The Tennis Thread

[Faulkner]

Yikes at Marketa going out in the first round.

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[I Am A Swede]

That's the first time a reigning champion has gone out straight away in over 20 years. Lleyton Hewitt lost in the first round as champion in 2003. For a female champion to do the same we have to go back to 1994 when Steffi Graf lost to Lori McNeil.

I don't think Vondrousova's loss is as big of an upset as Graf's was. Vondrousova's win last year was a big surprise, whereas Graf was the #1 player in the world.

[Faulkner]

I remember that Lori McNeil match. I was a huge Monica Seles fan and loathed Steffi, so I was thrilled.

Marketa loses all 2,000 of her points, which is a gag. And to lose in straights to a young player who herself lost in R1 last year.

[Faulkner]

Rublev also out in the first round:

 

[Faulkner]

[Soapsuds]

Judy can STFU!!

Wimbledon has been so boring. The future of tennis looks bleak.

[Faulkner]

The rain hasn’t helped, and just today we had back-to-back injury retirements from Madison and Grigor, but you don’t like Sinner or Alcaraz? Obviously, two great players don’t make a sport, but at least they’ve been consistent and give newer players something to chase. Mpetshi Perricard also seems promising. 

[Soapsuds]

I was hoping Grigor would win today. Did you see him with glasses early? Lord....he looked even hotter with them on him.

I like both Sinner and Alcaraz but the matches for the most part have been duds.

I'm favoring the Czech players now that Thiem will be retired in November. 

None did well and Lehecka was injured and did not play.

[DramatistDreamer]

I just haven’t been into it and I had been an avid fan since junior high days. I haven’t even bothered to tune into most of the matches (although I did tune into a few points here and there yesterday and saw the final two games of the final match of today, and saw Lulu Sun break some Brits’ spirits some minutes ago). The scheduling has been poor.

The ITF/ATP/WTA need to engage in some radical thinking and action to steer the ship around and I don’t mean tinkering with court surfaces as they have been known to do (I’m looking at you TA and LTA) but take the streaming options out of the hands of the likes of TC and ESPN, at the very least, don’t give them exclusive streaming rights. TC hasn’t grown much in reach since their early days and ESPN got people interested in their ESPN3 service, which they now seem to be turning into some weird zombie streaming service in order to push their subpar ESPN+ service. Now they want to do this other joint sports streaming service…all over the place.
You would think the ITF would make some effort to attract more people besides throw some weird reality-doc series to Netflix (which, last time I checked, shows exactly none of the major tournaments), but they are relying on an ever shrinking pool of engaging personalities actively playing the game.

[DramatistDreamer]

As an example of how little I have been following this year’s Championships, I just found out that Coco Gauff got tossed out of the tournament with a loss to Emma Navarro.

[Faulkner]

And Kalinskaya just retired against Rybakina. So many retirements this tournament, notably in the past couple of rounds. 

[Soapsuds]

Patrick McEnroe is such a dumbass!!

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Seeing Sasha lose again and getting into it with Fritz was priceless.

Hope Fritz loses in the next round.

 

[Faulkner]

[Soapsuds]

The Robot loses again!

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[Soapsuds]

List of countries that have had a men’s singles Slam finalist since the last time the USA had one:

Argentina
Australia
Austria
Canada
Croatia
Czech Republic 
Germany
Great Britain
Greece
Italy
Japan
Norway
Russia
Russia (redacted)
Serbia
South Africa
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland