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Post by oopssorry on Jul 7, 2009 4:50:52 GMT
Crap! How do I keep missing the ESPN Classic coverage? I've only seen some wacky stuff there when I checked throughout the day....
Enjoyed Serena and Letterman hitting balls into the audience. Some interesting conversation about the grunting! (Dave asked if she does it for all endeavors - like breakfast, etc...!)
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Post by francienolan on Jul 7, 2009 12:43:26 GMT
eta: Oh, and I forgot--Mirka's reached the "only flip flops fit" stage! Too adorable. I thought the same thing. Her flip flops probably cost more than my entire shoe collection but it's funny that they are the go to footwear at 8 months pregnant no matter how rich you are
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Mpol
3rd Round
Posts: 444
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Post by Mpol on Jul 7, 2009 13:08:40 GMT
Yeah I know hey! I hope their baby is as cute as Andre and Steffi's kids!
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Post by admin on Jul 8, 2009 22:03:09 GMT
Huge post tournament ramble here.. I'm just catching up with the thread, i spent the whole Sunday at the beach, but of course.. have phone.. will constantly be using it to refresh the tennis score... I really wish i hadn't, there's little more nerve wracking than following point by point a live scoreboard and live updates on the Beeb site. I nearly yowled in irritation when i saw the details of the 2nd set tiebreaker. At some point in the 4th i lost my signal and didn't get it back until they were 7-7 in the 5th. Brown trousers time! You could see the writing on the wall (or the mobile phone screen!) from the service games, Federer holding easily, Roddick often getting his to 30, or even after Ad. I'm still glad i didn't watch it, i would have been heartbroken. This Wimbledon has made me wonder a few things over the course of the two weeks, one of them being I'll never understand how Roddick can be so douchey at times and yet so decent and likable at others. Everyone has their moods on court, but generally you have your decent guys, and your assholes and Roddick really spans both, often both in one match. I was reminded of Roddick as i've just seen the post match speeches for the first time, and Roddick looked SO ticked off when Federer talked about him "going through bad times (too)". I'd heard about it, but thought it was Roddick laughing it off. Not so. I'm sure a lot of it was utter disappointment at that time. I don't think Federer was trying to be douchey and patronising, he seemed clearly to be saying he knows you can be down and out one year and come back and go one further next time. But i don't blame Roddick for his reaction either, i can see how it came across AS patronising. Federer hasn't had the same wait as Roddick, and hasn't had to go through the same expectation and then (relative) failure as Roddick (maybe lack of success is a better way to put it.). I don't think i've ever thought this before, but i really do hope now that Roddick gets that next slam. I didn't see the Sampras fake applause.. i don't know which way to go on that. I didn't like him either, and his game bored the hell out of me, not just his dominance. (corrected) lt- I have heard that Leander is kind of a jerk if that makes you feel better about your dislike. I've heard that too. I believe one of the major issues in the Paes/Bhupathi split was that Paes was claiming that Bhupathi was the reason why his own tennis singles career never took off, because Paes felt pressured into the doubles side of things. It all got pretty nasty IIRC. This? Makes my blood boil. How anyone could be hostile to someone as lovely as Rafa makes me fear for humanity. Okay, so maybe he's not your favorite or you don't like his style of play or the way he picks at his butt or you want someone else to win for a change, whatever. But you really have to be nuts not to see that he's a particularly lovable human being. This to me is even worse than the US Open crowd booing (BOOING!) Rafter when he was injured during that early round match and had to retire. You could chalk that up to plain old idiocy, unfamiliarity and alcohol poisoning. But there's no defense for the French fans who boo or are hostile to Rafa. I don't get antipathy towards Nadal, i certainly didn't like his game when he was first around, and the little asspicking bandito annoyed me in general, he did nothing for me as a tennis player. I've totally done a 180 on him in the last couple of years and that's mainly due to the person he is. I don't think there's many more gracious, more decent people in the game. But then as far as the French go, they are a law unto themselves, it's not just the Open, i saw.. i think Rusedski absolutely taken to town by them because he happened to take issue with a call in a Paris match against Kafelnikov. They barracked him and the umpire for full on 10 minutes until Kafelnikov had to plead for silence. I do love them, because unlike the US Open night crowd they generally know their tennis and because i love an insane crowd, but they are not a fair crowd. That is hilarous.
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Post by oopssorry on Jul 9, 2009 0:49:54 GMT
Heh. I just posted a post-championship op-ed in the Haterade thread - that is perhaps perpendicular to this one. Though I think on some level I'm addressing a similar question: what contributes to one's read of a player?
