Tennis Talk 2023: Vol 20 (Eastbourne, Bad Homburg, Mallorca)

Coco Gauff snatched up Qinwen former coach Pere Riba. Watch out for Gauff signing up to play the Valencia WTA125 next season.

I think Osty believes she's about to win Wimbledon. I mean really believes.
Stranger things have happened. The fake big 3 certainly aren't a shoe-in to even get to the semis.

Keys is dark horse, 100/1 with slybet, won grass tournaments before, she can play on this surface. Would not be backing Iga at 4/1, how can she be that price when the lower ball bounce doesn't favour her game yet it does the big servers, Sabalenka should be shorter than she is, will be keeping an eye of even Pliskova's draw.

these two being drunk together again (Kerber and Petko).
https://pbs.twimg.com/card_img/1673307522231402497/9DgXx-DT?format=jpg&name=small

That's from Petkovic's big farewell exhibition in Bad Homburg on the weekend btw. if the associated tweet didn't say.

I saw some other pics from that, but it wasn't clarified if this drunken pic was from that.

Brenda Fruhvirtova dropped 2 points in the 1st set.

Looks the classic 6-0, 2-0 blowup atm.

BBC are mugs for streaming Minnen-Bouchard instead of Eden Silva - Julia Riera.

Genie is a bigger star than your hipster mugs.

Riera has a win on clay against Mayar Sherif this year.

Some randomer tweeted that Badosa practiced with her father-in-law and the thread on TF was promptly changed to say Tsitsipas and Badosa are possibly married.

thread title

The WTA released a new calendar roadmap today. The rumours about entry restrictions into WTA125 and WTA250 turned out to be true. Those levels are now for local top players and journeywomen. Mayar Sherif and I are screwed.

https://www.wtatennis.com/news/3557739/wta-announces-new-tour-calendar-and-pathway-to-equal-prize-money

Doha and Dubai will also both become WTA1000s in the same year.

so no Ons in Monastir etc, Iga in 250's in Poland etc?

Home country players can get exceptions (see the graphic near the bottom)

But as I said, Sherif is probably really screwed over by that. She basically became a (near) top30 player by relentlessly rocking the WTA125 level (much to gambler's fortunes). She and your friendly next door gambler are going to be very sad.

Oh, Irina Falconi is an Irina Falconi Hartman these days.

Jun 27, 2023 -- 8:51AM, edy wrote:

Home country players can get exceptions (see the graphic near the bottom)

that's good. that was my big problem with this proposed rule change.

So Angie will be able to play Bad Homburg next year even if she catapulted herself to the top10 by the time the grass season starts.

I hope she's back in the top 10 so she desn't take Sabine's WC.

Jun 27, 2023 -- 9:01AM, edy wrote:

Oh, Irina Falconi is an Irina Falconi Hartman these days.

Betfair acknowledging this love, but not the love of some other players.

Keep an eye on Andreescu's backhand later. Yesterday she had trouble with her left wrist and only sliced on the backhand from halfway through the match.

Thanks.

Cepelova with the decently sized straight set upset victory over Danilovic.

This umpire in the Andreescu match was already awful yesterday. No gold badge future for him.

Mladenovic has now lost a dozen consecutive matches - only three of which were against top100 opponents and with the mean rank of her opposition during that losing streak being about 205.

Jun 26, 2023 -- 5:45PM, mesmerised wrote:

Keys is dark horse, 100/1 with slybet, won grass tournaments before, she can play on this surface. Would not be backing Iga at 4/1, how can she be that price when the lower ball bounce doesn't favour her game yet it does the big servers, Sabalenka should be shorter than she is, will be keeping an eye of even Pliskova's draw.

baseball hasn't got much chance at all, sorry mes.

Jun 27, 2023 -- 2:20AM, edy wrote:

That's from Petkovic's big farewell exhibition in Bad Homburg on the weekend btw. if the associated tweet didn't say.

Bad Hamburg*. cool that they gave Petko a nice farewell

Feliciano Lopez hanging on to play up until this week in Mallorca was fully worth it. In his first round victory over Max Purcell he served eleven aces and went past Goran for 4th place in the all-time aces list.

Shame, Goran a legend of the sport deserves to be higher on this list than some Mallorcan journeyman leech.

Can you believe McDonald missed that shot on his latest match point?

Lopez showing another kid how to play some proper grass court tinnis.

