ILE rolling non-slam Tennis thread

delray is lots windier

suprised to learn:

Here are all the scenarios in which Medvedev would climb to World No. 1 on 28 February:

Medvedev wins the Acapulco title, regardless of Djokovic’s results in Dubai
Medvedev reaches the Acapulco final and Djokovic does not win the Dubai title
Medvedev reaches the Acapulco semi-finals and Djokovic does not reach the Dubai final
Medvedev reaches the Acapulco quarter-finals and Djokovic does not reach the Dubai semi-finals
Medvedev reaches the second round in Acapulco and Djokovic does not reach the Dubai semi-finals
Medvedev loses in the first round in Acapulco and Djokovic does not reach the Dubai quarter-finals

Djokovic has Musetti in r1 Dubai. Come on, Lorenzo.

Meanwhile, Opelka has lost his serve a couple of times this week, but is still in the Delray Beach final (vs Norrie, starts shortly). Alcaraz-Schwartzman in Rio. FAA finally won a title, but is back to his usual this week - straight sets defeat in Marseille vs Rublev. Ostapenko saved mp vs Kvitova in three-hour qf in Dubai and went on to win the title. There's a lot goin' on!

alcaraz wins rio, opelka ran out of steam in delray... both withdraw from acapulco

Fair enough. Has Acapulco ever had such a strong draw? Five of the top seven.

Norrie managed to take 30-odd points off Opelka's serve, not enough to ever break, but enough to put him under constant pressure and the inevitable 76 76 scoreline.

RBA won in Doha too!

i wondered to myself if opelka knowing his 1st rd match @ acapulco was vs rafa played any factor in his withdrawing

…but i did see him take a medical timeout vs norrie & his semi vs millman was a 3 hr grind….he really surprisingly rallied p well the last two weeks, tho strategically he prob needs to find a way to avoid the longer rallies altogether

Musetti was 0/7 in bps... pretty typical for an early-round Nole match, chances not taken. Meh.

It's 4:20am in Mexico and Brooksby-Zverev have only just started the 3rd set... Zverev saved mps in a 112min second set, 12-10 in the t/b.

I assume the Dimitrov-Koslov epic was immediately before this but… having already got to 1am wouldn’t you just cancel the last match of the day and roll it over to day two?

Zverev wins at 4:54am. I see now that there were three matches in the 6pm session, under lights - they all went well over three hours.

Acapulco has some form in this regard - Ferrer-Tomic and Dimitrov-Murray in previous years went beyond 2am. Is it entirely a floodlit event? Seems it's 25-32C regardless of when they play.

wow. "latest finish in history" i am seeing...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ScH5xN8hyc

whoops, meant to be this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9RuO690uXY

guy accused of abusing his partner has a temper problem, who would’ve guessed?

That doubles defeat clearly finished him off, cos he's withdrawn from the singles now.

He was booted out of the tournament

Ha, just shows what you miss when you follow tennis via the occasional stream, a score app, and the ATP site (which has said *nothing* about this).

What an idiot.

jiri vesely takes out novak in dubai ! meds will reach #1

vesely is now 2-0 vs novak btw

Had it on my phone during the tail end of a meeting :)

Vesely failed to serve it out once, and was unlucky with a bad call (played-two after a challenge) in the t/b - but Novak tossed in a double to hand back the advantage.

Not quite sure why it took so long for Novak's non-entry to the US to be confirmed... Indian Wells men's draw shuffled around overnight, Dimitrov now #33 at bottom of draw.

Irony is he'll be back at #1 unless Medvedev has a deep run here (Medvedev drops his Marseille '21 points this week, Novak loses nothing). Djokovic is only ATP player in top 25 absent (next highest absentee is Federer! Grimly holding on to those half-price 2019 points); women's draw rather spottier - Barty, Krejcikova, Collins, Pavlyuchenkova missing.

i read meds keeps #1 if he makes the quarters...his path looks like monfils then alcaraz or bautista agut.... gotta think he's like 75% or so to do that

Thanks to the Davis Cup interruption to the calendar, he's already beaten Pat "One-Week" Rafter anyway :)

Also seems like IW22 and IW21 points both count, until IW21 drops off in October (unlike, say, FO20/FO21)? I guess IW21 was sort of where Shanghai would normally be in the schedule, so it'll drop when that comes around again.

nadal comes back after korda was serving up 5-2 in the 3rd... great 3rd set, korda is uber talented

watched brooksby defend and torment stef last night, incredibly impressive... they said in the atp live rankings brooksby is now ranked #40 (!)

opelka also beat shapo yesterday

brooksby, opelka, fritz & korda are all 24 or under... that group bodes p well for us mens tennis imo

Not for the first time, I switch off a Medvedev match thinking "he's got this", and check 30min later and he's barely won a game since.

Harriet Dart in the last sixteen is unexpected; saw her play Wimbledon qualies a few years back. Alcaraz taking out RBA two and love is scary stuff. Kyrgios flying too.

man this breaks my heart a little bit

Used to be rackets and strings, now this🙄🙏🏻🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/hdYjMDlMuo

— Alex Dolgopolov (@TheDolgo) March 16, 2022

Age while entering the top-15:

Rafael Nadal - 18y 10m 16d
Carlos Alcaraz - 18y 10m 17d

— YoungTennisGuns (@YoungTennisGuns) March 18, 2022

Wow didn't see this one coming

World No.1 Asheigh Barty has announced her retirement from tennis.

