This weekend Nadal won the Barcelona Open for the eighth time. It’s not the eighth time in a row because he missed the tournament in 2009, but he’s won the event the last eight times he’s appeared in it. That’s pretty good I guess.
The #5 match in the “Decade’s Best” series, by the way, was the 2009 Federer-Roddick Wimbledon final. That really was a heartbreaking loss for Roddick. He played very well and practically the only thing he did wrong the entire match was missing that backhand volley at 6-5 in the second set tiebreak. Match #4 airs Wednesday:
Venus Williams vs. Lindsay Davenport in the 2005 Wimbledon final. At the time I think it was the longest women’s match ever played and it’s still the longest singles final.
Yep, he was chasing Karlovic’s record at the time, I think. John Isner and Mahut broke the record in their epic, epic match. Isner hit 113 and Mahut hit 103.
That record can’t be touched unless another match happens like theirs.
Right. At the time of that Federer-Roddick final, Karlovic had just set the record (at the French Open) by hitting 55 aces in a loss to Lleyton Hewitt. Later that year he hit 78 aces in a Davis Cup match that was crazy long, but not Isner-Mahut crazy long: the final score was 6-7 (5), 7-6 (5), 7-6 (6), 6-7 (2), 16-14 in 5 hours and 59 minutes. That was almost 50% more aces than the old record, but Isner and Mahut went so far past that that it’s hard to imagine that one ever being broken.
The Madrid event started this morning and I had time to watch a few minutes at breakfast, which was nice. I see Raonic and Nishikori both won. The Tennis Channel list continues on Wednesday - they’re broadcasting two matches and I think the second one is three hours instead of two. The #3 match is
Henin vs. Capriati in the 2003 U.S. Open semifinals
and #2 is
Djokovic vs. Nadal in the 2012 Australian Open final.
Andy Murray is out with an injury and is unlikely in the French Open. Well, he said he’d be surprised if he plays. Perhaps he was just reacting to the suddenness of it, but it looks bad.
That’s a bummer. He hasn’t been great lately but you had to expect him to make at least a decent run, and it’s going to make life considerably easier for the other top guys.
I couldn’t tell if you were saying she’d lost a match or if she’d dropped out of the French Open, too! By the way the #1 Tennis Channel match is on tonight, and it’s the match everybody knew it was going to be.
Final. Berdych plays the winner of Nadal-Ferrer, and the winner of Federer-Janowicz plays Benoit Paire in the other semifinal. I don’t really know anything about Paire but it looks like he’s on a nice run this spring.