Draper on to the semis, still hasn’t dropped a set. His serve down the middle that spins away is amazing.
De Minaur has lost in three straight quarterfinals at slams, though one was a withdrawal. I wonder if he’s found his ceiling or if he can build on this season and make a deeper run at the AO.
Tiafoe looked good last night, aside from a few minutes in the second set. I feel for Dimitrov. He was getting emotional when he retired, which is understandable in context. This was probably his last best chance to make a final at a slam. He’s still obviously a good player, but it felt like the end of the road for him, even if he continues playing for a few more years.
I feel like tonight’s match between Medvedev and Sinner might actually be the ‘final’ for this event. Both guys are fighting for their second slam title, and they have to be looking ahead and seeing that the semi and final are not going to feature either Alcaraz or Djokovic. It must feel like a golden opportunity for them; if they can just win this match, they would like their odds for the title.
Of course everyone else still in the tournament feels the same way, except they don’t have the experience of the slam title and none of them are normally as good or successful as Sinner or Medvedev.
This stat from the Swiatek / Pegula match is insane. Pegula won a total of 65 points in the match, of which 41 were unforced errors by Swiatek.
I gotta say, both of these dudes look beatable for Draper / Fritz / Tiafoe if their form does not improve from this match to the next. They’d still be the favorites, but I would not be surprised if either lost in the semis of finals. Unforced errors and lopsided sets aplenty!
Pegula winning keeps alive the possibility of two billionaire heiresses playing in the finals (Navarro being the other). Which, even in a sport like tennis, feels weird.
It really feels like Sinner and Medvedev are just taking turns out there.
Turn based tennis? Who knew such a thing was possible?
Great, reading the bio of Navarro’s father makes me root for whoever she’s playing.
Wait, Fritz beat Zverev? That’s really impressive! That’s got to be a huge breakthrough moment for him, surely? I wish I hadn’t made the decision to skip ESPN+ this year now. I missed a great tournament.
A long article for me to read over the weekend about tennis.
Just looking over the sub-headlines, I already hate that the future of tennis apparently is sports betting. Arrrgh.
Let’s not forget that there have been multiple tennis gambling/throwing matches at the lower levels problems in recent years
At this point it looks like the future of all sports is sports betting. I do not like this.
If we restrict it to the billionaire kids we might be able to skip the betting.
Yeah, she could be the most charismatic tennis player to ever live with a beautiful, all-court attacking game and it would be impossible to root for her knowing that her tennis career was initially funded by her dad, who
is the founder and chief executive officer of Sherman Financial Group, LLC, one of the largest buyers of consumer debt in the United States and the owner of Credit One Bank, a bank specializing in credit cards for borrowers with low credit scores. . . His companies have been criticized for aggressive debt collection practices, and he is credited for helping transform the once small and fragmented business of collecting credit card debt into a multibillion-dollar industry.
And that’s just the neutral topline summary on Wikipedia. Excluding any extracurriculars (i.e., non-money-making pursuits), he might be scummiest billionaire in the world, which is saying something. And Pegula’s family are no picnic either.
This is particularly galling in tennis which, as mentioned above, has had rampant match fixing at the low levels for decades (and probably some higher-level stuff too that gets swept under the rug) and where numerous usually low-ranked players are regularly subjected to death threats from gamblers. Exacerbating any of that seems like a bad idea, but as the article concludes, “The money was, apparently, too good to pass up.”
I’m feeling better about my tennis-crush on the Belarusian Sabalenka all the time!
You’ll be seeing her for another match, though she made it more difficult than it had to be at the end.
On the men’s side, the top 5 on Monday will be:
Sinner
Zverev
Alcaraz
Djokovic
Medvedev
Fritz can reach #6 if he wins the tournament. Tiafoe can reach #10 if he wins the tournament. Draper can reach #13.
Sinner will have a strong hold on the number 1 ranking no matter what happens. Zverev and Alcaraz will be nearly 3000 points behind him.
Draper seemed to throw up in his match against Sinner. Bit weird. Maybe the heat.
Maybe it’ll work out for him like it did for Sampras that one time. Sinner is looking beatable for Draper, but Sinner’s also playing a bit better than yesterday, though both seem to be making unforced errors as often as winners.