ILE rolling non-slam Tennis thread

Jinxed it! Bolt wins 12-10 as soon as I posted that.

compelling atlanta match, tiafoe had break pt vs bernie tomic to go up 5-0 in the first set, tomic looked his usual uninterested ~ set got to 4-4, 'foe won 6-4. bernie then came back, played hard & showed how skilled he is & won in 3 sets

andreescu is, amazingly, back at it again ~ 3 straight 3 set wins @ rogers cup, today over kiki bertens; up next is karolina pliskova in the qtrs

yet again, this gal is wild - 6-0, 2-6, 6-4

serena/osaka tnight also btw

fed unexpectedly flat & out of cincy to rublev (!)

deminaur is abt to close out rba 2 & 2 o_o

andreescu finally lost a match (to osaka & it was a battle)

ascendant next gens @ shanghai

meds v tsitsy / zverev v berretini

Fed was untouchable for approx 10min today, in the process of saving 5mps, and Zverev rode it out (a rattled RF getting himself a point penalty and needlessly haranguing the ump for failing to remind him when it was the last game with the old balls). Pretty impressive from Sascha. Glorious from Tsitsy too.

Maybe... it's finally happening? Until the next Slam when there's no one under 30 in the second week.

There's this idea going around that Zv, Dom and Tsits have somehow been emboldened by the Laver Cup experience, turning around their stuttering seasons. Which seems far-fetched. Kinda funny if being coached and cajoled by Fed courtside actually gives you the key to beating him forever after.

Yeah, that occurred to me too.
Medvedev in his sixth consecutive final!

Of course, DM skipped the Laver Cup altogether :)

6 straight finals is madness

thats like novak territory or rafa on clay

I hope Medvedev can sustain this for a few years

btw I am fully engulfed in COCO FEVER

As Lex pointed out elsewhere, we completed the triangle in Linz:

Qual R2: Korpatsch 6-4 6-2 Gauff
Round of 32: Ostapenko 6-1 6-3 Korpatsch
Final: Gauff* 6-3 1-6 6-2 Ostapenko

(* - reinstated as Lucky Loser when Sakkari withdrew from main draw)

Andrea Jaeger won a title in Las Vegas in 1980 as a lucky loser (Wiki says the Sept '80 event, but she was already a five-time finalist by then; more likely the Jan '80 event), and there was also Olga Danilović in Moscow last year. Happens more often with the men (though still rare). Rublev (Umag) and Mayer (Hamburg) did it in consecutive weeks in 2017. I think you should be made to play the person who knocked you out, best of three tie-break tens, in a challenge round, before you get the trophy. Unless they've skipped town.

You can lose an hour looking at openerarankings.com (or I can).

Fun fact: nearly everyone down as far as Aljaz Bedene at #66 in the ATP Race is still in with a shot of a place at the O2 :) (Off to put a fiver on Felly Lopez to win Antwerp, Vienna and Paris for that 8th spot).

murray gets into the semis in antwerp

fun other side of the bracket also, rematch of one of the better us open rd 1 matches this year -- sinner v stan

shapo is kinda having a breakout, into the semis in paris (& then will play next gen yr end i think?)

also a formidable doubles team w 39 yr old rohan bopanna shap/bop

ah n/m i see shapo (and felix) withdrew from nextgen

tsisty wins atp finals, after winning nextgen last yr o_o

Terrific final, and despite my nascent ST fandom I started to root for Dom at the end.

Sinner was scary good last week in Milan. Don’t think he’s quite ready to do the same double but he’ll be top 10 in two years.

So... a 4:04am finish in the ITA-USA Davis Cup doubles last night and most sites seem to be leading on the fact that, despite this, both countries are eliminated? Is this actually the case? By my reckoning, if FRA and KAZ get thumped 3-0 today, and GER-CHI is a 6-0 whitewash in sets one way or the other, then the USA will rise to second spot in the runners-up table (3-3 in match wins and 7 sets won), and get a QF place. ARG will be group winners and not a factor. I must be missing something. (And this would be thanks to CAN forfeiting the "dead" doubles rubber to USA in the first match - counts as a 6-0 6-0 win for USA).

(When I went to bed last night Fritz had just pinched the second set vs Berrettini, so I thought there'd be a 1am curfew and they'd play the doubles this morning.)

dunno why the aussies played millman over kyrgios ~ pospisil is canadas secret weapon, dude has been playing well the last few months

Oh yeah - that had passed me by. Back to back Challenger titles.

lotta compelling angles to the final -- v interested to see how rba/faa goes

stylistically this match is prob on faa's racquet; id worry rba is too solid & felix will eventually hit too many errors

this fed latin american tour doc is good fyi -https://www.espn.com/tennis/story/_/id/28319373/roger-federer-everywhere-home-debuts-tuesday-espn-espn-app

watching 16 yr old carlos alcaraz, 1st atp level match in rio vs ramos-vinolas ~ alcaraz is scary talented

how bout elena rybakina this yr

finals @ shenzhen
wins hobart
loss to barty at ao
finals @ st pete
now finals in dubai

o yea also fed out after knee scope, hope to see him for grass season

https://www.espn.com/tennis/story/_/id/28785010/maria-sharapova-retires-tennis-19-year-pro-career

Sharapova burst onto the tennis scene at 17 by upsetting Serena Williams to win Wimbledon in 2004. She would beat Williams again at that year's season-ending tour championship to improve to 2-1 against the American -- and never won another one of their matchups, dropping the next 19 in a row.