A tip I became aware of through Aaron: Mansour Bahrami is playing this week and it's streamed on twitch.

https://www.twitch.tv/tennisclassic

Today has finished, but he is scheduled to play again on Friday and Saturday

https://www.giorgioarmanitennisclassic.com/2023schedule

Feli Lopez not anymore showing another kid how to play some proper grass court tinnis.

Feli Lopez again showing another kid how to play some proper grass court tinnis.

Has Wimbledon already handed out all its WC's?

yes

I placed some funky bets on the Wimbledon earlier this week.
Murray to lose in R1 at 3.5 and Venus to lose in R1 at 2.1
Let's hope the draw is nice to me on Friday.

Need Murray to draw Djokovic and beat him at his most vulnerable.

Irina Falconi Hartman retired from the sport after her loss in Wimbledon Q.

Erika currently in a tailspin since that awful choke against navarro at RG.

She needs to get her act together to avoid a lifetime of answering the question 'Hey your name's Andreeva. Are you related to the tennis star Mirra Andreeva?'

The BBC interviewed Mirra after her first round win in qualification whether the rivalry between her and her sister is really big.

Mirra started out saying something to the tune of "When I was younger, I always tried to beat her, always tried to be the same", but then swerved the obvious part with "Now, I just support her" instead of saying "I beat her 0 and 0 every practice set, so it's not a rivalry at all."

As for Erika being in a tailspin since her loss against Navarro: She wasn't exactly lighting up the tour before that. The match against the American was unexpectedly close.

Jun 29, 2023 -- 3:22AM, edy wrote:

Irina Falconi Hartman retired from the sport after her loss in Wimbledon Q.

I feel bad for the Betfair monkey who changed her name.

Karolina Wozniacka Lee announced her comeback to tennis.

Hopefully it will serve as inspiration for Aga to also come back and bring maiden slam comp glory to me.

Everyone is making the comebacks of the champions in hope to be champions again !

With Zvonareva old and out of the way, it makes sense for everyone to sniff their chance.

Especially Wozniacki who Zvonareva caused multiple traumata for.

Hamad Medjedovic has a pretty decent serve !

We need to bring Henin and Mauresmo back ! Maybe even Bartoli when she isn't doing top podcasts !

Dani to come back and use all the data, objectivity and perspective she's picked up watching other players closely
to win the Aus Open 2024.

Then to have a private party with just you Journey ! There will be pizza, jelly beans, and beers !!

Now you're talking.

Daniela would wear her classic Amazon Prime red dress and I would stand her any Papa John's meal deal (with two sides) she wanted

30- looeerrrve. this umpire thinks he's Marvin Gaye or something.

Jun 29, 2023 -- 9:15AM, Journeyman wrote:

Now you're talking.Daniela would wear her classic Amazon Prime red dress and I would stand her any Papa John's meal deal (with two sides) she wanted

That's the perfect evening ! She will never leave your side after the Papa Johns party !

1.01    £11.49        £3,171.93
1.02            £7,966.81
1.03            £4,334.99
1.04            £6,536.56
1.05            £5,707.34
1.06            £6,424.71
1.07            £1,162.62
1.08            £7,879.75
1.09            £2,362.46
1.1            £8,918.78
1.11            £6,155.93
1.12            £12,125.48

Mirra going into a decider. 1.15 SP out to 1.5 at 1 set all.

Vandegwhe 1.3x SP busted too

trainer for Garcia, looks quite fed up

Who wouldn't be losing a set 2-6 against Kasatkina on grass and not having been able to break her even once.

She was being outplayed, and the retirement seemed inevitable.

It's not the ITF and ITIA websites yet (from what I can see), but Kamil Majchrzak's doping case apparently reached a conclusion and he was banned for 13 months for accidental doping. Will be back at the start of the 2024 season. His own press release:

https://twitter.com/KamilMajchrzakk/status/1674440664581300225

I see the grass got Masarova's knee.

Neatly saved second match point by Hsieh.

Drama with Hsieh requiring the physio after that point (at 9-9 in the final set tiebreak)

Coppejans successfully qualified for Wimbledon today. He had previously been 0/8 on grass.

Perseverance pays off.

Hsieh was too hampered and lost the remaining two points after her MTO.

