The Savior wrote:Novak has Rafa mentally broken like Rafa has Federer in mental shambles.

TAKE IT BACK.

Fed

The Savior wrote:Novak has Rafa mentally broken like Rafa has Federer in mental shambles.

Might be even worse. 3 straight grand slam finals, 6 straight finals. Nadal was serving at 4-3 in the 5th yesterday and still lost.

Though Novak did it to Fed in the Open semis last year too. Roger won the first 2 sets and had 2 match points in the 5th. As someone who almost completely dismisses the mental game in baseball, I still have to think that these kinds of defeats are just confidence crushing in tennis.

CHIP! wrote:

SK790 wrote:Probably the best semis and finals in a major ever. The Murray/Djokovic semi was fantastic. The Fed/Nadal semi was pretty damn good, and the final was just incredible.

When you throw in the strong semifinal field the women had and the two good semifinal matches they (Azarenka/Clijsters and Sharapova/Kvitova) had, it was possibly the greatest last two rounds in a Grand Slam event ever. Obviously the only disappointment was the lopsided Azarenka/Sharapova final.

That Djovokic/Murray semifinal was a great match (saw the 3rd set tiebreak to the end, and though the 4th set was lopsided, the rest of what I saw made up for it), and it's hard to believe that 1) the championship match topped it and 2) Novak Djovokic was able to win a nearly 6 hour, 5 set final after having to win a nearly 5 hour, 5 set final two days earlier.

Aargh. I am sorry to be so "old school" but please look up "Super Saturday" from the U.S. Open 1984.

Ivan Lendl over Pat Cash in 5 sets in the first semi
Martina Navratilova over Chris Evert in 3 sets in the women's final
John McEnroe over Jimmy Connors in 5 in second semi

And then McEnroe beat Lendl the next day for the title (his last Grand Slam title, at age 25).

FWIW, I watched the first three sets of this year's Australian Open final. I had my DVR to record five-and-a-half hours - and by the end of the first set, I had a bad feeling I did not get the conclusion of the match. My recording lasted just through the end of the fourth set, which I fast-forwarded through and watched the end of. Then, I got the final score on ESPNews.

It was a titanic struggle. Both Djokovic and Nadal are amazing athletes and great players. But, in all honestly, it wasn't all that fun to watch. It was a war of attrition, not a great tennis match.

I really think Rafael Nadal felt BETTER about himself after Sunday's loss to Novak Djovokic. As Nadal said himself, he never came close to really pushing Djovokic to the brink in 2011 like he did at Rod Laver Arena on Sunday. He saw Djovokic hanging on by a thread. Nadal's problem was that he was also hanging on by a thread, and he lost his grip before Djovokic did. It was thisclose between the players on Sunday.

When you combine that 1) Nadal came much closer to beating Djovokic on Sunday than he did in 2011, 2) Andy Murray pushed Djovokic just about to the limit (i.e. a little short of where Nadal pushed Djovokic) in their Australian Open semifinal match, and 3) both Djovokic and Nadal will need some time to recover from their epic match, which has to make Murray and especially Roger Federer (and to a lesser degree the very good 2nd tier players who can beat Djovokic or Nadal when they're on, like Jo-Wilifred Tsonga, Juan Martin del Potro, David Ferrer, and Tomas Berdych) lick their chops, the 2012 men's tennis season could be something special. Assuming no injuries among the top players prior to late May, the build-up to Roland Garros (French Open) and then Wimbledon will be nuts, especially with Djovokic going for both the career Grand Slam and the Djoker Slam (in an event in which he's never even played in the finals).

(For whatever it is worth, my current two favorite players are Djovokic and Federer, Federer because he plays an enjoyable game and got me more interested in tennis and Djovokic because I wanted a then-young gun to root for who was overlooked but had a high quality game and could sometimes beat Nadal - I started rooting for Djovokic in 2007. As a Federer and Djovokic fan, I can't root for Nadal, but I do have a hell of a lot of respect for him, which only increased with his performance in the Australian Open final this year.)

BuddyGroom wrote:FWIW, I watched the first three sets of this year's Australian Open final. I had my DVR to record five-and-a-half hours - and by the end of the first set, I had a bad feeling I did not get the conclusion of the match. My recording lasted just through the end of the fourth set, which I fast-forwarded through and watched the end of. Then, I got the final score on ESPNews.

It was a titanic struggle. Both Djokovic and Nadal are amazing athletes and great players. But, in all honestly, it wasn't all that fun to watch. It was a war of attrition, not a great tennis match.

I tried to subtly warn you about the match length without giving anything away. Seriously, the best part of the match was sets 4 & 5.

