Talk About Tennis 2.0

Fergus Murphy is too often too authoritarian. It seems that he sees himself as kind of a school principal.
He's a decent umpire, but he needs to loosen up, learn to relax, and not take his job too seriously.

ti-amie wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 12:21 am Alex Gruskin
@GreatShotPod
·
9h
Dating back to August, I’ve repeatedly stated my belief that the Sakkari/Kontaveit/Mertens generation continues to be overlooked

Can essentially pen one of them into any tournaments SF spot. If recent results are any indication, they’re all clearly entering their primes



What do we think about this theory?

^ None of the above.
Muchova is the best of this group, in my opinion... followed by a tie between Mertens and Jabeur.

How can Muchova and Jabeur not be included in his list?

I can see Mertens winning a Slam, if she gets a few breaks. It is not as if she has not been a regular of the top 20. Kontaveit is the weak player in that group. She has no weapons to talk about. Vekic gets injured too much.
This group is not like Dimitrov, Raonic and Kei, sandwiched between the three greatest of all time and a generation that is better than theirs. In the Democratic Republic of the WTA, any of this players could win a big tournament. Or they can spend an entire career getting to an occasional QF, winning 4-5 250's and earning $10MM after a decade in the top 30 of the tour.

ponchi101 wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 1:14 pm I can see Mertens winning a Slam, if she gets a few breaks. It is not as if she has not been a regular of the top 20. Kontaveit is the weak player in that group. She has no weapons to talk about. Vekic gets injured too much.
This group is not like Dimitrov, Raonic and Kei, sandwiched between the three greatest of all time and a generation that is better than theirs. In the Democratic Republic of the WTA, any of this players could win a big tournament. Or they can spend an entire career getting to an occasional QF, winning 4-5 250's and earning $10MM after a decade in the top 30 of the tour.

I don't see any of them winning a Slam. Mertens is getting beat up by her doubles partner Sabalenka as I type this. Ons has a tendency to wilt under pressure. Kontaveit has a nice game but winning a Slam? As for Vekic it's beginning to show that away from the ATP coaching she used to get she can get a bit lost out there.

The young ones coming up behind them are, as Ponchi said about Kei, Raonic and Dimitrov, better than they are.

And Ostapenko is a Slam winner.

ti-amie wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 5:46 pm

ponchi101 wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 1:14 pm I can see Mertens winning a Slam, if she gets a few breaks. It is not as if she has not been a regular of the top 20. Kontaveit is the weak player in that group. She has no weapons to talk about. Vekic gets injured too much.
This group is not like Dimitrov, Raonic and Kei, sandwiched between the three greatest of all time and a generation that is better than theirs. In the Democratic Republic of the WTA, any of this players could win a big tournament. Or they can spend an entire career getting to an occasional QF, winning 4-5 250's and earning $10MM after a decade in the top 30 of the tour.

I don't see any of them winning a Slam. Mertens is getting beat up by her doubles partner Sabalenka as I type this. Ons has a tendency to wilt under pressure. Kontaveit has a nice game but winning a Slam? As for Vekic it's beginning to show that away from the ATP coaching she used to get she can get a bit lost out there.

The young ones coming up behind them are, as Ponchi said about Kei, Raonic and Dimitrov, better than they are.

And Ostapenko is a Slam winner.

I agree with all that. I think Mertens could if she gets a lot of help from the draw, but she would have to get really lucky and then play her absolute best in the latter rounds. Commentator said she had the most match wins in 2020 but didn't win a title. Because she doesn't beat players ranked higher than her. That could always change, and she could catch a better player on an off day, so you never know. But I'd never put her as a top 5 contender in any given Slam without improvements to her game.

I could be wrong, but what Ti described is the case for about every top 100 player. They're all good but missing a couple things that make them champions. The potential is always there to add/fix those things, and you never know when they will catch lightening in a bottle, like Ostapenko, but it usually doesn't happen.

