nounforcederrors
Hall of Fame
A three-setter coming up, Halep-Bouzkova?
2019 Rogers Cup (Toronto) – Women's Singles
- Thread starter Enceladus
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SystemicAnomaly
Bionic Poster
Is Mike Oldfield Canadian? Have been hearing a lot of Tubular Bells here at the Rogers Cup
Tanya
Hall of Fame
Lets hope not... that could go on forever at this rate
nounforcederrors
Hall of Fame
Well, Bouzkova's looking very sharp, 3-0 already.
Tanya
Hall of Fame
True she has come out playing quite well. The first two games or so were pretty long and I was anticipating a real grinder... hopefully Bouzkova can keep up her level. Nice to see a youngster that isn't a ball bashing robot.
Aussie Darcy
Bionic Poster
Bouzkova races to a double break 3-0 serving for 4-0.
This tournament is all about the youngsters and then Serena!
This tournament is all about the youngsters and then Serena!
nounforcederrors
Hall of Fame
RBA-Monfils rained out. Maybe this last women's match will get more attention now.
Tanya
Hall of Fame
RIP Vaidisova
tennis4me
Hall of Fame
Bouzkova reminds me of Hana Mandlikova.
Tip my hat for any qualifier who goes deep into the tournament. This is already her 6th matches in the tournament - 3 being in the qualifying rounds. Looks like she's still going strong with all the grinding rallies with Halep
Edit: 6th match, not 7th. Thanks for the correction.
Tip my hat for any qualifier who goes deep into the tournament. This is already her 6th matches in the tournament - 3 being in the qualifying rounds. Looks like she's still going strong with all the grinding rallies with Halep
Edit: 6th match, not 7th. Thanks for the correction.
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nounforcederrors
Hall of Fame
And Bouzkova serves for the first set!
Aussie Darcy
Bionic Poster
Bouzkova takes the first set 6-4 on the Wimbledon champ.
This could be very good for Serena.
This could be very good for Serena.
nounforcederrors
Hall of Fame
Unless Bouzkova takes a page from the Halep playbook on how to beat Serena - make her run for dropshots, make her run side to side, make her run, period.
Aussie Darcy
Bionic Poster
Defending champ retires hmmm. She does that alot after dropping a set.
Really?! ... Do you have any data to back that up?
Aussie Darcy
Bionic Poster
SF:
Kenin v Andreescu
(Q) Bouzkova v (10) Serena
Not the SF lineup anyone would've picked.
Kenin v Andreescu
(Q) Bouzkova v (10) Serena
Not the SF lineup anyone would've picked.
Harry_Wild
G.O.A.T.
Bouzkova just to much for Halep to play, after close 1st set and had to retire or else blow out score!
Aussie Darcy
Bionic Poster
20 year old Kenin v 19 year old Andreescu
21 year old Bouzkova v 37 year old Serena
Interesting.
21 year old Bouzkova v 37 year old Serena
Interesting.
SystemicAnomaly
Bionic Poster
It is quite unusual for Simona to retire. So often, she gets taped up and/or PT and soldiers thru her injuries. She did not seem to be getting to some shots that she normally would. And just a little bit off on the strokes, esp her Fh... enuff to rack up the UEs.
Hope she recovers quickly and plays Cincy. But she just might have to save herself for the US Open
Aussie Darcy
Bionic Poster
Jabeur last year in Beijing and against Makarova in Washington as well. Just seems very strange, seemed fine.
SystemicAnomaly
Bionic Poster
Don't believe that is the reason that Simona retired. That is not her MO. She's played injured in the past after losing the first set. No doubt either too painful or too risky for her to continue. That makes more sense given her past history with injuries
SystemicAnomaly
Bionic Poster
She did run down 2 or 3 drop shots, unsuccessfully, but did not get to other shots that I would expect her to get to normally. Appeared to be out of sorts... with shots just a bit off. Didn't look good when she took her socks off after the set. Didn't look good. It had been taped up as it had been in the previous round. Ongoing Achilles tendon issue. Met with the trainer and then decided to throw in the towel rather than to risk further injury
Is that "a lot" to you for a player that plays as many matches as she does and at the level that she does? It's common sense that if you are injured you usually can't play to full capacity and most likely you lose.
Aussie Darcy
Bionic Poster
After losing a set? 3 times in 2 years?
I just had a look and since the start of 2018, Pliskova hasn't retired once (she plays alot of matches too) Svitolina hasn't either (and she's had quite a few injuries of late), Barty's done it once. So yeah i'd say it's weird. And it was also the fact she looked fine, fought back from 0-4 down and smoked Kuznetsova in the last match. I'm sure we'll see her in Cincy all fine and well..
