The US Open (of Tennis) 2009

Draws are out! for men and

women.

Predictions for round of 16:

MEN
---
Roger Federer
James Blake
Robin Söderling
Nikolay Davydenko
---
Novak Djokovic
Radek Stepanek
Tommy Haas
Andy Roddick
---
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga
Fernando Gonzalez
David Ferrer
Rafael Nadal if fit (how are things?), otherwise... Gasquet??
---
Juan Martin Del Potro
Juan Carlos Ferrero
Stanislas Wawrinka
Andy Murray

Unluckiest seeds in 1st round: Mathieu (vs Youzhny), Hanescu (vs Isner), maybe Almagro (vs Darcis).
Most even 1st round matchups outside of seeds: Hernych v Schüttler (could be Gicquel v Tursunov but latter apparently injured?).
Guess at number of qualifiers to proceed: six (two guaranteed), then two, then none left.

WOMEN
---
Dinara Safina
Virginie Razzano*
Ana Ivanovic*
Jelena Jankovic
---
Elena Dementieva
Jie Zheng
Caroline Wozniacki
Svetlana Kuznetsova
---
Victoria Azarenka
Na Li
Kim Clijsters
Venus Williams
---
Vera Zvonareva
Flavia Pennetta
Samantha Stosur
Serena Williams

*) These seem like the toughest 16ths by some distance.

Unluckiest seeds in 1st round: the ones in the 16ths just mentioned (esp the first one), Szavay (v Peer), perhaps Bammer (v MJMS).
Most even 1st round matchups outside of seeds: Dulko v Makarova, umm... Govortsova v Mirza?
Guess at number of qualifiers to proceed: six (one guaranteed), then one, then none left.

wtf formatting up there? I blame Notepad.

going 2 days this year, daytime sessions on the 2nd and 7th. psyched! (the open is my favorite live sporting event, especially the first week when there are so many matches everywhere.)

haha juan carlos is seeded for this? excited abt going the first week too if i can sharapova looked shaky against pretty uninspired competition in toronto shld be interesting to see how she does here. is clijsters playing? lol i think im just looking for reasons to get excited about the women's like any reason at all will do

yeah JCF said after his queen's run that his goal was to make the top 10 by the end of the season and we all went "lol you are outside the top 50!". Then he promptly made the Wimbledon QF and is a couple of lucky Masters Series runs away from actually getting there.

Ughhhhhh I really dislike Clijsters...the "St Kim of Niceness" crap that follows her around, her ugly-ass forehand, her "career-ending injury!" drama every few weeks before proceeding to dismantle everyone 0 and 1. The latest rumour is that Henin is coming back next year! ("In training for exos" Yes, we know where that led with St Kim.) I love her but try not retiring in the first place.

Sharapova has drawn Demented in the 3rd round...I can't see her getting past that. Her serve is woeful now. And Demented has to save her epic choke for the SF against Jankovic or final against Silliams.

Will do predictions and such later...I really like both draws. Nice and balanced. Weird seeing Murray at the bottom of the draw!

haha yah sharapova looked TERRIBAD in toronto - more than just her serve is woeful. agreed on clijsters too but i mean cmon so many of the new jills have failed to step their games up iirc u were hot on that tactical polish chick who's name i wont even guess @ - she looked so limp and inert in toronto as well

looking forward to your men's draw predictions took a look over and realized i had NO CLUE for most of these outside the really obv three

Nadal is not anywhere near his best yet but he should still massacre Gasquet, who lost in New Haven QUALIFYING last week and complained that he hadn't picked up a racquet for two months because of the coke business. That didn't stop you from practising, Richard.

xps I love A-Rad but am not fooling myself that she'll ever be a Slam contender. Born too late :(

Didn't see much of Cincinnati, but so much for New Dad Fed being re-schooled by his younger rivals. It's one thing beating Sod, Rod, Haas (twice) and DelBoy to win Slams, but doing a couple of top-fourers back-to-back is something RF hasn't been capable of for a while, so that was good to see.

Murray for this title, though, I think.

hes got the best draw, for sure

as for the men, Federer of all people threw a massive spanner in the works by winning Cincy! Like...despite his RG/Wimbledon titles, he still hadn't beaten Murray or Djokovic this year yet. And he didn't have to beat them, or Nadal, to win his Slams. But then he straight-setted them both at Cincy!

xp

What I saw of the Cincy SF was reminiscent of last year's USO F - Murray doing what Murray does, lots of nice angles, great retrieving, but Fed just stepping up and ending points quickly. When RF's attacking game is on, Murray seems powerless. Which is clearly not the way their head-to-head has gone over the last three years.

Predictions, then!

Women's - 4R:

Safina, Safarova, Lisicki, Jankovic, Dementieva, Zheng, Wozniacki, Szavay, Azarenka, A.Radwanska, Clijsters, V.Williams, Zvonareva, Mauresmo, Stosur, S.Williams

QF:

Safina, Jankovic, Dementieva, Wozniacki, Azarenka, Clijsters, Mauresmo, S.Williams

SF:

Jankovic, Dementieva, Clijsters, S.Williams

F:

Jankovic, S.Williams

Champ: Silliams

Men's 4R:

Federer, a qualifier, Querrey, Davydenko, Djokovic, Mayer, Verdasco, Roddick, Tsonga, Berdych, Chardy, Nadal, Del Potro, Ferrero, Wawrinka, Murray

QF:

Federer, Querrey, Djokovic, Roddick, Tsonga, Nadal, Del Potro, Murray

SF:

Federer, Roddick, Tsonga, Murray

F:

Federer, Murray

Champ: Federer

Champ: Nadal
http://cornedbeefhash.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/nadal-fans-indianwells09a.jpg

once a fanboy, always a fanboy

And back out of my semi-permanent ILX retirement for another tennis thread. Give me a decent backhand and call me Justine Henin.

(please come back Justine.)

I saw an interview with Justine in the paper a few months ago in which she said she was really happy, (working in Tennis still). Won't believe in a comeback till I see it.

Murray to win it. Didn't see that Masters defeat but I read it as Murray not having much left after winning the Masters title the prev week, the accumulation of matches getting to him.

As for Fed I think he might not get in the final this time.

part of it was def because Murray was tired but quite honestly those last two days at the Masters was abt as close to vintage Fed as I've seen him play in ages. i mean the next day i thought Djokovic was playing much better than Murray was and he was totally crushed too. t

hat said, i don't know if Fed can still keep up that level of play for long - he does seem to switch off mentally often enough these days that i think Murray still might have a good chance of winning if he has a better serving day than he did at Cincy (I say might primarily because i haven't been completely convinced by Murray's ability to play best-of-five matches).

agree with lex's predictions on the women's draw except that i'm going for Demented over JJ.

*that said

sweet analysis of federers footwork http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/08/31/sports/tennis/20090831-roger-graphic.html

weather forecast for the first week looks perfect.

Hey look this tournament has actually started. Of course, nothing interesting has happened yet. Clijsters is rolling and Kirilenko and Mathieu are winning as well.

And oh by the way 10 games into the Kirilenko/Koryttseva match and not one single winner for either player. That's interesting I guess.

sigh, we all know Blake is going out in the first round, right

After about a second of thought that can't be right. There must be something wrong with the winner counter.

bout to feel the wrath of lex but hello women's tennis

Clijsters/Kutuzova was pretty much exactly as you'd expect - Kim controlled virtually every point and hit a few out (nearly as many errors as winners) but at no stage looked troubled.

Also STFU Azarenka, you're nearly as bad as Sharapova with your 'grunting'.

so not that I want to encourage any illegal activity here, but how can I watch this from the comfort of my British home without subscribing to Sky Sports?

oh it's on Eurosport. Don't suppose they'll be showing the 'big' games or anything in the later stages, though?

Seeded losers in Day 1 Morning Session: Hanescu & Mathieu, thought neither were really upsets. Both had tough round 1 matchups (Isner in front of a home crowd and on his surface and Youzhny). Kaia Kanepi is the only seeded loser on the women's side.

Whoa, Stosur is seeded 15.

Venus is down a set and a break. I'll believe it when I see it but her results on the hard have been spotty at best. I just wish she'd win and Serena would lose :(

Okay, now she's just down a set. She's playing the Douchebag, fwiw.

they are both playing so bad its kind of n/l

interesting tht from mary carillo she was saying that the decline the quality of the womens game is from going for power over everything - if youre off your game at all than theres no margin and gets really ugly.

I would agree with that even if I were just looking at the stats! Heaps of errors, and yeah, it's a shit match.

To change the subject, Venus is in a fuchsia outfit that is highly flattering!

there have been seen really pretty points (the passing shot to close the tiebreaker, a few baseline rallies where venus dominates) but they keep finding themselves in weird spots hitting out of position - like i honestly cant tell what either of them are thinking or why theyre doing half the things theyre doing

lol @ douche completely whiffing a shot too - wtf?????

haha lol @ posting and watching and yah that dress is really nice

Loved that Douche volley at 15-30, it was almost as if she was lucky to make contact.

Douche's backhand = not being with the very good.

Okay, she's not going to win another game in the whole match now. Venus breaks to 6-5.

lmao @ the douche's body lang after that ace

hahaa she's walking off the court as venus tosses it!!

women's fucking tennis

Oh god, the McEnroe brothers will be commentating the Roddick match. That'll be the antidote for scary pro-Roddick feelings I've been having lately. McEnroe, P is insufferable on the topic.

most interesting thing about douches game 1) two handed backhand 2) ocd need to hit the ball after any point she misses 3) ...

