Thoughts about Tennis Tradition...

[stroke]

I like Monfils, I like Dimitrov. They are both great players and a tribute to the game. I am certainly glad to see them both playing well right now. Their problem was the same as all others was in the wake of the 3. Just abysmal records vs those 3. Those 3 never gave an inch, tired legs or not. They all almost always advanced to the business end of almost all tournaments, and did it again the next tournament. It was something to behold. Now, it is wide open, to an extent.

[don_budge]

October 25, 2023...only two months of shopping left until Christmas

Ahem...be that as it may. Without being political. What exactly does that mean? There is another war that has begun. Just miles from Armegeddon. Well, I was just wondering. Which of the combatants will not be represented by a flag in the ATP and WTA? Palestine or Israel? We all know the answer to that one don't we. Just curious.

But on this day keep in mind what I said about Christmas. Come to think of it...I wonder if there are descendents of Christ left in Palestine. In Israel. I've been reading the Bible all of this year. I read the Bible every day before I turn on any electronic device. It has really helped to survive some of the turbulence. At home. In the world. On this website. It's everywhere!!!

Today we have a rare opportunity. We can observe one of the fundamental difficulties of playing on the ATP tour. The question of preparation. Afterall...the mantra of a tennis player is "preparation, preparation, preparation". Know what I mean? No? Who cares? The question is one of recovery. If a player has been deep in the draw the week before and he travels over time zones to the next tournament...how does he overcome the fatigue. Case in point...first up Ben Shelton. If you follow what young Ben has been through over the past number of weeks you can see he has sort of had a "Meteoric" rise of late. Boy...does that sound familiar. Anyone know what I am talking about? No? Doesn't matter. Ben had his sort of coming out party at the U. S. Open in September then embarked on the Asian tour this month. Interesting results to say the least. Last week he won in Tokyo. The draw wasn't what you call stellar by any stretch of the imagination. But he won. He went the distance after going deep the week before in Shanghai. He skipped Beijing.

Arthur Fils is another case in point. Last week he managed to make the finals in Belgium before losing to a real question mark in Alexander Bublik. Not the most solid egg in the batch. Fils did manage to beat Stefanos Tsitsipas. But nearly everyone manages to beat Tsitsipas in his romantic downturn. Fils plays Daniil Medvedev. A stiff challenge. To say the least. If the legs aren't totally under you. Mr. Pencil will draw a demise for you. He's tactical...if not elegant. I think he is in his own way. Most importantly. He doesn't care what you think. He likes that way he hits his forehand.

Ah...then there is the truly "Amazing Mr. Monfils". Not a word on the forum about this man's victory in my home country of Sweden. No offence taken. Not at all. Not anymore. It is what it is...she said. But Gael...you are amazing. Thirty-seven years old and he wins an ATP tourney. One of the oldest to do such a thing. Ok, the draw wasn't the toughest. The guy he beat in the finals didn't even have a flag to his name. One of those pesky Ruskies. Pavel Kotov. Gael had a couple of three setters during the week. How will he get along this week? It is a question of preparation. Remember? The tennis player's mantra.

Finally we come to Alexander Bublik. I mentioned him earlier as the conquerer of Arthur Fils. You won't find this fellow's picture under the word consistency in the dictionary. But today he live to play another day. He gets to play another huge question mark on the tour. What ever happened to Caspar Ruud? At one point he made one of the meteoric trajectories to the top of the echelon...then it became a struggle. Just to fight his way out of a paper bag it seems. So you see what the question is now. It's all about some of the intangibles. Scheduling. Consistency. Man...Federer knew the answers to these questions. Djokovic and Nadal too. Masters of their domain. The rest of the crew are all struggling with the concept. Is it in the meds? Who knows? Who cares?

Oh yeah...I forgot to mention that Ben Sheldon plays Jannik Sinner today. Should I tell a little story about the possibiliies here? This might be as interesting as it gets today...on October 25. 2023 no less. Just two months of shopping left until Christmas. There's another war going on. Have you forgotten about the other one yet?

