Tennis thread - February.

[Guest Princess Leena]

February sucks for tennis, but it looks like we have a few people interested.

 

I wish to become the Al Keiper of tennis, and defeat baseball in popularity.

[Rob Anybody 0]

What are all these Al Keiper references, anyway?

[Guest]

Mod. King of baseball knowledge.

[naiwf 0]

Agassi could easily win the Delray Beach tournament this week, and that's about the only tourney I could see him winning this year.

 

I hope Sharapova loses in Tokyo this week but the only player I could see even challenging her is Hingis. Just looking at the WTA schedule I wonder if ESPN will be showing any of the Dubai Duty Free Open considering how many times they ran commercials pimping the Dubai Duty Free shop during the WTA Championships a couple of months ago. I guess they wanted to show the Williams sisters in some way considering neither was able to qualify for the event.

[Guest Princess Leena]

ESPN will never show a tournament not a Grand Slam or YEC outside of North America again. Dubai probably paid a bazillion dollars to get those ads. They have tons of money to throw around. That's how they magically get such good fields for their tournaments.

[Vern Gagne 0]

They should move the Australian Open to February. After the Super Bowl it's a downtime for sports until NASCAR starts it's season late in the month.

[Rob Anybody 0]

They should move the Australian Open to February. After the Super Bowl it's a downtime for sports until NASCAR starts it's season late in the month.

 

Of course, there's always the other regularly-brought-up point that on-court temperatures during an Australian summer can get a little warm, but the American sports schedule comes ahead of that.

[Guest Princess Leena]

They should move the Australian Open to February. After the Super Bowl it's a downtime for sports until NASCAR starts it's season late in the month.

 

They're planning to move it to March in a few years. Or were at least planning to... I haven't heard much about it lately.

 

American television is non-important... the Aussie Open is by far their biggest national sporting event every year. The rest of the world cares a lot more about it too.

 

Also, the heat can't be avoided. Melbourne gets those occasional super hot days from September to April.

 

The main reason is the ridiculous tennis schedule. The "off-season" consists of 6 weeks. By moving it to March, that gives around 3 months of off-season, which is absolutely needed with the amount of injuries lately.

[Rob Anybody 0]

We do get hot days at other times, but not as regularly as we do during summer. The biggest potential issue with moving it closer to winter is that if you get a bad week, they could be in for a rainy tournament.

 

As for Australia's biggest annual sporting event - that's sort of true. The AFL grand final traditionally draws huge amounts of attention in Victoria (and interstate, if there's a team from somewhere else playing), and in the states north of Victoria there's also rugby to think about, but the Open is our biggest event that involves people from other countries.

 

In other news, I'm going to be watching the Sui/Aus Davis Cup tie for Guccione.

[naiwf 0]

Hingis really struggled in her first match in Tokyo 6-0, 6-0 in 33 minutes against the 60th ranked player in the world. If she beats Dechy in her next match, she'll already be back in the top 100.

 

Robby Ginepri has really carried the momentum from making the US Open Semis into the new year as he is now 1-3 after losing to a no name at Delray Beach. The future of US men's tennis is bright baby.

[Guest Princess Leena]

WTA Tour: We like to pretend we've improved since 1997, but it's not fooling anyone!

[naiwf 0]

Hingis just anally raped Sharapova 6-3, 6-1 in the Toray Pan Pacific Open Semis, making it back to her first Tier I Final since her retirement. The pretty princess didn't even get a break point on Martina's "weak serve". If only I could get my hands on the press conferences following that massacre.

[Guest Princess Leena]

If only I could find a torrent of this match.

 

I obviously wanted Martina to win... but like this, against Maria, on a very fast surface... the tour blows.

 

Hope Martina can be #1 this year.

[The Czech Republic 0]

Hingis just anally raped Sharapova

Hot

[Guest Princess Leena]

And Martina is down 2-6 0-4 to Demented...

 

Don't get it.

[naiwf 0]

I guess she ran out of steam. Elena just anally raped Martina, but I'm pretty sure if Semipova had gotten by Hingis should would've beaten Dementieva pretty handily. I guess you can't really predict anything with the "top" 10 or 20 players. But Elena was my favorite player in Martina's absence so it's all good.

[Guest Princess Leena]

Only reason I can think of.

 

Or, Demented had one of her rare hot days. She can absolutely deadly in rallies some matches.

 

Still a very weird result, though... Martina never makes that many UE's.

[naiwf 0]

From what I read elsewhere Dementieva brought her A+++++ game and made Martina look like a scrub. I wish Elena could serve because she'd easily be the most versatile/talented player in the game.

 

Tommy Haas won the tournament Agassi should have, and Ljubicic wins another tourney that no one else in the top 5 would even be playing. Granted it was in his homeland of Croatia but he and Davydenko are the most glaring examples of "over-ranked" players in men's tennis.

[Guest Princess Leena]

No, Elena wouldn't be that good. While she can be the greatest groundstroker in the game somedays... when she's off on that, she's REALLY bad. And she's too inconsistent with it to be a Top 5 player. The serve isn't a huge weakness, either... her 1st serve is fine, and very few players can regularly attack her 2nd serve.

