Tennis Anyone?

I sometimes feel a bit bad for the players having to wear what these companies provide. Sometimes they are awful…

Go Carlos!

Bummed that Mboko is out but she put up a great fight in the second set. I think she’s going to be 12 in the world come Monday, and certainly has the potential to go much higher.

I wouldn't feel too bad for Sinner tho. For $158 million I'd wear just about anything Nike asked me to wear. 😀

Remember Adidas dressing their players as zebras at RG a few years back? I recall Zverev looking particularly, er, extraordinary in it. Fortunately I've deleted my photos - its maybe better that way...

Yeah, when you get to Roger’s level, you get to choose!

Musetti was on another planet. Dismantled Fritz and looking forward to his matchup with Djoko.

Tien played amazing. Very young and I hope to see more of him. With Michael Chang in his box he's in good hands.

Gauff crashed out in spectacular fashion, and Svitolina played better in every part of that match. It's hilarious that well after the match ended she took a racquet deep into the stadium, smashed it, was recorded doing so, then complained about it being shown.

She said she doesn't want to do it out on the court because it sets a bad example. I don't condone people smashing racquets (it's childish at best - who else gets to go around smashing things if things don't go well at work?), but in a way this almost seems more egregious then doing it in the heat of the moment on court. She had plenty of time for whatever rage flare up she was experiencing to subside, so this is a premeditated thing that reflects pretty poorly in my view. It's very Medvedev like, and that's not a compliment...

She's young, but rather than complain openly that something has to be done about it being shown and whining about privacy, she could solve the problem pretty easily by just not doing it in the first place.

I've always said that if I was a racquet company, it would be in the contract that if you are out there smashing up the product we give you, you would lose your sponsorship immediately.

This is quite possibly the worst sports take I have heard in a year. Sports are emotional and they're not played by robots. Yet.

How are readers supposed to know if your judgment is any good? Why don't you attempt to rebut what he said, so that readers can judge your arguments, other than "sports are emotional", on their merit?

I happen to agree with @Archer that it reflected poorly on CG to relieve frustration in such a childish manner, then complain about having been caught doing so. Why do you think that she intentionally waited until she was in the bowels of the building to do it, if she doesn't herself feel some related shame?

Wow, we're getting a great preview of what marriage is gonna be like with Ike Turner over here.

You don't have to dig very deeply to find a baseball manager losing his mind spitting and kicking dirt at an umpire, or a bench clearing brawl, physical altercations with fans, Bobby Knight throwing chairs across a basketball court, never mind the antics of John McEnroe. Bo Jackson broke a bat over his head after a strikeout, didn't lose any endorsements with Louisville Slugger.

She hasn't been playing well, can't hit a second serve, and after getting crushed she left the court and smashed a racquet.

Did she hurt someone? Did she lose her mind in front of the fans? Did she cheat in some way? No.

Shame? Jesus.

Athletes and coaches smash things behind closed doors and in locker rooms every day. Every day.

I'm not CG's dad or coach. I'm not condoning what she did, not saying is was classy. But I am a grown up and wasn't offended beyond belief that a 21 year old athlete smashed her racquet after a bad loss. Off the court and in a hallway, no less. The same way I won't overshadow all the great tennis being played because I'm losing my mind because of a "premeditated rage flare up" or offended that she wasn't polite enough in the post match interview. Give me a break. I like Archer but his being offended isn't a story.

Maybe I'm wrong and she'll be playing with a Wilson come time for Wimbledon, wearing an Omega instead of a Rolex.

Trust me, I know that sports are emotional. Over my nearly 30 years of being a competitive archer, I won a lot and lost a lot in all kinds of competition formats, including head to head match play single elimination competitions in the last years once they became the norm. I won events that I had no business on paper winning (such as my 4th and last national championship in 1999) and lost against archers I had no business losing against. It happens, that's why they don't just hand out the awards based on ranking - you still have to perform on the day.

It's certainly not the fame and attention of a tennis major, but chasing a spot at the Olympics is not a small thing either. People will cheat, sabotage, lie, and sue all to get a spot at the Olympics.

So I fully understand the highs and lows that you can feel in competition, the frustrations of losing to a lesser competitor, the feeling of taking one step forward and two steps back as I'm sure Gauff felt in this match. Unlike me (I was holding down a full time engineering job at the same time I was training and competing), these tennis players are professionals - this is literally their day job. No one has said that players cannot be emotional or that they have to be robots. However if you smash a racquet during a match, there's a penalty for it, so clearly the sport as a whole sees this as an unacceptable behaviour, and Gauff herself said it was something she was against, even as she was complaining about being caught doing it.

I've seen this behaviour escalate - line judges have been threatened and injured, and players have even threatened and some have fought each other physically. All because players could not control their emotions.

In the end we can agree to disagree if racquet smashing has a place in tennis or not. I don't believe it does, but if you do that's fine with me.
I was neither "losing my mind" nor was I "offended" at anything that Gauff did.

