Talk About Tennis 2.0

....WELL, LOL, and OK. Somewhere, Tommy Paul is cackling!!!!!!

This match has become interesting...
Tsitsipas had a couple of match points in the 3rd set tiebreak, but Khachanov came up with a couple of big forehands to save them... then won the next 2 points, as well, to send it to a 4th set.
Momentum change? We'll see...

Tsitsipas also had served for the match.

I mean, it's not the worst blown set ever, but given he's trying to set up a match against a guy he blew a 2 set lead to who apparently doesn't recall that he played a GS final against you, this is not good Stefanos and doesn't bode well if he does get to the AO final. Should've closed out that set emphatically given the chances he had to do so.

nelslus wrote: ↑Fri Jan 27, 2023 6:15 am BTW, Tsitsipas has been called for more than one electronic foot fault. 2 or 3?

The umpire explained that he was crossing over the center line, not stepping on the baseline.
Stefanos just moved a bit over. and no more.

I'm wondering if John McEnroe pronounces Stefanos's name as "Sisipas" out of ignorance (not likely), out of disrespect, out of trying to make some sort of statement on his opinion of Stefanos, or out of legitimate phonetic disability.
He's been doing it since Tsitsipas first came on the scene several years ago, I think...

WELL, if Stefanos had to go into Mess Mode- at least the 4th set was pretty non-traumatic.

Now, rest up for the Tommy Paul final.

Because Djokovic was sympathetic to the 87% of fans who had fallen asleep watching yet another dominating performance, he allowed Tommy to come back from 1-5 to tie the 1st set at 5-5... Then, seeing that the fans had awoken, he got back to business and put the set away quickly, 7-5.

And after that, he allowed the fans to sleep again while quickly breezing through the next two sets.
Yawn....

Djokovic is going to beat Tsitsipas, but the first set could be a shock to his system when he faces a player who actually has the game to hurt him. You get into bad habits when you face guys you know have zero chance to threaten you, and he showed some of those bad habits in the first set against Paul with a preposterously high unforced error count.

Tsitsipas can routinely win points against Djokovic even when Djokovic plays well. De Minaur, a non-believing Rublev and Paul could not.

One mechanic that I notice between Stefanos and daddy. It is daddy that gets nervous, and then he transmits those nerves to Stefanos. Daddy, whenever Stefanos misses ONE SINGLE SHOT, squirms on his chair, as if Stefanos has been shot with a bazooka.
Stefanos then starts playing poorly, and you have the feedback effect.

I said that Paul would get 8 games out of Novak. Well, I got lucky and he exactly got that. Stefanos will get more: 6 from a TB, 6 more from the other two sets.