Okay, I love you Venus, but that overhead was looool

DF to put villiams up 1-0 in the third..........

espn commentary has been noticeably excellent this match critical and incisive but then anytime i get too giddy they do something like mention "top players" and "mauresmo" in the same sentence

oh god double faulting to lose the opening game :/

Yeah, I'm watching an ESPN stream and it's so much better than anything I'm used to on Austrlaian TV. Giggle at Venus' hitting partner's voice, it's kinda camp.

man after a couple of the commentators were discussing whether a women's match should be the featured night match, this shit ain't a good look

haha i thought that conversation was interesting - mary carillo (i think thats who im thinking of) is such a bitch but she often has some insightful shit to say - lol @ the debate getting shut down with "well if u make the women go on 2nd no1 will stay to watch them"

this is just nagl for both of them

wtf women's tennis

Oh, commentators saying that Venus looks sufficiently shaky that she can't be guaranteed of making the quarters. How many times does this get said after a dodgy first round...

interesting tht from mary carillo she was saying that the decline the quality of the womens game is from going for power over everything - if youre off your game at all than theres no margin and gets really ugly.

Pretty much, and so few of them have any plan b. Basically, the majority play high-risk, one-dimensional tennis and have the mental strength of a young child.

Venus has looked awful all summer...losses to Bartoli, Pennetta and K-Bond. La Douche is a terrible player (haven't seen her play since last autumn but she's not fast, not powerful and her forehand is a joke) and I am amazed that she won more than 6 games off Venus - who will have to get past either Clijsters or Bartoli to make the QF...

Noted a rare Turk in the men's draw, Marsel Ilhan, who beat Rochus Minor...the first Turkish player in a Slam singles draw?

Oh, I note that Tracer Hand fave Mathilde Johansson contrived to blow a 6-1, 3-1 lead against De Screamo. Ugh.

the first Turkish player in a Slam singles draw?

His Wikipedia page says he was the first Turkish player to even play in a GS quialifier, so it seems like it.

Connoisseurs of spectacularly massive ball-bashing need to be watching Rezai/Lisicki right now.

how sad is it that I'm psyched and impressed that Blake didn't go out in the first round

safina lookin so bad

I really thought Safarova could beat Batty, but she lost in the final set TB :(

Caravane served for the first set, but lost in the TB - let down by a terrible 1st serve percentage, and constantly playing the kind of shots that get called "gutsy" until she smacks a stupid FH into the tramlines, set point down. Many spectacular winners when they do go in though, from both sides.

Melanie Oudin, the next great hope of US Women's Tennis is rolling right now. The hype on her right now is way out of proportion to talent, particularly being as I live in her home town, but she does have a fun game. Anybody see the match to know if she's playing well?

Oh yeah, note that her opponent (Pavlyuchenkova) has 8 winners to 31 unforced errors. Women's tennis.

Caravane comes through epic service game to start the second set :)

It would be fairly sweet if Safina lost early, and didn't get the chance to stink up more latter rounds, but you know this will be one of her trademark bullshit fighting wins, where she plays terribly against some scrub but wins anyway.

Oudin may be overhyped, but Pavlyuchenkova even more so. Great junior career or not, her game is so generic and I would bet money that she never hits similar heights in the seniors.

Really hoping Blake is able to give one final night match thriller hurrah.

Oh lord, Safina losing the first set on a double fault. Our No 1!

I would imagine Oudin is more overhyped here in America than elsewhere, with her being the 3rd highest ranked American woman right now.

Wow. Lisicki saves a SP at *5-6 with a terrific 23-stroke rally and then takes a 4-0 lead in the TB, with Caravane in meltdown...

...and then loses seven straight points and the set, the last with a DF.

oh oh oh Rogowska is ahead 3-1 in the third

plz plz plz plz plz plz let this happen

Just switched to the Safina mess to find Rogowska conceding her break lead in the third on...wait for it...a double fault. Sigh.

*shakes fist at computer*

Final combined tally: 113 UEs, 24 DFs. Sigh.

womens tennis

Ok, so I can see why 1370th-ranked Devin Britton got his moment in the spotlight yesterday - youngest-ever NCAA champ, a freshman winner like McEnroe, Great Things Are Expected, etc. But who is this Chase Buchanan dude? Not only does he sound like an estate agency, he actually is an estate agency. Tsonga minced him anyway.

The AELTC gets a bit of flak for handing out Wimbledon wildcards to perennial underachievers like Bogdanovic, but the USTA seems to favour the barely-out-of-high-school baptism-of-fire approach with the freebies. If they're good enough, they're old enough - and if they're not good enough... jeez, kid, the boys' event is over there.

Half-suspect I'll wake up tomorrow to find Gulbis has just had one of those nights and Murray is out...

Buchanan won the USTA U18s tournament - winner always gets a USO WC. (McHale is his equivalent in the women's draw.) I like that some WCs are specific rewards - makes it much less arbitrary.

Ah, thought it was something like that. Obviously, my Googling stalled at the comedy hit and that was enough reason to post...

I was going to ask whatever happened to Somdev Devvarman (NCAA champ 2007-08), but I see he's in this event and already through to round 2. Bit of a late bloomer (older than Nadal or Murray) but finally inching into the top level.

Last bit of trivia for the evening: JM Del Potro recently moved up to #125 in the all-time money list (Fed having overhauled Sampras as #1 late last year), leapfrogging...Bjorn Borg. (Other people who've earned more money playing tennis than Borg: Sandon Stolle, Wayne Arthurs, Rick Leach, David Wheaton... Mind you, back in 1981, $3.65m was a lot of money).

Whoa, did some work, came back, missed all of Ana In The Van vs Little Bondarenko and it's 6-6 in the third. K-Bon went down a mini-break, got it back with some great shots and then hit a really shit backhand down the line that wouldn't even have come close to being the right shot had it gone in, and, well, Ivanovic just FLUBS the match point on a backhand.

You know...

Murray vs Gulbis first set looked good!

Ana - having trouble with ball toss, and, er, the net.

FFFFFFS K-Bon serves to take the match and her serve hits the top of the net and bounces a mile out...

And Ivanovic flubs it into the net to lose it off her own serve. This isn't that big an upset, when you've fallen from 1 to 11 in the world, and generally been a second-tier top player for most of that, it's hardly a surprise that a good floater like Bondarenko could do it. I'm just surprised given how shit her groundstrokes were (so many errors) that it went to a tie-break in three!

Am also thinking K-Bond may for some while have been a teensy bit underrated, maybe due to being seen as the lesser sister? Have noticed this in the odds when they play each other, which seemed to me too lopsided in Alona's favour compared to what hard facts would warrant.

K-Bond had the better junior career but has never been ranked above 37 - A-Bond's been a top 30/40 stalwart for a few years now. Neither have a great record against top players, though for different reasons - A-Bond's groundstrokes are lovely and clean, but metronomic and predictable; K-Bond is nuts. Anyway I considered calling the upset but thought K-Bond's nutsiness would win out - how bad must Ivanovic be to be the mentally weaker one in a third set TB?

Jankovic sounds happy in her press conference! I do hope she's genuinely back to her best. Jankovic getting her shit together would be about the best thing for women's tennis right now.

I think, Williams sisters aside, I really want Dementieva to win this year

oh man a Demented win would be so sweet. But a decade of being a fan has pretty much taught me that whenever one has hopes and expectations for her, bad things ensue. Really though...this has been said before, but if she's going to ever win a Slam, now is surely the time. She's beaten Serena twice this year, and come closer than ever before to doing it at a Slam, on Demented's worst surface. I want a Demented/Silliams final*, and if that ensues then Demented has to go in knowing she can win. And surely Silliams' tanking outside Slams has to backfire on her at some point. It'd be sweet for her to do it here, where she made her first breakthrough and where she's had so many classic wins - still have v fond memories of her 04 final run, beating Mauresmo and Capriati back to back, both in third set tiebreaks. And if anyone deserves it...she's spent the past decade doing nothing but improving her game.

I wonder whether her inevitable loss will be a limp 3 and 3 affair to Petrova, or a choke from a set and 5-0 up to Jankovic.

*well actually I want a Bepa win, but realistically :(

Li leads De Screamo 6-1 :)

Oh my, not as much of a killing as Flavia Flav just laid on Mirza, though. Ladies and gentleman, our first double bagel of the Open!

Li/Screamo is a good match now, btw: De Screamo's FIGHTING SPIRIT is incredibly annoying, but the quality is great. As ever when I watch Li, some of her shots just leave me gawping.

A clean return winner for Li on match point! :D

De Brito is intolerable, though. The scream. The incessant shrieking of "COME ON!!!!" after every point she wins, even when it's Li missing a smash. The drawn-out whines when she loses a point. The constant bashing of her racket into the court, into her chair, into the net. The petulant demands at the umpire. The SCREAM. I really do hope her temper prevents her from fulfilling her potential.

Gulbis is the biggest waste of talent I've ever seen in tennis.

I want to watch Korolev/Beck, who are in a 5th set but more because Korolev looks like this:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_bbUGdWsee9o/SXavPcjuepI/AAAAAAAAAJc/EUXMnwY07CA/s400/korolev3.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Qg6J04XZhR4/SXdroN9FQRI/AAAAAAAAFbM/kFBkBT-6bQY/s400/Off%2BCourt%2B2009%2BAustralian%2BOpen%2BQJ54ogANhDsl.jpg

But the fools who make the schedule didn't put them on a TV court, so I'm watching my two favourite headcases, Bepa 3 and A-Chak, square off. Not bad! Bepa just took a 5-1 lead in the second set with a beautiful dropshot.

