How long should tennis matches be? At the Grand Slam level, five sets. That’s the traditional answer, and all of the best matches I’ve seen have been five sets long. That’s long enough to be challenging, but not so long as to be ridiculous.
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I know I’m something of a Federer partisan, but wow, does this commentator take it to a ridiculous level (note that the translation may not be entirely accurate). There’s some excellent tennis in there too, but the commentary really is amazing.
Roger Federer put more space between first and second place in men’s tennis history by collecting his (record) 16th Grand Slam victory, 6–3, 6–4, 7–6 (11) over Andy Murray last night. Pete Sampras has 14 Grand Slams, and now it seems as if Federer will be looking to match the all-time greats in women’s tennis—Margaret Court has 24.
I thought it would take Federer four sets to overcome Murray, and maybe five. Instead, Federer again underscored the disparity between his game and everyone else’s.
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Absolutely one of the most amazing achievements in sports history, and terribly underappreciated. The last time Roger Federer hasn’t reached at least the semifinal stage of a Grand Slam: the 2004 French Open. Almost six years ago! In addition, the only people he’s lost to in that span were the eventual champions. This on grass, clay, different varieties of hardcourt, in quite varied conditions—it hasn’t mattered. He’s always gotten at least to the semifinals, i.e. to the sixth round.
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On the men’s side, for the most part the top seeds have been rolling along. Six of the top eight are in the quarterfinals, the most notable absence being that of Juan Martin Del Potro, who was taken out in a tough five-setter by #14 Marin Cilic, who now faces #7 Andy Roddick. #8 Robin Söderling went out in the first round, and the quarterfinalists are rounded out by #10 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.
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Serena Williams was recently fined $82,500 by the International Tennis Federation for the actions leading to her exit from this year’s US Open. The ITF fine is in addition to the $10,500 she was fined by the USTA soon after the incident.
The fine from the ITF is the largest ever in tennis, and there’s significant controversy over the whole affair. I’ve read quite a few claims that racism and sexism are key drivers for the decision to fine her so much. I’m somewhat skeptical of those claims.
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Nikolay Davydenko won the 2009 ATP Finals yesterday with a surprise 6–3, 6–4 win over Juan Martin Del Potro. While Davydenko was seeded 6, just one behind Del Potro at 5, this was a significant upset. Del Potro looked very strong after his initial round-robin loss to Andy Murray, and won the last Grand Slam of the season, the US Open.
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The 2009 ATP year-end championships have finished the first, round-robin, stage, where the field of eight is split into two groups of four, and each group plays round-robin to winnow it down to the two who go to the single-elimination rounds (semifinals and final). There have been some interesting effects of running the tournament this way, and I wonder whether a different setup would be superior.
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Well, I didn’t see this one coming. I really thought that Federer would be too relaxed, too experienced, and just too good to lose this final.
He wasn’t. He lost 6–3, 6–7 (5), 6–4, 6–7 (4), 2–6 in a match that was actually closer than the scoreline reflects—Federer really had multiple chances to close the door on Del Potro and just couldn’t seem to quite take them.
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Rain delays over the last few days mean that the US Open men’s final isn’t until tomorrow, with the men’s semifinals and women’s final today. Those three matches produced some excellent tennis, although none of them were particularly close.
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The biggest story so far is Andy Roddick getting knocked out by John Isner in a battle of big servers. I was somewhat surprised, as I’d thought that Roddick would do well, and that he was a likely semifinalist. But in coming up against another big server in a five-set match in New York, he had to face a final set tiebreak against someone he didn’t have a serving advantage against. Isner took it with a single point against the Roddick serve and without losing any on his own serve, 7–5.
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I tried listening to this podcast by Bill Simmons and Jon Wertheim, but Simmons’ pronunciation drove me nuts. I actually like some of his writing, but listening to him proved incredibly irritating.
If you don’t follow tennis, well, you might not know how it’s pronounced, fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. We all screw up pronunciations of unfamiliar and foreign words, and clearly something about American placenames pushes Americans to devoice that consonant. No problem.
Wimbledon has a “d” in it. No “t”. Not all Americans pronounce it with a “t”—Wertheim pronounced it properly without difficulty—but I’ve only ever heard Americans do this. Simmons doing it in this podcast was all the more annoying because he was talking to someone who was pronouncing it correctly.
If you’re a major sports journalist talking about it, and you’re talking to another sports journalist who’s pronouncing it correctly, what the fuck is your excuse? Either Simmons is unbelievably oblivious, or he’s doing it on purpose as some kind of schtick—which would be even worse. Deliberately pronouncing it the wrong way to show that you’re “a common man” who doesn’t have any truck with the educated types and their high-falutin’ ways of talking is just horrible. See, for example, “nucular”.
