Yeah, Serena would seem to have a point there. Roddick is a star, but so is she, and she’s done much more winning in recent years.
Here are the highlights of Federer’s match the other day. I forget how to link to a time stamp within a YouTube video, but I think everybody who likes tennis should see the shot he hits on match point. He didn’t need to take the ball where he did. I think he just did it to challenge himself and do something spectacular. It’s a hell of a shot but it’s the exuberance of it that makes me smile.
<embittered snarl> TVNZ has now put Wimby on TVNZ 7 after 6am - but mid point in this game my screen went black & then they switched to a children’s programme. I guess they felt there was no point staying with this game as Mannarino had no chance of winning, but I was enjoying it dammit! </embittered snarl/>
This morning they did stick with the Murray Ljubcic (sp) game.
Going back to Roddick. I like him,but if Iwas lucky enough to be at Wimbledon & was offered a chance to see either him play or one of the Williams sisters, I know what I would chose.
Really? This sounds ridiculous.. Who might have won a few Wimbledon’s if Borg hadn’t been around.. or Sampras..
I hear this in Basketball when people are trying to defend Karl Malone and Charles Barkley..
Andy’s always been too one dimensional and much more skilled players came along and beat him at pretty much every turn. My question is where’s the next group.. cause i really hope John Isner isn’t all their is..
You never know what would happen if some people were removed from history, the draws would be different, and blah blah blah. But given Roddick’s results over the years I think it’s reasonable to say that if Federer hadn’t come along, he definitely could have won three or four Wimbledons and maybe another U.S. Open or two. Federer beat Roddick in the Wimbledon final three times, the U.S. Open final once, and in three other major semifinals (two Australian Opens, one Wimbledon).
In other words, Roddick has reached five slam finals in his career. He won one and lost to Federer the other four times. He’s lost in the semifinals five other times, and three of them were against Federer. The others were against Schuttler in the 2003 Australian Open - that was the match after Roddick beat El Aynaoui in one of the longest matches ever, 21-19 in the fifth - and against Hewitt in the '05 Australian Open. In a world without Federer, Roddick’s career totals are about one step below Andre Agassi’s, although if you ask me who is better, it’s Agassi by a longshot.
Malone and Barkley are all-time greats who don’t need a defense. Their stature in basketball also exceeds Roddick’s in tennis, if you ask me.
This sentence would be far more accurate if your replaced “much more skilled players” with “Federer.”
After struggling against Hewitt last time, Soderling lost today to Tomic, another Australian. Tomic started getting noticed this year when he made the third round in Melbourne, and he’s still only 18. Biggest win of his career so far. He gets Malisse next and he has a good chance there. Del Potro and Nadal could get very interesting, too.
Uh, calm down and there is no need to call what I said ridiculous.
I’m not defending Andy. I’m just saying what happened to him. If he’d played in the late 1980’s and early 90’s, I think he could have won the Australian and US Open a couple more times.
Ooh, ooh, I want to play the “If only” game, too! In looking at replays of old matches, had I played tennis during my prime in the 70’s, I have no doubt I’d have been able to beat Chris Evert. If only I could have been able to keep my sweet 2010 Dunlop Aerogel racquet.
I’m enjoying the coverage, but speaking of Chris Evert, I actually don’t like her as a commentator. She gives some good insight, I suppose, but she doesn’t have a television personality. She puts me right to sleep. She’s too, I don’t know, sober. Give me Mary Carillo or Martina Navratilova any day!
Federer is looking really sharp. And he’s getting hungrier by the day to prove that he can keep winning the big ones. Maybe that will help overcome the domestic bliss handicap that plagues the top men.
I didn’t get to see any of the Djokovic match, but I was surprised to see that Baghdatis was able to take a set off of him.
Goooo Mardy Fish!
I’ve been on vacation so I haven’t been able to see most of the matches, but I’m hoping that the draw will eventually allow a Wozniacki v. Serena Williams match-up.
Ahh i plead guilty to the hyperbolic nature of the internet. I apologize as ridiculous is far too extreme. Perhaps I should stop reading posts in the Pit for awhile.
You’re probably correct that in a down time Roddick could have been far more successful. The issue that frustrates me about Andy is that i never saw him widen his game more. While Roger clearly has more shots than Andy.. their were times when i felt that he really should have gotten through..
He outplayed Roger in the Wimbledon final two years ago. I mean, when he was winning, he was really beating Roger. Naturally, though, Roger found ways to sneak back in and outplayed him in the end and won.
That match is still Andy’s best ever, even with though he lost.
Y’know, I don’t hear many drug scandals coming out of the tennis world. Not like you hear from bicycling and baseball. I wonder why that is? Is it less prevalent, and if so, is it less prevalent because it’s less useful, or because it’s better enforced, or more laxly enforced?
The most recent drug busts in tennis involve cocaine. A positive test ended Hingis’ comeback a few years ago. Gasquet miraculously beat a suspension for cocaine by claiming he kissed a girl who’d done coke. Energy and being slender are big advantages in tennis, as is control (both of the ball and your emotions), so on paper cocaine makes more sense than steroids. Besides, athletes these days have to be super fit to compete on the pro circuit, so there’s little room for all-night benders – not to mention drug tests that could end your career a la Juan Ignacio Chela. Who, incidentally, was banned for taking steroids.
He did, though. He hasn’t become a completely different player, but he’s strengthened his backhand and tried to play more aggressive tennis. I think the year he made the Wimbledon final again, there was a lot of discussion of the fact that he lost around 15 pounds of muscle because he wanted to be more mobile. He was never all that versatile, but he’s tried some different things.
They do test pretty diligently and the punishments can be harsh. It probably helps that there isn’t much of a players’ union to speak of. The last case I can think of was Wayne Odesnik, who isn’t exactly a household name. He was caught with HGH - not in a blood test; I assume customs got him - and he was banned from the tour for a year plus. After something like that you have to work hard to get back into competitive shape and get your ranking back up, because a years’ suspension takes away a significant amount of time and all of your ranking points.
When Andre Agassi admitted to using crystal meth a few times in 1994, the real scandal was that he’d been able to avoid a suspension just by lying to the panel that was supposed to be investigating his test results. The players are allowed to claim drug tests are inadvertent, which is fine, but they pretty much accepted his excuse without checking it. It was embarrassing to find it was that easy avoid a suspension for recreational drug use and I think that led to some procedural changes.
I don’t think anyone has suggested Hingis and Gasquet were using cocaine to get a competitive edge. That wouldn’t make a lot of sense. It would make sense to use HGH or steroids because muscle recovery is extremely important, so you do see people get caught from time to time.
Personally, I reckon it is odds on that some tennis players have blood doped. I have no proof except the following link (unfortunately, it’s in Spanish from El Pais).
Long story short, the doctor at the centre of the Operation Puerto drug bust that caught a boatload of cyclists blood doping went to the press, stating that the selection of names to release from the files had been incomplete and that he had worked with soccer and tennis players. It should be noted that the nationality of the doctor/drugs bust operation should not lead anyone to jump to conclusions - one of the cyclists suspended has claimed that he had seen French footballers at the clinic for instance - so the players could be anyone. No names were released.
Looking forward to today’s tennis. The weather here is due to be pretty good today but then the weather is likely to break during the week. This could be the last day of uninterrupted tennis and all the remaining players in the singles are due to play today. Should be an excellent day of sport.
