The WTA is holding it's Roger's Cup tournament in Toronto this week. TennisTV started it's coverage. Funny how the ATP tournament in Cincinnati gets continuous coverage sans the doubles. With the WTA you get a couple of daytime matches, only on Center Court, and if we're lucky an evening match or two. If TennisTV isn't covering the second women's night match you can usually find it on one of the popular live stream sites. Until tonight that is.
TennisTV was only set to show one women's match. Do you have to ask? The Siberian Bansidhe was playing her country woman Vera Zvonareva and despite a very long rain delay amid reports of a tornado touching down nearby that match was broadcast in it's entirety.
Don't be fooled. The rain delay didn't cause the lack of coverage for Jelena Jankovic vs Kim Clijsters. TennisTV never intended to carry it. What tennisheads didn't know was that someone wanted to make sure no one saw it. Seriously. There were no working live streams for the match. Why?
As reported by@lexi98
"they covered up the cameras with tarps at the start of the match."
I swear they must hire crackheads to do their marketing strategy. Whether you are a fan of either woman or not this was must see tennis. JJ was coming off of a surprise tournament win and Kim is of course coming back after marriage and having a child. Both women have pretty large fanbases. I guess someone in a decision making capacity felt that their match couldn't possibly be of interest to tennis fans. After all the face of the WTA had just played. Who cares about anyone else?
As it turned out the match was the best of the tournament thus far. It would've gone a long way to grow the fanbase for women's tennis and develop interest in the tournament but nooooooo, the cameras were covered with tarps so nothing got out.
If it wasn't for @TopSpinRadio who provided updates on Twitter as the match progressed no one would have had a clue about anything other than the dry scores. I take that back. The final scores were 1-6 6-3 7-5. Seems like it was an exciting match.
Oh, by the way the Siberian Bansidhe won fairly easily but that was to be expected. I hope Vera has not hurt herself by coming back too soon.
End Note
I was going to watch the night match from Cincinnati on TennisTV. Why? Well let's just say that if I want to hear gossip and speculation passed off as commentary I can watch one of the evening entertainment shows.
I've said it before and I'll keep saying it. When Robby Koenig, Jason Goodall and Doug Adler are not being fanboys (Read Andy Murray and the Monogram) they call a good, analytical match. You actually know what the players are doing on court and get a good feel for the ebb and flow of a match.
In comparison if I want to know who ate what where I can listen to American commentators. The TennisTV feed was a little behind so I couldn't watch the match on HDTV and listen to the announcers. It was too disconcerting. Otherwise I would've just for peace of mind. At least I call it Idle Chit chat when that's all I'm posting about. And I don't get paid for doing this.
2 comments:
OMG - I thought I was the only one who can't abide their endless murraylove ... I just wish i could figure out why?
Morning Savannah. They covered the cameras with tarp. Now that is a good one. I tell you last night over at TW, people were as mad as hell that they could not get to watch the JJ/Kim match, including me. As you say, the face of the WTA had already played so why do you even want to watch these 2. I am not sure I would call the guys over at ATP TV fan boys of Roger as I have heard them say some pretty nasty things about him, especially after he wore that really awful outfit at Wimbledon this year. I think they are fan boys of anyone who is on top at the moment, which to my mind makes them very fickle fans. They have no loyalty. I have heard them speak in superlatives about many players, including Rafa, and compared other players' shots to Nadal (as in Nadal like) yet in the same breath they criticise his style of play and state what he needs to do better etc. I guess in some sense you could call them objective commentators as they are not only fans of the players but they criticise aspects of all the players, game style, routines, etc.
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