Wimbledon 2015

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

Bouchard has a tear in her abdomen, apparently, she was advised not to play but says she didn't want to miss Wimbledon.

whiterebel

Great comeback from Wozniacki.

the_monkey

Stepanek Bedene a nice match out on #8..

the_monkey

I love these late matches ....

the_monkey

Berdych's missus .... I wouldn't kick her out of bed .... that's for sure ...

smurfs5

What's with the Inverdale hate on here? Is it just because of what he said about Bartoli 2 years ago?! I think he's an excellent broadcaster- one of the BBC's best assets for their tennis coverage and he's adapted very well to commentary considering he's never done it before. Not in the same league as Petchey on commentary but very listenable. He's eloquent, intelligent and asks interesting questions. As much as I like Clare Balding, she is such a downgrade from Inverdale on the highlights show- she clearly doesn't have much knowledge of tennis.

Really great atmosphere for the Berdych-Chardy match. Something about those late matches which really get the crowd going. Difficult draw to get Chardy in the 1st round but he came through in the end.

Surprisingly good showing from the Brits. Ward and Bedene through today, Broady through yesterday with a really good performance and Watson with a great win, knocking out Garcia, the 32nd seed.

Considering the year she's had, it was difficult to see Bouchard making it past the 2nd round. At times, she looked like she wasn't even trying such was the erratic nature of her shots. Looks totally bereft of confidence and it's probably best to find a new coach, take 6 weeks off just relaxing and working with a sports psychologist, find her confidence and then slowly work her way back. Although I'm not her biggest fan, it's a shame to see such a talented and promising player in that state of affairs.

Halep's exit was surprising but Cepelova gave a fantastic performance and thoroughly deserved her win.

Watched some of the Monfils match earlier and he really is one of the most entertaining players out there- his style is so fun and the crowd gave him a huge ovation when he was leaving the court. It's a shame he's so inconsistent and a choker but he's one of the best players to watch in the early rounds.

youtube!

When Inverdale learns the difference between a match and a game it will be a start. He knows bugger all about any player outside the top 10 and generally comes across as smarmy and smug with no real passion for the sport.

smurfs5

Had a bit of time on Sunday night so decided to predict the matches before the tournament got under way. Anyone have any predictions for the quarters, semis and final?

Here's what I came up with:

Mens Quarters : Djokovic/Cilic, Wawrinka/Dimitrov, Nadal/Murray, Berdych/Federer
Mens Semis : Djokovic/Dimitrov, Murray/Federer
Mens Final : Djokovic/Murray
Mens Champion : Andy Murray

Nadal has gotten lucky with his draw- Lu, Troicki and Fognini to get to the quarters isn't bad at all. Wawrinka has a difficult quarter- Verdasco and Goffin are dangerous prospects. The other part of that quarter sees Raonic handed an incredibly difficult draw- he'd have to beat Tommy Haas, Kyrgios and Dimitrov just to get to the quarters! Only one of Dimitrov, Kyrgios and Raonic will get to the quarters which is a shame in a way. It'd be interesting if one of them was thrown into Nadal's quarter.

Womens Quarters : S Williams/ Bencic, Sharapova/Safarova, Kerber/Lisicki, Makarova/Kvitova
Womens Semis : S Williams/Sharapova, Kerber/Kvitova
Womens Final : S Williams/Kvitova
Womens Champion : Petra Kvitova

Two particularly strong parts of the draw are Serena and Petra's quarters. Petra could have Jankovic in R3, Radwanska in R4 and Makarova in the QFs while Serena could meet Cibulkova in R3, Venus in R4 and Bencic in R4. Nearly all of the aforementioned players are good grass court players while there are some on brilliant form such as Bencic and Venus.

Whoever meets Serena in the quarters will get there the hard way. If it's Azarenka, she has to get past Flipkens, Mladenovic and Bencic while for Bencic, it's Ivanovic and Azarenka in her way. Some potentially fascinating matches in there.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

youtube! wrote: »

When Inverdale learns the difference between a match and a game it will be a start. He knows bugger all about any player outside the top 10 and generally comes across as smarmy and smug with no real passion for the sport.