I've thought the last couple of days about the changes in tennis play over the last decade or so, and whether tennis today is better than it was in the past (i.e. the issue of more athletic players but less variety of styles in the game). Now I haven't watched tennis closely for that long, so I only have a partial appreciation of the changes that have occurred in the game, but I think the blame for the lack of variety in the game today can be summed up in 2 words - Pete Sampras. Obviously Sampras was a great player, and played a style (serve and volley) you don't see much today. On the other hand, Sampras' style of play was boring - he served an ace or a non-returnable shot a high percentage of the time and he didn't play long rallies because he couldn't play long rallies. His serve, combined with improved racquet technology, was too good for the game and may have been detrimental for the game in terms of fan interest. I read last night that some of the tournaments slowed down the court speeds about 10 years ago to try to promote longer rallies. The original by-product of that is that some players (or more accurately, one player - Roger Federer) who came up before the changes were to able to alter their game to become better all-around players - they could hit hard but they could also adjust their games and play a variety of styles and a variety of shots. However, the players who came up after the change (namely Nadal, Djovokic, and Andy Murray) didn't get any major benefits from playing a serve-and-volley style of game, so playing from the baseline made more sense (which was also facilitated because many younger players, especially European players, grew up playing on clay).

Chip, you make some excellent points. Some people felt serve-and-volley tennis was boring - certainly the Sampras/Ivanisevic final at Wimbledon in 1994, in which I believe there was just one point that lasted longer than six strokes, was a low point for game and serve-and-volley.

But it wasn't always so. Again, I am sorry to be so old-school - I recognize that today's players are superior athletes and the best tennis players of all time - but if you had seen some of McEnroe/Borg, McEnroe/Lendl or Navratilova/Evert matches that showed what kind of theater and entertainment tennis can be when you get to watch, basically, two different philosophies go head to head, it's hard to understand what we are missing today.

The last player I truly found fun to watch was Martina Hingis. (And not just because of her sex appeal.) She was no serve-and-volleyer but as a great doubles player and an all-court player, she knew her way around the net. She played the game as much with her mind as she did physically. To me, that was much more interesting to watch that hour upon hour of bashing the ball super hard.

Today's players are like Metallica. The 80s and 90s players were like Squeeze or Crowded House. There is a lot of pleasure to be had from Metallica and I love heavy rock. But to me, Squeeze or Crowded House are a lot more fun.

I can appreciate the desire some people have to increase the amount of variety in the game; I personally think that would be beneficial. The key to any change that might be made is to allow the great offensive baseliners to remain great (i.e. not penalize their strengths while possibly mitigating them just a tiny bit) while also creating conditions that encourage a wider variety of styles to be both successful and entertaining.

For whatever it is worth, one of the guys I really like is a guy who made a QF run at the Australian Open in 2011, that Alexandr Dogopolov. He plays a very interesting and fun game when he's playing well.

One final thought - though I'd also like to see greater variety in the game, if there isn't going to be variety I'd much rather see baseline power players (like the top players today) than serve-and-volley power players (like Pete Sampras and other big hitters who lacked not only variety but also didn't hit as many amazing non-serve shots as today's top players do).

I wouldn't mind changing the surfaces. The hard courts are too fast and similiar. Make one hard court really slow and the other as is. Try to speed up the grass courts at Wimbledon, too. I'm 100% against changing any equipment, though.

Nice win for the U.S. over Switzerland in the Davis Cup this weekend.

oh hai french open

lol Roddick

Djokovic beat Federer in straight sets. Will face Nadal in the Final.

these last few points have been amazing to watch

how does djokovic suddenly get this leg strenght/speed suddenly

Federer up 2 sets to 1 on Djokovic and leading in the 4th set

Federer wins!

Down goes Djokovic. Murray could become the first British guy since 1936 to win Wimbledon.

phdave wrote:Federer wins!

#1 in the world again if he wins sunday

ReadingPhilly wrote:

phdave wrote:Federer wins!

#1 in the world again if he wins sunday

Would also tie and then break Pete Sampras' record for number of weeks ranked #1.

A Federer win over Murray would also allow Federer to tie Sampras' modern men's record of 7 Wimbledon singles titles.

Have we ever had back-to-back men's Grand Slam finals that have had as much historic significance prior to the match as we've had with this year's French Open (Djoker Slam & career Grand Slam vs. Nadal French Open championships record) and Wimbledon (Federer Wimbledon championships and weeks #1 ranking record vs. Murray first Grand Slam title by British player in 76 years?). What's really amazing about that is those two finals have involved four different players.