Tennis Talk 2023: Vol 40 (Davis Cup)

Much more importantly: The Valencia challenger tournament this week made Andujar's wish from April true and gave him a wild card in order for him to be able to say good bye at home.

Hope Linda F. is a fan of japanese culture and got something out of the trip that way. For the results it will likely not have been what she wished for.

play dropshots in Florianopolis if you want to increase your  chances of winning.

On each of the first two days of the tournament a player injured herself running for one to the degree that they had to leave the court in a wheelchair.

The woman known as Mayar Sherif on the WTA tour becomes Maiar Sherif Ahmed Abdelaziz again once she steps onto an ITF Women's World Tour court.

Sevastova is set to make her first tournament appearance since the AO 2022 - got a wild card into the WTA125 Andorra next week.

Mandy Minella had her swearing to officially become a member of the Luxembourgian parliament. She is a member of the demokratesch partei, member of ALDE on the European stage.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cz68knurIv-/

https://www.chd.lu/de/deputy/1280

All over for Canada's short but beautiful couple of weeks as Davis Cup and BJK cup champions. Felix's body couldn't hang on to the end of November.

But (ridiculously) Novak is still motoring on. Big pressure on Draper to get a result knowing that the Novak/Norrie match is pretty much in the bank for Serbia.

Hope Linda F. is a fan of japanese culture and got something out of the trip that way. For the results it will likely not have been what she wished for.

It seems Leylah broke her in Hong Kong and now she's back on the downcurve. I'm assuming Brenda is now bored with being the Hipster Queen and will roll into the main tour in 2024.  Erika definitely had a adjustment period where she had to get comfortable with her kid sister shooting past her in the rankings. A similar story may be about to play out with the Fruhvirtovas. We'll see.

Brenda still chose a desperately weak W40 in the middle of nowhere this week (every W25 this week has a much better field) even though she would have firmly been among the seeds at the W100 Valencia as well as the WTA125 Florianopolis.

Not sure how tired she and her schedulers are with beating up on weak fields just yet.

....though you can't stay at W25/W40 level forever when you are within top100 and grand slam direct entry range.

.....said nobody to Arantxa Rus ever.

Ok, not every W25 this week actually. Bengaluru in the middle of even nowherer is weaker than Guadalajara.

Once great is right. Best of three sets now. The corporates have had their way. Winning the Davis Cup

is now totally unimportant when compared with the epic battles of the past.

It'll be the Grand Slams next.

And best of three matches! What a ffng joke!

The very essence of the Davis Cup has been destroyed. It should not be allowed to call itself the

Davis Cup. Shame on tennis for allowing this to happen.  I for one will not be watching ever again.

Finland in the semis says it all. And they won their QF WITHOUT their by far best player.

So many flags! As a reminder, winning this does not count as a title for the purpose of flag comp.

Michal Samulski @MichalSamulski
The field for the Next Gen ATP Finals, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia from November 28th to December 2nd.

Arthur Fils
Dominic Stricker
Luca Van Assche
Flavio Cobolli
Abduallah Shelbayh
Alex Michelsen
Luca Nardi
Hamad Medjedovic

Nov 23, 2023 -- 10:12PM, SamuelMertensBertens wrote:

Finland in the semis says it all. And they won their QF WITHOUT their by far best player.

and the player leading them in Ruusuvuori's absence has never won a main tour match. Virtanen sole purpose of existence is indoors tennis, but still...

Heard Djokovic was mad with the British, as always, choosing to be on their very worst behaviour when abroad.

David Nalbandian allegedly installed hidden cameras to spy on a former partner.

https://www.marca.com/en/tennis/2023/11/23/655f6558268e3e4c528b4571.html

.

Nov 21, 2023 -- 8:16PM, edy wrote:

play dropshots in Florianopolis if you want to increase your

What kinda **** puts double spaces in their posts? Son of a biscuit, man.

What I wanted to write: Todoni was another one who took a bad fall running for a dropshot. She managed to complete the match in which it happened two days ago after an MTO, but today gave a walkover.

1.06            £928.27
1.07    £130.84        £46,462.82
1.08            £14,348.58

Nole busto

Surprised wasn't lower
Had 3 match points

Kecmanovic stepping up and Novak can't get it done in the singles. Puts a different kind of pressure on him in the doubles.

Oh and Amanda's out of Hobart.  Maybe the paintings have started to shift.

A shame. Amanda winning Hobart would have been a nice addition to my Hobart springboard to superstardom thread. Can't have another Lauren Davis type winner in 2024.

Italy reaching the final of both BJK cup and Davis cup, they probably deserve one of them.

that singles loss is so un-Novak though, the nature of it. I guess it's the one flaw in the GOAT design, he's designed to rack up solo records but it just breaks down when it comes to playing for his country. The polar opposite of Bencic basically.

Taylaaah timing her career biggest win to perfection with the tennis world moving down under in a matter of weeks.
Wild cards incoming!

Death, taxes and Taylah cracking the top 100 in 2024.

The Aussie Open WC's will be in high demand next year. Saville will need one and probably get it despite a very weak post-Wimbledon. Tomljanovic too. Birrell is on the edge of direct entry with one more week to go until the entry deadline. Sharma won't make the cut and recently won a title in Aussieland and reached another final. Storm Hunter needs to be in because of her name.

Then you have the three comeback mums who have all won the tournament and might prefer to save their SR entries for e.g. RG, which is so definitely not giving them wild cards.

Taylah might be relegated to a qualies wild card (if she needs it).

Ha, Basilashvili found someone he can win a set against in 2023 - the world number 1398.

Is Kerber 100% going to trap?  Woz I had forgotten about (probably wishful thinking) but I guess that's a shoe-in.

Who has a 2024 ceiling that on paper could win the Oz open. Ajla yeah of course. Gavrilova can beat anyone on a given day but stringing seven matches together without some kind of incident, no. Big character though and the tour need these.

Storm Hunter needs to be in because of her name.

No way. If it was wrestling or a Game of Thrones type TV series then 100%.

Does Australia not want to give big stage previews and experience to young prospects that could maybe win the title one day.
Give a main draw WC to Taylah and a QWC to Gibson imo.

I'll have you know that the 2014 Storm Hunters movie features Sarah Wayne Callies, the eternal crush of everyone who watched Prison Break (and didn't fall for Wentworth). It also has 21% on the Tomatometer, which is reasonably close to the score Game of Thrones has on Rotten Tomatoes.

Personally I agree that the wild cards should preferrably go to prospects like Gibson and Taylaaah over old people like Sharma and Hunter with a very obvious and well defined ceiling (in singles). At the same time, Sharma is much higher ranked and that will often determine who gets the wild card.

Crowd go crazy as Arnaldi pops Pop in the first leg !

Heaven isn't on earth, but some peices of it are. Seems Badosa is as insufferable as Stefanos. Great match.

Alex getting a hammering.

Well and truly Sinner's pigeon.