Twenty year old American Taylor Fritz has Zeverev down 2 sets to 1 with play suspended. Zeverev finally made it to the quarters in a major at the French, but that’s all he has been able to do. He’s won 3 Masters 1000 events, so that’s very impressive, but he disappears in the majors.
Fritz is one of those American hopefuls on the men’s side. He made a rise in the rankings in 2016 as an 18 year old, but slid back down again. Still, he’s only 20. This would be a big win for him if he can pull it off.
I really hope Fritz pulls off the upset. It’s a shame the match was suspended because Fritz had Zverev completely out of sorts during the last tie break. If things go as expected for both guys, this matchup is a future slam final. I remember Fritz made the weird decision to get married and have a child at age 18/19 and took time off to see to that (I think he also had an injury), but he’s been doing well this season. Other young Americans Tiafoe and McDonald are already in the third round so this could end up being a great tournament for the futures of USA tennis.
Isner is still alive too, and with his big serve you never know. Isner’s strategy is simple: Hold serve and get to the tiebreaker and win it. He does have a big forehand but it’s not quite as consistent as it needs to be for him to be more dominant. I can’t see him winning it all but maybe he gets to the quarters.
Yeah, I agree that Isner has a clear path to go deep if he doesn’t screw up. He could get Raonic in one round, but I believe Isner usually wins against him. Querrey’s still in the tournament too, but he’s in Federer’s section so I’m not expecting him to match his past results.
Fritz was a total non-factor this morning. He hardly even showed up today for the final two sets against Zverev.
Querrey vs Mon Fils is tied at 1 set each.
Kevin Anderson won his game easily against Kohlschreiber and is awaiting the winner of that Querrey- Mon Fils match.
The big drama this morning was Madison Keys’ match. She was up 5-2 in the first set, then it turned around, she lost the first set 7-5, and was 2 breaks down, 0-4 in the second set, and she came back and won that second set. Sadly she turned it around again, looks like, while I was driving to work, and lost the 3rd set 6-4.
Anderson looked very good against Kohlschreiber, who is a quality player.
Edmund manages a set against Djokovich - woo!
Wow. On one point, Edmund:
- hit a ball on a double bounce
- hit the shot out of play
- threw his racket to make the shot, and
- ran into the net afterward
…and he was awarded the point.
I know it was the heat of the moment, and he may not have known the ball bounced twice himself, and he may not have seen it go out, but he surely knew he threw his racket, and he also knew he ran into the net. It’s not a good thing that he accepted the point. He’s going to get asked about that a lot.
That Edmund-Djokovic match was pretty great overall. Edmund was really good in that first set. It’s a shame that his level of play dropped off. I love that the crowd and Edmund were getting into Djerkovic’s head so much. He started doing that thing you know, where he’s opening his eyes really big, trying to contain his anger at the crowd but failing. I haven’t seen this Djokovic come out since he started losing. Maybe my Fed-Nadal final prediction is in jeopardy here. I think this Djerkovic can beat Nadal. Watch out Pete Sampras and your 14 majors, Djokovic is coming back, and it’s only a matter of time.
Nadal is vulnerable on grass, though he has had an easy time so far this Wimbledon.
I thought when Djoker won the French and got to 12, he was going surpass Fed. Fed had 17 at the time but Djoker was beating everyone and Fed looked done and Nadal wasn’t winning as much anymore either. Djoker looked like he was going to win 2-3 majors a year for the next few years, but then his game fell off and his elbow sidelined him.
One thing Brad Gilbert rightly pointed out in that match: Djokovic doesn’t need to get back to his old self to win majors. If he can get to 90% of his former self, he can still win majors.
Which sounds right to me. Fed and Nadal aren’t at their former best now either, and none of the youngsters are stepping up yet. A 90% Djokovic would be pretty formidable.
Round of 16 today. That’s 8 men’s matches and 8 women’s matches. 9 hours of coverage on ESPN, and 9 hours on ESPN 2. Luckily, no football today, so I can try to catch a lot of it tonight after work.
To me it seemed the big difference was that after the first set, Djokovic won the break point chances he got. He was 0 for 3 chances in the first, and I think he actually scored more points than Kyle in the first. He just didn’t win the ones he needed to win.
There was an interesting IBM statistic they showed in the 4th set. It broke down where Edmund hit his volleys during each set. In the first set he hit over 60% of his volleys at the edges, right near the line, and the average pace of those was about 80mph. Then in the second and third set, only about 40% of his volleys were near the edges, and the average pace had dropped off to about 74 mph. So a drop-off in speed and placement. I thought that was a great analysis of the difference in why he wasn’t winning the key points anymore.
Meanwhile, Fed is enjoying a walk in the park vs Mannarino. We’re only getting one ESPN feed here, despite a channel guide that says we should have two.
I’m watching ESPN 2 live today, and I’ll catch up on ESPN (the channel covering center court) later tonight.
One match I really enjoyed on Saturday was Simona Halep’s defeat at the hands of Hseih (from Chinese Teipei). Hseih is a 32 year old veteran who has been around for a while, but she just played amazing on Saturday. I honestly thought it was the most unexpected and refreshing game I’d seen. Chris Evert said that Monica Seles used to play like that back in the day with her two handed grip on the racket, where she could disguise the direction and pace of her shot until the last second. I’d never seen anything quite like it though. Even Monica Seles used to telegraph her moves way more than Hseih. Su Hseih (pronouced Shay by everyone on air) could hit a drop shot at the last second from a few feet behind the baseline when it looked she was lining up to hit a huge backhand cross court.
Anyway, disappointingly, she lost today to Cibulkova. So she’s out. After Halep left, the only person left in the top 10 seeds was Pliskova, and she’s out today as well, to Bertens.
Remember the lady who came out of nowhere to win the French Open last year (and lost in the first round of the French this year), Ostapenko? Well, she’s doing really well. I saw her in a very competitive first set this morning against Sasnovich, who beat one of the top seeds to get here. But Sasnovich folded completely after she lost the first set tiebreak. Ostapenko won the second set 6-0.
Speaking of completely giving up after a tiebreak, did anyone catch the American Tiafoe? He won the first and second sets, and almost won a break in the third, but it went to a tie-break, and it’s rare to see a player collapse completely. The tie break was a complete blowout for Khachanov, and then Tiafoe looked like he didn’t want to be on the court anymore. He couldn’t lose the fourth and fifth set fast enough. Tiafoe is one of those young up and coming Americans, I wonder what happened to him.
We’re streaming BBC coverage as well as watching ESPN. Kerber is as usual making it harder for herself than it has to be. Where we are (Latin America) I anticipate we’ll get the full del Potro match once it starts, and have to hunt if we want to see any of the others.
There was another quite bad / inexplicable umpire ruling against Hsieh. Fortunately on this one, Hsieh argued her case, a tournament official came on the court and discussed it with the umpire, and they fixed the call.
I was wondering what that was about. The only thing ESPN2 showed about the Hseih match was her standing in front of the umpire, arguing a call forever, but they never explained anything about it, or showed the rest of the match.
Right now Match point in the 2nd set tiebreak in Kerber vs Bencic. And she just won. Kerber is looking really good. She’s the number 11 seed, but she’s number 10 in the world, so she’s the only top 10 player left in the Women’s draw.
