Tennis Talk 2012

[lt]

Mary Carillo! I had no idea she did this gig.

Yeah, she's been doing it for a few years now. My dog growing up was a Puli and when you have such a rare dog you tend to watch anything where you might get a glimpse of one (problem is that they're in the herding group with the always popular German Shepherd and Collies [and Briards and Old English Sheepdog, etc. etc] so they rarely win [although one did a couple of years ago and made it to the Best In Show, didn't win there of course]). I think they hired Mary to give the "everyman" take on the judging to get more viewers who don't know what's going on but, honestly? She takes it too far with the ignorance, she just sounds stupid. Last night she went on this whole spiel about show dogs being named with simple names and what happened to the long complicated names. Well, duh, it's not like the owner calls his dog GCH Swan Crest Windy City Robert Henry (the name of the Polish Lowland Sheepdog--one of my faves) around the house, they're going to call him Bob. The co-anchor is a real dog guy and he was getting a bit exasperated but you could tell he was told to humor her.

As for Federer, man I cannot believe that he blamed Wawrinka for the doubles.

He did? That's awful. Losing, cranky Fed is not a Fed I like. . .

It took all the way to the bottom of that article about the two-year ranking before the writer wrote anything of any real interest (thinking Rafa is pushing so hard for the 2-year so he could retroactively still be #1 is silly) but here is where I agree that it shouldn't happen and why:

More questionable is the two-year system's tendency to support players whose struggles are due to form rather than injuries. There's Fernando Verdasco, who would be up at No. 11 instead of No. 24; Marcos Baghdatis at No. 30 instead of No. 45, despite being more famous for his racket-smashing than his results these days; and finally, Ernests Gulbis, who would be sitting at No. 40 instead of No. 86.

Should these talented head cases be cut a bit of a break, or do they richly deserve their lowly squandered rankings? The two-year system would indeed make the rankings less volatile, keeping the familiar faces around for longer, even if they didn't play as much or as well. But opinion could be divided on when it becomes time for them to give way to someone who has been posting better results.

For similar reasons, the biggest knock against the two-year system has been that it slows the climb of up-and-comers. Federer cited this as a major reason for opposing the change, and the numbers bear this out. The two biggest young breakouts of the past year are both significantly lower in the two-year rankings -- exactly 20 spots for Milos Raonic, who would be at No. 48 instead of No. 28, and more than 30 spots for Bernard Tomic, who would come in at No. 67 instead of his current No. 34.

Everyone knows how I feel about Fer but there is no way he should have been protected from how he's been playing the past year. He's sucking big time and his ranking reflects that. And who in the world wants to see players not playing well lounging around in the top half when we have the option of a surprise guy kicking ass and earning the rewards that come with that?

Meanwhile, that wax figure of Djoker is horrendous in ways I cannot fully fathom.

[printwhore2012]

lt: I'm with you on that, absolutely. The point system is a meritocracy and it doesn't lie; there's not point changing it just to suit one guy.

On the issue of keeping the calendar and the current ranking system, I am totally with Federer on that one. People tend to forget about the guys who make their bread and butter scraping by on the rankings and jumping planes from tournament to tournament. Federer was absolutely correct about the issue of keeping the tour events as is. Perhaps they can make fewer tournaments mandatory for the top players but the bottom guys need the multitude of tourneys to live--something that the top guys with their multimillion endorsement deals tend to forget. Right now I'm watching an absolute dogfight between Nieminen and random unknown and I can't help but think of these guys for whom match play is not an opportunity to show off their latest Nike outfit but a real matter of subsistence.

Also, such a system would make a farce out of the World Tour Finals. The WTF already gives the top players points for winning matches during RR, a "rich get richer" type of deal. What would a two year ranking do in that case?

[breezybee]

As for Federer, man I cannot believe that he blamed Wawrinka for the doubles. It's such a horrible thing to say, Stan's always been the DC guy when Federer was out there winning Slams so the least he could do was stick up for his partner. *sigh*

Lot of controversy about that though. He was not speaking in English and many have said that if you translate correctly he did not blame Stan and the reports that he did critize are due to incorrect translation. Federer has also denied it.

[printwhore2012]

There are so many conflicting accounts of what Federer said: www.tennis.com/articles/templates/news.aspx?articleid=16408&zoneid=25

From what I gathered, he did comment on Stan's game but it is not stated if the French or Swiss-German interviews are the ones that had some controversial bits.

Either way, despite the ambiguity and the press retcon I do think that he said something about Stan. The degree or exact valence of it is unknown (given that there were so many interviews in different languages) but nonetheless, something was uttered about his buddy that was ambiguous enough to be interpreted the wrong way.

Personally, I think he did say something but the extent of it is unknown since I'm not fluent in Swiss-German.

