2021 In Between Grand Slam Thread

Ranking points last for 52 weeks (or more in some cases). Winning the USO this year means that at the very worst, she will be seeded in the low 20s at next year's USO. Her ranking can't really go down much before before next year's Wimbledon, where she has 4th round points to defend.

I watched parts of it, jumping between it and some women's matches. It was a long match for a 5-7 6-3 6-2 scoreline, over 3 hours. But that's the way of it here: There was a women's match a few days ago over 3 hours and 50 minutes!!!

Haleps is currently struggling against Sasnovich. I can't see myself staying up for the end of that, let alone Kvitova vs. Azarenka, and certainly not Ferndandez vs. Pavs.

Ostapenko vs. Swiatek in the next round could be interesting. Ostapenko continues to be as erratic as ever, but at least she's stringing some results together.

EDIT: Halep has just broken back for 5-5 in the 1st.

In the battle of the surprise French Open winners, Ostapenko beat Swiatek 6-4 6-3. Swiatek was a break up in both sets, took a long toilet break after the first, and a questionable MTO in the second. She just couldn't live with Ostapenko's hitting.

Laylah Fernandez has just taken the first set 6-2 against Shelby Rogers, despite struggling at times on her serve. No post-US Open hangover for her it seems.

Rogers d. Fernandez 2-6 6-1 7-6(4). She gets to play Ostapenko in the QF. It was a very tough final set, hardly any easy service games (actually, that was the case for the whole match).

Murray vs. Zverev next up.

Murray will drop to #172 following his Indian Wells exit.

I saw Medvedev was up a double break in the second and then lost 8 straight games, I'd assumed there was some kind of injury but I watched the highlights there and it appears it was just a complete meltdown.

Azarenka didn't look the fittest there at the end. She could have got to the winner Badosa hit, it was well inside the line. She didn't even try.

Badosa wins 7-6(5) 2-6 7-6(2) in 3 hours 6 minutes. Azarenka must be wondering how she lost it when serving for the match at 5-4 30-0.

Badosa has been threatening to deliver a huge performance this season, and is now 8th in the race for the WTA tour finals in Guadalajara.

Well, the best that can be said about the men's final is that it went to three sets. Basilashvili was like a third- or fourth-rate Ostapenko. In the final set, he hit over 3 unforced errors per game. All Norrie had to do was to get the ball back and wait for the error, and he knew it. The first Briton to win Indian Wells!

The Balkans are very vaccine skeptic and that extends from Bulgaria over as far as Slovenia.

I don't know much about the reasoning in the other countries, but in Serbia they instinctively don't trust anything they are being told by the state. It doesn't help that the current PM was Milosevic's information minister.

I also know one guy who is badly physically disabled because of some medicine his mother took while pregnant back in the 70s. Although that was a domestic product unlike the current vaccine, things like that don't help engender trust in medicines.

I don't agree with Djokovic's opinion on vaccines, but he's not doing it to get kudos somewhere, he truly believes whatever it is that he believes.

As regards society bending over backwards to help out sports people during the Covid crisis, I don't think there was any benevolence in that. Nor were sports people "prepared to risk everything" for society. Keeping elite sports going during the pandemic was beneficial to both sides. Sports people were able to remain on their massive incomes and having televised live sport, helped encourage people to remain indoors and isolated during lockdown.