 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I'm a pretty big tennis fan, and have been watching the French Open for the past 2 weeks, and with it in the quarterfinals and about to start the semi-finals, it's REALLY getting interesting!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Oh sure, I always enjoyed tennis since I was a kid. We used to have as a kid a ping pong table in our living room. pretty good player and from there I got into tennis. But to be honest my liking of TENNIS is twofold. I like the game and I love those ladies in there outfits.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jim Phelps: What I don't like about tennis is that there's often just one man and woman who dominates the sport for roughly a decade and while injuries and the occasional upset do occur, it's usually the same people winning everything. We went from Sampras to Federer and now to Nadal. With the women it was Martina, then Steffi, and now the Williams sisters. However, there is still much excitement when watching despite the dominance of so few.
Tall Guy: Not sure it's like that now, Jim - the top five or six men are all capable of winning a major tournament on their day.
I totally agree, TG. And Jim, while there's some truth in what you wrote, there are a lot more than just those you cited -- of course the Martina you mentioned was the great Navratilova, but there was also Martina Hingis and Maria Sharapova and others whose names don't immediately come to mind. Like some here, I love Andy Murray and go through the same sort of angst when he loses that I did decades ago when Ivan Lendl would falter in some of the big ones. I sat here for hours today watching the ladies semi-finals and will do the same tomorrow with the men's, but off the DVR, since I must be away most of the day. Rafael Nadal seems to be pretty invincible these days, particularly in Paris, so he'll probably eliminate Andy in tomorrow's semi, which will be a bummer, and then face Novak Djokovic in the final.
Then there's Wimbledon, which most tennis fans look forward to, and I've been wanting to time another vacation to England to see it, just as I'd like to time a vacation to New York to see the U.S. Open later in the year.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Thomas:
It was good to see Maria Sharapova back in top form! Missed her! As I predicted, Nadal in Paris was unstoppable by Djokovic (I wrote that "Rafael Nadal seems to be pretty invincible these days, particularly in Paris"). It wouldn't surprise me to see him win a couple more there before he's through. I was looking at the winnings, and, after a 10% increase, Nadal and Sharapova both won 2 1/4 million dollars -- but it's amazing that those who lost in the quarterfinals still won close to, as I recall, $100,000 -- will have to go back and review the figures. I was up before 6 this Sunday morning so I could watch the men's final live. [Follow-Up: I see that those in the 4th round got, in Euros, 125,000, quarterfinalists got 220,000, semifinalists got 412,500, runners-up got 825,000, and the male and female singles champions each got 1,650,000, all in Euros.]
I've always loved the Andy Williams album in which he does "Moon River" and other movie themes (like "Tender Is The Night"). I first bought it on LP and then CD, but when I got my new Mac last June and had to re-do about 75% of my music, I had misplaced the CD and ended up re-buying it at Amazon.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Maria Sharapova:
I was rooting for her for most of the match, although I knew I'd be happy for either of them, although, near the end, found myself rooting for her opponent, the underdog, although she had a higher seeding. But was simply thrilled for Sharapova!
And the crowd would later happily see an all-French men's doubles team win that championship.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jim P: Re: You all may have noticed that the same guy who won the French Open nine of the last ten years won it again this year.
As I wrote on June 9th and predicted on the 5th, although I didn't cite his number of wins, assuming that anyone watching would have heard that statistic repeatedly or already known it.
|
|
|
|
|
|
So Wimbledon 2014 has come and gone, but it was quite a wild ride! We surprisingly lost Rafael Nadal very early and the same for the Williams sisters -- especially Serena, whom many of us thought would at least be in the final, if not win it, but I felt that those losses invigorated the competition! Andy Murray, the perennial over-achiever, made it far enough that it wasn't an embarrassment, but fans of his, like me, were crushed to see him go. The Bryan brothers made it to the final, but their doubles express seems to be running out of steam. I was thrilled that Bouchard made it to the ladies final, but her one-sided loss to Petra Kvitova was, dare I say it, boring. Not so the gentlemen's final with Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic, which truly kept us on the edges of our chairs. It was a deserved win for Djokovic, but could have easily gone either way, which, ironically, seemed to be Federer's declaration that he's not ready to hang up his tennis sneakers quite yet. (I wouldn't be surprised to see him raise his majors titles to 20 before he's through.) Dvokovic made an emotional salute to his first coach, who died last year and whom many of us saw with him on, as I recall, 60 Minutes. What an exciting Wimbledon!!!
I do want to say something about the singles finals that were broadcast on ABC, with all the rest on the Tennis Channel. For us here in Southern Cal, the gentlemen's final began at noon today and after the commercial break that followed the 1st set, which Federer won, they suddenly took us to the middle of the 2nd set, which was unsettling, and they periodically did it again a few times, with the 5 set match too long to fit into the time slot. I understand ABC's dilemma, but it was still unfortunate -- I would think that the Wimbledon finals deserved better.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