How apt that Stupid Safin's USO epitaph should be a scoreline like 6-1, 4-6, 3-6, 4-6.

A-Rad vs Kirilenko is a great match!

marat ;_;

really bummed i missed his match. i went to cincinnati a couple weeks ago and arrived an hour after he was bounced out. :(

holy shit, the usopen.org video player is of awesome quality!!

the ballboy outfits remind me of lionel richie's album cover i think

alright not so much
http://lh4.ggpht.com/_BelOZxxIMHg/ScVBaMF6XOI/AAAAAAAAaBc/qBFxcSd62C8/thumbLionel%20Richie%20-%20Just%20Go%202009%20front.jpg

look at this fucking dork behind nadal's chair wearing the same shirt and holding a giant tennis ball. side note i hate ppl who have giant tennis balls

gonna watch Nadal/Gasquet later, though if Gasquet really didn't practice for two months he has the mother of all thrashings coming to him. for now, Cake and Clijsters.

yeah, he's down 2-0 already :(

i really love gasquet though, his one hander is an inspiration for me

his cocaine kisses are an inspiration for me.

hahaha <3 him

I found it hilarious that the tribunal believed that story and cited Coquet's good, honest character and decent nature, when they didn't believe Hingis using almost exactly the same defense a year earlier, for reasons I can't fathom.

Cake just served for the set. Guess how that ended! Yes, a double fault. SIGH.

This match is pretty bad generally. Weird how the showcase women's matches are like this, even though I've watched some terrific WTA play tonight.

lol so I guess Cake pissed Clijsters off by winning the first set

i fucking hate barftoli

I <3 <3 <3 Cake so much, and it's never a love/hate thing like with Demented. She's such a weirdo and you can never predict her 2-3 amazing tournaments per year. In any case, I hate St. Nicesters and would probably have cheered for anyone else in the draw against her. Sadly the draw is setting up nicely for a SF run by her :(

okay I am looking ahead at Serena's opponent and, um... how do you pronounce Melinda Czink's last name

i THINK it's "zink" :/

She has randomly improved a lot this year though! Spent most of the decade gently bobbing around between 70 and 130 in the rankings, has quietly put together a very nice year and cracked the top 50 the other week. I expect she will play one entertainingly close set, and then Serena will adjust and steamroll.

http://forvo.com/word/melinda_czink/

phew

tempted to try to catch part of this to see how badly the US commentators butcher her name, but I'm guessing they're going to be too terrified of the repercussions of screwing it up to not study it beforehand

Oh I totally forgot, they actually played a few weeks ago - highlights on the WTA website. 6-3 7-6 to Serena, but the TB was 9-7.

will def check that out later

Hey, Americans. Your girl Vania King is on the verge of upsetting Stosur. Playing really well for someone about 3 feet tall! Fun, gutsy play. Dammit, I should have put money on this one.

Rushing to net off Stosur second serves! Lob winners off Stosur smashes! King will serve for the match...

It's not that much of an upset when you consider Stosur's grand slam record is pretty damned lol if you forget the French this year.

She serve-and-volleyed on match point! For the biggest result of her career! More female players might want to try some of that gutsiness.

Stosur's had a pretty fine hard court season, beating Serena at Stanford and reaching the LA final. Did a good job of making the case that she's a top singles player as well as doubles now. And for someone of King's limited results, this is huge. Though I called when I saw how much Stosur struggled with 94-year-old Sugiyama in the 1st round - King's game is a C-version of Sugiyama, but then King is also 70 years younger and with a home crowd behind her.

things i saw today (a set here, a set there):

-- monfils/chardy. i like watching monfils play, he's so languid that it's always surprising that he hits so hard.
-- radwanska/kirileno. i saw the 2nd set, when radwanska seemed to have recovered. guess that didn't last.
-- darted into ashe just in time to see mauresmo shake hands at the end of her drubbing. don't feel like i missed much in that match.
-- safina on the practice courts, working hard. as you'd hope...
-- her brother getting buttkicked by melzer.
-- venus cruising through the 2nd set of her match.
-- watched a lot of bartoli/clijsters, which was exciting if sort of sloppy. clijsters looked very fit, but rusty. bartoli, i never noticed before how much she bounces up and down and up and down all the time, like a nervous rabbit. it's distracting.
-- rafa looking good. i left when he was up 5-3 in the 3rd, to beat the crowd a little.

good day of tennis. going again on monday. i love the open.

a few pix from yesterday:

monfils
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v335/gypsyfrocksbedlam/IMG_2470.jpg

safina during a break on the practice courts
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v335/gypsyfrocksbedlam/IMG_2487.jpg

radwanska's net form is kind of like mine: duck and stick a racket up
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v335/gypsyfrocksbedlam/IMG_2516.jpg

Nice!

thx for photos/reportage, jealous! I think I may actually remember that exact A-Rad point.

M-Nav's tersely concise summation of Safin: "A waste of a career."

harsh!

went last nite :)

Safina lost the first set to a random player I never heard of. What a surprise.

lol safina and demented both blowing their first set lead, and then safina double-faulting on set point in the TB AGAIN.

LOLOLOLOLOL Safina you useless wench.

holy... what the hell is happening in Dementieva/Oudin

HOLY...

Dementieva just got beat by a youngin from Georgia (rep4sent!)

I don't think Safina can hold up if she plays like the set I saw.

Kim Clijsters is someone I've been rooting for since watching her play the first match on the first day. I want her to make it to the Final.

i wish murray could play like 10x a day

Yeah, I predict Murray in the final. He can consistently hit it right on the line. Plus his serving is top notch.

If Nadal doesn't play Murray before the final then I predict them two.

okay now Jankovic is down a break in the first set

WHAT IS GOING ON, WOMEN'S TENNIS

Hey, anybody actually watch Oudin/Dementieva? Was this Dementieva being Dementieva or did Oudin impress?

Didn't see it but apparently Oudin hurt her leg and was crying at one point while serving.

Jankovic lost the first set, btw

Shvedova looks kinda tough with her black top, bandana and badass sunglasses -- at least compared to many of the other girls, who I just realised with their sometimes pale frilly dresses can look a bit... petulant princessy?

just flippin on this querry match...sam's been playing pretty well lately, i saw him beat roddick in cincy

terrific BH pass by kim at 5-6 in the breaker!

oooh sam's flustered, DF to give kim serve at 7-6

hahaha wait, Jankovic is down a break again

what the hell am I going to do with a US Open without Jankovic's petulantness and Dementieva's on-court-ugly/off-court-gorgeous?

WHAT IS GOING ON, WOMEN'S TENNIS

i think one thing is that all these eastern bloc countries that have come online one after another (russia, serbia, poland) seem to be doing a good job of producing young, powerful players who can come in and make a splash. but because the whole tennis scene is still pretty young in those places, there aren't models of really building and sustaining a career. obviously a lot of them end up moving to florida or other places anyway, but still, i think maybe the emphasis on youth and power is distorting the game and leading to a lot of 23-yr-old flameouts.

and you can find some examples of that on the men's side (safin, obv, and djokovic may or may not break out of the mold) but most of the top men's players are still coming from places with much more established tennis traditions -- western europe, britain, u.s.

the problem is none of these girls is particularly athletic, or the ones who are can't hit it hard enough to play with the big girls

Jankovic and Safina are pretty athletic!

Dementieva, too! (her problem was always her serve; her groundstrokes have always been massive)

yeah aside from the top players, i meant. it's still a demonstrably wrong statement probably but i believe in it in a general sense

btw Jankovic is down a break AGAIN

sometimes w/ womens' matches i like to think of it as being "on break" rather than "on serve"

hahahahahaha

shvedova sprays forehand wide, match on break at 5-all 3rd set

timely net cord for shvedova, stays on break at 6-5

jankovic fights out of a daunting 30-0 hole to hold break, 3rd set breaker!

haha ok that is funny.

SHVEDOVA WINS

hooooly shit at that blake/rochus point! mens tennis!

Safina is the only seeded player left in her quad, and she is playing horrible. It's just a bunch of nobody journeymen! That has a potential for a weird semifinal slot.

Heh the last 4 or 5 games of Youzhny-Chiudinelli was on break like clockwork! Men's tennis!

LOLOLOLOLOL women's tennis. Horrible results, and I quite like both Shvedova and Ou(shit)damn. Jankovic and Demented...winners of the biggest USO warm-ups in the past month. Elite players, both, or what passes for "elite" in women's tennis these days. Both so talented, and can actually hold their own against Serena. Both of them should have been gunning for nothing less than the title. Second round exits. FAIL. Retire, both of you. They will never win Slams.

And of course Dinara bullshits her way through her three-setter and has the path cleared to the final, where...will she even win a game, this time? :cry:

Poor Sabine Lisicki, though. Two big breakthrough results this season, both immediately followed by injuries. Here, apparently she was 5-2 up, had match points, choked, twisted her ankle on match point and was still on court crying 10 minutes later. Oh well, maybe Rodionova and her legendary temper can murder the rest of the top half for us.

Youzhny losing to players like Chiudinelli. Our glory days, such as they were, seem so distant.

KING KOLYA marching on through his section :)

(The problem with women's tennis is that it's dominated by a bunch of Novotnas. I loved Novotna, and I love Jankovic and Demented, but more than one Novotna at a time at the top of the game leads to...situations like this.)

Oh god. I can see it now. Safina bullshits her way to another final with more playing like crap/"fighting" wins, where she will face either St. Kim or Silliams, and win 10 points, and serve 15 double faults.