Deuce wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 3:59 am

ti-amie wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 12:21 am Alex Gruskin
@GreatShotPod
·
9h
Dating back to August, I’ve repeatedly stated my belief that the Sakkari/Kontaveit/Mertens generation continues to be overlooked

Can essentially pen one of them into any tournaments SF spot. If recent results are any indication, they’re all clearly entering their primes



What do we think about this theory?

^ None of the above.
Muchova is the best of this group, in my opinion... followed by a tie between Mertens and Jabeur.

How can Muchova and Jabeur not be included in his list?

So weird, I would never have associated Muchova, Mertens, Kontveit, Sakkari, and Jabeur as the same generation. I would have put Kontaveit and Mertens together, then Sakkari and Jabeur have emerged at about the same time, and then Muchova has only been coming on in the last year or so. But they're all about the same age, 24-26. I didn't know. I would have guessed Muchova was more like 21 or 22 and Mertens and Kontaveit like 26 or 27, more of the Muguruza generation. (Generation in tennis seems to be like 3-4 years, doesn't it?) Just because they have had higher rankings for a while I guess. And what about Garcia? She's 27.

I disagree with Alex (who lives in Indy, by the way, same as me!) that they are overlooked. When they dod something that makes us look, we will. They have just the right amount of attention IMO. Between them, they have 1 Slam semi (Mertens).

I think Pavs has decided if not now, when?

Love all this. Veteran players can be so introspective. I must admit I haven't paid much attention to Pavs in many years. Love that she's found this level again, and it will be interested to watch her over the next few months now.

ti-amie wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 6:17 pm I think Pavs has decided if not now, when?

ti-amie wrote: ↑Sat May 08, 2021 2:55 pm

Novak grew up playing on hard courts. The famous/tedious story of him playing in an empty pool is still fresh in my mind.
Osaka is not very good on clay because she rarely played on it. That has not stopped her from tremendous success.
Argentina basically has nothing but clay courts. Four grand slam champions in all of its history, three of them with just one.
Sampras, Agassi, Courier, Chang, Connors and McEnroe grew up on hard courts. Do not believe Connors did not know how to construct a point, and three of those won RG. The other three made a final and semis.

The narrative that the moment America lays down more clay courts it will become dominant again is faulty at best, and overly simplistic. The USA no longer dominates in tennis simply because tennis has go to be the most successful sport at modern globalization, or share that distinction with basketball (soccer always was global). If 30 years ago anybody would have said that the three most successful players in history would come from Switzerland, Spain and Serbia, you would have been laughed at.
Another great American champion will come, out of nowhere. It is the cycle of the sport.
(Sweden and Germany produced great champions in the 70's and 80's. Since then, nothing. And they did not cover their clay courts with plexi-pave).

Matt Zemek @mzemek

Another big story from the WTA Madrid final:

FoxTenn doesn't work well enough on clay.

Sorry, folks: We need umpires to check the marks on clay. It's not the verdict we want, but it's the responsible thing to do after that blown call early in the match.

There is one other big story to emerge from this Madrid final: FoxTenn got exposed.

I had not previously seen FoxTenn get a call so egregiously wrong on clay, but I and the rest of the world witnessed a clear error on Saturday. It came on break point for Sabalenka in the second game of the match.

I rewound the FoxTenn replay around 10-12 times to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. You can see the ball float just above the painted white line, suggesting — as FoxTenn ruled — that the ball brushed the back of the baseline. However, was the ball actually touching the white, or was the ball still above the ground, continuing its downward trajectory before actually hitting the ground?

That was and is the essential question. I rewound my TV at least 10 times to be absolutely sure the ball wasn’t touching the ground when it was hovering just above the back of the baseline.

Yes. The ball was above the ground when it was above the back of the baseline. That was a CLEAR missed call, and — at least in my mind — a huge blow to the idea that FoxTenn is a regularly reliable clay lines-calling solution.

https://tennisaccent.com/wta/sabalenka- ... wta-final/