Monday, August 23, 2010

Rainy Days and Mondays

by Savannah

The late Karen Carpenter's voice was one of the best pop voices ever. She left us too soon.

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Roger Federer, thanks to two retirements was the fresher player on Sunday afternoon in the heat and humidity of the American Midwest. There was only one break of serve and he got it and went on to defeat Mardy Fish. Fish can't complain. He's had a great summer. Now let's see if The Monogram gets his wish and Mardy is on the opposite side of the draw from him in New York. Federer will be the number two seed.
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There is no million dollar bonus for doubles teams that win the US Open Series. Bob Bryan and Mike Bryan took home the prize at Mason, Ohio.
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Flavia Pennetta and Gisela Dulko were forced indoors by rain in Montreal but they weren't fazed and walked away the winners.
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The woman who will be the top seed in New York romped her way to victory in the rain delayed Rogers Cup Montreal final. Her opponent Vera Zvonereva never got going today. All Caroline had to do was keep the ball in play to get the easy victory. Surprisingly, or maybe not, there was absolutely no analysis of her game by the commentator. Instead all we got was straightforward reporting of the score and misses. Of course everyone was holding their breath for a Vera meltdown but she did not live up to the high standard she's set in that area.

The television schedule for the US Open has been released and it's going to be interesting to see who will commentate Caroline's matches and if there will be any analysis beyond "She kept it in play" or "she hit it out." There was a big announcement that if she won Montreal, defended her title in New Haven and went deep in New York that she could be number one. Heaven help us all.

5 comments:

Overhead Spin said...

OK, I really hate to do this but I feel like I must. Federer played the 2 MS tournaments getting to the finals of both. He benefitted from 2 retirements. The thing is that Fish never played Toronto, so in essence it all kind of worked out at the end quite evenly, don't you think, seeing as Federer played Sunday in Toronto, flew to Cincy and up to Wednesday afternoon when he was doing media for the event he had not practiced as yet.

Methinks that while Federer may have had it easier than Mardy with the retirements, at the end of the day Mardy got some time off as he did not have to play 5 continuous days the previous week, 2 of those matches actually went to 3 and the final was not easy either.

Just throwing that out there in Fed's defence.

Finally, it was a well fought and well played match. Could we be seeing a possible evolution of the game when it was more than a grind and players actually came forward. Would love to see the game evolving once again, but I doubt if the technology will permit it.

Craig Hickman said...

Women's tennis isn't even worth talking about at this point.

Overhead Spin said...

Oh Craig, it is not that bad LOL

However, this year will be the first time that we will certainly see what the face of tennis will be like when Serena and Venus are no more, especially Serena.

Federer said it best. He recently said that the women's game needs the Williams Sisters, especially Serena. Right now people are wringing their hands because all of a sudden interest in the women's game just went plummeting down.

Which woman do you put in a night match? Who can draw the crowds in a day match? How about the women's final in prime time? Yeah, all those questions and more are left to be answered when the USO starts next week.

Overhead Spin said...

Savannah, remember when I posted something about draws and 2007 etc., well the women's seeds were released today and if the seeding goes according to how they should be then Sharapova would play Kim in the 4th round. Already there are people tweeting that they should do something about the seeding.

Come on if you are back (Sharapova) and you are ready to defend (Clijsters) it really should not matter who is on the other side of the net. You are ready to play.

It will be interesting to see who gets the favoured draw, the Comeback Mom with the cute kid or the Golden Girl with the millions in endorsements. Cannot wait

Savannah said...

I missed all of that TennisAce. No surprise at all. I want to see the top half of the draw.