The last on match point. Obviously.

Oh wait, apparently JJ's grandmother died last night :(

i like the one-novotna rule. somebody find a way to implement it please. keeping one of them around is good for the continual drama of will-she won't-she until finally she wins one. but yeah, a tour half-full of them is just too much.

Philipp Petzschner is reasonably hott. But. White T-shirt, white shorts, white shoes...black socks. Why. No. NO.

Also, shave. Sigh.

how come federer and nadal seem to inspire the rest of the top tier to be even better - i.e. soderling, murray, roddick - but the williams sisters just routinely dispose of the rest of the field? if it weren't for the williamses we might not be talking about "a bunch of novotnas" because other girls would at least get a look in

or have i just restated every tennis column of the last six years

the latter

Petzschner pissing away a two sets to love lead - good dropshots, horrible negativity. Ferrero playing very well, though. But now, it's the SILLIAMS/MARTINEZ SANCHEZ GRUDGE MATCH!

xps this is kinda what I mean when I say that the WTA could be as good as the ATP, had its elite shown the commitment and focus of Roger and Rafa. There have been so many voids at the top of the WTA in the past five years what with the injuries, retirements and general flakiness of the Williamses and Belgians (who really should've been the big four since 2003). So Ivanovic/Jankovic/Safina won big tour titles and achieved the No 1 spot by backing into them rather than overthrowing the previous generation - and they rarely even got to play the Belgians and Williamses enough to hone their games to a level where they could beat them on their own terms, like Nadal had to do to Federer week in week out, Murray and Djokovic had to do to R&R, like Tsonga and Del Potro now have to do.

So basically, the current elite became the elite before either their games or mentality were ready for it.

Also, the Williamses only routinely dispose of the rest of the field when everyone's looking. Jankovic, Kuznetsova and Dementieva actually have very respectable records against them. Six weeks before the Wimbledon embarrassment, Safina actually beat Venus in Rome.

The GRUDGE MATCH is actually very boring :( Not even any bitchy staredowns :(

What the hell is going on with Cilic/Levine? 4-6, 2-6, 6-0, 6-3!

I saw that score while watching the Ferrero comeback and just went o_0 o_0 at Anime Eyes. Assuming the usual whacking massive groundstrokes 5 miles out for two sets, then getting his shit together finally.

Watching Cilic/Levine now and...wow, Levine is actually a complete puffballer. No weapons at all. How the hell did Cilic go two sets down to this!!!

The Cilic and Ferrero comebacks were fun, though there was more than a touch of women's tennis about Petzschner's choking and sulking.

Silliams/MJMS got pretty good towards the end - MJMS's service game at *5-5 was epic, so many good shots from both and so many deuces, until...er...MJMS served two consecutive DFs to lose it. Women's tennis. Serena, of course, then served out to love.

aw i missed most of this serve-and-volley match!

<3 taylor dent

yea i just turned it on too, good shit~

damn this is where a fifth set tiebreak sucks...two guys like this should be able to serve til one of em fucks up imho

dent is bringing some fuckin heat...2-1 on mini serve

oh no...2-4 taylor's down

back on serve! dent serving 4-5

oooh navarro tightened up on that volley, mishit winner tho, 6-all

navarro just steals pts imo..his playin style is kinda amazing

dent flubs a volley serving at 7-6...puts a BH DTL pass just long at 8-7...8-8 atm

lol @ the "miss it" call by the color dude

huuuuge serve, 9-10 navarro serving

xp missed that! damn

aw i think i was rooting 4 navarro. good for dent tho

nice moment grabbin the mic

awww did u see him just hijack the ump's mic and thank the crowd??? <3 him!!!

omg @ high 5 w/ the crowd member! dude almost fell onto the court!!

wtf happened 2 rafa in 2nd set?

watchin this nadal match really reinforces a lotta things that were awz abt the taylor dent match..baseline tennis is not that compelling, also fuckin side courts are the shit, that dent crowd was on top of the match

Okay this Federer/Hewitt match, this is ludicrous. Federer was up 4-2 40/00 and now Hewitt is serving for the match. Some of the shots Fed is missing, I could have made.

I still expect Hewitt to tank serving for the set, or lose the 2nd to 4th very quickly.

I bet my mum Hewitt would win no more than eight games. But who'd predict Fed to hit 23 (!) unforced errors in one set.

xp you gave me a heart attack...you meant serving for the set

ok what abt this djokovic match? witten is really controlling him..

Jesus, I just re-read my post and nearly gave myself a heart attack.

Heaps of breaks of serve in Witten/Djokovic. Novak is playing in a very subdued fashion, and Witten is being pretty smart in taking it up to him, he hasn't got anything massive shot-wise but he's gutsy and god, a few of the women should have the chutzpah he's got. It's a better match than Fed/Hewitt!

haha, more heart attacks here. Who the hell is Jesse Witten.

great guess by witten 2 win the tiebreak holy shit@!

Hah, Witten wins the set with like, the cutest block imaginable - quality.

Fed up a break in the second, sanity returning.

lol gotta love this run of taking sets off the big guns - yesterday it was capdeville against murray, and levine taking two against cilic.

fed/hewitt set was retarded - hewitt wasn't doing anything special, just fed not being able to hit a forehand for like four straight games

i'm 100% rooting for witten

jesse witten looks like he should be playing rugby or something

can someone point me to a livestream to the witten/djokovic match pls? my local channel's only showing hewitt/fed and this match is lame.

http://www.usopen.org/en_US/interactive/video/live.html?promo=rightnav

i can't find a place to click!!

This is, um, an oddly early-tournament-Serena-esque performance from Federer. Playing very badly, groundstrokes everywhere, going down scads of break points and saving them on big serves.

thanks but that only works if you're in the US and i'm not. :(

43 UEs from Fed now sheesh.

xpost to kev

http://www.justin.tv/rk0_nw0 this seems to be showing the federer match atm :(

thx though kev but it seems like none of the usual places are showing the djokovic match. oh well.

fed just took a nasty spill. he's really not having a good day.

break for fed!

witten and djoko are at a set all, 2-all

bingo! http://www.livescorehunter.com/live-video-streaming-links-us-open-2009-grand-slam.php

ooh djoko just slammed his racquet

just saw something i dont think ive ever seen...witten served off the net cord, bounced back on his side for a fault but then bouced over the net onto djokovic's side.

4-5 on serve in the third

cheers for the link!

wtf jesse witten

oh boy, chokes serving for the set AGAIN. 3rd set breaker

phenomenal BH pass from witten to get back on serve in the breaker! 2-3

djokovic takes the third set, 7-2 in the tiebreak

ok lol at both these matches today - esp that shot of djokovic serving his racket along with the ball

oudin is cuet

wow melanie oudin - now up a break in the third. shriekapova looks baffled.

baffled or just awful

i suddenly miss Capriati. i vaguely remember a great friday night match (as in friday midnight here) that i really wanted her to win. i think she did. forgot the opponent though, heh.

both. her serve is rubbish but mostly she always seems surprised how this tiny teenager can run down every deep ball and hit it back just as hard. oudin has her running all over the court, it's brilliant.

and best thing about oudin - not a squeak of a grunt from her end of the court. xp

nervous serving from oudin, rubbish serving from maria - five breaks of serve in a row. oudin fails to serve out the match, score now dead even at 5-5. augh shriekapova will prob pull off one of her FIGHTING wins now boooo.

and oudin breaks again! let's see if she can serve this next one out.

this match is so silly.

well, good for oudin. but baaaaaad tennis.

it is the day for ugly wins yes.

I quite like Oudin, she's definitely seems like she has the goods to be a top player in a year or two. Especially mentally.

yeah, i like her too. she needs to work on a few things -- her forehand especially -- but she could be a contender.

omg @ haas right now, he's screaming like a fucking dying bird of prey between points, and i'm pretty sure he's dropping lots of f-bombs

omg verdasco DF's serving at 8-7 in the third set breaker...he's been watching too much women's tennis

10-8 verdasco, he's up 2 sets to 1

Roddick's down a set and a break! After a slew of preposterous games (some still going, obv) this is a welcome balm!

roddick down two sets!!

there's a v high quality stream up at usopen.org right now btw

roddick's only serving 61% - 15 winners 7 unf in 2 sets. havent been watching but this is not how he wants to play

srsly marveling @ how great this looks on my computer

omg bizarre...roddick challenges a serve and shows a mark clearly out - which the chair ump agrees w/ - but hawkeye shows it catches a bit of the line. chair ump goes "the shadow's always bigger than the mark"

wow - that IS a good quality stream - thanks for the link!

there's something about isner's shirt, either the length of the sleeves or his ugly tan lines, that's NAGL

not just the sleeves, but the shirt itself is too short too ugh

roddick up a break via running BH DTL pass. here's the announcer's call:

"and he's done it! no, it's long. yes, it's deep. roddick's got the break"

roddick <3's net cords

roddick double faults(!) at 30-all to give isner a match point, but then aces and holds in deuce. 5-all in the 4th

isner is nerrrvous - two loose forehands and a "should i hit it/should i let it bounce" "overhead"

roddick breaks for 6-5! wow

what's also great about this stream is the lack of commercial breaks. the announcers can have fuller conversations and finish thoughts on changeovers, and we can see players' changeover routines which is neat

isner is fucking ripping these second serves at 5-all here...couple in the 115 range

isnt louis watching this??

5th set breaker

triple match point isner - 3-6 on roddick's serve

Hurrah! Isner is, really, just a tall big serving dude out of US jock central casting, but HE! IS! NOT! RODDICK! Happy!

