Talk About Tennis 2.0

My brave prediction of the day- Vondrousova will beat Jabeur...MV excels on this kind of slow hard court..Jabeur doesn't, and hadn't been playing much .good chance of an upset.

Krejcikova was having a difficult time with Xinyu Wang, but she seems to have rectified the situation now...

Tsurenko seems like a paycheck chaser to me.

Meanwhile, Muchova playing like a champ..her potential was always there..hope she goes far now, in many tournaments..she is lovely to wstch

ashkor87 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 3:53 am My brave prediction of the day- Vondrousova will beat Jabeur...MV excels on this kind of slow hard court..Jabeur doesn't, and hadn't been playing much .good chance of an upset.

May be brave, but this is also what the betting odds are showing, interestingly

Not so brave then! Ok.

Medvedev not impressive, as I expected...if Zverev is anywhere close to his best, he should beat Medvedev...hanging about 10 feet behind the baseline and returning everything, is not good enough. Med doesn't have many ways to actually win a rally, except on serve.

I am not sure about Ons Jabeur losing today, but I do think Stan Wawrinka has a chance of taking down Holger Rune. On the ladies side this is more of a sentimental upset pick, but I am picking Leylah Fernandez to upset Caroline Garcia today. We shall see if my streak goes to 0-8.

I saw Rune play his first round. His FH is clocking; I wonder how much it is a coincidence that him and Carlitos use the same Babolat aero. For Stan to beat him, he will really have to get on a time machine and go back to 2017. I don't see much chance there.

The news corrected my statement above that Tsurenko has retired 8 times in the last 11 events. It has been 8 times in the last 15. A combination of RET and W/O's. And she has retired to a lot of different players, so there is no political motivation (Sabalenka being Belarusian) or anything like that. Maybe she will talk about it.

ponchi101 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 3:22 pm I saw Rune play his first round. His FH is clocking; I wonder how much it is a coincidence that him and Carlitos use the same Babolat aero. For Stan to beat him, he will really have to get on a time machine and go back to 2017. I don't see much chance there.

The news corrected my statement above that Tsurenko has retired 8 times in the last 11 events. It has been 8 times in the last 15. A combination of RET and W/O's. And she has retired to a lot of different players, so there is no political motivation (Sabalenka being Belarusian) or anything like that. Maybe she will talk about it.

Hell, if we flip back to 2017 then I am definitely predicting Stan to beat Holger because he would be only 13 years old at the time.

I make a point of never betting on or against Pliskova, having suffered so many times! But I think she will beat Sakkari here...big serve, slow courts lessening the effect of her slow movement ..Sakkari has great defense but not as many offensive weapons as Pliskova has...
Rybakina vs Badosa is very intriguing too..badosa always does well here.. I don't think she is quite in Rybakina's class but on this slow court Badosa could win...I hope not but....

Agree that Pliskova is a puzzle. I would bet only dog-chewed balls on her (or against her). Never real coin.
I am surprised that you are not very bullish on Rybakina vs Badosa. Paula was taken to a deep 3rd set by Parrizas Dias, certainly not a hard court player. I don't see how Badosa will be able to handle Rybakina's current serve and FH.

Blood has been drawn!
Felix hit himself in the chin with his racquet or something like that vs. Cerundolo, and appeared to get some quick stitching done on-court.
I didn't see what happened - I turned the match on when Felix was starting a Medical Time Out... and one of the people attending to him asked him "How did this happen?", and Felix appeared to say "I went for a return, and I mis-hit it, and the racquet came up into my face."

The treatment was done on-court, but he then left the court just to change his shorts (maybe there was blood on them?). He was off the court for less than one minute.
Play has resumed now - 3-2, 1st set. It was 2-0 Felix when his injury occurred - Felix has lost all 3 games played since the injury. It doesn't appear to be bothering him physically - but maybe the shock of hitting himself, plus the stoppage of play breaking his momentum...

Garcia took the 1st set off of Leylah 6-4. Garcia is rock-solid on her serve.
It's tough when two Canadians are playing at the same time...

ponchi101 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 3:51 am ESPN says that this is Tsurenko's 8 w/o in her last 11 tournaments. I checked her stats, and she was RET or W/O 6 times since Eastbourne.

I think ESPN's stat is correct and yours is as well, you're just counting different things. I'm assuming you're watching the ESPN Latin American feed, right? I think we determined before that how they pull stats is a bit different. Like whatever they are accessing likely allows for them to change the parameters to see a data point, something not as widely available to us. I think this came up before when they gave a stat about Badosa's retirements. It'd be great if they gave more context to the criteria they are using.

In this case, I'm pretty sure the difference is going to be their stats are just WTA main tour tournaments, so leaving off everything the ITF runs and any WTA 125k events. If you count her last WTA main tour tournaments starting last week in Mexico, yeah, you'll hit 8 out of 11. It's an astounding stat.

Leylah takes the 2nd set in a tiebreak.
Leylah is playing some really good tennis today - and she has to, as Garcia is playing well, too... and Garcia always puts pressure on her opponents with her aggressive game.
Garcia still hasn't even faced a break point today.
This is an enjoyable, high quality match.

Felix got a late break to win the 1st set 7-5, and is up 3-2 with a break in the 2nd...