Jun 29, 2023 -- 7:44AM, edy wrote:

Karolina Wozniacka Lee announced her comeback to tennis.Hopefully it will serve as inspiration for Aga to also come back and bring maiden slam comp glory to me.

No Way!

I thought a tweet about this and thought it was a joke for sure.

*saw

Osty tapped.

many thanks to Osty. showed signs she didn't wanna be there for about 30 mins, stopped putting in effort running for balls. called a MTO before the tiebreak, feeling ill. loses the TB than inst-retires. classic Osty!!

draw is out 10am tomorrow morning, Murray v Alcaraz, you heard it here first

Wozniacki is going to be another Clijsters, what an absolute disaster that was, she looked like a bowling ball with legs, don't think she even officially re-retired

Toadie must be absolutely distraught that Su Wei failed to qualify

Jun 29, 2023 -- 11:36AM, edy wrote:

I see the grass got Masarova's knee.

Ben Navarro paid that grass to do that

meanwhile Emma N owning you both real hard who didn't believe she could make top 50 in her career. real hard

Always had her down as future top10

Jun 29, 2023 -- 2:45PM, mesmerised wrote:

Wozniacki is going to be another Clijsters, what an absolute disaster that was, she looked like a bowling ball with legs, don't think she even officially re-retired

Woz is gonna win 3 more Slams and end up on 4? Cool.

https://www.cameo.com/ajla.tom

Now that she's always injured, Tomljanovic decided to start up her pep talk business. She's among the most expensive though.

Iga not committing to the tour

Semifinal is enough.

I do wonder if we should read anything into Woz's comments about wanting to inspire her kids. They're so young they'll have no clue what's going on until another 4-5 years. But I don't think we should expect her to play for so long.

hey, remember when I called Serena's daughter Olivia and was mocked. Well, Woz's gaby girl is named Olivia so I wasn't that far off.

And not only Wozniacki's daughter. One of Taylor Swift's daughters is called Olivia as well after all.

Popeye's lover was called Olive, so it's starting to really form a picture that SMB was one step ahead of us all !!

I loved Popeye so much as a kid.

Also had a Popeye game for the C64 home computer, which onYouTube and in retrospective looks a lot less impressive than I remember it though. Pretty sure it was this game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxAI5lP5Zgc

didn't know Taylor Swift had kids

only game I ever saw on c64 was the Simpson, the graphics are laughable when you compare them today, they're so good now you have to look twice as to whether it's real images.

The C64 was really big in Germany. Lots of people had one. The graphics were spectacular for its time too, as were the joystick busting sports games by Epyx.

I think they were big here as well but too young to remember, my older brother's friend had one, remember standing up the whole time watching them play as they took it turns, didn't let me have a go the maze game on the sega master system was the first thing I ever played on a console, or California Dreams as the first proper game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsPPWWlV-T8

only just finished having a good look at the draw, Kostyuk v Spartak Moscow's Potapova round 4 would be interesting, not that either will make it that far, Romanian Warrior Princess has Penko round 2.

mes I'm looking forward to reading your preview of the women's tournament. no clear favourite makes it very interesting

don't have time for write ups anymore on anything, hence less postings in general, will post the usual simple outright predictions though.

Jun 30, 2023 -- 10:55AM, mesmerised wrote:

didn't know Taylor Swift had kids

Adopted. Olivia Benson.

mesmerised
26 Jun 23 23:45

Keys is dark horse, 100/1 with slybet, won grass tournaments before, she can play on this surface.


Best Madison Keys speciality call since my Cincinatti thread last year.

Obviously you were talking about Wimbledon but storming through a 500 not too shabby.

Jul 1, 2023 -- 2:10PM, Journeyman wrote:

mesmerised26 Jun 23 23:45Keys is dark horse, 100/1 with slybet, won grass tournaments before, she can play on this surface. Best Madison Keys speciality call since my Cincinatti thread last year.

this gives me a reason to bump this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnMp0YqrtjI&ab_channel=WesternandSouthernOpen

noticeable how apparently all the cool native languages of these players have the i as ....well.....i like a civilised language is meant to have it and English is basically the only one where i becomes eye.

I hope Simona reads descriptions on pill bottles better than she reads city signs. Or maybe that could be her excuse.

Jul 1, 2023 -- 6:25PM, edy wrote:

noticeable how apparently all the cool native languages of these players have the i as ....well.....i like a civilised language is meant to have it and English is basically the only one where i becomes eye.

very good point.