Tomorrow should be good/horrifying! But again, look at the juniors' names: Jacqueline Cako! Jack Sock! Johannes Robert Van Overbeek! And that's just the Americans...

ATP - U.S. Open (John Isner vs. Andy Roddick): What will be the match result?
5:15 PM
CBS

Tennis
Andy Roddick Wins 3-0// Any Other Result

Women's tennis ffs. Kvitova fails to serve for the match vs Safina. Lol backhand, really.

Commentator mentions "fighting spirit" that Safina is supposed to have, neglecting to mention that she has nothing of the sort and is just less of a choker than someone ranked outside the top 100.

I think Safina's shot at 30-00 on Kvitova's serve was out. Instead of being 40-00, now 30-30.

wow, after a gutsy inside out BH winner to stave off match point, she DF's to give safina another

But she holds on. Tiebreak! I was thinking of commending the US Open, once again, on abolishing advantage sets, but looking at this game sometimes makes me think they should just abolish women's tennis completely.

Safina sounds like an Eastern European peasant women bringing water from a well when she hits the ball.

hahahaha

Mind you, some quality stuff from Kvirova here -t he drop shot before, and some big shots at 2-2.

Seriously, I half expect Safina to grand-motherly offer some sausage to her opponent. "You too thin! Eat more!".

that skintight shirt safina's wearing is not a flattering look

lol xp

ZOMG, that is one of the worst returns I have ever seen.

Wow! Kvitova wins on a great match point.

Discuss: Someone like Radwanska would have won more matches if she'd been born 20 years ago, but Safina would have just been molested like silly by Henin, to say nothing of Graf, Seles or Hingis.

Oh and Blake is losing but that shouldn't be a surprise.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/09/06/sports/06open.3376.jpg

YEAHHHHH what awesome results, sad I didn't get to see any of the matches except for my great timing in stumbling drunkenly home just in time to catch the Isner/Roddick final set TB. (Isner is...oddly sexual. Maybe because there's so much of him. WS unhesitatingly.)

I knew from watching Kvitova during last year's autumn swing that she can be lethal when she connects. Which has been rarely, this season. But I guess when our World No 1 struggles against Rogowska and Barrois, anyone in the draw has a chance. Safina really needs to go away with her brother.

Sharapova's game is just...not there any more. I really question whether she can win big again with neither a serve nor an effective ground game. Though she'll always have that fighting spirit~~~ which 95% of the tour crumbles in the face of. But not Oudin!!!!

Lulz who will be our US Open semifinalist out of Kvitova, Wickmayer, Dulko and K-BOND.

Putting Flake on as the night session? It's like they wanted him to lose.

KING KOLYA marching on without difficulty :)

Venus vs St. Nicesters...is Venus really playing that badly? I fear she is :/

Commentator mentions "fighting spirit" that Safina is supposed to have, neglecting to mention that she has nothing of the sort and is just less of a choker than someone ranked outside the top 100.

A huge factor in Safina's ascension to the top 5 has been the amount of bullshit "fighting" wins she guts out these days. She's great at winning ugly - she has so many horrendous days with UEs and DFs aplenty, but against most scrubs she's developed a knack of sitting back, defending from 5 feet behind the baseline and just topspinning heavy balls into the court, cleaning up her own game in the nick of time. Her improved fitness means that the one thing she's confident about is her superior stamina in long rallies and matches. Most of the time, scrubs either find they don't have the weaponry to hit through her defense (see: Cornet at the AO), or they self-destruct. But not Kvitova!!!!

And yeah, she only does it against scrubs in early rounds. Slam SFs and Fs, nothing of the sort.

Your women's round of 16!

Petra Kvitova vs Yanina Wickmayer
Kateryna Bondarenko vs Gisela Dulko
Melanie Oudin vs (13) Nadia Petrova
(9) Caroline Wozniacki vs (6) Svetlana Kuznetsova
(26) Francesca Schiavone vs (18) Na Li
(WC) Kim Clijsters vs (3) Venus Williams
(7) Vera Zvonareva vs (10) Flavia Pennetta
(22) Daniela Hantuchova vs (2) Serena Williams

zzz's at the pervasive roddick hate

Oudin's been a pretty great story but I feel her fairy tale is coming to an end.

i dunno, petrova's not that daunting really. but even if so, round-of-16 should give her some confidence to build on.

(granted petrova is not likely to spot her five games' worth of double-faults.)

zzz's at the pervasive roddick hate

― hope this helps (Granny Dainger), Sunday, September 6, 2009 9:19 AM (2 hours ago)

i don't looove roddick or anything but i lol at the notion that isner defeating roddick is some kind of victory for exciting tennis!

Oh look, Hantuchova is giving Serena a hard game!

Made you look, of course she's not.

wtf @ this nadal match...nadal just broke for 5-4 and i think there have been 3 breaks already? or 5?

alright, almagro has just broken back for 5-all !?!?

break. 6-5 nadal

nadal falls behind 15-40 but holds on to take the set. turning this off

Hm I can never have watched Schiavone before, she sounds like she's vomiting or something!

i don't looove roddick or anything but i lol at the notion that isner defeating roddick is some kind of victory for exciting tennis!

it's a victory for exciting tennis b/c roddick's boring game would've likely taken him to the SF had he won, whereas isner's boring game will hopefully and plausibly lose to verdasco in the next round

LI NA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! <3 <3 <3

Villiams bagelled!

second time in a Slam this year. this "Williams sisters only bring it in Slams" is so inaccurate - that applies to Serena. Venus is a grass court specialist these days, and has been so for half a decade now.

6-0 0-4. W***** t*****...

6-0, 0-5 :D :D

The :D is more for the insane and fun scoreline, though I'm very much on Venus's side. Ugh, Clijsters. Least appealing comeback ever. Hope she gets knocked up again soon.

loool is this the ultimate in Women's Tennis?

YESSSSSS!!!!! 6-0, 0-6!!!!!! I <3 scorelines like that.

I think I was cheering harder for that scoreline to ensue than for any actual player in this tournament so far.

Please let the third set be either 6-0 or 7-6. To whomever.

This match is dreadful. Some of those errors, just, god, I miss the days when female players could HIT THE BALL IN THE COURT.

It seems no other women's Slam match in the 2000s (including qualifying!) has started 6-0 0-6 or vice versa.

There was a '90s RG match between Ginger Helgeson-Nielsen and Sonya Jeyaseelan which the former won 6-0, 0-6, 12-10.

No, I have absolutely no idea why I remember that either.

I mean, the latter. Jeyaseelan won.

Jeyaseelan also beat Venus at Amelia Island the following year! Such a weird and inexplicable upset, back in the days when Venus hardly ever lost to anyone outside the top 10.

dreadful :(

I love that you do remember such stuff though lex! :D My tennis memory only goes back to about 2005 brainwise and 2000 computerwise. xp

My tennis memory probably never goes that deep in any era but its sweetspot is definitely men's singles late-'70s to mid-'90s. Lex is very impressive on the last 10-15 years of the WTA!

Clidge up a break in the 3rd.

Haha been attempting a calculation of what would entail the equivalent of 6-0 0-6 12-10 here... the tiebreaker would have to fill up for ten extra games of, say, 5.5 points each in average, ie 55 points, so a final set score of 7-6(27) would do it, I guess.

Probably a stupid question - do all courts at Flushing Meadow have lights? I know there isn't a night session per se outside the showcourts but I see Cilic-Istomin was scheduled 5th on court 11 but the first three doubles of the day all went the distance and the Bryan Bros are only in the first set in match #4. Meanwhile, Ashe sits idle (not for long, mind).

What time is it? Time for a bagel, Flav. Poor Bepa.

Cilic was the anti-Istomin!

Bepa blew six match points :( Apparently it wasn't really a choke job, though, she's still some way off 100% form after coming back from injury, this is an improvement on losing 4 and 2 to Flavia in LA. The smallest of silver linings.

Your men's round of 16 -

(1) Roger Federer vs (14) Tommy Robredo
(12) Robin Soderling vs (8) Nikolay Davydenko
(4) Novak Djokovic vs (15) Radek Stepanek
(10) Fernando Verdasco vs John Isner
(7) Jo-Wilfried Tsonga vs (11) Fernando Gonzalez
(13) Gael Monfils vs (3) Rafael Nadal
(6) Juan Martin Del Potro vs (24) Juan Carlos Ferrero
(16) Marin Cilic vs (2) Andy Murray

Seedy! Only Roddick and Simon failing to hold their seeds, of the top 16.

So then I got 11/16 men, and only 8/16 women. Hrm.

Yeah, I'm not going to even look at my predictions. I called Clijsters d. Venus though, sadly.

Sweta vs WozDEN is a huge, huge match today. It will lead either to the emergence of WozDEN as a Slam finalist, or...Sweta's FIFTH Slam final!

I can't really see WozDEN as a slam finalist. I think Sweta will cruise through. Harumph, famous last words. Anyway, as lovely and gracious and funny as Venus is, I STILL LIKE KIM A LOT and hope she finds some way of beating Serena.

She won't need to, if she loses to Li, which would be just about ideal. And then Li can beat Silliams like she did in Stuttgart last year.

I don't think WozDEN's passive, nothingy game is Slam finalist quality either. That match is in Sweta's hands entirely. But we know what often happens when matches are in Sweta's hands, and once past that...there is no one left in the top half! Seriously, Oudin is the third favourite there to reach the final.

Lol, Bondarenko bagelled Dulko. Not a surprise, Dulko's a bit.. um.. well, a quintessential choker. But so pretty.

