Great Day for US Tennis.
Today, was a great day for US tennis players. Both Williams sisters and the Bryan twins made it to the Australian Open Finals. It's incredible how these 4 players have been able to keep playing at such a high level for almost 20 years. Hope the new generations can follow suit.
January 26th, 2017 at 4:36 AM ^
All hail Venus and Serena. Their longevity and dominance are a constant source of wonder and amazement.
January 26th, 2017 at 6:58 AM ^
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January 26th, 2017 at 7:13 AM ^
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January 26th, 2017 at 7:45 AM ^
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January 26th, 2017 at 7:46 AM ^
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January 26th, 2017 at 1:21 PM ^
What? I said "no offense"!
January 26th, 2017 at 8:25 AM ^
You're turning into one of them.
January 26th, 2017 at 8:30 AM ^
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January 26th, 2017 at 8:33 AM ^
January 26th, 2017 at 8:39 AM ^
January 26th, 2017 at 9:15 AM ^
...he's working on it.
January 26th, 2017 at 9:07 AM ^
stupidity checks out
January 26th, 2017 at 9:11 AM ^
LSA signal
January 26th, 2017 at 9:26 AM ^
You're an idiot.
For one thing, your insinuation that they are men and not women is disgusting.
Secondly, as a tennis professional, it's realy easy to spot people who know fuck-all about tennis when they say shit like this. Serena and Venus would be absolutely destroyed if they played against top 200 men. We even have a really handy system that ignores gender and rates all players on the same scale. It's call the Universal Tennis Rating system.
So again, you're an idiot.
January 26th, 2017 at 6:15 PM ^
Serena even admitted herself on Letterman a few years ago she would "lose to Andy Murray 6-0, 6-0 in five to six minutes, maybe 10 minutes."
January 26th, 2017 at 9:36 AM ^
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January 26th, 2017 at 9:37 AM ^
January 26th, 2017 at 9:58 AM ^
you typed your post and my dog's head perked up like he heard something.
January 26th, 2017 at 10:03 AM ^
+1 insightful. If this is the kind of subtlety you practice, you should post more.
January 26th, 2017 at 10:15 AM ^
January 26th, 2017 at 6:51 PM ^
January 26th, 2017 at 12:32 PM ^
In all fairness, they should be in the men's league
In all fairness, fuck you.
January 26th, 2017 at 1:09 PM ^
My wife is a major Serena fan. In addition to watching tennis, she spends a lot of time following the WTA and Serena on multiple social media outlets. Bullshit comments like this (and MUCH worse) are par for the course. Anytime I start to think that human decency is staging a comeback, my wife reads a few comments from Serena and the WTA's Facebook pages and I am reminded how nasty and ignorant so many people can be.
January 27th, 2017 at 12:51 AM ^
Rule 14 of the internet: Never read the comments.
January 26th, 2017 at 10:31 AM ^
someone get WD working on where i can get myself one of those polos
January 26th, 2017 at 12:46 PM ^
January 26th, 2017 at 2:23 PM ^
I used to buy every shirt from his Slam tournaments.
January 26th, 2017 at 5:10 AM ^
January 26th, 2017 at 9:39 AM ^
has not lost a single set yet soooooo
January 26th, 2017 at 6:51 AM ^
January 26th, 2017 at 1:10 PM ^
I'm with you. I'm looking for one more grand slam for both Federer and Venus.
January 26th, 2017 at 7:28 AM ^
Always found her to be the more likeable of the Williams sisters, in part because of my suspicion that Serena has been juicing something fierce for the past several years. So I'm hoping Venus wins - especially given her health issues over the years.
On the mens side, I'm 100% with rob f. Federer has been my favorite player for years, and if the final is against Nadal, I especially want Federer to win. Because I suspect that Nadal has been juicing for the past several years too.
January 26th, 2017 at 12:41 PM ^
Juicing would not make that much of a difference in tennis to be honest. Raw strength just doesn't make all that much difference.
Even if she was (and she's not) she would still be the best women's tennis player of the last decade by an incredible margin.
January 26th, 2017 at 1:32 PM ^
You are totally wrong about "juicing" not making a difference. They said the same thing about baseball pitchers for years. That was based on the misconception that juicing was all about building massive muscles for raw strength and power. That's how they were used in the 80s, but for at least 20 years, the use of steroids has been as much about enhancing recovery and enabling muscles to work at peak performance longer/more frequently. Roger Clemens had a blazing fastball before he started juicing. Steroids may not have made his fastball better, but they allowed him to throw more of those fastballs and to be able to throw them again on less days of rest, especially as he got older. The parallel to tennis should be obvious.
Also, "juicing" doesn't just mean steroids. A host of "supplements" are out there that allow you to play at peaks levels longer and to recover much more quickly so that you can maintain a high level over a two week tournament.
Why do you think Sharapova (not to mention scores of Russian athletes in many sports) use/d meldonium? Do you really think it was for an irregular heartbeat? Why did she keep taking it even after she was informed that it would be banned? Do you really think no one on her team saw the numerous emails and social media notifications that were given by WADA and the WTA? I think the reason she kept taking it is after using it for so many years, she believed it was the key to maintaining performance longer and shortening recovery times. She was willing to take the risk of getting caught because she felt she couldn't perform without it.