I don’t know if Simmons is actually doing it on purpose, but what, nobody ever took him aside and said, “look, Bill, it’s ‘Wimbledon’”?
Federer won his fifteenth Grand Slam title, and his sixth Wimbledon title, today in a remarkable five-set match, 5-7, 7-6 (6), 7-6 (5), 3-6, 16-14. That last set isn’t a typo, it really was sixteen games to fourteen. The longest fifth set, in terms of games, in Wimbledon history, and probably in playing time also. Andy Roddick did better, far better, than I or many others expected, and did not lose his serve until the last game of the match.
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I commented on Sunday that I’m not as interested in women’s tennis as in men’s tennis. I’ve been wondering why the disparity is so significant at the moment, as this hasn’t always been the case for me. While that was on my mind, Wimbledon and the BBC decided to throw this into the mix:
A BBC source said: “It’s the Wimbledon play committee, not us who decides on the order of play. But obviously it’s advantageous to us if there are good-looking women players on Centre Court. No one has heard of many of the women now, so if they are pretty it definitely gives them an edge. Our preference would always be a Brit or a babe as this always delivers high viewing figures.”
—Emily Andrews and Colin Fernandez. “Babe, set and match: Why looks count for more than talent when Wimbledon decides which girls will play on Centre Court”. Mail Online, 29 Jun 2009.
Huh, well, that’s to be expected from a channel trying to boost ratings, I suppose, but surely the organizers of the most revered tennis tournament in the world would have no truck with such an approach?
[L]ast night, the All England Club admitted that physical attractiveness is taken into consideration.Spokesman Johnny Perkins said: “Good looks are a factor.”
—Emily Andrews and Colin Fernandez. “Babe, set and match: Why looks count for more than talent when Wimbledon decides which girls will play on Centre Court”. Mail Online, 29 Jun 2009.
Halfway through, and there aren’t too many big stories that weren’t present at the start of the tournament—the big three are still Nadal’s absence, Federer’s attempt to break the Grand Slam record, and Murray’s chances of being the first British men’s player to win in 73 years.
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The The New York Times tennis blog mentioned DFW’s “String Theory” essay the other day, bringing to my attention the fact that it’s available online. I loved it when I read it in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, and highly recommend it. David Foster Wallace wrote a number of truly excellent pieces on tennis, and all of them are absolutely worth reading. Here are those that I could find available online:
Unfortunately “How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart” doesn’t seem to be available online. It’s not about tennis in the way the others are, but it’s a fascinating look at the mentality of high-level athletes. It’s in Consider the Lobster, which is also full of other excellent essays.
Jelena Janković was the number one female tennis player in the world at the start of the year, but has fallen rapidly since (like her compatriot Ana Ivanović ). Janković is now number six, while Ivanović is number twelve… but Janković seems a tad more desperate, as rumor has it that she’s considering a coaching switch to the guy behind this video:
I don’t think that can be a good sign.
Three days before the tournament begins, defending champion Rafael Nadal withdraws. This isn’t too much of a surprise given that he skipped Queen’s, but it’s definitely bad news.
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Or, “French Open for Federer”. He defeated Robin Soderling of Sweden 6-1, 7-6 (1), 6-4 at Roland Garros today, tying Sampras’ record for career Grand Slam wins and (in my opinion) establishing himself as the greatest male tennis player of all time.
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Since I started playing tennis again, I’ve been looking for tips to improve my game. I already knew it could do with a lot of improvement, but unfortunately there’s even more than I had realized.
I’ve been extremely impressed with the annoyingly-named site Fuzzy Yellow Balls. They have a pretty good selection of videos that take you through more or less everything a beginner could want, and plenty that beginner-intermediate players like me could want, also.
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I started thinking about writing this post on Friday, and also mulled it over yesterday. I certainly didn’t expect to be writing about the biggest upset of the year: Nadal losing in the fourth round of the French Open to Robin Soderling. Soderling took it in four, 6-2, 6-7 (2), 6-4, 7-6 (2). It still seems crazy.
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Despite having written at least twenty-one posts about tennis over the last two years, I haven’t really been playing any. I’ve been on court several times with Monika, which is fun, but she’s a beginner and we don’t play actual games, and seem to have reverted to playing squash instead. Several years ago (I can’t believe it’s been that long) I used to play with Lara, who was at about my level (although her technique is better than mine).
Yesterday an ex-colleague, Jeremy, got me out on court in Dolores Park to play, and I remembered how much I love the game.
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In straight sets (6-4, 6-4), no less. It’s a big win for Federer, who finally wins a Masters Series event after nearly two years without one (his last was Cincinnati 2007). This brings his career Masters Series win total to 15—catching him up to Nadal, with the pair of them trailing Agassi’s all-time record of 17.
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