Full video with Casey Dellacqua on Instagram: https://t.co/4dvdLMIgOQ pic.twitter.com/4A6bhh3pJT

— WTA Insider (@WTA_insider) March 23, 2022

mad respect though, going out on top

back to cricket

1 of the matches of the year thus far diego/stef in monte carlo, wow

Whoa, that's the one match I saw nothing of today! I saw it was 6-2 5-2 and didn't think it was even worth checking the score again!

yep diego came back to win the second in a tiebreak, then had a point to go up 5-0 in the 3d….but stef got momentum back & pulled it out, complete w a dive volley in his last game

Carlos Alcaraz won this tennis match pic.twitter.com/8Bj3es7QWT

— Ricky Dimon (@Dimonator) April 24, 2022

hes only lost 3 times this yr

The improvised shovel down the line to save the MP depicted above was bizarre.

Felt a bit sorry for Norrie in the midst of all the Barcelona rain - 3hr+ vs Fucsovics and then another epic vs De Minaur same day, while ADM's earlier last-16 match was a 6-0 (ret).

Grimly predictable recoveries from set (or set+break) deficits all week from Novak in Belgrade, only to get bageled in the decider by Rublev in the final. Excellent. Everyone is peaking too early again though! By the time Roland Garros is here, you know what's going to happen.

Swiatek finally dropped a set, but she's in Williams territory with this run. Even if Barty hadn't retired she'd be a long way off #1 by now.

Re: Russian/Belarussian ban at SW19 (sorry, strictly off-topic, but it's too early to start a Wimb thread)... where's the spirit of '73 in the ATP/WTA? I'm not sure what to make it of myself, but if the players' federations are completely against it then there has to be some action?

Loving the rise of Alcaraz/Swiatek. Never was too into Tennis but I've been fortunate enough to be around a lot of live matches lately by way working in the TV industry. Have quickly become a big fan. Seems like an exciting time with the tides of the Big 3 turning...

Alcaraz: first player ever to beat Nadal and Djokovic on consecutive days on clay. 62 16 63 vs Rafa yesterday (I saw CA getting his foot taped at 62 12, saw that he lost the next four games, and didn't bother tuning back in!), 67 75 76 in 3h35 vs Novak just now. He has a 10-1 record in final set t/bs? Ridiculous.

Tsitsipas-Zverev almost a non-event in comparison. Funny how the Next Gen, having failed to truly break through against the old guard (three of them have lost Slam finals from two sets up ffs!) are now becoming a supporting act to this teenager. My money was actually on Sinner or Musetti eclipsing them (or, once upon a time, FAA), and that may still be the case at Slam level.

(Entirely possible Zverev beats Alcaraz today, of course!)

Yeah about that

Tim Van Rijthoven, ranked 205, who had played precisely one ATP main-draw match before this week (as a lucky loser, Winston-Salem 2016), has just won 's-Hertogenbosch as a wildcard. Beat Fritz, Auger Aliassime and Medvedev.

“Living in the closet is impossible. It is too hard, it is pointless,” she added. “Living in peace with yourself is the only thing that matters, and fuck everyone else.”

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/jul/18/daria-kasatkina-russian-tennis-player-comes-out-as-gay

Good for you, Daria!

bernarda pera wins back to back 250s
twenty-four straight sets won i believe

always liked her game everytime i watched her but she'd regularly have dips where shed make tons of errors; today vs konteveit she was so solid, only dropped serve once & it was when she was serving for the match up two breaks

Great stuff from Pera. Delighted to see Thiem string a few wins together, though he got thumped by Berrettini in the Gstaad semis yesterday.

Holger Rune's run to the Paris-Bercy title is quite... incredible:

R1: Wawrinka
R2: #10 Hurkacz
R3: #9 Rublev
QF: #1 Alcaraz
SF: #8 Auger-Aliassime
F: #7 Djokovic (6 times champ)

— José Morgado (@josemorgado) November 6, 2022

Hats off but I’ve got a feeling I have my NextGen hate figure :)

Watched the deciding set vs Stan (gutted!) and saw the little exchange at the net (which was a bit harsh). Also saw last hour of Novak-Stef semi and about half of that crazy 17min last game in the final (on my phone, on a train, picture freezing as I lost signal). So, yeah, any Djokovic defeat is good but really not sure about Holger…

What's wrong with Rune?

not sure if he was eventually fined but investigated by ATP last year for using homophobic slurs. also allegedly made up some stuff about Casper Ruud on social media

Yeah, he just seems fairly immature and brattish, yelling at his parents in the crowd etc; a particularly intense driven character who may grow into someone a bit more likeable :) The Ruud dispute was bizarre - genuinely seemed to have invented a locker room confrontation to deflect criticism of his own on court behaviour. And his “apology” (quickly deleted) for the homophobia was basically “sorry I’m not perfect LOL”.

Not easy to grow up in the spotlight, but he’s not winning ppl over so far. Alcaraz, in comparison, is already hugely popular.

good story

Djokovic once hand-picked him to 'impersonate' Nadal’s lefty forehand before a Grand Slam final

Yet until last night, 33-year-old Matija Pecotic had never competed on the ATP Tour

This is a story of redemption - a classic case of it’s never too late and you’re never too old 🧵 pic.twitter.com/fjcSwqqs9J

— Bastien Fachan (@BastienFachan) February 15, 2023

great scrambling match pt by dimitrov vs deminaur just now

saw the stat that this is dimitrov's 44th tour level semifinal & 12 consecutive seasons hes reached one...