Yeah, I use the ATP’s streaming service* for everything except the Slams. I’ll watch the AO on my ESPN service here. Commentary in Spanish, but it’s character-building.
[*] note that their apps have been broken off and on which irritates me. I’ve been able to stream from the site while they fix them, but it is pretty clumsy on a TV.
I just knew I posted about a new LiveTV service that launched a few months ago. I kept googling “new LiveTV service”, or variations of that, but it brought up the usual suspects (Hulu, Youtube, FuboTV). But not the new one. I finally had to comb through my own posts in the meta streaming services thread and found my own post. The new service is TVision. So at least now I have a plan for the Australian Open. It comes with 100 hours of Cloud DVR. That’s key, because I’m not staying up all night to watch live tennis.
The Germany / Canada matches were very good. Struff did a great job returning Raonic’s serve, broke him several times and won in straight sets. Zverev and Shapovalov fought through 3 grueling sets. Zverev had an early lead in the first set tiebreaker but lost it and lost the set. He recovered well to win the second, and the third was hard fought. Zverev had a number of break points against Shapovalov in the third that he could not quite take, and had to win it in the tiebreaker. It was a good show of steady nerves and mental toughness from Zverev, something that would be welcome in his game.
Russia and Italy are through to the semis. Serbia can get through today with a win over Germany, a tough matchup. Nole will play Zverev and Lajovic will play Struff. Spain will advance if they can beat Australia today, which they should do. Nadal will play Tsitsipas and RBA will play Pervolarakis.
Serbia would draw Russia in the semis, while Spain gets Italy. I like Spain’s chances to win this thing.
Uh-oh.
Sounds as if some players / team members have to get tested and wait in isolation until test results are back. Play for today is cancelled, and the prospect for tomorrow sounds vague.
The AO draw is out.
The top 8 are distributed as follows:
Djokovic
Zverev
Thiem
Schwartzman
Rublev
Medvedev
Tsitsipas
Nadal
My rough calculation suggests Medvedev has the easiest draw of the top 4, but then he has to get past Nadal.
The ATP Cup matches have been superb. Either hard-fought, close battles or surprising performances by some players. The two finalist teams are Italy (who toppled Spain) and Russia (who defeated Germany).
I would have guessed Spain and Russia would be the finalists — it’s hard to top Spain’s lineup of Nadal, Bautista Agut, Carreño Busta; or Russia’s of Medvedev and Rublev. But Berrettini has been superb, and Fognini produced some brilliant tennis against Carreño Busta, and Italy got through.
Nadal chose not to play; in fact he didn’t play a single match in the Cup due to injury, which seems ominous for his chances in the Open. Hopefully it’s something minor and he’s just being conservative and preserving his chances for the Slam. One consequence of not getting to the final, though, is that he has no opportunity to improve on his ranking points over last year. That now guarantees that Djokovic will remain number one long enough to break Roger’s record, no matter what happens in the AO or the Rotterdam tournament.
Djokovic played very well. His two matches, against Shapovalov and Zverev, were played at a very high level. But the rest of the Serbian team was decimated. Lajovic was hobbled by a bad blister, and in any event was outclassed by his opponents. Krajinovic played brilliantly as a doubles partner for Djokovic against the Canadians, but injured his back in that match and wasn’t available against the Germans. Doubles journeyman Cacic joined Nole against Zverev and Struff. He also played well, and they had several chances to win that match, but in the end the serving by the Germans was just too much for them.
Zverev played very well throughout the tournament, but it looks like he hurt himself playing Medvedev last night. With the AO beginning on Monday, that’s bad news for him.
All in all, it was a good, if abbreviated, follow up to last year. It’s a good tournament concept, the team approach giving it a lot of appeal, and the format mostly guaranteeing high-quality matches between top-ranked players. If there is a question about it, it’s whether it can work as a permanent fixture, played this time of year in Australia. There will be pressure, I think, to allow other countries to host it, which necessarily means moving the schedule around, etc. Given that there isn’t any other obvious ‘break’ in the sport schedule to fit it in, that will be a challenge.
I just watched McEnroe Borg Fire/Ice, HBO documentary. Man, that was so good. It was really interesting watching the whole rivalry play out. The documentary’s main focus is on the 1980 Wimbledon final, and that is amazing to watch again, but that match is over half way through the documentary, and it was really interesting watching Borg basically bow out of the sport a year later, and then to watch McEnroe slowly fizzle out as well, and also never a major after he turned 25, just like Borg.
He felt that Borg leaving had robbed him of that long rivalry that he needed, that defined his tennis up to that point, that he was never able to recapture after Borg left.
And it was interesting that the documentary was basically told by the two men themselves through interviews, and it’s nice to see that they are still friends and how much they love each other.
The first day is done and in the scoreboard. Clearly the class match of the day was Sinner vs. Shapovalov. There’s something wrong with a draw system that pits those two against each other in the first round — Shapovalov is currently number 12, Sinner number 32, no way they should be playing each other this early. It was a great match.
Only one real upset on day 1. Monfils lost to Ruusuvuori, but Gael has not been playing well for some time. Otherwise the seeds all found a way.
Looking specifically at the Djokovic / Chardy match, Nole was amazingly on form today. He had 41 winners to 11 unforced errors in three sets of tennis. In the second set, he had 11 winners and 0 unforced errors. That’s not something you see every day.
It’s not like Chardy was playing badly. He had 20 winners / 26 unforced, which is a bit upside down but not awful. But he won just 8 points on Nole’s serve in the entire match. Djokovic generated 13 break points in the match, and took 6 of them. It was clinical.
Afterward, what the press really wanted to know was, how did he feel about the comments from Kyrgios earlier in the day, and would he like to respond to them? Sigh.
I was just going to sign up to watch the Australian open until you reminded me: Oh yeah, this is going to be 2 weeks of watching Djokovic do well. That will be torture for me. I wish I liked the guy.
To be fair, it will be a lot than just Djokovic doing well, especially in the early rounds. So maybe I should sign up anyway. I wonder if Serena has a shot? I’d love to see her match Margaret Court’s grand slam total.
Hey, you’re not secretly Nick Kyrgios, are you?
Lol Tsitsipas!
Things not to say when you’ve beaten someone 6-1, 6-2, 6-1:
“I honestly didn’t expect it to be so easy.”
The crowd boos him.
Just watched a clip of that. He kept putting his foot in his mouth over and over. He was good natured about it, though, and the boos didn’t sound that mean.
Poor Simon. He’s too old to deal with a drubbing and then get disrespected like that. I don’t think I remember seeing an AO crowd boo a player before. The French and US Opens, certainly, but the Australian crowd tends to be the most laidback.
I feel the same way. Watching Nole thump Chardy, I felt really bad for Chardy, who has always been a competitor. But I also knew that, after the match, Djokovic wasn’t going to dunk on the guy; he was going to be kind and respectful, as he always is.
The thing with Tsitsipas is that he doesn’t honestly grasp that. He’s so self-centered that he can’t even really understand what he said wrong.
Wawrinka down two sets to zero so far. (Yes I paid the $65 to get Hulu Live tv, I can’t resist you tennis).
Fucsovics is a quality player. He always manages to give a few players fits at the slams.
I think the heat and the Tiafoe game are bothering Djokovic a bit.
Man, Tiafoe carved him up in that tiebreaker. He had Nole on a string, yanking him around the court.
Djokovic had three break points early in that set but couldn’t take one of them. After that he was really struggling.