Your comment above about thinking Nadal is one of the more gracious in the game resonates for me, because that's absolutely true in his speaking, and yet I find the over- the-top antics during the match more aggressive than what one says or doesn't. And yet I've never been able to reconcile the two aspects of how he comes across to me.
Much like my Roddick read - which you mention, too.
Roger doesn't need my PR, so I'll be quick. My thing is that people are taking him out of context. He only selectively pumps himself up in matches, tries to be diplomatic and polite with everyone (sans Djoko-rents), and shows an obvious love for the history of the game. Along with a deep awareness of the pressures placed on him within that history. So I take his "15" jacket as an extension of all of those things.... Others see him as all hubris and overstatement and so take it as evidence of that.
Feels like a detente.
I haven't read any articles on Andy's anger at Roger's comments, so I'm off to search those....
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Post by vallegirl on Jul 9, 2009 2:59:50 GMT
This Wimbledon has made me wonder a few things over the course of the two weeks, one of them being I'll never understand how Roddick can be so douchey at times and yet so decent and likable at others. Everyone has their moods on court, but generally you have your decent guys, and your assholes and Roddick really spans both, often both in one match. I'll take a stab at explaining Roddick, although it's just dime store analysis so take it for what it's worth. Overall, I think press conference Andy is the truest example of who he is. But while I think he's quite smart and quick-witted, he's very emotional, but not necessarily in the sobbing Roger kind of way, and those emotions rest barely beneath the surface. And clearly he's a very verbal person so when he's grilling the umpire over some thing or other, it's also partly him processing the moment so he can (or not as the case occasionally may be) move on. Just watch him on changeovers when he's peeved. He'll sit there with a thousand yard stare, bitchily drinking his water and then he'll glance up at the umpire and aggressively grill him. Then silence...then grill again. I think he's just making sense of it all. Plus, isn't he the youngest in his family? Classic baby of the family. When he's off court, he has less pressure so he can be more thoughtful, and a thoughtful Roddick is a charismatic Roddick. I've had a love/peeve relationship ever since he turned pro because when he's good, either in play or interview, he's exciting to watch but when he's bad you just want to swat him with his racquet upside his head and tell him to shut up. Still, I always think I'm not much of a Roddick fan..until I watch him play and find myself cheering him on.
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Post by admin on Jul 9, 2009 8:12:53 GMT
Hahah. Spot on.
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lt
Semi Finals
Posts: 3,223
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Post by lt on Jul 9, 2009 13:19:12 GMT
vallegirl, I absolutely agree with your analysis of Roddick. I think my problem continues because he never acknowledges his bad behavior. Roger has acknowledged the tears, Beaker has to answer for his attitude, Rafa has been taken to task for his ticks--but Andy never speaks up in those enjoyable, witty postmatch interviews and says "boy, I was a real jerk to the chair ump this match." He could do it and it would go a long way to making me agree that it is a heat of the moment/stress reliever-type thing but I just don't think he finds anything wrong with his on-court behavior and I cannot ever truly become a fan until he does. However, there was a second part to why I wasn't a fan--couldn't stand his game. Big serve then nadda. Now? His game has become really enjoyable to me--and, as I mentioned earlier in the tournament, the fact that he recognized that he had to change is a huge plus for me.
Unlike, say, James Blake. In this past month's Tennis PMac wrote a bit of a diary piece when the US Davis Cup team was in Alabama. I would normally have skipped reading it (figuring it for a PMac-loves-his-team-way-too-much story) but I needed plane reading. Yes, it was all "look at the guy getting to hang out with the cool kids" but there were two interesting things to note that you didn't need to read between the lines to see: the Bryan brothers are too intense (read: strange) and James Blake refuses to change his game, no matter how much it would help him. PMac said something along the lines that this was the way James made it to the Top 10 (at one time) and he wasn't going to change a thing. Well, Andy was #1 in the world and he is still willing to grow.
I stopped being a Blake fan when he refused to acknowledge that the J-Block might need to tone it down but his refusal to get better will keep me from being a Blake fan ever again.
Exactly how I saw it--Roger didn't mean anything bad by what he said, he was trying to be friendly and funny but Andy was well within in his rights at that moment to take it the wrong way. Classic miscommunication.
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Post by tikigirl on Jul 10, 2009 18:18:07 GMT
I'm very much with oops on this, and not just for any single player, but the vast majority of them. I guess that mostly I care about how the players act on court. I don't know them off-court, and I never will. Short of things like spousal abuse or PEDs or other cheating, I don't much care what they're like in "real" life. So I don't have much to go on except what I see during matches. Obviously this is limiting, but since I'm not the type who reads or pays much attention to non-tennis related stuff about tennis players, there you have it. YMMV and all the usual disclaimers.
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