January 26th, 2017 at 7:34 AM ^
Long gone are the days of American Greats in the sport. From McEnroe to Connors, Davenport, Billy jean king, Mary joe Fernandez, Courier, Sampras, capriati, Agassi, Chang, even Roddick
The us has almost always had at least one or two greats in the sport for each gender over the last 40 years. This is a real downturn.
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January 26th, 2017 at 7:45 AM ^
follow. If my son was a good athlete I'd get him into tennis.
January 26th, 2017 at 8:08 AM ^
Well, Venus had to beat American CoCo Vandeweghe in the semis in three sets.
January 26th, 2017 at 9:32 AM ^
You couldn't possibly be more wrong. While the women's side of USA tennis is ahead of the men's side, both have a very large amount of talent moving up through the ranks.
Madison Keys
Frances Tiafoe
Taylor Fritz
Coco Vandeweghe
Stefan Kozlov
Jared Donaldson
Cici Bellis
Alison Riske
Nicole Gibbs
The list goes on, and now that college programs are finally starting to prepare juniors for the pro tour again, I would expect the amount of quality young talent to increase.
January 26th, 2017 at 11:06 AM ^
I'll believe it when I see it camp. We have been hearing about young american talent for quite some time, but nobody has actually panned out. And by panned out I mean become a regular threat to win a major. This is particularly true on the mens side, where outside of Roddick we haven't really even had a consistent threat to make the semis in a decade or so. Partial list of highly regarded / touted american men off the top of my head:
Donald Young, James Blake, John Isner, Mardy Fish, Steve Johnson, Sam Querry, Jack Sock
I'm sure there have been some other next big thing types.
January 26th, 2017 at 1:36 PM ^
No one who actually watched Young, Blake, Isner, or Fish play thought they could be top 5 players. They all have/had giant holes in their games. Querry is running out of time, but Sock is still well-positioned to be a top 5 player in the next few years.
Roddick got screwed by two things.
1. Hitting his peak at the same time Federer and Nadal were dominant.
2. Being cast as the next star and believing it when he was young. He waited too long to realize how much work he needed to put into conditioning to take advantage of his talents.
January 26th, 2017 at 5:05 PM ^
Donald Young has not been in the top 35 let alone top 5. Past that, the other three you mention all have had nice careers; hitting the top 5 (or at least close) is impressive. That being said, they have a combined zero grand slams. Actually, if memory serves none of them have made a grand slam semi. Again, I respect the pro grinders that work their way into the top ten, but if the next generation of American men's tennis players looks like the post Sampras-Agassi-Courier-Chang generation then I think most will view it as a failure.
January 26th, 2017 at 7:06 PM ^
You don't "grind" your way into the top 10. You have to be insanely talented, healthy, and lucky to do make it to the top 10.
January 26th, 2017 at 6:23 PM ^
Sock is on the upswing but I'm not sure he'll get to a point where he is a top 5 player threatening on the second week of a major. He has a nice serve, HUGE forehand, pretty good net skills but his backhand is a big weakness.If you ever watch him play, he spends the entire match running around his backhand - even into the lefthand doubles alley at times. It makes his movement terribly inefficient and opens up the court big time to his forehand side if he doesn't hit a winner or a really strong shot. He needs to improve his backhand significantly if he is to continuing improving to the next level.
January 26th, 2017 at 7:10 PM ^
I'm well aware of Sock's playing style. He has to do that because he was let down by his coaches at a young age. They spent way too much time developing that forehand at the expense of his backhand. It's actually a pretty common problem for a lot of players between 4.5 and 6.0. It's absolutely stunning that he's gotten as far as he has with the deficiencies on the backhand.
If he would hire the right coach, it's a problem he can fix. It would probably be worth it to back out of every tournament after the US Open one year and spend a long off-season putting in the hours to develop a bit of an offensive backhand. For his own health, it should be a two handed, and he should avoid hitting any 1 handed shots unless it's a drop shot. He's stronger than Nadal, but the torque he puts on his arm to develop so much topspin is going to catch up to him eventually.
January 28th, 2017 at 10:11 PM ^
Doubt you'll see this, but I wanted to let you know that I missed the whole thread on UM's statement in regard to immigration/international scholars. I was at a movie, and by the time I checked the website it was locked. Thanks for posting it--I am so happy that my alma mater is doing what it can to try to stand up to this lunacy.
January 26th, 2017 at 1:34 PM ^
I'm a bit skeptical as well. I have much more hope on the women's side, but I am extremely skeptical about US men's tennis. I think that the group of players you list is more likely to win zero grand slams combined than they are to win as many as just Venus (7). Granted, 7 is a high bar, but an over-under of combined slams set at 3 would make it pretty easy to take the under.
Then again, in one tournament Coco went from shotmaker/hitter to a bonafide "player". Hopefully this is not a flash in the pan. If the way she played in Australia becomes her new normal, she is definitely a slam contender.
January 26th, 2017 at 7:35 AM ^
(ducks)
January 26th, 2017 at 9:13 AM ^
I've been wringing my hands all morning trying to figure that out!
January 26th, 2017 at 7:35 AM ^
Been so long - who was the last dominant American man? Sampras?