ILE rolling non-slam Tennis thread

great tournament for Fed tho, he seemed happy postmatch

assuming Ferrer doesn't defend his finals points in miami, Fed should get up to 4th by the start of clay season

happy Nole seems to be righting the ship

Aga officially has an issue with closing out tournaments now, right? Yes, she was injured...it's not just physical, though, that's three gigantic missed opportunities with relatively "easy" draws in the past nine months now. I wouldn't be surprised if she got more chances though, two of the women's Big Three are messes atm and the one who isn't has lost to IVANOVIC and CORNET in two of her three tournaments this year.

Murray and Lendl split :((

surprising! always seemed the least gimmicky of the old legend/current player partnerships.

Wish I'd seen the Miami qualy match between Kimiko Date-Krumm and Françoise Abanda - Abanda was born in 1997, after Date-Krumm retired for the first time. KDK won 7-6 4-6 6-4 and plays 1996 baby Vekic in the main draw...

(I think that's the second time Kimiko's played someone born after her first career ended, after Bencic at the AO)

wau baghdatis comes back from 2-5 down in the 3rd to beat giraldo w/o even going to a tiebreak

saw a bit of Thiem beating Rosol last night, was really impressed again. In one game he hit two incredible redirected BH DTL winners off full-blast Rosol FHs, a sweet sweet shot that I hope to see a lot more off in years to come.

dipped in and out of Kyle Edmund's match too - second time I've seen him, when he's on he has a v impressive power game that can hang with top 100 players already but he played a chokey service game after going up a set and a break, and it was basically NID from that minute - total collapse (this happened in Marseille vs Kamke as well).

watched a bit of Zheng and Davydenko, Jie and KING KOLYA are both shadows of their former selves. Jie really is the queen of hitting 3-4 brilliant, aggressive shots per rally that aren't quite winners and then missing the putaway.

Servebot Karolina Pliskova went up 5-4 40-0 against Peng and then lost 10 straight games hahahahahahaha.

*of

Peng smacking so many DTL winners vs Kerber

She also hit one amazing dropshot winner on the run in the first set and has tried to replicate it, like, six times since, all ending in terrible failure. That one barely made it over her own service line

It's so weird to me that Peng's career high ranking (14) is higher than Zheng's (15), comparing the two significant non-Li Chinese players of this era. Zheng's reached two Slam SFs, Peng's never gone beyond the last 16. Zheng has four titles, Peng has none. But Peng had that one super-consistent year in 2011 where she put up a solid, if not spectacular, result in almost every tournament she played, whereas Zheng's never managed to sustain her health or her form over a whole year.

wow such a textbook choke from Peng smh

Delbonis has no control over his game, Harrison has no game. This match is terrible

Like, why does Delbonis keep coming to the net when his volleys are so terrible? I don't think he's made one.

Vekic d. Kuznetsova 76 75 :D

Nice to see Donna emerge from her slump...

Tomic just lost 06 16 to Nieminen in 28 minutes. I know he's been injured, but...that's got to be the shortest ATP match in some time. Like, decades.

Or indeed EVER, as it's just been confirmed. A very Tomic-like record to set.

shved serving for 1st set and serena breaks her

such a weird game. and so LOUD

yea serena is fucking shouting

like, from 30-0 down Serena played two incredible points BUTTTTT she got hugely lucky to win the weird net cord one that would have given Shvedova 40-15. and then of course Shvedova flopped BP down

is the crowd drunk or something?

what the fuck is wrong with the crowd, seriously? I can't even tell what they're booing for.

Shvedova DF on SP, NID

that 4hand @ 7-7 was niice

wow garcia won a match in two tie-breaks

last point in the Tomic "match" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvDLOfu5Ols

lmao

today's play hasn't even started and Halep and Kleybanova have both w/d. ugh, had been looking fwd to the Halep/Venus 3R

also, it needs to be said that the disparity between men's and women's TV coverage is embarrassing - no way can this tournament lay claim to "fifth Slam" status when about a fifth of women's matches are televised as men's.

from a fan perspective I've always loved joint tournaments, and really it makes little sense that the ATP and WTA are so separate (in terms of ranking points, calendar etc) but this really demonstrates why a joint tour would just screw the women over completely

otm, it's pretty infuriating

Svitolina beating Bouchard is not really surprising given their h2h...

Bit disturbing how quickly the wheels have come off Muguruza's stellar start to the year though.

that last game between sharapova and safarova was outstanding

I went to bed when Ma$ha broke in the third set. Her hysterical fighting warrior mode remains the most insufferable of all.

This Vandeweghe run of actually winning matches is hideous.

Oh and is that Lisicki giving her third walkover in six tournaments this year? For "the flu"?

Vandeweghe winning matches is so gross. It's like... tennis gods adding insult to injury on top of Del Potro maybe being out for a year. CANNOT TAKE THIS.

That set wasn't as close as the scoreline. Only went to a TB because Li had a disastrous four-game stretch from 3-1 up, DFing and UEing all over the place. Outside of it, she had few difficulties and surprisingly, Keys never really imposed her power on Li. Keys seems to have plateaued if not actually regressed this year, her big weapons don't seem as effective for some reason.

meanwhile, baghdatis has come back to life here. but wtf is up with tsonga this season?

just switched to that and Tsonga looks dreadful

Peak Baghdatis dropshot/lob

lmao

SP Tsonga, Baghdatis holds up play by flapping around about a wasp, Tsonga DFs.

lol this is amazing

Hahahahaha something karmic about that

Keys is particularly dire on big points. She had every chance to break Li back in that last game and did nothing about it except hit errors

Tsonga keeps digging himself holes with woeful errors then saving BPs with excellent play

Well, Tsonga escaped there...mess of a match. His footwork was especially painful.

Aga closed out Vesnina with an ace, a service winner and an ace!

So annoyed that I fell asleep in the first set of Nishikori/Dimitrov, I was enjoying it.

Hahahaha Stephens got bagelled and breadsticked by 2014 Wozniacki. 0-4 H2H now. She won five points in the second set.

seems like Chang has helped Nishikori