Bondarenko up 6-0 3-0 and has hit all of six unforced errors. SIX!

Srsly, you would not guess Dulko's the higher ranked. She's got NOTHING and making basic errors on the tamest shots. Bondarenko is hitting accurately and taking all the risks.

6-0 6-0! Women's tennis etc. etc. etc.

Soderling, the ugliest Swedish man ever, is a set up on King Kolya, who I believe was the second ugliest man in the top 10 for a while during the zenith of Ljubicic.

UHHHHH

Wow! I glanced at the live scores at 3-0 K-Bond and thought, good, K-Bond playing well, will check live stream in a bit. And then...it was over. Well, I know Dulko's not a mental giant, but she's steady and has had good results before, whereas K-Bond is genuinely nuts and loves to pull a Bepa in her matches, so...I thought the choke would go the other way.

Bepa herself claims she didn't lose her temper yesterday! I think the side of her head would disagree with that.

Also: six bagel sets across the five women's R16 matches played so far! Well DONE everybody.

Davydenko/Soderling is not very thrilling. More errors than winners, and it's going to go at least four sets innit.

Petrova whips through first set against Oudin 6-1. American commentators think that's good because Oudin has won from a set down before. But neither of her previous two opponents was serving as well as Petrova is at the moment.

Nadezhda is probably being fuelled by her excitement at not having to play Sharapova again.

And yes, both Demented and Shriekapova broke Oudin quite easily - unlike them, Petrova actually has a reasonably solid serve when she's not flaking out.

oudin breaks back for 4-all!

petrova <3's hitting the ball into the net

lulz Nadezhda.

lol

Thought Nadezhda might have a chance when Oudin choked three routine FHs to let her hold from 0-30 at *5-6, but then Nadezhda played one of the most woeful TBs I have ever, ever seen.

Four successive breaks in Kvitova-Wicky. Women's, and, indeed, tennis.

This game is a disgrace

whoa who is that girl in her box??

cuety

Oudin's sis maybe? My live stream kept cutting out :( Or given the quality, maybe :)

I like Oudin and, far from the hype, this is a fun run from her. She'll be a nice little top 20 player and give us many entertaining matches over the years.

I want to watch Kvitova/Wickmayer but no live streams to be found. As much as I mock Women's Tennis, all their matches today are preferable to Federer putting Boredo to the sword, or...watching more than a point of Isner.

lol @ ESPN.com:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3225/3897263423_19da01a3f0_b.jpg

(apologies if the sizing isn't correct)

was in the stadium for oudin-petrova. that was fun. the crowd was pulling so hard for oudin (we do love our scrappy american underdogs), and when she started to put pieces together in the second set you could just feel the momentum build in the stands.

(watched 2 sets of federer too, just for the hell of it. he wasn't trying all that hard but he still looked ridiculously sharp.)

I'm good friends with Ouidin's coach and have watched her play locally for the past six years or so. So awesome!

That is really awesome! The ILX connection.

Swetlana playing very well :)

if oudin plays kuznetzova, that'll be 5 russians in a row for her.

Oudin's been a pretty great story but I feel her fairy tale is coming to an end.
― Where is Stephen Gobie? (Dandy Don Weiner), Sunday, September 6, 2009 2:09 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

tomorrow shall be exciting... the 3/4 people I've been cheering on the most are playing (the 4th is Oudin - I already said it but ATL suburbs rep4sent)

Arthur Ashe Stadium 11:00 Start

Na Li(CHN)[18] vs. **Kim Clijsters(BEL)**
Marin Cilic(CRO)[16] vs. **Andy Murray(GBR)[2]**

Arthur Ashe Stadium
19:00 Start
Flavia Pennetta(ITA)[10] vs. Serena Williams(USA)[2]
Gael Monfils(FRA)[13] vs. **Rafael Nadal(ESP)[3]**

I like Serena too but whatever. My main concern has been Nadal and he hasn't been doing 100%.

Women's tennis! Kuznetsova has gone from 3-1 to 3-5. You're supposed to be a grand slam champion, Sweta. Bad errors in that last service game too. No excuse.

And of course, Kuznetsova remembered she can play tennis and broke while Wozniacki didn't serve out the match. Some good deep shots on the backhand.

Sweta should have easily won this in straight sets. Wozniacki's game is just...nothing.

Incredible BH to save match point, though.

wowowow.. Kuznetsova got lots of great shots serving at 4-5 but made a few mistakes so she went down match point. HUGE backhand winner to get back to deuce, then two aces. I think she's gonna be OK now.

What a moronic return from Sweta.

What a moronic double fault at 30-30 from Sweta.

Clutch FH to save MP though.

AAAGH what a moronic "drop shot" from Sweta!

woziniacki-oudin might or might not be a good match, but it's a marketer's dream.

Whatever, Sweta. If anyone gave a shit a few years from now, they'd mention how Sweta could have won at least a few more slams if she'd just stopped being a retard.

Oudin's a lovely story, definitely, but Wozniacki as a slam finalist? What a gyp.

serena is licking her chops, for sure.

Oh, Sweta. Oh, Russians. Look at the scorelines of the three Russians in the 4th round:

Petrova lost 6-1, 6-7, 3-6
Kuznetsova lost 6-3, 6-7, 6-7
Zvonareva lost 6-3, 6-7, 0-6

I think I see a PATTERN there and its name is CHOKING IDIOCY.

Wozniacki is just not a good player. The second set...she DID NOTHING. I can't even tell you what shots she was hitting. She...came to net a couple of times? Hit two BH winners in the TB? She doesn't even have the energy of your usual retrievers, your Schiavones and Sugiyamas and Cibulkovas. She's so passive that she seems to drain her surroundings of energy. And yet, she will be a Slam finalist. She must be so resilient, though, to hang in there despite knowing how little she controls the match.

STILL, I would take that over horrible UE-fests any day: it was a rather gripping contest in the end, just with an awful result.

Sweta: 59 winners, 63 UEs
Caroline: 16 winners, 23 UEs :o

http://i26.tinypic.com/35nd0us.gif

live footage

sigh. i had to leave for work when sveta saved the first couple MPs and thought that she would be ok from then on - goddamn russians.

what is going on

hilarity

The Oudin match was so wtf last night that I decided to break my ilx duck. Hello everyone. Women's tennis etc

Hi Kat!

Seeing very little of this; upgraded to Flash 10 and still can't play the highlights on usopen.org. Monfils for the upset tonight?

hi Kat!

isn't usopen.org for Americans only? The sooner tennis realises it needs to get rid of these silly territorial restrictions the better. I've no idea how it'll do it, what with TV channel rights and such, but...it needs to. One of tennis's main selling points, as a minority sport, is that it's more global than any other.

Still can't believe the Sweta loss. A compilation of her highlights from last night would be incredible viewing. A compilation of Wozniacki's highlights would consist of maybe four points. Why is Sweta such a raging MORON so often!

The live feed from usopen.org is certainly US-only, but the highlights should be unrestricted. And I've just got them to play from my work PC (whether three points from Murray-Dent was really worth waiting for, I'm not sure; better were some great rallies from BJ King vs E Goolagong, Forest Hills 1974); not sure what the problem is at home. "Vista" is usually the answer to this question.

Li vs. Clijsters. Midway through the second set. 9 combined winners, 46 combined UEs. AAAARGHHH.

What a horrible match, and the exit of the last player I really like. Pennetta vs K-Bond is the only final I'd be happy with now :(

hopefully this murray/cilic match will be interesting

was at the event last night, hanging out behind the espn booth. p-mac came down and signed some autographs, seemed like a completely normal guy.

Also, Mary Corella (sp?), below her presentational attire, was wearing some really cool Adidas I had never seen before.

During the match the announcer added vowels to both players names and pronounced the W as a V: Voziniecki and Kuznietsova

Too bad I left early though, missed the mcenroe / djokovich thing.

cilic up a set and a break. and he's a tottenham fan.

two breaks!

oh, andy

radge bastaaaaaaarrrrd

oh dear andy - 2 sets and a break down.

anime eyes' forehand is quite a thing.

0/7 on break points. Tarango on the radio just now advocated some trash talking from Murray..."Lendl would've done it. Just tell the guy his service toss is off or something at the changeover. Get in his face."

I was wrong about Andy hitting it on the line. He consistently hits it right back to the other guy

whoa!

So Murray is going to pull the zipper on the top of his head and SURPRISE it will be Jankovic, right?

"hopefully this murray/cilic match will be interesting"

Unfortunately it was :-(

can i just

LOOOOL

ty

pronounced the W as a V: Voziniecki

W is pronounced like (English) V in most languages -- pretty sure it is in both Danish and (at start of words at least) Polish. The extra i is a bit wtf though.

(except it may be correct for all I know about Polish!)

LOL Murray. I guess this Slam business has officially become an issue now. Draw now open for a nice Del Pony run, maybe to the final!

Having previously told myself I'd be in bed early tonight, I can fully see the Tsonga-Gonzalez match keeping me up for quite some time...

hellyeah, good fun this!

I would have said this could run and run, but Tsonga was really looking knackered towards the end of the tie-break.

Doesn't show much disadv now though? Liking these guys.

Pennetta is playing great, you guys. Granted she's down a set and a break but she's made Serena work for it.

Have an small soft spot for the Flav tbh. Looks a bit game over though? Hm guess I should remember the four T's, Tain Tover Tilly Tsover...

Yeah, she really improved her game at the end of last year and has been in great form in the hardcourt swing this summer. Watched the first set - v high quality, both hardly losing points on serve until, er, Flav lost hers to love at *4-5. At which point I switched off.

