Tennis Random, Random (On Court)

[ti-amie]

I'm thinking about starting a Grand Slam Random, random thread specifically for things like this. What do you guys think?

[ashkor87]

There is a phrase 'who would you want playing for your life?' - a bit melodramatic but conveys the meaning..
Gonzales, Laver, Djokovic, Nadal, Alcaraz, Serena
yes,
Federer, Sinner no!
Maybe a better way to say it.

[ashkor87]

I'm thinking about starting a Grand Slam Random, random thread specifically for things like this. What do you guys think?

Yes, makes sense

[ti-amie]

Today was my first time seeing Anastasia Zakharova play and I don't think I've ever seen a service motion quite like hers. I just did a search and can't find a video of it. She bounces the ball up to 7 or 8 times while simultaneously twirling her racquet.

Does anyone else do that?

[ashkor87]

there is a lot of talk on social media now on whether that RG finals was the greatest match ever..
I woud say, scertainly a candidate but which are the other great matches? Not for drama, but for the pure quality of tennis?
My vote would be yes, this one, and the McEnroe vs Connors semifinal at the USO (I think it was '80), and the Federer - Nadal Wimbledon finals of 2008.. any others you have seen/recall as being great tennis? There are others more dramatic but perhaps not the tennis itself..

[ashkor87]

Among women, I still remember the Wimbledon finals where Venus beat Serena , 2008 - very high quality match..

[ti-amie]

Whenever the greatest matches of all time are discussed the women are rarely mentioned. It seems that 2008 was an interesting year for Wimbledon.

I'm probably the only person who hasn't seen this years RG Final. I'm going to have to make time to do so.

I'm going to play devil's advocate here and ask if a match from 1980 can be considered best of all time when tennis has changed so much due to racquet technology and the change in surface quality. I can see it being considered best of it's era but not more than that.

[ashkor87]

Whenever the greatest matches of all time are discussed the women are rarely mentioned. It seems that 2008 was an interesting year for Wimbledon.

I'm probably the only person who hasn't seen this years RG Final. I'm going to have to make time to do so.

I'm going to play devil's advocate here and ask if a match from 1980 can be considered best of all time when tennis has changed so much due to racquet technology and the change in surface quality. I can see it being considered best of it's era but not more than that.

Maybe..but of course I am talking about the impression it made on me then...i haven't seen it later

[ponchi101]

I would say this was the greatest RG final ever. But let's not forget Gaudio/Coria, which also saw a player coming back from two sets down, and Lendl/Mac 1984.
But greatest ever at all slams is a hard one. I'll go with Goran's appraisal; certainly top 5, together with:
Rafa/Roger W2008
Novak/Rafa AUS2012
Borg/Mac W1980

And not a slam final, but people don't remember the 1972 WCT final between Rosewall and Laver: 4–6, 6–0, 6–3, 6–7(3), 7–6(5) (Rosewall). I didn't see it, but people used to say it was one of the greatest matches ever.

[FredX]

Agassi/Sampras 2001 US Open QF comes to mind. Gaudio/Coria was good drama, but don’t recall it being great tennis.

[Suliso]

Federer/Roddick 2009 Wimbledon final was great for drama.

[ponchi101]

Sampras/Agassi QF at the USO 2001 was certainly the greatest match ever that DID NOT reach a fifth set. Before the start of the 4th TB, the crowd got up and gave them a standing ovation of at least three minutes. And the level of play was in the stratosphere.
I gather that Roddick still wakes up every now and then, drenched in sweat, thinking "High BH volley!!!". That was gut wrenching.

[ashkor87]

Federer/Roddick 2009 Wimbledon final was great for drama.

High quality tennis too..from both

[meganfernandez]

We count UFEs and winners, which we should, but equally important are forced errors - most of our game consists of forcing the opponent to make a mistake, or not return into the court. It is the single most important metric in our game, and we dont count it. Another one I would like to see, especially with people like Coco, is weak shots that allow the oppoent to hit a winner - maybe 'invited winner' or something like that. On serve, aces and double faults, yes, but unreturned serves are more frequent, and more important. and so on.

Don’t get me started on forced errors. Wait, too late!

They are lumped together with mistakes by the point loser, but they are more like winners by the point winner. Tennis coaches throw around the stat that amateur players lose 70% of their points to errors, and use it to preach that offense doesn’t win at our level. But half of those are errors are forced (good offense), so you could also say that only 30% of our points are lost on unforced errors. The majority of points are won, not lost. I hate the misinterpretation.

Then people like Roddick doesn’t believe in an unforced error. I get the idea but it’s Roddiclous. Of course people just make sloppy errors.

[meganfernandez]

This is the third time in the past few months that I’ve seen her just fire a ball into the stands like this lmfao. What a horrible look for her

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I'm not bothered by players (especially ones as young as Mirra) showing emotion on court - crying, shouting, yelling at their box, etc. Even when they get into arguments with the umpire, it's annoying but not something I have much of an issue with, it's kind of the umpire's job to deal with emotional players and if they have to take their anger out on someone/something best the umpire imo. But smashing a ball into the stands is becoming a repeat problem with Mirra and the more times it happens the less it's excusable...those people bought tickets, they're there to support women's tennis and they're the reason she earns so much money and lives the lifestyle she does. She could injure someone if she keeps doing this.

If a player does it once obviously it's stupid but if they don't do it again it shows that it's something they've worked on and don't make a habit of it. But it doesn't really seem like Mirra's working on her impulse control

Yeesh. This is awful. And I’m pretty forgiving of players swatting balls in frustration and occasionally taking a freak bounce or shank. But not firing point-blank into the crowd. Was this a standard penalty?