Again, if a player is injured most likely will lose... I don't see how one retirement per season is "a lot" for a top player by any stretch of imagination. Each player is different and if player X did not have to retire during the match doesn't mean the player Y shouldn't either.
And BTW.... with Makarova in 2017 in Washington, it was actually one set each and she was up a game in the 3rd when she retired so your speculation that she retires when she's down has no grounds. She was down a set and she came back to win the match so many times that the theory that she retires with fake injury when she's down a set makes absolute no sense.
With Jabeur in Beijing last year, she was injured going into the China leg and trying to play did cost her the rest of the season and a long break, including missing the Finals. She probably learned from that experience and she's not taking chances anymore.
Actually retiring during the match today was a good decision IMO. If she would've pushed forward perhaps she would've made it worst and in the event that she would've won the match she would've probably withdrawn tomorrow thus robbing Bouzkova from the chance to play the SF. This was probably her train of thought and I think she did the right thing.
I hope there is nothing serious and with few days of rest she will be fit for Cincy and of course USO. She had nothing to gain by continuing to play with injury tonight. She does not need to prove anything, win this tournament or anything else. Strategically this tournament worked out almost perfectly for her. Winning one more match would've helped in the race, but not at the risk of an injury. I think she smartened up lately and learned when to stop.
SystemicAnomaly
Bionic Poster
@ALEXT
Not fine. Ongoing Achilles tendon issue bothering her in the prev round. I believe 1 or both ankles taped for this match and prev. Called in trainer in both matches. Was not quite getting to a few of the shots in this match that she normally would.
This does no constitute an MO or a pattern. Retired in 1st round in China 2018. She was not the defending Champion there. Ongoing back problems in that case. I believe she went in for an MRI for her back after that incident.
Crazy that you brought up the DC tournament. That was the Citi Open 2017. She was not the defending champ there either. Only played there 1 year TMK. Not likely to go back after dealing with the conditions and treatment.
Brutal heat in DC that year. And she was forced to play all 3 of her matches midday (early afternnon) in that blistering heat. Top seed not given any evening, prime time matches??? On Tues (Aug 1), she beat Sloane. Then played a long 3-setter again in the brutal midday heat 2 days later. Her match against Ekat Makarova, the very next day, was again in the very high heat of the midday sun.
Simona retired after 1 game in the 3rd set. In the 1st two sets she had actually won more points and more games (9 v 8). She was not being outplayed. She succumbed to the brutal heat conditions. Heat exhaustion.
Because of her tenacious style of play, running down shots that others would not, Simona has difficult time dealing with very hot and humid conditions. Recall her AO final vs Caro Woz? She ended up in the hospital after that match with heat exhaustion
Not true with regards to Simona. She has played injured quite a few times after dropping a set.
Not fine. Ongoing Achilles tendon issue bothering her in the prev round. I believe 1 or both ankles taped for this match and prev. Called in trainer in both matches. Was not quite getting to a few of the shots in this match that she normally would.
This does no constitute an MO or a pattern. Retired in 1st round in China 2018. She was not the defending Champion there. Ongoing back problems in that case. I believe she went in for an MRI for her back after that incident.
Crazy that you brought up the DC tournament. That was the Citi Open 2017. She was not the defending champ there either. Only played there 1 year TMK. Not likely to go back after dealing with the conditions and treatment.
Brutal heat in DC that year. And she was forced to play all 3 of her matches midday (early afternnon) in that blistering heat. Top seed not given any evening, prime time matches??? On Tues (Aug 1), she beat Sloane. Then played a long 3-setter again in the brutal midday heat 2 days later. Her match against Ekat Makarova, the very next day, was again in the very high heat of the midday sun.
Simona retired after 1 game in the 3rd set. In the 1st two sets she had actually won more points and more games (9 v 8). She was not being outplayed. She succumbed to the brutal heat conditions. Heat exhaustion.
Because of her tenacious style of play, running down shots that others would not, Simona has difficult time dealing with very hot and humid conditions. Recall her AO final vs Caro Woz? She ended up in the hospital after that match with heat exhaustion
NaomiKonjuhPotapova
G.O.A.T.
Wonder how motivated Andreescu knowing she has a chance to meet Serena in final.
NaomiKonjuhPotapova
G.O.A.T.
Yeah with the new crop of Vondrousova, Bouzkova, Muchova to replace Kvitova, Pliskova, Safarova.
helixx
Hall of Fame
i hope it will happen. that would be a juicy match
THUNDERVOLLEY
G.O.A.T.