[breezybee]

printwhore2012 it came from the French interview. From my reading it says that he thought Stan played "not bad". That wasn't how it was originally reported but it seems to be corrected now. Federer often comes across bluntly in his interviews and does not always say the most flattering things so I'm not surprises at this. Fed and Stan have both said their is no issue so I'll take them at their word.

[acre]

Yeah, I'm going to take them at their word, too. Mostly because that's what they say, and they should know. Obviously I'm a big Fed fan, but even if Stan played worse than Fed did in the doubles(I don't know), what's he gonna say, honestly? Fed lost his singles match too, the whole thing was not riding on that doubles. They lost them all. And Stan is his buddy last I knew.

[lt]

Some behind the scenes video of Rafa's SI swimsuit shoot.

[printwhore2012]

breezybee in the link I brought up it wasn't the French report that was supposedly contentious, it was the Swiss-German one. He said "pas mal" en francais but according to the Swiss journalists, it was the other one where he was a bit more critical.

In any case, I'm still miffed at him for losing to Isner on clay. I saw that match and I thought he should have just stayed in the locker room while Stan was in that dogfight with Mardy Fish. Stan came back from match point down so many times but he played so strangely after being up two sets--something mental happened and the match was right there for the taking.

Anyway, I'm curious to see how Rotterdam will play out. If Federer is losing to Isner on clay (clay!!!), I'm not sure how he's going to handle Youzhny, Del Potro and Berdych on indoor hardcourt. Berdych is looking scary, I just caught his matches in Montpellier and he demolished quite a few good players in that tournament.

I don't think Fed will win Rotterdam this weak; there's something niggling and he can't seem to serve. Maybe his back injury has come back, he can't seem to manage decent first serve percentages anymore.

[roseha]

I don't know, wasn't that indoor clay court the Swiss built supposed to have horrible bounces that hurt Roger's game? From their point of view they really should have built a court exactly like the one at the YEC, he hasn't lost there for 2 years. This whole indoor-clay-court idea was started by the Swedes in 1984 to defeat McEnroe, but it doesn't make sense to create a surface that hurts your best player.

As for whether Roger said "pas mal" or not - that is kind of ironic, that it could have been taken as "mal" possibly.

[mooncreek]

What the Swiss really should have done was figure out the best surface for their #2 instead of their #1. It has to be considered that Federer is not the most reliable Davis Cup player to begin with but odds are good he can win on nearly anything if he does show up. Either way, Wawrinka is the one you need to get a point from. If the surface was bad for Federer's timing, it was absolutely a mess for Wawrinka's.

I do agree that Roger being on that bench for the fifth set of Stan's match was a really stupid idea on his part, as if he wasn't taking preparing for his own match seriously.

[falafaclese]

Delpo just had a nice win against Berdych. I totally missed that he'd made it back into the top ten in the past couple of weeks.

Azarenka seems to be continuing her good form. I'm interested to see if there will be a Vika/Petra final next week in Dubai.

[acre]

Nice win I'd say, my goodness, 3 and 1! I mean Be-dych ain't that shabby himself. Hope it means good things fo- JMDP.

I can't stand Aza's noise, but it's awfully nice to see a WTA #1 who is -eally going afte- it, doesn't seem the least ove-whelmed o- apologetic(and why should she be) about the whole thing.

[mooncreek]

If you're a fan of Davydenko, you'd be really happy that the guy from three years ago has finally returned. I'd heard he'd arrived about midway through his quarterfinal match but decided to stay around to play a (decidedly below-par) Federer. Even though he had chances to win today, the fact is I can see him getting his ranking back up to maybe be a seed by the time of the French.

Based on the matches this week, I do like del Potro's chances in the final.

[breezybee]

Agreed Mooncreek. I watched the match and was impressed with Davydenko. I've always liked him and I hope he continues to improve.

[falafaclese]

I saw the match too, and I agree. Davy looked much better than he has in quite a while. Davy was impressive; Fed, not so much. If Delpo plays like he did today, the title should be his.

Apparently Vika injured her ankle today, but was still able to finish it off. I'm sure she won't play Dubai next week, I have a feeling she'll play tomorrow though, and then take a break until Indian Wells.

And Raonic made it to another final as well. Good for him.

Tennis Channel had a "Best of Five" top five players never to have won a slam. Of course Dementieva came in at number 2 (Rios was number 1) They talked about Elena's retirement, and how much respect and good will she had from the other players, and it got me wondering which would be better: being someone like Elena who never won a slam but was so highly respected as a player and a person, or being someone with less respect who won one slam, but had some asterisk attached that caused a lot of people to devalue it, and never made another final.

As frustrating as the unrealized potential might be, I think I'd rather be Elena.