Bill Lobsalot
Hall of Fame
Ever had food poisoning? Or, British food?
WTA week of 6/25; Eastbourne 500 & Bad Homburg 250
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robyrolfo
Hall of Fame
Yep, every time I watch her play, I wonder how she manages to win many matches at all. It's a little like Brengle, who looks so completely unexceptional, with a ridiculous serve for a professional, and yet she has been in the top 100 for how many years now?
Coco is almost becoming a joke. I hope, for her sake, that she wasn't trying her best, in order to concentrate on Wimbledon.
Honestly, I want to like Swiatek, but she can come off so badly sometimes. She's another one that needs to mature quite a bit. Maybe take a year off and just live like a normal person for a bit.
I don't remember where it was (I think somewhere on clay), but the last time they played, she also beat Giorgi pretty comprehensively. For some reason it seems like a particularly bad matchup for Giorgi.
Aussie Darcy
Bionic Poster
2 more lovely withdrawals this week.
Not one but two in the ladies doubles SF's in Eastbourne.
Top seeds Gauff/Pegula give a walkover to Krawczyk/Schuurs.
And 4th seeds Kichenok/Ostapenko give a walkover to Melichar-Martinez/Perez.
Funny when you look at the walkovers considering Gauff, Pegula and Ostapenko are all in the top 15 favourites for the Wimbledon singles title. Wonder why they just suddenly had to withdraw...
Not one but two in the ladies doubles SF's in Eastbourne.
Top seeds Gauff/Pegula give a walkover to Krawczyk/Schuurs.
And 4th seeds Kichenok/Ostapenko give a walkover to Melichar-Martinez/Perez.
Funny when you look at the walkovers considering Gauff, Pegula and Ostapenko are all in the top 15 favourites for the Wimbledon singles title. Wonder why they just suddenly had to withdraw...
ScentOfDefeat
G.O.A.T.
It's over, at this rate tennis will probably become a tiered sport where upward and downward mobility will be almost impossible.
You'll have people solely competing in Slams and the odd Masters 1000, and that's one race or "kind" of people you don't want to mix with the others, another type playing exclusively 500s and the odd 250, and the rest eternally bound to the serfdom of Challengers and Futures.
The best (i.e. richest) people will pay more to watch the best, who are the best because they're the only ones allowed to compete with the best, and so on and so forth.
You'll have people solely competing in Slams and the odd Masters 1000, and that's one race or "kind" of people you don't want to mix with the others, another type playing exclusively 500s and the odd 250, and the rest eternally bound to the serfdom of Challengers and Futures.
The best (i.e. richest) people will pay more to watch the best, who are the best because they're the only ones allowed to compete with the best, and so on and so forth.
Moose Malloy
G.O.A.T.
Don’t think any big 3 members ever played a tournament the week before a slam. Weird so many top WTA players played this week. And weird the WTA scheduled a 500 the week before a slam(eastbourne)
Also the wta just made a rule that top 30 players aren’t allowed to play 250 events starting next year, so you can’t blame just the players for only caring about slams.
And Rome, Madrid, Toronto, Cincinnati, Beijing becoming 2-week events is basically eliminating other smaller events, so yeah both tours are signaling the majors and masters are the only events we should care about. Not to mention crazy ranking difference in points(in 80s/90s the gap between slams and other events was much smaller and masters weren't required events so smaller events attracted more top players - Sampras/Agassi/Graf/Seles played more 250s/500s than top players today). So a lot of factors have created this new tennis world, can't blame players for following these trends.
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coolcamden
Hall of Fame
You are right in that we can’t blame the players. They don’t make the weird and stupid rules.
ScentOfDefeat
G.O.A.T.
I don't blame players alone, but at some point their interests (mostly those of the top players in contention for big titles) simply coincide with how the tour wants to structure itself for the future, so I think it's a case of converging interests.
We could argue it's a trend that goes back a long way, when Sampras made it all about the Slams, which then intensified with the big 3, and which was also solidified by media and fanbases - who cares about a 250 when all that matters is who can be the GOAT? I was hoping things would change after the big 3, and that we could return to an era where people's favourite players aren't just one of three exclusively, with more spread out fanbases and a shift in focus from GOAT debates to actual discussions about the sport itself (McEnroe, Edberg, Chang, Agassi, all these players made us talk more about the complexity and the variety of the sport than about "who's the greatest?"). But it seems like they want us to believe that the only way to sell tennis is if we're constantly watching the most hyped players in Slam finals and talking about who could take the mantle of the big 3, so I'm not too optimistic.
robyrolfo
Hall of Fame
I agree with a lot of what you said. People are way too focused on slams now, and everything (in every sport) is about this annoying "GOAT" term that gets thrown around non-stop. The rise of social media probably has something to do with it, but it's very annoying, and in tennis you have all these clueless people that don't even follow the sport, but only talk about slam count. I mean, if you compare Graf's numbers to Serena's, it's really not even close. Serena has the one additional slam, but she is then clearly inferior in every other statistic and category, despite playing for so much longer than Graf.
I also remember reading McEnroe's autobiography, and being pretty shocked at how much tennis he was playing in his peak years, and how many of the smaller events were best of five! I know the points were generally shorter thanks to serve and volley being more prevalent, but it just seems unimaginable today.
On the other hand, I can see how they want to emphasize the slams and masters from a marketing point of view. 4 slams plus 10 masters is already a healthy number of events, and it's hard to compete for the attention of fans. My favorite soccer/football teams plays 38 league matches, plus another 15 or so other matches between European cups and domestic cups. So that's about 55 events, but they are just two hours each. Each slam is already 14 days of tennis for fans to watch, so 60 days for the slams alone, and a single mens match is going to be longer than 2 hours (sometimes twice as long). So there is a lot of tennis for fans to try and keep up with.
All of this to say, it's pretty complicated, but for sure this habit of pulling out of small tournaments before a slam is pretty bad. A few years ago the Bronx Open was the 250 warm up event for the US Open. A lot of big names pulled out, but I went to every match Camilia Giorgi played on her run to the final, and she played her heart out in absolutely scorching heat (I was feeling dizzy one day just sitting in the stands). The organizers of the tournament were so thankful to her for making the event exciting... but then she did lose pretty badly in her first round USO match two days later to Maria Sakkari. Honestly, I think Sakkari would have beaten her that year anyway, but Giorgi's run in the warmup definitely took a little something out of her. Anyway, my thought is that these players shouldn't enter if they have no intention of seeing it through. They can arrange practice matches if they really need the warm up.
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BjornBored
New User
She burnt herself out playing too many matches. Looked exhausted, better to bail to save herself for Wimbledon.
tennis4me
Hall of Fame
Finally, after 5 championship points, Keys sealed it at 15-13 in 2nd set tiebreak. Every time Keys is leading, during tiebreak or not, she started playing safe or started hitting UE. Only when she’s down, she started cranking it up again. If I heard it correctly, it’s been 9 years since she won her last Eastbourne title?
Great observation, I was saying the same exact thing.
coolcamden
Hall of Fame
Yes. Here is it.
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