[don_budge]

If a player has been deep in the draw the week before and he travels over time zones to the next tournament...how does he overcome the fatigue. Case in point...first up Ben Shelton. If you follow what young Ben has been through over the past number of weeks you can see he has sort of had a "Meteoric" rise of late. Boy...does that sound familiar. Anyone know what I am talking about? No? Doesn't matter. Ben had his sort of coming out party at the U. S. Open in September then embarked on the Asian tour this month. Interesting results to say the least. Last week he won in Tokyo. The draw wasn't what you call stellar by any stretch of the imagination. But he won. He went the distance after going deep the week before in Shanghai. He skipped Beijing.

Oh yeah...I forgot to mention that Ben Sheldon plays Jannik Sinner today. Should I tell a little story about the possibiliies here? This might be as interesting as it gets today...on October 25. 2023 no less. Just two months of shopping left until Christmas. There's another war going on. Have you forgotten about the other one yet?

Interesting match the other day in Vienna...Ben Shelton versus Jannik Sinner. Sinner won 7-6, 7-5. The match was actually somewhat watchable. Ben Shelton has been on the rise lately and it will be interesting going forwards to see if he can maintain his trajectory. It looked to me as if Ben ran out of gas a bit. He hung in there and didn't go away but he started to use the lost cause drop shot...looking for a way out of a grueling match he didn't have the legs for.

However, he did demonstrate at to why his trajectory has been so steeply climbing as of late. The serve...the serve...the serve. There hasn't been a weapon like this for a while. Not to be confused with the servebots. They are in another stratosphere...serving to win the point outright because they don't have the game to back it up otherwise. Ben has got a very solid forehand to back up the left handed serve. Being left handed is such an advantage in his case and he needs to exploit this advantage even more in the future. Developing the forehand further has to be high up on the list. He really needs to make his opponent pay on balls hit to his forehand, particularly on his serve when the return goes to that side.

He did a couple of nice approaches to the net to more or less mop up on weak returns. A number of times he came in on decent approaches but failed to deliver on balls that managed to get down at his feet. Half volley expertise is another phase of potential development. He has the game to potentially look for way more serve and volley opportunities. That lefty swing serve should be money in the bank in the ad court.

I remember watching him serve and it looked to me as if he was just giving a bit of McEnroe in his setup...and almost in the initiation of the backswing. Too much to hope for. I know that a lot of players mimic other serves and strokes. Some have more of affinity for it than other. I would certainly like Shelton to try on the motions of both McEnroe and Roger Federer. I believe that both of them would enhance his ability to follow the serve to the net, which I think he should really be looking into more. Finishing the service game quickly with no muss, no fuss puts a great deal of pressure on the opponent to duplicate on their serve. I don't think that Ben is getting the total potential out of his serve, as good as it appears to be. The question is always one of potential. Is the player maximizing the strength tactically out of the stroke.

Shelton is certainly a very interesting work in progress. Much more interesting than his opponent...Sinner. Much more potential too. But the question is...does Daddy know what is best? I'm not too sure that he does.

[don_budge]

2023 Rolex Paris Masters...ATP 1000...Paris, France (first round Cat Food)

Geez...right out of the gates. "Gentle Ben" Shelton and Christopher Eubanks go down in a hail of withing heat in the first round. Both tough losses. Three setters. Oh well boys...it's a tough world. Yesterday's news is today's loser of the day. Both players accumulating a ton of expectations. By now the reality of the deal has hit home with Eubanks as he will have to wait for the grass court seaons to create any more positive headlines. Ben will have to get his legs back under him all the while trying to pull his head out of his butt with all of the social media hype. No easy task. Ask Jannik Sinner. Ask Felix Auger-Aliassime. Ask Holger Rune. Ask Caspar Ruud. All searching and seeking a semblance of consistency. Sinner has been through the entire rigamorol now. He is just beginning to get a handle on it. But look for more falls. Always the ups and downs. Cat food. First round loser. The world doesn't owe you a damned thing and there is no better way to learn this than the food chain of tennis competition.

Every draw sheet tells a story. Now...in the preliminaries. The foreplay. It is all about the hopes and dashing of hopes. There is always next week you can say to yourself. But it seems like an eternity away and there are no guarentees. A tough road to hoe. As the week goes on the story develops. First round is just window dressing. A quick look at the draw and you see a lot of old timers looking for the old spark. Watch them fade in the ensuing days...just happy to be back on the court. The wily veterans know the score. They have been there and done that. Ben and Christopher have a lot to learn. Preparation...preparation...preparation. The mantra.