Probably jittery about being fresh for the U.S. Open, so she bailed. Not the first time a player retired from an event to preserve themselves when a major is on the horizon.
I Am Finnish
Bionic Poster
Nobody beats Serena 3 times in a row
Looks like she didn't pull out (yet) from Cincy.
In what was the shortest press conference I've ever seen (less than 1min) she eluded that she realized during the match that she was not fit to battle Serena in the SF even if she would win the match and she decided to retire.
I hope she manages the situation wisely to preserve her chance for another YE#1. If she needs to sacrifice Cincy as well she should.
The way I have it is nobody beats Serena in a GS final and expect to beat her ever again.Nobody beats Serena 3 times in a row
Ask Sharapova if you don't believe me!
SystemicAnomaly
Bionic Poster
Nope, not weird and not a real pattern. I looked at it further. She's not a quitter. It makes no sense for her to quit after losing a set (esp with only a 1-break differential) in a QF match w/o good reason. Why would she? She had called out the trainer (twice?) in her previous match. The TC match commentator mentioned her Achilles tendon issue several times during the QF match with Marie.
And heat stroke/exhaustion (DC) is not to be taken lightly. She been hospitalized because of it.
She's played injured quite a few times. And she's lost 1st sets numerous times w/o quitting. Recall she lost the first set to Lauren Davis last year in that marathon AO match. She lost a 1st set last year to Dominika Cibulkova, 0-6, and keep playing (even tho she had been plagued by Achilles and back injuries since Cincy last year).
Last year she won Montreal and then followed it up by reaching the Cincy final. I recall that she was already dealing with Achilles (and back) issues at that point. She headed over to play at the Connecticut Open right after the Cincy final. But the day before her match there, she decided that her body couldn't take it and pulled out even though she was already there at the tournament site.
I'm sure that she hoped that the week off would leave her in good enough condition to play the US Open the following Monday . It didn't. She lost 1st set, 2-6 but kept playing only to lose in 1R. She backed off tennis to recover from injuries and did not play a tournament again until four weeks later at Wuhan (9/25). Lost to Cibulkova in 1R there. She tried to play at China Open the following week but discovered that it was a mistake after the 1st set. An MRI 3 days revealed a herniated disk in her back. That China Open match was her last tournament until the following January.
Halep's MRI reveals herniated disk but 2018 not over yet | Tennis.com
Rafa (and Novak in the past) have a rep for retiring. Not Simona. And don't get me started on Nick K. Simona's tenacious, aggressive counterpuncher style of play puts a bit more wear and tear on her body than that of Karolina or Elina...
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SystemicAnomaly
Bionic Poster
She sacrificed Connecticut last year but it didn't help. By the end of Cincy last year she had already beat up her body too much (Achilles injury and a herniated disc in her back).
A little bit more to the story than that. Even tho she handled Svetlana pretty well in the previous round, she was hurting and called out the trainer. Twice, I think. I believe that Simona had learn her lesson, the hard way, in 2018. Check out the details in post #538 above.
ScentOfDefeat
G.O.A.T.
Yeah, it's a bit weird to be suspicious of the player who went to hospital for exhaustion at the Australian Open but at the same time be perfectly fine with Serena playing six tournaments a year.
ScentOfDefeat
G.O.A.T.
Yeah, well, it was all expected.
Osaka's false dawn was always going to end in tears, nobody can possibly challenge Serena and escape completely unscathed.
The psychological damage started rather insidiously in that very first Slam final, where she won but probably felt like she lost in the end.
She managed to carry on her good form and positive attitude into the Australian Open, but the now well established pattern of bad decision-making as a female teenage tennis player, exacerbated by the pressure that was put on her that she would be the "new Serena", ultimately finished her off.
A sigh of relief even before there is any need to be worried for the most extreme Serena fans, who are pretty much a mirror image of the most extreme examples of Federer fandom in the men's game: you see, records (especially the quantitive kind, because this is a consumer society) are now everything in this game, and because they're everything, obsessive fans obsessively identify themselves with them, while the player they support is just an empty vessel that represents "the greatest", which they choose to identify with.
I have engaged with Serena and/or Federer fans who openly admit that they'd immediately take option #1 if the choice was between:
1) Their player never wins another tournament, but with the assurance that their rivals will never surpass their records.
2) Their player continues to win tournaments, but one or a few of their rivals (in the present or the near future) will eventually surpass their records.
It is very difficult to continue loving this sport when the trend is to magnify personality cults rather than promoting a genuine love for the game itself.
