season quite nicely.

Serena is also a lot, lot better than all the other players Maria beats. Why couldn't I have had this violently pro-Serena revelation 10 years ago?

In general yeah, but did she play a lot better than the others this tournament? Nope. Someone else will probably beat her at Roland Garros.

Does that matter even remotely? She won all the matches in front of her.

My original point here is what's important to me: Maria didn't put up a decent fight and I'm pissed off.

Look at it this way - you can let go of expectations that clay significantly increases Maria's chances of beating Serena and then be pleasantly surprised if she backs up last year's RG.

All I have to say is LOL

(@ Maria, not this convo)

@BenRothenberg:"Thanks Maria! Thank you! Good try! Thank you!" -Serena to Maria at the net.

amazing

I'm just gonna start calling Serena "Shade"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=165r4mM9edc&feature=youtu.be

:-D

kinda strange Gulbis doesn't join the conversation with an eloquent and well-mannered opinion of his own

that was amazing

quite an achievement to be the craziest person on court with Gulbis right there

YULIA. PUTINTSEVA. I knew her presence on the main tour would be worth it.

CoCo Vandeweghe ‏@CoCoVandey 5h
I have never played a person with worst sportsmanship... Putintseva...

CoCo Vandeweghe ‏@CoCoVandey 5h
...How can anyone comment on my game style after you have already won the match in such a negative way is unbelievable!...

CoCo Vandeweghe ‏@CoCoVandey 5h
Her exact words were "You are a terrible player only serve. I win all the rallies" that comment is totally uncalled for...

CoCo Vandeweghe ‏@CoCoVandey 5h
...and on top of it your father clapping while you say this haha, unreal! #venting

Yulia Putintseva ‏@Yulka1995P 7m
And by the way saw a twit of Coco... Wont comment much!Really surprise that people can act like that after losing to younger player:p

Yulia Putintseva ‏@Yulka1995P 3m
@jakedavi5 haha i did:D i think she is angry coz before the match she thought that im not her level of player:p lol

RobOsna ‏@RobOsna 3m
@Yulka1995P haha, she is just a bitter bitch. Good luck in your next match
Retweeted by Yulia Putintseva

Maxime Parans ‏@MParans 5m
@Yulka1995P Hahahaha, just bitter that you were the better player out ther
Retweeted by Yulia Putintseva

Yulia Putintseva ‏@Yulka1995P 2m
And by the way no matter who is at the other side i am respecting that person! And always shaking hand in the end of the match!

Her exact words were "You are a terrible player only serve. I win all the rallies" that comment is totally uncalled for...

fucking lol

Yulia serving TRUTH there

really looking forward to CoCo's bitter early retirement

looooooool did yulia lie? <3 her

Wozniacki extends her losing streak to five: Voegele, Suarez Navarro, Shvedova, Jovanovski, Zheng. It's so beautiful how every player is supremely full of confidence when they face her these days, no matter how deep their own slump.

imagine a Woz/CoCo doubles team

oh hey Sloane beat Pironkova? (I know it's not at Wimbledon so it almost doesn't count but still, with how Sloane's been performing that's a surprise to me)

Pironkova's been even worse, 3-11 for the year before this match

(but not as bad as Paszek, who is 1-10 in 2013...although that's pretty much where she was at this time last year)

hmm from that standpoint would the Zhang Shuai be more impressive? I don't really know some of these players that well

Zhang Shuai is barely a top 100 player at her best and only qualifies for WTA MDs occasionally these days.

Stephens won a couple of matches last week in Rome - Pennetta (just coming back from injury, could barely keep a ball in court) and Bertens (which is a no-caveats decent win). Brussels is basically where all the slumping players who desperately need matches/wins have come instead of taking a week off before RG, though (hence Zheng, Wozniacki, Goerges as well). Ideal place for someone like Stephens to find a bit of form.

now that uni has finished, i have 3 months to do nothing but watch tennis :D starting with a bit of vinci/putintseva

putintseva's footwork omg
i can't believe she managed to get all the way around a vinci CC slice to hit a forehand inside out winner. LEGEND

this match is really nice

but vinci running away with it now :( putintseva broken from 40-0 up (punctured by a racket smack as she lost serve ofc)

Okay I will bump this. Lucic d. Wickmayer. Petkovic d. Georges. FUCK. YEAH.

Görges rather. I didn't just get a keyboard with ö and ä on it to not use them, except clearly I did, and misspelled anyway.

(Also POINT AT LAUGH at Dimitrov losing to 900-year-old Hewitt in straights.)

pironkova lost to cirstea on grass? smh

I was at Queens on Monday and Dimitrov looked extremely ropey (lightning-bolt serve aside). Ma$ha was sat a few rows in front of us and did not look v impressed either. Disappointing, especially after I'd sat through the entire Hewitt/Russell match which was kinda like when you're at the dentist and they haven't given you enough anaesthetic :( :(

Happily the Evans/Pella match on first was really good, esp the second set when Dan got his backhand working. Lots of variety & a decent-ish first serve. Ooo just had a look at today's results, he beat Nieminen as well...

Extremely disappointing form from Dimitrov

yeah Dimitrov was a shambles in both match, completely vacant tactically. Delpo v Malisse was quite fun yesterday.

Robson's PR people have been sending out bumpf saying this is the first year she'll be seeded at Wimbledon - not without several withdrawals after that shocker of an opening loss to Hantuchova. Sad that 15-year-old Robson gave Hantuchova 2009 a much tougher fight than 19-year-old Robson has given Hantuchova 2013 either time they've played this year.

Vekic played a wonderful match to beat U-Rad, still firmly on this bandwagon and wondering when the tabloids will notice her GBR connections.

“Gaël, I always respected the way he plays,” Gulbis said Wednesday. “This guy has a very big potential. I wish that he would fulfill it, you know? The way he plays, the way he can play, everybody knows it. I think in France, also, everybody is waiting for him to have some clicks in his brain and to do the right things. And for sure he has the potential to be, in my understanding, top five, for sure. So I just respect him in this way, and I think he’s a fun guy. I always have good relation with him, but not really close.”

When it was pointed out to Gulbis that what he said about Monfils sounded a lot like what people might say about his own sometimes perplexing career, he assented.

“Yeah, probably.”

http://straightsets.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/12/monfils-soaring-on-the-grass-will-miss-wimbledon/?smid=tw-NYTStraightSets&seid=auto