Tennis Talk 2012

[harry24]

Hi all -- I live in Sleepy Hollow, a suburb of NYC in Westchester County. I've been without electricity, phone, heat/hot water since Monday, so I decamped for your neck of the woods, fala, to stay with my brother* in northern VA until power is restored. It's been quite a week.

Where are you, mooncreek?

I hope everyone else is doing okay.

*The brother who has an enormous crush on Venus.

[lt]

My area wasn't hit hard--it's like some weird arm of the storm kept swirling around us but not really hitting us so not a lot of rain and just gusts of wind. BUT! for some reason we lost power and while a lot of the area around us is getting their power back they just added four days on to my outage schedule. I'm not supposed to get power for another week. This is a huge problem (bringing it back to tennis here) because I leave for London on Wednesday for the WTF. I can't reach my cat sitter because she works at the vet and the vet doesn't have power. I have no clue what is currently still turned on from the pre-power outage so I guess I'm going to just unplug everything in the house before I leave. Yes, I'm freaking out a bit. The friends I would normally have look in on the cat when the cat sitter isn't available are leaving on vacation the same day I'm going.

I drove in to the city yesterday (lots of projects but mostly to charge my laptop and phone and take a long shower at the gym) and my bus is running today so getting to work has not been difficult. But my cat! What am I going to do?!? Guess I'm going to become good buddies with my neighbors this week. . . .

[mooncreek]

I live in central Nassau County. Even though my area isn't where the high tide was a factor and there was hardly any rain to speak of, the wind gusted so severely that the next town had a lot of uprooted trees. Fortunately, of those, none seriously damaged a house.

My big problem is that my car is nearly out of gas and I can't figure out a gas station that has supply. Yesterday, there were three stations with power with long lines. It was getting dark (and I didn't yet have power) so I was afraid of waiting then. When I tried this morning, there was only one. I waited on line for a half hour, only to find out they were out of gas. If I do that again, I might not be able to get home!

Meanwhile, it's rather obvious not having a break between Paris and WTF screws over Paris. It's tough to say about Djokovic (given his father's health) but Federer and Murray clearly made WTF priority.

[roseha]

Good to hear from everyone! Good luck with getting to London lt! When I go out and see the long lines for the buses and all the confusion and the power out downtown, I know how lucky I am.
No work till the end of the week due to the flooding/power outages downtown. Trees down right around the corner in my little urban area as well.

I didn't realize that there was no break between Paris and London. Questionable decision, I'd agree.

[breezybee]

Glad to hear everyone is doing well.

So the Paris Masters semi-finals are Simon vs. Janowicz and Llodra vs. Ferrer. I did the draw on the ATP website and can say that I never, ever considered this combination of men in the semi-finals (save maybe Ferrer).

[mooncreek]

Saw Janowicz's matches against Tipsarevic and Simon. First of all, Janko needs to learn how to lose gracefully instead of retiring (Jerzy was up 4-1 40-love in the third set). The power + use of drop shots in the Simon match made me think of a level-headed version of Gulbis - actually the only other time I'd heard of this guy as Gublis' opponent after the Berdych win at Wimbledon. Janowicz was already on ATP's list of nominees for Newcomer of the Year but voting has been going on for weeks.

I hope this is finally Ferrer's time to win a Masters. He's been able to take advantage of draws based on Nadal's absence but it's now a golden opportunity due to all of the Big Four out.

[falafaclese]

I did the draw too, and not surprisingly Ferrer is the only semifinalist I had. I had Murray beating Djoker in the final. I mean, Jerzy who?? Very strange.

Wozniacki just dumped her coach and went back to her dad, who basically said they were going to go back to the unmitigated grinding she was doing before, because trying to be more aggressive wasn't working. I don't see it working as well now give that part of what helped her before was a little bit of a confidence vacuum at the top. Maria was still piecing her game back together, Vika as still finding herself, and Serena was pretty much gone altogether. Then if you look at the other slam winners in the past couple years, they were all veterans who presumably had the experience to help them stay on target. She may be able to hang around in the top 15 (which she's been doing anyway) and maybe grab the number 9 or 10 ranking sometimes, but even when she was number 1, she had a bad record against top ten players. I don't see how going back is going to improve that, especially since the top players are much stronger and more consistent than they were when she was up there.

Oof. Watching Ferru play LLodra right now. At one point, Llodra was winning his service games in about 1:30 on average, and Ferru was fighting through his in about 7+ minutes. Somehow Ferru was still able to break at the end to win the first set 7-5. Impressive.

[mooncreek]

WTF Charity photos:

the 7 in attendance

Your Top 3

Andy Murray to Roger Federer when asked about support he got after Wimby: "“It's this guy's fault. He made me cry!”

[acre]

Those a-e some tall guys. And they say it's by height, but I think they got it mixed up a little bit. Isn't Djok talle- than Fed(6'2" and 6'1")? I'm su-e he is, but this way they keep Fed smack in the middle, the focal point. I'm guessing that wasn't an accident.

Yeah, the g-oup with Andy and Djok is toughe-, but hello, DelPo? Not so easy, like, at all.

Also, I haven't seen Djok with his glasses b4(2nd photo) ... they look so good, he looks so good, cute even! Yes, I'm shocked that Andy gets a lot of suppo-t in London. Inconceivable!

Cong-ats to David on his 1st Maste-s. Kinda shocking he hadn't won one b4, but just mo-e evidence of what a total st-anglehold the top 4 have on the big titles.

[roseha]

Hi acre, were you affected by Sandy? How is it going?

[breezybee]

Nice to see the wee Ferru finally win a Master's title - on an indoor hard court no less! He will probably play like crap at the WTF now but I don't think he'll mind.

[lt]

breezy, I was kind of thinking (hoping) that he'd go in on a high and play better than usual for this tournament. He doesn't play until tomorrow night, so that's a plus for him.

Meanwhile, have you guys seen the weather coming to the Northeast on Wednesday (the night I'm flying out)? I bit the bullet and changed my flight to Wednesday am so hopefully I'll be out before planes start getting cancelled. Looking at the scores today, I'm kind of wishing I was going for the beginning of the tournament instead of the end. (Oh, and I got power back Friday evening and my cat sitter is staying at the animal hospital while she still doesn't have power so her taking care of my girl isn't a problem. Now I just need to beat the storm. . . )

And man, those top 3 guys look good in suits--Roger, natch, Andy, good haircut, Djoker, looks good in his glasses. I'd buy stocks from any of them.

[mooncreek]

breezy - I also think it's an advantage for Ferrer to face del Potro first. del Potro is probably the only player who'd rather face Federer right now than Ferrer.

Personally, I'm hoping he gets to the SFs, which would mean one win to go to be the #1 Spaniard.

[harry24]

Very happy that Lopez-Granollers beat the Bryans. Also, I didn't hear that Rasheed is now coaching JWT. Jimmy A seems to think that JWT is already using a slightly different style. I'm just glad he has a coach, and a good one. I pray it works out and JWT can make that last step up to Grand Slam Winner. As long as he doesn't beat Roger. :-) (Fed, that is.)

[acre]

I'm fine, thanks roseha. I'm in CT, and folks within 2 miles of me lost powe-, but I got away without even that. Feeling ve-y lucky.

Huh, I'm talking about the YEC and all so golly gee I should check my listings and set my dv-, duh! Yeah if Nadal is out much longe- , the Spanish rankings will change. I mean, he's been out a long time al-eady, you can't keep you- place indefinitely not matte- how good you a-e. Ask Se-ena.