I always really liked him on my the rugby on BBC. He's just no good at the tennis.

youtube!

I reckon Kyrgios is gonna go far perhaps even the semis, he has what it takes if he puts it all together.

smurfs5

youtube! wrote: »

I reckon Kyrgios is gonna go far perhaps even the semis, he has what it takes if he puts it all together.

It'll be interesting to see how he does considering he split with his coach of nearly 7 years last week which I thought was strange timing. He definitely has the ability but he'll have to get past Raonic, Dimitrov and Wawrinka to get the semis which is a tough ask.

Memnoch

smurfs5 wrote: »

It'll be interesting to see how he does considering he split with his coach of nearly 7 years last week which I thought was strange timing. He definitely has the ability but he'll have to get past Raonic, Dimitrov and Wawrinka to get the semis which is a tough ask.

Kyriogs needs to work harder and get his body in better shape. He also needs to grow up and improve his attitude. If he does he has the potential to be number one in the world. Right now I think wawrinka and Raonic will be too much for him. Probably even dimitrov.

youtube!

Memnoch wrote: »

Kyriogs needs to work harder and get his body in better shape. He also needs to grow up and improve his attitude. If he does he has the potential to be number one in the world. Right now I think wawrinka and Raonic will be too much for him. Probably even dimitrov.

Agree for the most part. Raonic is still carrying that toe injury a bit so I don't see him getting to the semi's . Wawrinka and grass just don't really work and Dimitrov is in horrific form, I just reckon he can do it ,he is fearless. I know Wawrinka destroyed him at Queens but Nick was fluish that day. Anyhow we will wait and see.

innuendo141

youtube! wrote: »

Agree for the most part. Raonic is still carrying that toe injury a bit so I don't see him getting to the semi's . Wawrinka and grass just don't really work and Dimitrov is in horrific form, I just reckon he can do it ,he is fearless. I know Wawrinka destroyed him at Queens but Nick was fluish that day. Anyhow we will wait and see.

The way he plays today will be interesting. He played like it was an inconvenience for the most part of his monday match, I think he could be able to go far too.

Hopefully he will, with the likes of Janowicz and Gulbis always crashing out early these days there is a serious lack of characters toward the end of these events. At least with Kyrgios you have to be glued in because he could have a coniption at any time and next minute hit an upside down inverted backhand crosscourt volley tweener

the_monkey

smurfs5 wrote: »

Had a bit of time on Sunday night so decided to predict the matches before the tournament got under way. Anyone have any predictions for the quarters, semis and final?

Here's what I came up with:

Mens Quarters : Djokovic/Cilic, Wawrinka/Dimitrov, Nadal/Murray, Berdych/Federer
Mens Semis : Djokovic/Dimitrov, Murray/Federer
Mens Final : Djokovic/Murray
Mens Champion : Andy Murray

Nadal has gotten lucky with his draw- Lu, Troicki and Fognini to get to the quarters isn't bad at all. Wawrinka has a difficult quarter- Verdasco and Goffin are dangerous prospects. The other part of that quarter sees Raonic handed an incredibly difficult draw- he'd have to beat Tommy Haas, Kyrgios and Dimitrov just to get to the quarters! Only one of Dimitrov, Kyrgios and Raonic will get to the quarters which is a shame in a way. It'd be interesting if one of them was thrown into Nadal's quarter.

Womens Quarters : S Williams/ Bencic, Sharapova/Safarova, Kerber/Lisicki, Makarova/Kvitova
Womens Semis : S Williams/Sharapova, Kerber/Kvitova
Womens Final : S Williams/Kvitova
Womens Champion : Petra Kvitova

Two particularly strong parts of the draw are Serena and Petra's quarters. Petra could have Jankovic in R3, Radwanska in R4 and Makarova in the QFs while Serena could meet Cibulkova in R3, Venus in R4 and Bencic in R4. Nearly all of the aforementioned players are good grass court players while there are some on brilliant form such as Bencic and Venus.

Whoever meets Serena in the quarters will get there the hard way. If it's Azarenka, she has to get past Flipkens, Mladenovic and Bencic while for Bencic, it's Ivanovic and Azarenka in her way. Some potentially fascinating matches in there.

