Because he had to. No exemption available.
If you like. Fed’s character doesn’t interest me that much. I adore Connors, and Connors was a complete prick.
It’s funny about Connors. People hated him when he was young, but when he got older they loved him. I think it’s because he got beat up a bit by McEnroe, Borg, and Lendl, but he kept on playing and winning now and then.
BTW, you could accuse Connors of ducking the best players early in his career. He chose not to play on the main circuit, the WCT, where the best pros played. Pro tennis was still developing back then and there were competing tours.
I’m watching the Nadal match right now, and he’s looking like he’s in great form. I know you guys said he won’t be a factor since he hasn’t been one since 2011, but I’m not so sure that’s true. So I’m calling Del Potro vs Nadal in the Quarterfinal. I think that’s going to be a great match, since they’re both doing well right now. I’ll probably call that one for DelPo, but it can go either way.
The bottom half of the draw is fascinating actually. Kyrgios and Zverev should meet in the fourth round, and the winner of that match should face Djokovic in the Quarterfinal, and then the winner of THAT match will face the winner of DelPo-Nadal in the Semis. Certainly that half is a heavy with contenders compared to Federer’s top half. In that half, Roanic should face Cilic in the fourth round, assuming Cilic pulls out of the 5 set battle that he’s in right now. And then after beating Roanic, Cilic should face and beat Isner in the Quarterfinal I think, since Isner managed to win the 5 setter he was in thanks to the match being suspended yesterday. That was his second round match. He was winning the first two sets, had a chance to win the third, blew it, got in a bad temperament and lost the 3rd and 4th set, and wasn’t in a good place in the fifth when the match was suspended. Darkness saved him, he came back and won it today. Cilic will then meet Roger Federer in the other semi I think. The last Quarterfinal could be any one of several players against Federer. Querry vs Monfils winner will face Kohlschreiber vs K. Anderson. Either of those could go any which way, and the winner of those will face each other, and then face Fed in that Quarterfinal. I personally always pull for Monfils. He’s so entertaining to watch. He’s like the Michael Chang of this era, after Chang retired. Sadly he never won a major like Chang did with that one French Open.
Hahahah. And right after I posted that, Cilic loses the fifth set 7-5 to the Argentinian Pella.
Cilic is out. Badly, he sprayed errors all over the court.
Kukushkin finally capitalized on an opportunity and got a break in the 3rd set against Nadal. (Nadal won the first two). This is a competitive match now, I hope. Kukushkin is a decent player.
Btw, you guys arguing over Federer as GOAT is very amusing to me. It reminds me of the conversations I used to have in 96 with my friend who was a great Michael Jordan fan, who wasn’t just satisfied in proclaiming that Jordan was GOAT in basketball, but he always wanted to argue about him being GOAT in any sport, so he spent a lot of energy in arguing on whether Jordan was better than Mohammad Ali, or better than Rod Laver, etc. I wonder what his argument would be these days if I had kept in touch on Jordan vs Federer or Nadal? :)
I think the arguments against Federer as GOAT are these: No calendar Grand Slam, not even holding all 4 slam titles at the same time; lopsided losing record vs his biggest rival, Nadal. He’s even upside down vs Djokovic, though only just. But it’s an unresolvable argument, really.
Yeah, it’s probably best to save the greatest of all time arguments until after these respective players have retired.
Nadal broke back. And is about to break Kukushin again, which should put a pin on this match.
Here’s my bold prediction: I think Nadal will meet Federer again in the final this year. They’ve been talking so much about how great that final was 10 years ago, I think karmic forces are going to make that happen again this year.
My bold prediction is that Federer reaches the semis without playing a single player in the top 16 seeds.
That’s not all that bold at this point. All you’re saying is that he won’t meet Kevin Anderson or Sam Querry in the Quarterfinals. Instead he’ll meet either Monfils or Kohlschrieber, who are both good players that can beat Querry and Anderson in their respective matches.
Fair enough.
Djokovic was impressive. Not that he beat Zeballos in straight sets, but that he made only 4 unforced errors in the match. That’s clean tennis.
Then it’s always and forever Laver (or Budge, if you want to go pre-Open Era). That simplifies things, I suppose.
Fed called me to apologize for running over your puppy…
Yeah, your mother told me already.
Especially when you snip off the second half of that sentence.
I’m thinking this too. Nadal’s section is now mostly clay-courters so it’s looking good for him until the quarters unless the young Alex de Minaur pulls the upset. It looks even better if del Potro loses before then since I don’t think anyone in del Potro’s section has the right game to trouble Nadal. In other news, John Isner has a winnable path to make his first slam semifinals, especially if the ball bounces stay as high as they’ve been. Of course, it would be very Isner of him to lose to the journeyman Albot.
I was eating steak at a lunch meeting just now, and they had Wimbledon on in the background the whole time. i was very distracted by it. Del Potro was killing it while I was eating lunch. It’s good to see the big guy in good form again.
Totally agree, he’s a pleasure to watch when he’s on form.