Tennis Anyone?

Sinner started hitting the ball harder from set 3 on, and DM let off on the pace at around the same time.

I can;t help but think that the sheer amount of tennis that DM had played before his match (6 hours more than Sinner since ethe start of the event) had something to do with it. He looked pretty gassed by the end. I think DM set a record for that event in playing the most sets including the final - 31 sets!

Yes DM just ran out of gas…you could see it in his face in some of the close ups in the 3rd set. Was good I got to watch the whole game at work in between jobs Sunday night 👍

As Al said, over 24 hours of tennis in his run up to the final.

Also it’s been a hot summer in Melbourne (whole east coast) this year, I know one day it was high 30s he played a 5 set match in.

I was watching a first round match on Monday, and spotted someone I know on the court!



That's my friend Irene who is an umpire and judge. The last time I spotted her on a televised match was at the Canadian Open (Masters 1000 level event) a few years ago so it's pretty cool she's now doing the slams as a line judge! She just played a match against my wife a few weeks ago...

Unfortunately here we get commercials at every change over. 🤬

There are some things that have changed - colours on the players clothes came and went, but I like the all whites.

What I dislike is that some of the formality is gone - was just remarking to my wife today that I sort of miss the traditions of calling the players by "Mister", "Miss", or "Mrs".

I also hate on court interviews at all events. They already do press, so I fail to see the need for this, and it completely screwed up the tradition of having the players exit the courts together - I always thought that showed respect to the player who lost on the day, but now they have to slink off alone after their loss.

Karma is a bitch, Emma...

Very happy to see Krejcikova come through today. She thoroughly outplayed Collins with a great serve and wicked slices that stayed low and gave Collins fits. Very smart tennis on her part. Don’t think the injury to Collins made any difference in the outcome on that one.

de Minaur looks to have injured himself making that great volley on the last point of his match. Then he had to sit there waiting for his on court interview, where they of course asked him about it. Yet another example of why I hate those. I’m sure all he wanted to do was get off the court and get that evaluated. Fortunately he said in his actual press conference that it wasn’t serious...hope that’s the case so he can be in top form in the next match.

Djokovich showing that even though he won, he’s still a loser.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5624917/2024/07/08/novak-djokovic-wimbledon-crowd-rune/

I agree with this perspective on Djokovich.
https://www.google.com/search?q=mce...ate=ive&vld=cid:6b53e035,vid:w96g_nFkdV8,st:0

Very disappointing - looks like the injury on the last volley of the previous match was much worse than he let on in the interviews. Hope he recovers quickly. ND already had an easy draw, that just got easier. 🤦

Since he can't get the same kind of love that fedal did, the only thing that is left for him is to be the victim, and he loves it.

He's always made the mistake of thinking that fedal were both loved because they won...

Unfortunately for majors, the coverage here in Canada on TSN is the feed from ESPN. For other events it tends to be mostly Tennis Channel, and there the commentators tend to be a little more respectful of the play - in other words they are not yammering on through rallies and repeating dumb stuff throughout the whole match. I find it's not a coincidence that those TC commentators are in large part British. In fact I was listening to the Match Point Canada podcast the other day, and they had Nick Lester on - he made a point of saying that as a commentator he gave the match some space, so that people could just enjoy the play and not hear him all the time - the US commentators could learn from that. I find the better commentators not only say less, but if the point starts while they are in mid sentence, they just stop talking - the US channels just keep on talking - it's like they have been told that there shouldn't be any "dead air" or something.

Sometimes if a match I want to watch is on an outside court, there is no commentator. TSN calls this "the stadium experience" and honestly it's very refreshing just to watch a match with no one commentating.

But now in the quarters the ESPN coverage has reached a whole new level of stupidity. I am always recording all the channels so I can see matches that I want to see. Sometimes more then one match I want to watch is on at the same time. During coverage of the match I'm watching, I try to avoid news of the other match, and when they give little updates at the bottom of the screen or in one corner, I can avoid those for the few seconds they are displayed. Now ESPN has decided to spoil the other match by displaying the score for that match 100% of the time...



So as I'm watching the Ostapenko/Krejcikova match, they have the other quarter's score being displayed point by point, in the upper right corner of the screen. This never goes away - it's impossible to avoid seeing it. Who the feck decided that this was a good idea? The sheer stupidity of this...it's it beyond belief...🤬🤬🤬