Nadal always gets an easy draw, even as #10 seed , it's a joke.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

innuendo141 wrote: »

Hopefully he will, with the likes of Janowicz and Gulbis always crashing out early these days there is a serious lack of characters toward the end of these events. At least with Kyrgios you have to be glued in because he could have a coniption at any time and next minute hit an upside down inverted backhand crosscourt volley tweener

I find it interesting that people like that are called "characters" where as people like Bouchard are called brats. I can understand that Bouchard may rub people up the wrong way but other than the Fed Cup handshake thing has any of her behaviour, on or off court, been anywhere near as bad as those guys? Her results this year stink but last year she achieved more than the likes of Gulbis or Kyrgios put together. They don't even have the results to back up any of their behaviour.

lostcat

youtube! wrote: »

I reckon Kyrgios is gonna go far perhaps even the semis, he has what it takes if he puts it all together.

Interesting piece on the heavy topspin blog about Kyrgios and how poor his return game is. He might certainly serve his way to a wimby some day (as cilic did at US Open) but according to the stats he will hover in the lower reaches of the top twenty until he improves his return game.

Obvious maybe, but its interesting to see someone lay out the stats.

Another interesting point he makes is about Raonic, whose own return game is pretty poor, but who has made his way into the top ten in the past year by way of a freakish run of tie-break wins (which is statistically highly unlikely to continue).

innuendo141

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

I find it interesting that people like that are called "characters" where as people like Bouchard are called brats. I can understand that Bouchard may rub people up the wrong way but other than the Fed Cup handshake thing has any of her behaviour, on or off court, been anywhere near as bad as those guys? Her results this year stink but last year she achieved more than the likes of Gulbis or Kyrgios put together. They don't even have the results to back up any of their behaviour.

I think it's exactly that reason why the other two lads could be known as characters (i would alos call them brast too, btw). People are just frustrated with Bouchard because everyone knows that she should be getting way further in every event because she has the talent, and proved that last year. The likes of Kyrgios and Jerzy could be called characters because I suppose they aren't afraid to show it on the court, where as Eugenie just did act like an absolute tool with the handshake thing, which happened off the court. I'm not saying the other lads are any less frustrating (you could add Fabio to that list too actually, he's one I'd label a brat actually. And a knob.)

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

lostcat wrote: »

Interesting piece on the heavy topspin blog about Kyrgios and how poor his return game is. He might certainly serve his way to a wimby some day (as cilic did at US Open) but according to the stats he will hover in the lower reaches of the top twenty until he improves his return game.

Obvious maybe, but its interesting to see someone lay out the stats.

Another interesting point he makes is about Raonic, whose own return game is pretty poor, but who has made his way into the top ten in the past year by way of a freakish run of tie-break wins (which is statistically highly unlikely to continue).

You could add Isner to that list too. Quite a few of the male players have made their way up the rankings based on serve alone. I think Raonic is at least trying to add to his game but plenty of them are happy to just be serve bots. Someone should do stats on how many of Isner's sets go to a TB. A pretty high proportion of them, I'd say.

Obviously a good serve is the foundation of your game, if you can't serve you're already at a disadvantage but the players that get to the top and stay at the top have as good a return game as their serve.

bing3

I like Raonic but really hope Haas beats him today. He never got the rewards his talent deserved and to still be playing at 37 is incredible.
Giraldo could give Nishikori big problems today. Had a decent run here last year so it will be interesting to see how Kei's calf holds up.

lostcat

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

You could add Isner to that list too. Quite a few of the male players have made their way up the rankings based on serve alone. I think Raonic is at least trying to add to his game but plenty of them are happy to just be serve bots. Someone should do stats on how many of Isner's sets go to a TB. A pretty high proportion of them, I'd say.

Obviously a good serve is the foundation of your game, if you can't serve you're already at a disadvantage but the players that get to the top and stay at the top have as good a return game as their serve.

Isner played 63 tiebreaks in the past year alone, winning 36 of them (56%). This is in 63 matches played. His average over the past 5 years is over 60% of tiebreaks won.