Novak in the house. How much does he care about this tournament. Depending on the scheduling he make a run for it. Otherwise...he'll count his steps to live to play another day. Slams Baby!

[don_budge]

This match between Dimitrov and Medvedev hinges on a tie-breaker. John McEnroe always felt that the better serve had the advantage.

[don_budge]

This match between Dimitrov and Medvedev hinges on a tie-breaker. John McEnroe always felt that the better serve had the advantage.

Grigor Dimitrov played an exceptionally intelligent (read tactical) match against the exceptionally talented tactically speaking Daniil Medvedev. The margin of victory was slim and I'm going to highlight the judicious use of the slice backhand right up there in the things that swung the match to Dimitrov. So many slices and so many times he refused to give Medvedev the shot he preferred to play. Right out of the book of Bill Tilden..."never give your opponent the shot he prefers to play".

Then there was Bublik...and then there was Hurkacz...and now it Tsitsipas. What is the best thing to have in tennis in the post Roger Federer era? Clearly for the moment it is Baby Fed. Baby Fed it has been all week...all grown up. Man up and taking the bull by the horns. Exceptional tactics individually devised based on each opponent. Very, very clever combination of matches and tactics.

I'll tell you one thing about Grigor, I remember when I gave him the nickname "The Bulgarian Playboy", I watched quite a lot of him this week. Not like I would watch the original. But I kept tabs on him. Dimitrov acts and behaves himself along the same lines as the original. As Roger. No crazy displays of celebration after points. Even when he won a key point his reaction is a pretty simple clench of the fist and a subtle pump. No wide open mouth. No primal screams. No monkey faces and no monkey business. A bit of a blast from the past. Respect.

Baby Fed. Yeah...why not? He really lived up to it this week.

[don_budge]

Speaking of manning up...another classic Novak Djokovic performance. Joke 'em if they can't take a fuck. The reverse of the original saying...courtesy of none other than don_budge. But joke them he does. Novak has been struggling with his physical well being all week if the reports are true that I have read. The back thing a new twist tonight. But from some accounts he has had some kind of "stomach" bug which has had him putting in some overtime sitting on the toilet. Was that a nice way of putting it? Rublev, a man without a flag, did what he could to put pressure and maintain it, but Novak is the ever elusive, hard to bag prey. He is as slippery as a Houdini in ordinary handcuffs.

Perhaps the single most aspect of a Novak Djokovic reign as the best tennis player in the world and certainly one of the best over the past how many years is Darwinian. In the Darwin paradigm of the survival of the fittest...it is not the strongest or even the smartest that is bound to survive, it is the one that adapts the best. No matter what the circumstances, Djokovic is never out of any given match from beginning to end. So many miraculous escapes. Make it two more in a row as he took out Hoger Rune after Rune threatened to overturn Novak's apple cart last night. It was Rublev tonight, who again was in the driver's seat for a good part of the match but ended up playing second fiddle when it came to the end. Novak extricated himself from another dicey situation. He always looks so comfortable doing it. He does it different ways...but many times there is this factor that he looks to be on the verge of going down. But somehow...well, you know the rest.

[don_budge]

2023 ATP Tour Finals...blah, blah, blah

If you ask me...this has been a real snoozer. I'm not referring to the heroic efforts of our "big 3" posters in this thread that are averaging way south of three views per posts. Masters of the one or two liners. Lots of just completely meaningless stats. No real opinions. No original thought. Lots of agreeing. No...this tournament is a real bust. It used to cause quite a sensation too. The difference...a lack of Roger Federer. The post Federer era of tennis...listen. You can hear it. It sounds like the air escaping from the balloon. A sucking sound only found in the queerest of all vacuums. This is a strange one. I predicted it and sure enough...right on cue. Tennis as we used to know it is down the tubes. Coming soon...the Post Modern Era of Tennis.

Case in point...one Stefanos Tsitsipas. One day he is proclaiming that this tournament is bigger than a Grand Slam. The next he is retiring after a mere four games into a match leaving the paying public high and dry. So much for chivalry. It's dead too. So is the sport. It is hard to write about anything because it all so dreadfully boring. Hear that...it is the sound of one hand clapping. When this tournament is over, they are going to turn the lights out in the stadium and there will be one old guy left there sitting asking himself...who cares?

