On Saturday, it was funny how quickly Nishikori dispatched Kyrgios. Brad Gilbert was talking about how there was less than two hours of daylight left, and they’d have to move that match to Center Court so that they could close the roof and play under the lights, but no, Nishikori just beat Kyrgios really fast so there were no issues.
Meanwhile, Zverev was beaten by Gulbis, a pretty much dominated Zverev in the 4th and 5th sets. Looks like Gulbis is ahead of Nishikori right now, having won the first set. Second set seems to be headed to a tie-break.
On the women’s side, both Gorges from Germany and Giorgi from Italy have made it to the quarterfinal. I think I was getting them confused when they kept mentioning their names verbally.
Kevin Anderson vs Monfils, I really wish they were showing this match instead of just switching to it occasionally. Actually I am watching on the ESPN app, maybe I can just watch that match instead of watching ESPN 2 TV coverage.
EDIT: Man, Monfils is making me nervous. He was broken at 3-3, but he broke right back. Now at 5-5, he’s fended off a few break points.
Edit 2: This ESPN3 feed of this match is pretty great you guys. I think it’s the BBC commentary of this match, maybe? It’s a British commentator sitting along with Boris Becker to provide the color commentary. There’s no commercials, it’s all tennis. They talk about the match during the changeovers/breaks.
Edit 3: First set heading to tie-break.
All the big players’ matches were duds yesterday. Federer, Nadal, Djokovic all winning easily. But the Monfils-Anderson match was great, and the DelPo- Simon match was great. The second and third sets were so long. They were epic. Finally Simon was able to fend off a break after such a long game, and won the set, and it was too dark to continue. They continued the match today and DelPo won the fourth set in a tie breaker, ending the match. Kevin Anderson also needed 3 tie breaks to win his match in the fourth set against Monfils.
This Williams-Giorgi match is surprisingly competitive so far.
Agree, it sure looks like a Fed / Rafa / Nole are all headed to the semis. Hard to see Nishikori stopping Nole or Anderson stopping Roger. Nadal has The toughest match but he’s been playing beautifully.
Phew. Serena Williams held her serve at 2-1 in the second set. That was a tense game. She’s still a set down, but if she can hold her serve in this set, maybe she can come back in this match.
Raonic - Isner should be interesting tomorrow if you enjoy seeing a lot of aces. They are 1 and 2 in aces served in the tourney and Raonic has the fastest recorded serve in the tourney so far at a blazing 147 MPH.
The quarters are like Land of the Giants. Isner is 6’10", Raonic is 6’5", Anderson is 6’8", and Del Potro is 6’6".
I know he’s likely to lose the match, but I’m loving this second set, where Nishikori is on the precipice of taking a set from Novak Djokovic. Can he somehow sneak another two sets in this match? Dare I dream it?
These IBM statistics they show during the match are actually really cool. It’s the first time tennis stats haven’t just been “well, yeah, duh” type statistics. Like they used to: Oh look, this player has more unforced errors, this player has more winners.
The new stats show the court, and say, look, in the first set, Nishikori was standing here when he returned the ball, and in the second set he was standing here, and you can see a clear line of returned balls in two different spots on the court. And they show how he was hitting his shots deeper into the court, which leads to more winners and more unforced errors from your opponent. In other words, it’s one layer deeper than the old stats of winners and unforced errors, it actually looks at why those stats come about. Very cool IBM.
Gah. I got busy at work at 2-2 in the 3rd set. I just started looking at the match again and it looks like Djokovic must have ran away with the set right after I stopped watching, 6-2. Come on Nishikori.
Djokovic let himself get derailed in the second set because 1) he couldn’t capitalize on two straight multi-chances to break Nishikori’s service games, and 2) the umpire gave him a pointless and unnecessary warning for dropping his racket. But he appears to have either shaken it off or turned it into productive rage.
Man, Anderson is such an improved player. The old Anderson would have folded after going down two sets to Federer. This guy is a fighter, with the skills to pull it off.
Yep. As someone who dislikes Djokovic, I love seeing him get irritated. Unfortunately it also fuels my dislike of him. i know he had a PR firm rehabilitate his image and formally changed his nickname to Djoker, but this feels like the real Djokovic. I take a perverse pleasure in it when the real Djokovic comes out.
I’m a bad person.
Well, it must be a perverse pleasure for you then. Young Djokovic lost matches when he got angry. Great Djokovic won them when he got angry. He’s looking more and more like the latter guy than the former.
Yeah, I agree. I said so upthread as well. I really think, after watching 3 matches of his now, that he is pretty much back. I think he’s going to win several majors now in the coming years barring some kind of injury flaring up or something.
I may hate Djokovic, the person, but I really respect Djokovic, the tennis player. He kept hitting his head for years against that Federer-Nadal ceiling, and instead of giving up, like Roddick and others, he actually just buckled down and got better. He needed to not just be good, but incredible. So he became incredible. You can’t not respect that. That’s pretty amazing.
A tremendously gutsy performance by Anderson, and Fed is gone.
Sad to see Fed go. Just a few weeks shy of 37, you never know if he’ll go this deep in a major again.
Edit: Isner against Anderson in the semis. Maybe the most combined height ever in the semis? A combined 13.5 feet of tennis players?
I can’t believe Isner is one match away from the finals. Beyond his serve he doesn’t have much. He can hit a big forehand, but his groundstrokes aren’t all that great.
I like Anderson over Isner. Anderson’s serve can compete with Isner’s, and the rest of his game is IMO better.
It’s hard to imagine this day breaking better for Djokovic. He finished in about 2:40, and Nadal played nearly 5 hrs.
Yeah, I think Anderson has a better game than Isner. I don’t see him beating the winner of the other semifinal, though. Still, a player can ride a big serve at Wimbledon. Anderson or Isner could win it all.
Once again it’s disappointing that the younger players haven’t done a better job of stepping up. All the semi players are over 30.
Yeah, a bunch of guys let us down, particularly in the second quarter of the draw.