Oh yeah, I'll be HEARTILY supporting Serena against Kim.

OK to be a bit of an obv-ass arsehole in "defending" the Kim: what she does now is a blatant disrobing of the present generation ("generation" bullshit, it's "vintage" innit, ie single-year semiglory not 5/10-year period) of wannabe stars... which is clearly a good or possibly bad thing! <- watch closely my conviction in this argument there

(Williamses don't count in this argument obv, they're proven. Except they ruin it a bit for the statnerds among us for refusing to do the wta properly and all...)

I will be whole-heartedly supporting Kim. Serena's arrogance is founded in her playing the best when it matters - the Slams - and everything else doesn't matter. If she were to lose to Clijsters, it would upend her argument that she doesn't really have to try or commit to be the best and it might force her to pull her finger out a little away from the majors and learn a spot of grace.

Oh, Monfils up a break.

Draw now open for a nice Del Pony run, maybe to the final!

yeah pretty happy abt this even though i was really looking forward to a Murray-Del Po match.

And now he's not up a break. Lots of really uncontrolled hitting in this match.

if there aren't fireworks in this TB i will be emo face. Monfils still looks hot despite that awful colour choice.

French TV commentators still say "minibreak". AMAZING.

The point on which Monfils broke Nadal back in the second was all kinds of brilliant.

jesus these guys

How the hell does Nadal get those defensive shots back, without fail, into really sweet spots near the lines? Genius, really.

shit i really really want to watch this match - why do i gotta be at work? :(

Dear retards in crowd: STOP APPLAUDING faults. Monfils' fierce pass to save set the third set point was great. The drop-shot immediately after, less so.

It's a really fun match and there's two more sets to go, so good!

good god, come on gael

he's done :(

last interesting player left in the draw besides federer

what's happening?

btw rafa goes back to no 2 if he wins tonight thanks to murray's loss.

oh dear

monfils has a break pt at 1-3 here...he needs this or it's over

got it! back on serve

It might still be over, mind you!

Needing to die right now: idiots in the crowd dressed like Nadal.

omg i know, i commented on that a few days ago.

oh no, 0-40

Poor Monfils' serve, ever bouncing off the top of the net, ever landing long.

That was in the head as much as on the knees. Oh, I see Monfils is working with Roger Rasheed. That's sure to work out real well. (/sarcasm)

Rasheed is primarily a fitness coach, isn't he? That's the one area in which Monfils needs no improvement at all.

Tsonga's loss to Gonzo is a bad one. Obviously we all know how scary dangerous Gonzo can be, but we also know what his career has been, and it's not the elite Slam-contender one that Tsonga should be aspiring to, and that involves winning matches like this. Does Tsonga want to be an elite player, or does he want to be Gonzalez, basically. I remember Berdych being in the same position a few years ago, and he chose to be Gonzalez, except flakier.

I agree that it would've been nice for Silliams' taking the piss to backfire on her. But...Clijsters is just the worst option, in any scenario. I'd forgotten by how much she was my least favourite player.

It's funny and sad...when Clijsters retired, SHE was the pathetic choker who crumbled in Slam latter stages, and it took useless old immobile Pierce as an opponent to get her one Slam. (She's still a one-Slam wonder! Less than Sweta!) Remember all those latter-round losses to Justine? That epic collapse against Serena?

It will be amazing, incidentally, if Sweta ends up with a career better than either Sharapova or Clijsters. Which is entirely plausible! She probably has at least one more Slam left in her.

I'm starting to be think that French male players are the equivalent of Russian female players - so much potential but will lose under pressure.

oh god yeah. Mathieu is the worst but Gasquet is a wimpy loser and Monfils a perpetual frustration. I really thought Tsonga might be different though.

Rasheed is primarily a fitness coach yes, best known for telling Lleyton Hewitt he needed to "bulk up" so he could hit big booming serves to compete with the big guys, which basically slowed him down about 15%, removing his best asset and improving his serve fuck all causing him most of those wilderness years. Which, regardless of what you think about Hewitt, is just moronic for a coach, and you can't help but feel Monfils isn't going to get anything from him. The man wouldn't know strategy if it kicked him in the balls if his commentary is anything to go by, even though the time he drooled over Venus Williams' arse on TV was very funny.

I cannot imagine what Monfils needs him for. Physically he's pretty much ideal but has a duff head about him, he needs someone with a tactical brain and to work on his mental preparation not a fitness coach. Gah, why do players I really like do this?

re: Clijsters, ok, sure, Henin was a better player and would improve the game far more for coming back, but a 'choker' like Kim coming back and winning this thing might remind those Russian head-cases that they can't just sit there and do nothing or they will just look even worse, underperforming against a wild card.

Oh I didn't dislike Kim for her choking, I found that hilarious, especially as Henin benefited so much from it. I disliked her for, god, where to even begin. The niceness bullshit, the constant injury drama, the fakeness, the butt-ugly forehand...

Andy Murray

To win a slam event (singles) within the next five years
Yes 1/7
No 4/1

To win slam in 2010 (singles)
Yes 8/11
No Evs

US Open 2009

Men

R Federer 8/13
]R Nadal 4/1
J M del Potro 11/2
N Djokovic 9/1
F González 33/1
F Verdasco 33/1
M Čilić 33/1
R Söderling 66/1

Women

S Williams 1/2
K Clijsters 3/1
C Wozniacki 7/1
M Oudin 14/1
K Bondarenko 40/1
Y Wickmayer 50/1

K-BOND TIME!!!!!!

K-Bond's BH is so good and her FH so bad :(

if i were to bet on this my money would be on nadal, given those odds

This is a good match y'all. K-Bond just hit a massive BH x-court and followed it up with a beautiful BH drop volley. Mmm.

K-Bond's chihuahua Princess is in the stands :D

Wickmayer really needs to stop saying 'whoopee' on each shot though.

Wickmayer won a couple of tight games at 1-4 down and then suddenly started really outhitting K-Bond :(

The "whoopee" is v distracting.

Awww that was some heartbreaking lower-lip trembling from K-Bond after that challenge for match point! Poor K-Bond.

Wickmayer through :(

Apart from me liking K-Bond more, it's a pity because Wickmayer really benefited from everyone else taking out the big names, and hasn't had to beat anyone of note herself so far. Still, she's a good player from what I saw. Good serve, good groundstrokes, held her nerve.

Verdasco/Djokovic next. Can this match be played in the nude please.

Also, Americans? Your Bud Collins...he is actually senile.

Pam Shriver is a fun one, though.

Actually the men's tournament has been v.g. for eye candy, WS 5 of the 8 quarterfinalists.

Verdasco I'll give you, but Djokovic is Not Hott, dude. Loving the ESPN guy's fist-pumps tho.

Fist pumps? Fist BUMPS. Argh.

djokovic is totally hot.

lex who would you not ws apart from the Sod?

WNS Gonzo or Nadal (yes the body and ass are amazing but the foetus face is a dealbreaker).

Djokovic...

http://ink2metal.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/djokovic1.jpg

...is definitely hott.

I mean,

http://ink2metal.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/djokovic1.jpg

OK agreed he is better with the shirt off.

Whatever that...pattern is on the back of Verdasco's shirt, it's an abomination.

He also seems to be growing his ahir again :( LESS HAIR, LESS SHIRT Fernando.

Djokovic so erratic in that 2nd set.

hahaha 7-6, 1-6? I should have saved my "is secretly Jankovic" joke!

Djokovic saves a break point to hold for 1-1 in the third. Could be a crucial game.

have a feeling this one's going 5

Uh! If you predicted two Belgians in 2009 GS SFs a couple of years ago I wouldn't find you very imaginative, but not like... this. Bottom half ftw...

So do we think Melanie Oudin can win again? I hope so.
I think this time will be the hardest match for Melanie yet. Caroline Wozniacki [9] has already played Serena and Venus Williams in a doubles match this tournament - giving her that much more experience. She also has knocked out Svetlana Kuznetsova [6] in the 4th round.

i do feel a bit guilty about not giving a shit about oudin, especially given that i'm american...i see these thousands of ppl waiting to get inside to watch her match but i don't find her game that interesting. nice story though

i think one of the announcers said she's hit like 31 winners total this tournament? can't be right

jack donaghy in the house!

looks like oudin's entourage got a coconut water endorsement deal and some believe t-shirts made up.

Is Gavin from Bush officially part of Federer's entourage now?

i smell a triple bagel for fed here...hate to say it, but this really has been a dismal US open so far

really? i saw two very entertaining matches last night.

in the end it's all about watching Nadal stomp Federer

i guess i'm just butthurt that all of the players i give a shit about went out early

Did anybody else see the bad call during the last tie break at 6-6? Soderling hit it long and Federer hit it back.. the ref didn't it and no one challenged it. Now there Soderling has 1 set under his belt.

Suggest Ban Permalink

i guess i'm just butthurt that all of the players i give a shit about went out early

― k3vin k., Wednesday, September 9, 2009 10:22 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark
maybe also cause you're bad at predicting matches.

i think one of the announcers said she's hit like 31 winners total this tournament? can't be right

sounds totally right. i like her, but she doesn't have the weaponry to be striking winners at will. another interesting stat would be the combined UEs of her headcase russian opponents. she's a lesser version of WozDen - slightly more aggressive and willing to come to the net, but with a worse serve. which is why she lost 2 and 2 today.

otm on the WozDen comparison - read somewhere that Caro's won matches without hitting a single winner before. she's a nice girl but she basically just puts the ball in play and waits for head-casey opponents to self-destruct. i don't think she'll have a prob with wickmayer but she's gonna get destroyed by either kim or silliams.