I too see the sudden success of the young female players, especially if they come from a developed country and they are reasonably good looking, as being a burden rather than help for their long term professional tennis career. There are few examples in the recent history that illustrate that. They instantly turn into a marketing vehicle first and tennis players second. I think a steady and progressive raise to the the top, winning multiple smaller tournaments first over a period of time, running deep in multiple bigger tournaments, holding or improving the position year over year for few years, sets up the player for a longer, more successful career most likely.
The meteoric raise after winning one big tournament/GS, becoming a "star" overnight, getting all of a sudden a lot of attention from media and sponsors is often followed by just as sudden drop the next year and from there, much harder to climb back up because now they have the pressure from the same media and sponsors to deal with. When personality, character, education, entourage are thrown in the mix, things get even more complicated.....
It's hard to say where Osaka will be in 5 years from now but looking back at Ostapenko, Bouchard, and even Muguruza to a certain extent, the prospect is not very good. Bouchard didn't even win anything big and she became "a tennis star" just because she reached one GS final and 2 SF within a 6 month window when she was 19-20 yo. All of the sudden everyone jumped into the "next big thing" wagon.... Look where she is now tennis wise.... Same with Ostapenko..... she is back if not lower than where she started before RG17.
Osaka might be an exception as she seems to have a good personality at least, which is helpful, but perhaps by the end of the next season will have more hints where her tennis is going. She was lucky indeed that she carried the momentum to win a second GS within that window which makes a difference but still.... only time will tell how she will evolve from here.
THUNDERVOLLEY
G.O.A.T.
^ The very definition of one with such obsessive hatred of Serena that the natural ups and dons of other players--including one--Osaka--who won two majors back-to-back is not enough. It is rare for teenage players in the WTA or ATP to win their debut majors final, then follow it by winning the next major, so Osaka is in a special class of player., but the irrational project their wishes on them to keep that up, major after major. The second she is not your imagined "Serena-killer," you turn the knives on her, dream up utterly amateurish analysis on fans and players (you are so out of your range there).
There are next to no Serena fans who want her records to stand forever. The true tennis fan knows records (e.g. majors count) are meant to be broken--that's how the sport remains healthy. It is only those who I have observed (the worst of Federer's fans) who live and die by his majors count (and idolatry in the extreme), and flood this board with "tennis is dead" / "_______is a cheat" / "______is an awful player/person" / "I won't watch tennis again!!" whenever Federer falls to his biggest rivals and/or fails to win majors. No one does that regarding Williams, as she--thanks to members like you--is the most vilified player of the past 30 years, if not longer, and yes, there are volumes of studies pinpointing why that is the case, and why certain people return to this kind of argument (thinly veiled or overt). Give it a rest. There's not a week that goes by where you find new ways of grinding your axe in Serena's back, and attack other players for not finishing the "job."
You do not care at all about tennis--your number one goal is for someone to run Serena Williams into retirement, which only shines a light as bright as the sun on your motives, since the past decade have seen an army of women not named Serena win majors--contrary to the completely false "Serena wins everything" / "Easy draws" ranting from you, ScentOfDefeat, and others who share his self-created disgust with the WTA:
- Schiavone - FO - 2010
- Clijsters - USO 2010 & AO 2011
- Li Na - FO 2011 & AO 2014
- Kvitova - Wimbledon 2011 & 2014
- Stosur - USO 2011
- Sharapova - FO 2012 & FO 2014
- Azarenka - AO 2012 & 2013
- Bartoli - Wimbledon 2013
- Pennetta - USO 2015
- Kerber - AO 2016, USO 2016 & Wimbledon 2018
- Muguruza - FO 2016 & Wimbledon 2017
- Ostapenko - FO 2017
- Stephens - USO 2017
- Wozniacki - AO 2018
- Osaka: USO 2018 & Osaka: AO 2019
- Barty: FO 2019
- Halep: FO 2018 & Wimbledon 2019
...so she is not the "dominator" of your dangerous hate fever, which is what your post boils down to, among your other dark thoughts.
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SystemicAnomaly
Bionic Poster
Ostapenko is a strange case. Her very 1st WTA title (2017) was a slam event. But she has only added 1 minor title for a grand total of 2. Osaka has fared better but is still rather odd. A total of 3 titles -- all but 1 of them is a slam title. Will Jelena and Naomi be the WTA versions of Stan Wawrinka?
I Am Finnish
Bionic Poster
Both kenin & andreescu abusing the net
SonicNirvana
Hall of Fame
And screamingBoth kenin & andreescu abusing the net
I Am Finnish
Bionic Poster
Lets goo
Finish it in 2 please
Finish it in 2 please
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