 

As about the only Davydenko fan and defender, I'll have to state my argument for the 12342134th time. He got to the SF of Roland Garros, and the QF of the Aussie Open the last 2 years. QF's, or better, at 4 TMS events. If we were under the old ranking system that didn't count all TMS events to your ranking... he'd easily be #4 right now, as he's a QF/SF machine. While he's obviously not one of the 5 best players in the world... he has earned his ranking.

 

With Ivan... it's different, because he never did a thing in slams before AO this year, and basically sucked in TMS events too until the watered down indoor ones last fall.

[naiwf 0]

I agree Elena wouldn't be consistent but she'd be the person no one would want to face in case the good version came to play that day. If she had a good serve, ie the kind of serve someone about 5'11 should have she'd be a better version of Mauresmo and she's been top 5 forever it seems.

 

The way I tend to look at men's tennis is to just assume Federer and Nadal are the clear cut 2 best on the planet right now. Do I really think Roddick, Davydenko and Ljubicic are the next best three out there? No way. Sadly, everyone else in the game is either old/seen better days, mentally weak or as inconsistent as Elena.

[Rob Anybody 0]

Yay, Australia.

[Guest Princess Leena]

Lucky Australians!

 

And Kim is shockingly playing Antwerp! She recovered from torn ligaments in her ankle after 10 DAYS! It's a miracle! Let's all fly to Antwerp when we have illnesses, touch Saint Kim, and we shall be healed!

[naiwf 0]

I will have to concede that Clijsters is completely full of shit, as is her compatriot Henin-Hardenne. It's just sad that those two feel the need to rely on gamesmanship so much when they're more talented than everyone else playing right now. I'd like to see Mauresmo win here to keep things rolling, but I can't see her surviving this field after being pushed pretty hard in Paris this past weekend.

[Kurt Angle Mark 0]

Here are some pictures from Maria Sharapova's SI Swimsuit Edition Photoshoot

 

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/features/...msuit/athletes/

[Guest Princess Leena]

I will have to concede that Clijsters is completely full of shit, as is her compatriot Henin-Hardenne. It's just sad that those two feel the need to rely on gamesmanship so much when they're more talented than everyone else playing right now. I'd like to see Mauresmo win here to keep things rolling, but I can't see her surviving this field after being pushed pretty hard in Paris this past weekend.

 

To my knowledge, Justine has never faked an injury. She used to be the type that would try and play every week through injuries... and she learned the hard way to stop doing that. Whereas Kim stupidly keeps rushing back... and enjoys the attention from that so much, that she exaggerates any little injury she has to get the same reaction. I'm just glad some people have realized that when she does the "OMG! Injures! I might not even step on court!" then beats scrub 6-1 6-0... that it's a bunch of garbage. And she's not Sweet Jolly Ol' Nice Kim!!!!

[Guest Princess Leena]

Here are some pictures from Maria Sharapova's SI Swimsuit Edition Photoshoot

 

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/features/...msuit/athletes/

 

Love, Sex & Dating.

[naiwf 0]

To my knowledge, Justine has never faked an injury. She used to be the type that would try and play every week through injuries... and she learned the hard way to stop doing that. Whereas Kim stupidly keeps rushing back... and enjoys the attention from that so much, that she exaggerates any little injury she has to get the same reaction. I'm just glad some people have realized that when she does the "OMG! Injures! I might not even step on court!" then beats scrub 6-1 6-0... that it's a bunch of garbage. And she's not Sweet Jolly Ol' Nice Kim!!!!

 

Did you watch this year's AO final? I bet Justine's tummy wouldn't have been hurting so much if she wasn't down 1-6 0-2. That's the main reason she's on my "list". I still like her game and respect her achievements, but she could have stayed out there another ten minutes and lost properly without hurting herself. Any benefit of the doubt I've given Clijsters in the past went out the window the minute she decided she could come back from "torn" ligaments in less than a couple of weeks when there was speculation she'd miss at least 2-3 months and that was on the conservative side.

 

It's nice to see that the SI crew was able to CGI in some boobs for Semipova.

[Guest Princess Leena]

For any tennis fans with Dish Network, they've picked up The Tennis Channel.

 

Such horrible timing... I'm going to be glued to the TV now, with that, Olympics and soon to be conference tournaments starting.

[naiwf 0]

Did you hear that Clijsters "re-injured" herself playing at Antwerp and pulled out of the Pacific Life event in Indian Wells? What an idiot. For no reason whatsoever she decides to play a tournament where she's defending like 49 points, "hurts" herself and now has to miss one where she'd be defending 350 I think. Maybe they don't teach math very well in Belgium, but if you're trying to maintain the top spot you don't give up on the event worth 7 times as much to your ranking. I'm really beginning to dislike Kim, and I don't think it would have mattered much since Mauresmo is on fire and would have taken the top ranking spot by the end of March anyway.

[Guest Princess Leena]

Yes, I heard.

 

And I just don't care anymore.

 

I don't think she meant to play Antwerp, and skip IW, though. She just came back too quickly from an injury for the 234234th time... and now it's OMG, I'm injured again, why oh why for the 423423th time. Whatevz.