Gauff has been talked up for years now, so she's clearly under a lot of scrutiny and pressure from the media, and for the most part she has handled it pretty well (the same sort of attention has really ruined young players in the past). In this case she got caught, and instead of just owning it and saying yes I was frustrated and had a moment, she complained about "privacy" - I think it reflects poorly on her, and she knows it so I suspect a correction at some point (maybe her PR team will convince her if she doesn't see the light herself). She's young, and hopefully for her own sake, she will learn that this sort of thing isn't good for your game or career. But if she doesn't...oh well...

I always treated my sponsors with respect, and would never abuse the equipment that they very generously provided to me, no matter how small that contribution was. I don't know of many sports where the sponsors turn a blind eye to it like tennis seems to.

Let me ask you a question. I know you think fondly of Novak. Remember when he got kicked out of the US Open for hitting a line judge in the throat? After losing his bad temper? Did you see his match a few days ago at the AO when he did something very similar, narrowly missing a ball kid by a few inches as he stuck the ball 100+mph in anger?

There is a CLEAR rule against that in the 2026 Grand Slam rule book. The umpire didn't even give him a warning.

Novak wrote it off in his presser. "Wasn't necessary", "heat of the moment", "I got lucky there". Glad he was thinking about himself and not the ball kid's eye.

Maybe it's the larger, selective outrage that I don't understand.

Can we at least agree that coming a few inches from hurting a ball girl in this manner is worse than smashing a tennis racquet when you think you're alone? Novak isn't young. And it doesn't seem he has "learned from this sort of thing" at all.

I don't recall any sponsors dropping Novak for this behavior. He clearly can't control his emotions. Do you suggest they should?

Hopefully I've explained myself well enough for @Tony C.

You've explained your views on just one aspect of the original criticisms, but failed to address what some may consider to be the central point, which is that instead of simply taking responsibility for her actions, she complained about her delayed reaction having been captured on video. That, to my mind, is a greater sign of immaturity than the racquet smashing itself.

As for Novak, McEnroe, Connors, and many others, they are beside the point. No one suggested that CG was alone in producing such reactions, and there have been more than a few top players who controlled their tempers relatively well.

Who the player is makes no difference to me. Fondly? Novak? 😀

Novak should have gotten at least a ball abuse warning for that - that is the violation that would typically be used for this conduct. If he had hit the ball kid, it should and no doubt would be an automatic DQ, just like it was in 2020. One could argue this incident was much worse than that incident was, even though he missed the kid. There's absolutely no doubt that top players get preferential treatment, and ironically because he was DQ'd in 2020, I think it's actually less likely he would get it again for this near miss, even though it was quite dangerous and he was facing the direction that he hit the ball this time, so not as much of a "fluke" as it was in 2020.

But he is somehow blessed that not only did he miss that kid, but he gets a walkover into the quarters, and is probably the freshest he's been in a long time going into a quarter final.

I don't know what codes of conduct or moral clauses that these sponsors have, but I'm sure he can get away with a lot more than lesser ranked players can. Should he dropped? It wouldn't bother me if he was, let's put it that way, but as I said tennis seems to have far more leeway in this regard that other sports for some reason.

I think for some violations, they should skip the first warnings and go right to penalties. Losing points, games, and DQ would nip this stuff in the bud much more quickly.

While we're at it, they need to start calling hindrance on players that scream well after they hit the ball. Not mentioning any names, but the initials of one offender are Aryna Sabalenka. She's a great player, but watching her play a match is an auditory assault.

None of this changes my thoughts on the Gauff thing. The act of smashing the racquet is bad enough - the not owning it after and complaining about privacy is worse.

I can only speculate, but when you're at the Novak or Coco level of elite anthlete and status a lot of rules go out the window. She is of course the highest paid female athlete in the world (has been for years) and a multiple time GS champion. To Head and New Balance and Nike they are long-term ambassadors. These companies build their entire advertising strategies around a handful of players like them, or Ohtani in baseball (New Balance).

Many things annoy me. Most recently the questions to American players on their thoughts representing their country and flag. It's such a click bait question with no way to answer in a way that can't and won't be used against them. Landmines everywhere.

I'm also annoyed by the screaming and if I took a half-shot of lite beer every time Ben Shelton pumped his fist or looked to seek approval from his father after winning a point I'd be drunk in 2 sets.

But look, AO doesn't shy away from this. They lean into it. Making-tennis-cool-again kind of thing. At least where I am (Boston) the adverts on ESPN celebrate the first pumps and screams and dancing. Literally. Against the backdrop of black and white stills of women playing in white dresses.

And maybe because they're elite and well paid they don't ever deserve to have privacy, can't make a mistake or afford to really be human. And whatever they say can and should be used against them in the court of public opinion. And if they do lose, we toss them away like yesterday's news. God forbid they don't have the same politics as you do, or speak their mind, or move to a state or country with better income tax laws. The list is long.

I understand Coco has impossible expectations. I think you do too. I wouldn't think of apologizing for breaking my racquet in a hallway. Not for a second. I'll think less of her if she does. Impossible, see?