US Open tennis...

Picks?

Nadal and Federer both having solid matches against wily opponents. Fed against Hewitt was pretty good once he got going.

Djokovic looked pretty average for most of his win against qualifier and 276th ranked Jesse Witten.

Andy Roddick and James Blake are out.


In the women's Safina proved today just how much women's tennis has slit into utter absurdity. I'm not sure they can get much worse than this. The number one in the world almost gets beaten in her first two matches and then gets beaten by the 70th ranked player.

I read an article on the mathematics behind Safina being number 1 in the rankings, and it said the reason Serena was still number 2 was that outside her Grand Slams in the last year she's won nothing. Don;t follow woman's tennis close enough to know what her record is outside of the Grand Slams lately but the article seemed to suggest that she basically only shows up at Grand Slams (figuratively). It went on to say that while it seems ridiculous that Serena was number two and Safina without a Grand Slam was number one, it said that for the sake of the rest of the tour it was a good thing. Essentially the rankings need to reward consistency so that players will take the whole tour seriously. Having said that given the double points players get for Grand Slams if Serena wins the US she must be pretty close to the top with 4 from the last 5.

As for the US, it's hard to look past Federer without knowing whether Nadal's knee will last the tournament.

Thanks. That's all pretty common knowledge tho without having to go into the deep math of it. The Williams sisters don't play full tours - even they realise that's their issue.

my issue with Safina isn't being #1 without a slam - it's that she is such a an unreliable, flakey on the big points, double fault champion it is laughable. She is almost single-handedly making women's tennis a joke with her crap tennis in the big tournaments.

Clijsters has knocked out Venus Williams. So that's a bit more competition in the women's tennis with her coming back ...but they are really lacking a few more decent players to actually make the games worthwhile watching. Will Hingis come back to tennis when her drug ban finishes?

You know many people reckoned the women should have to play 5 sets if they were going to get paid the same as men? I now think that would be a mistake. We'd have to put up with extra sets of crap tennis ...they should never have received the same money for what is substandard play.

Hingis is retired.

WTF? Was that overnight? Jebus... Clijsters was always known for her consistency but to take a couple of years off, have a kid then come back and beat someone like Venus is... well... not surprising at all after seeing how Safina/Sharapova played!

I don't know if you can call yourself "retired" when you get banned and announce a retirement as a result.

"Oh, I've been banned ...hey guys, I'm going to retire".

Was she ever banned? Pretty sure a hair sample that got tested came back as negative and this would have been much more reliable than the urine test. Either or she decided to retire and not fight the charge ... so yeah not even sure if they banned her after that.

I don't think they charge you with drug use and you choose whether or not to fight it. It's you test positive and are banned. You can then choose to fight that ban if you wish, like the French dude recently who managed to get off.

Federer lines up a repeat match with Robin Soderling... the big serving giant from the French open final.

Wonder how this'll go on the much faster courts..

Didn't follow the situation, but Hingis is definitely 'banned' if the UK papers are to be believed.

Anyway. The Fed will cruise to another Grand Slam title. Tooooo easy.



gc.

Federer takes the first set against Robin Soderling 6-0... what's the chance he'll lose this match from here?

well that ended up being a bit closer than expected after that first set....soderling a slow starter vs fed

Yeah... end of the 3rd looked like Fed just went onto auto-pilot. Wasn't too tough in the end.

He had it covered.

I don't know, if Soderling hadn't made those two unforced errors in the tie breaker then he would have won the set and taken all the momentum into the fifth.

Gah, meant to add Federer would have probably taken the fifth but it was good to see him actually pushed. Soderling showed a lot of character to keep fighting though, especially after the first set where he made one more unforced error than Federer and yet didn't win a game.

You can say it the other way also. Federer made a pile of unforced errors in the 3rd set tie-break.

Federer would be well pissed with that 3rd set performance. He def took his foot off the gas too early.

Nadal's match just postponed in the 2nd set against Gonzales. He's not looking particularly dominant imo despite winning the 1st in a tie-break and it being level at 6-all in the 2nd.

Rain

Go Nadal!!!!








Oh.....wait.....

Jesus!



Not sure about best point ever, but incredible winner.

Good way to bring up match point huh!

Kind of the complete opposite of Serena Williams match ending brain-fart.

I love how bad sport reporting is now that many specialists have been ditched..

Herald website:



Lol.... that's like saying "Dan Carter's hair bounced in the wind as he avoided the advances of some men who weighed at least 25% more than him and dropped the ball on his foot as he quickly extended his leg - achieving a drop goal."

Yeah, the sports writing in the Herald is atrocious these days, they made some hefty redundancies there from what I heard.

thanks for posting that. that is so awesome.

Crazy thing is, that shot is good but he hit a much, much harder one earlier in the match.

Dunno is there's a vid but it was one of those running forehands which wraps around the outside between the net-post and umpire stand and curves back into court.

Agassi hit between the legs shots like that in almost every tournament (prob because he got lobbed so much cause his volleys were atrocious).

Between the legs shots are nowhere near as tricky as they look, that was a nice winner though.

At least it's not going to be straight sets.

Jesus! Federer just lost his cool and gave the umpire a spray!!!

Yeah that was out of it!

Man that Del Potro has got some huge bombs on his forehand side. Still doesn't have the head game to beat the Fed though.



gc.

He just choked the third set and you can't do that if you want to beat Federer... I hope it goes to 5 but I suspect Federer will blow through the next set.

Just proved me wrong... Great match.

Yeah didn't expect him to pull out that set after his body language at the end of the 3rd. He looked done.

I think Federer just likes marathon Grand Slam Finals

DEL POTRO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wow.... giant collapse from Fed. Congrats Del Potro

lol @ Williams biatch

Can Any of you tennis trainspotters confirm if the foot fault was genuine/a good call by the ump?

Haven't seen a good enough angle to say for sure.

Aaaahhh, the one day I have meetings most of the morning and miss the last three sets!

Sounds like Federer ran out of mojo in the 5th.

The TV angle I saw you couldn't really tell but it was def a possibility. The lines-woman was in the best position to see. No matter if it was the right call or not, Serena couldn't have known at all while out on court. Her brain fade afterwards was the issue.

Shame Fed

About to watch the match on Sky ...