Even in retirement, Sharapova is stuck in Serena's shadow.

Stood in a queue for 40min at Schipol airport Friday evening (lesson learned, train *both* ways in future), watching Monfils edge closer to victory on my score app. “No one beats Gael Monfils seventeen times in row”. 6-3 in the t/b. Marvellous. And then he blew it. By the time I was on the tarmac in the pouring rain walking to the plane Novak had levelled. I guessed the rest.

Up to that point Monfils had won 25 consecutive sets. One decent serve for 26. Damn it.

So, Novak and Rafa win their respective post-AO ATP500s and nothing changes. We better see some upsets in IW and Miami.

crossposting

Glenn Greenwald had planned to produce a documentary about Martina Navratilova, with Kimberly Peirce of Boys Don't Cry renown. And then...

https://theintercept.com/2020/07/14/cancel-culture-martina-navratilova-documentary/

sabalenka/gauff is p compelling, though each now have double digit double faults

serena v venus tomorrow btw

serena, desperately trying to end the match serving at 0-5 down, saves 7 match points and holds lmao

incredible as always from Naomi Osaka, and the rest of the tour have joined her lead

pic.twitter.com/miKzgSdGxY

— NaomiOsaka大坂なおみ (@naomiosaka) August 27, 2020

pic.twitter.com/l7cOoEMU8z

— wta (@WTA) August 27, 2020

I enjoyed this: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2906596-you-can-be-a-role-model-at-any-age

Sofia Kenin became the first top five player and reigning Grand Slam champion to be defeated by a 'double bagel' (6–0, 6–0) scoreline since Maria Sharapova was defeated by Lindsay Davenport by such a scoreline at the 2005 Indian Wells tournament. Kenin was defeated by Victoria Azarenka in the second round

Oof, brutal. I remember Lendl double-bagelling Connors at Forest Hills in spring '84, when Jimmy was reigning US Open champion. (A few weeks later Connors got his revenge in the Wimbledon semi).

Actually, now that I look it up, I see that Lendl led Connors 6-0 1-0 in the Rotterdam final a few weeks earlier, when it was abandoned due a bomb scare. Lendl won their match prior to that, so that's a minimum of 20 straight games heading into that Wimbledon semi-final.

paire/fognini head case battle @ atp cup, 1-1 rn in broken racquets

theres 89 matches today btw

There's a LOT of tennis going on. I was surprised to see 15/25-level Futures events going on all through January, in Egypt, Turkey, France, US, etc.

So, these two "one-year license" ATP250 events (Great Ocean Road and Murray River) are happening *at the same venue* in Melbourne as each other *and* the ATP Cup? Crazy. But I guess it's no busier than it'll be next week when the actual Aussie Open starts. Wawrinka/Dimitrov top two seeds in one, Goffin/Khachanov top two in the other.

RBA-DeMinaur looked like the best of the ATP Cup Day 1 matches. Nadal sat it out. Hoping Shapo would upset Novak, but he came closer last year. RUS and ITA already in the semis. GRC-AUS has gone to the doubles.

Wait, there's three WTA events too?! Gippsland Trophy, Yarra Valley and Grampians.

shapo/djoko have now played 4 times in like 15 months, i feel like i've seen all or most of those matches; theyre good competitive matches & shapo often feels on the brink of taking games/sets etc but novak really hones in against him and its not a good matchup for denis he cant sustain a hi enough 1st serve % and eventually hits badly timed errors, etc

fed pulls out of dubai after losing to basilashvili -- matches on back to back days was always gonna be a hurdle, is he just gonna get ready for grass season now?

meanwhile, muguruza into the dubai finals, she has been great lately -- her "offseason" regime of training w the spanish civil guard has seemingly really paid off

kinda crazy the recent dubai mens champs & this yr aslan karatsev O_o

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubai_Tennis_Championships#Men's_singles

how bout this monte carlo rafa/rublev match -- rublev 6-2 first set (rafa played badly for his level), 2nd set rublev gets up an early break but gives it back @ 4-3 (on an awkward slam at net that rafa guessed right and hit an open court winner on & then rafa proceeded to hold and break for the set)

hard to believe rublev can come back 3rd set after such a momentum swing.....then he breaks every rafa service game in the 3rd set and wins 6-2 holy hell