Sinner the saviour? Hardly. The guy's picture in the dictionary is under the word...boring. Novak is the only thing that is the slightest bit compelling. The only thing. This thread is filled with a bunch of meaningless stats which are jibberish. They hardly mean anything...yet that is all there is to say about the matches. Yawn...it's like some sort of exhibition. I remember writing about these matches during Roger's career. A different animal. Completely.

Let's hope that Novak pins the ears back on the latest and the greatest...Jannik Sinner. Look how Carlos Alvarez has sort of leveled out in the equation. Novak answered that question. It was rumored that Novak was training with Alvarez in Paris. It seemed like a nice gesture on his part. Don't underestimate Djokovic...Mr. Joke 'em if they can't take a fuck. He was measuring the kid. Looking here and there for a little sign of weakness to exploit when it counted. It counted yesterday. I said a while back...Novak's experience is the trump card until it isn't. You have to take his legs out from under him. That is the challenge for Sinner today. If Sinner wins it will be the end of tennis. Pure and simple. It will be over and the lonely old guy will just get up and leave...shutting out the lights on the way out.

[don_budge]

2023 ATP Tour Finals...blah, blah, blah

If you ask me...this has been a real snoozer. I'm not referring to the heroic efforts of our "big 3" posters in this thread that are averaging way south of three views per posts. Masters of the one or two liners. Lots of just completely meaningless stats. No real opinions. No original thought. Lots of agreeing. No...this tournament is a real bust. It used to cause quite a sensation too. The difference...a lack of Roger Federer. The post Federer era of tennis...listen. You can hear it. It sounds like the air escaping from the balloon. A sucking sound only found in the queerest of all vacuums. This is a strange one. I predicted it and sure enough...right on cue. Tennis as we used to know it is down the tubes. Coming soon...the Post Modern Era of Tennis.

Case in point...one Stefanos Tsitsipas. One day he is proclaiming that this tournament is bigger than a Grand Slam. The next he is retiring after a mere four games into a match leaving the paying public high and dry. So much for chivalry. It's dead too. So is the sport. It is hard to write about anything because it all so dreadfully boring. Hear that...it is the sound of one hand clapping. When this tournament is over, they are going to turn the lights out in the stadium and there will be one old guy left there sitting asking himself...who cares?

Sinner the saviour? Hardly. The guy's picture in the dictionary is under the word...boring. Novak is the only thing that is the slightest bit compelling. The only thing. This thread is filled with a bunch of meaningless stats which are jibberish. They hardly mean anything...yet that is all there is to say about the matches. Yawn...it's like some sort of exhibition. I remember writing about these matches during Roger's career. A different animal. Completely.

Let's hope that Novak pins the ears back on the latest and the greatest...Jannik Sinner. Look how Carlos Alvarez has sort of leveled out in the equation. Novak answered that question. It was rumored that Novak was training with Alvarez in Paris. It seemed like a nice gesture on his part. Don't underestimate Djokovic...Mr. Joke 'em if they can't take a fuck. He was measuring the kid. Looking here and there for a little sign of weakness to exploit when it counted. It counted yesterday. I said a while back...Novak's experience is the trump card until it isn't. You have to take his legs out from under him. That is the challenge for Sinner today. If Sinner wins it will be the end of tennis. Pure and simple. It will be over and the lonely old guy will just get up and leave...shutting out the lights on the way out.

Novak Djokovic's experience is the Trump card until it isn't. Pinned the ears back on Jannik Sinner. You read it here. Opinionated? Yes. Never agreeing or disagreeing. Just call it like you see it and explain to the best of your ability. The two young wannabee's came up way short. All of the hoping that the next generation is going to be enough...those hopes are dashed. The writing is on the wall. Tennis is dead in the water. Boring...boring...boring. Novak is the end of the line. Greatest player of all time? Not at all. Big racquets. Lack of depth in the field. The proof is where the game is at. A 36 year old is head and shoulders over the entire field. A 36 year old who would be cat food for half of the draw in 1980 on a slick grass court. Fast hard courts. What does that tell you? Wake up. Eyes that do not see. Roger Federer was the Living Proof.