Taking the current number 1 player as a comparison, Djokovic played 73 matches in the past year, which included 20 tiebreaks (he won 11 of them, or 55%)

You can have some real fun (if you call it fun, i do ) on tennis abstract dot com, which is a sister site to heavytopspin. That guy likes his stats.....

RosyLily

Nishikori has withdrawn due to calf injury. W/O for Giraldo to R3.

yerwanthere123

Pliskova out now too. Granted Vandeweghe is no scrub, but for all the hype Pliskova has never been past the 3rd round of a slam. Opens up that section of the draw a bit more, eases the path for Safarova to make a nice run here.

youtube!

lostcat wrote: »

Interesting piece on the heavy topspin blog about Kyrgios and how poor his return game is. He might certainly serve his way to a wimby some day (as cilic did at US Open) but according to the stats he will hover in the lower reaches of the top twenty until he improves his return game.

Obvious maybe, but its interesting to see someone lay out the stats.

Another interesting point he makes is about Raonic, whose own return game is pretty poor, but who has made his way into the top ten in the past year by way of a freakish run of tie-break wins (which is statistically highly unlikely to continue).

I really wouldn't read too much into that article tbh. So Nick's return game puts him at the lower reaches of the top 20 and yet he is only 29 in the ATP rankings anyhow, so you could argue that he is over reaching his ranking by even being in the top 20 of returners.

It takes a whole lot of differing factors to win a slam but the biggest of all is the very one that very few players have today and that is to have BALLS. To be utterly fearless and that is one the things that Nick has in spades. He is unafraid, yes he needs to be a lot fitter and yes he needs to mature out but as long as he remains injury free it is gonna happen in the next 2 yrs...who knows could even be this one! (i backed him at 100/1 on betfair some time ago so yes I may be a little biased but he has a chance.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

Kyrgios having another hissy fit on court today. Having a go at the umpire, ""Is that a threat? Does it feel good to be up there in the chair? Do you feel strong up there in the chair?"

lostcat

youtube! wrote: »

I really wouldn't read too much into that article tbh. So Nick's return game puts him at the lower reaches of the top 20 and yet he is only 29 in the ATP rankings anyhow, so you could argue that he is over reaching his ranking by even being in the top 20 of returners.

It takes a whole lot of differing factors to win a slam but the biggest of all is the very one that very few players have today and that is to have BALLS. To be utterly fearless and that is one the things that Nick has in spades. He is unafraid, yes he needs to be a lot fitter and yes he needs to mature out but as long as he remains injury free it is gonna happen in the next 2 yrs...who knows could even be this one! (i backed him at 100/1 on betfair some time ago so yes I may be a little biased but he has a chance.

Without turning this into a threat about the current state of Kyrgios return game, I see i might not have been totally clear in my earlier post so I'll return to it just this once. His current ranking is 29. According to the stats he will not rise above 15-20ish with his current return of serve (he has the third worst record in the top 50 in return games won). I suggest that anyone interested in such things read the article.

Even in his current state I have no doubt that he could possibly ride his serve to a grand slam title on a fast court (Winby or perhaps US Open) given a break or two along the way (no pun intended). My point was was more that if he has ambitions to by in the worlds top 5 and perhaps win 5-8 slams. he will need to improve his return game drastically.

No question, he has the ability to do this in time, and 100/1 is far from bad odds, good luck with that

youtube!

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

Kyrgios having another hissy fit on court today. Having a go at the umpire, ""Is that a threat? Does it feel good to be up there in the chair? Do you feel strong up there in the chair?"

Yea seen that it's never boring to watch him that's for sure!

seanhynes

Them Aussie tennis fans are an absolute wreck deserve to be chucked out for frying the rest of the patrons heads

fullstop

seanhynes wrote: »

Them Aussie tennis fans are an absolute wreck deserve to be chucked out for frying the rest of the patrons heads

I just came in to ask if they were driving anyone else nuts. So annoying, changing after every point and standing up in front of people. They're at all the Aussie matches too

seanhynes

Goons of people a spoonful of sugar makes the aces go down shut up you clowns,in control there they shouting something stupid every 2mins