I guess the positive thing about both Oudin and WozDen is that age is on their side - plenty of room to improve and they seem strong enough mentally that it prob won't hurt them too much if and when they start making changes to their game.

the final is not going to be pretty. or, for that matter, very long. luckily I won't be able to watch.

Wozniacki has good net skills but nothing in her arsenal to approach the net off. And the occasional BH DTL winner if her opponent hits a really short ball. She doesn't even try to move the ball around the court in the style of most counterpunchers - I tend to like less powerful players and most retrievers are fun, but her passivity is so extreme - constant mid-paced balls to the centre of the court all the time.

It was inevitable that she'd lose, but Oudin making the final vs Silliams would have been the most entertaining outcome - not for the match, but for the can of worms it'd have opened in terms of crowd support.

OK, looked up Oudin's opponents' UEs. Pavlyuchenkova 37 (in 15 games!!!), Dementieva 37, Sharapova 63, Petrova 59. Well done, women's tennis.

in the end it's all about watching Nadal stomp Federer

― CaptainLorax, Thursday, September 10, 2009 2:10 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

prob. gonna have to wait for the claycourt season. Unless by "stomp" you mean edging him in 5 sets or something.

fully expect Nadal to lose to Del Pony in the SF

supporting Djokovic now btw - it's sort of liberating not having to cheer for Fed any more, now that he's undisputed GOAT, as he should be

as for the women's side, I'm genuinely more interested in the Italian challenger this week featuring Dulgheru, Dokic, Pironkova, Sprem, Martic, Bychkova et al.

Sprem! Ah, the comedy tiebreaker that meant I missed the first goal in the England-Portugal Euro 2004 qf.

If the men's side has been a bit meh this year, I think we could ultimately be rewarded with a great final weekend; Fed-Djoko and Nad-Delpy? Hard to pick an obvious winner based on current form (I got the impression last night that Sod was just hopeless for two sets). Three five-setters to finish it off, please, a la 1980.

it's sort of liberating not having to cheer for Fed any more, now that he's undisputed GOAT, as he should be

Yeaah will be super happy if any of the other three dudes win, which is new! and awesome. Pulling for JMDP to get to the final at least though, kid's been due a breakthrough at a hardcourt Slam for a while.

cilic totally out-hitting Del Po at the mo, is up a set.

So, Delpy woke up and put Cili to the sword rapid-like. Nad and Gonzo dodged the showers, Gonz missed a coupla set-points and was 6-7 6-6 (2-3) when they called it for the night. Rain today and (30% chance of) rain tomorrow.

Federer has a lot of luck with weather, doesn't he? Either it works to his advantage (rain-breaks in a couple of Wimb finals) or it just doesn't affect him at all. The other half of the draw seems to get shafted instead. Nadal could still be playing his qf tomorrow.

Watch the skies for us, NYCers.

the skies are ugly. i'll be surprised if they get in any play today.

Oh dear:

Now the USTA is hoping for a window at 3pm EST, but if they can't get the matches on by then they may cancel play today, resume tomorrow, and finish the tournament on Monday:

If the weather cooperates, women’s semifinalists Serena Williams and Kim Clijsters would be first on Arthur Ashe Stadium Friday, followed by Yanina Wickmayer and Caroline Wozniacki. Though the men’s quarterfinal between Rafael Nadal and Fernando Gonzalez is currently scheduled for Ashe after the Williams-Clijsters match, it most likely will be moved to Louis Armstrong stadium, though not before 2:00 p.m.

If Nadal and Gonzalez don’t complete their match Friday, however, both men’s semifinals would likely be moved to Sunday, Widmaier said, to prevent the other men’s semifinalists, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic, from having a day of rest before Monday’s final. If the women do not complete their semifinals Friday, the tournament would have to hold the men’s semifinals and the women’s final on Sunday.

lol at the grasscourts of olde wimbledon being more dependable than hardcourts in queens

go go go rain - am at wedding tomorrow so can't watch anything - would be ideal if i could catch the men's SFs on sunday

in lieu of actual play today, I found this video of Nicole Vaidisova's 1R loss in Prague a couple of months ago - http://www.protenis.cz/video/clip.php?vid=1329

A heroic effort. This would be why her career has died and she'll be ranked in the 180s on Monday.

(The week after that video, she lost in the 1st round of qualifying at Stanford, to a college player called Stacey Tan ranked outside the top 500, who'd been given a WC into qualifying. The score? 6-2 6-1.)

(starts with Vaidisova at the far end. the one who isn't running, and who loses every point.)

As the US open final is gonna be on a Monday what time (GMT) is it gonna be and does anyone know of a pub in Central London that might be screening it?

the sports bar on haymarket will certainly have it. i believe they're open til 3am.

lol gonzo

Because of all the rainouts I missed the end of the Nadal vs. Gonzalez match
Demolishing gonzo 6-0 in the third set seems like quite a feet, seeing how the first two sets ended in tie-breakers

Not really, when you're playing only the streakiest player alive. Gonzo is, well, gonzo.

It's funny that they said the weather was favouring Fed and Djokovic because they would've had three days off and be well rested for Sunday and Monday, while Nadal would've had to play three days in a row but I'd say it's pretty much even money now cause Rafa might as well have had an extra day off - he only took 40 minutes or so to close out the match.

rafas scary - hes gonna destroy the world next year

thatd be pretty impressive for a player arguably in decline!

wow venus is blowing this set/tiebreak. 8 set pts blown now match pt 4 serena

LMAO i am hungover shut up

yeah Rafa's knees are cooked.

lol *kills self*

xp that was classic k3vin

a single injury plagued year and hes in decline and cookd at 23 ok whateverz

wow serena

so weird.

i wanna know what was said

apparently she threatened to kill the lineswoman?

i couldn't believe it. absolutely worst timing.

yeah serena said she didnt say that. either way she didnt seem terribly bothered by the whole situation afterward

i don't think it mattered what she said in the end. she already got a warning for breaking her racquet earlier so i think she was going to get a code violation regardless, just for going off the way she did. it's just terrible timing that she did so on match point.

oh man I need to turn on this match, it's still going. I cant believe I missed that

it's over dude

i just think serena was surprised to be losing.

funny how with all the oudin hype, the fairy tale of tournament is someone else.

couldnt catch all of what she said, but reading her lips she clearly said "i will take this tennis ball and shove it down your throat"

i just think serena was surprised to be losing.

funny how with all the oudin hype, the fairy tale of tournament is someone else.

― flying squid attack (tipsy mothra), Sunday, September 13, 2009 3:53 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

She's always "surprised" to be losing. Every time she loses she acts like it's because of bad luck, an injury, some inexplicable cause, not her opponent being better.

It's insufferable.

get ready for all the "working moms rally around clijsters" stories. (and why not? i'm tempted to rally around her too.)

to be fair she's got more talent than everyone else on tour put together xp

^^^rong btw

I don't think the match was being shown on any tv channel I get except the tennis channel. So I turned on the tennis channel and they started airing that match around 12:00 a.m (more than a couple hours late). I left the tv on and went away for a while. I came back to see the last couple games.

Serena said something about shoving a ball up the her ass (I believe). Anyways I have tivo and I watched the last game over a couple times. Serena was playing terrible, as if she was trying to throw the match. I could have returned those two shots on which Serena hit the net (they were easy shots to return for a pro at least). Serena also had one double fault in the last set (I think).

So then I watched the reactions of Venus in the stands and then Serena during the interview. I tried to analyze her like that Lie To Me tv show... SHE THREW THE MATCH I TELL YOU

But then again I never watched Serena lose before and it would make more sense to throw the match if it was getting more publicity (I think it only came on the Tennis channel for me and over 2 hours late at that). Am I wrong? Was it on another channel? Anyone else believe there's a chance that she threw the game?

(ignore the grammar/spelling mistakes please)

you're joking right....

I wish I was

me too, kinda.

please... serena was outplayed today, which happens more often than you think.

why would serena fucking williams of all people need more publicity (?!) as opposed to another chance at a Slam? sorry lorax but that's about the dumbest thing i've ever heard.

Anyways I have tivo and I watched the last game over a couple times. Serena was playing terrible, as if she was trying to throw the match.

Watch THE WHOLE MATCH instead of just that last game: she had already smashed her racket earlier on, she was only getting more and more frustrated and angry and in the end her game started suffering (as you've seen in that last game) and then she just exploded. But that's not as exciting as your conspiracy theory, of course.

Would shoving a tennis ball down someone's throat actually kill them? Because it's being called a death threat in the media and she said she didn't say she was going to kill that line judge - maybe Mythbusters should check this out in one of their next episodes.

So was it a foot fault or not? I can't tell.

yeah me neither. the camera angle was a bit awkward. it didn't seem like one though.

i'm a little sad that safin has now been overtaken for the most epic foot fault rant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RJ9IsA59Rk

ok, "retires" - but this one's in HD (click the movie, go to youtube, click the HD button) - still can't tell, but her foot DID move just a tiny bit before she hit the ball.

i think it was a harsh call to make at 6-5, 30-15 but serena should've composed herself and kept on playing instead of reacting the way she did.

meanwhile, this is the saddest women's semifinals pic i've ever seen.

http://i27.tinypic.com/vovcb7.jpg

worst us open ever.

LOL, someone found this at latimes.com :

http://imgur.com/ny8pM.png

FREE SERENA

fuck tennis god i love the sport but i hate everything they do

simultaneously incredibly shitty and amazing

congrats to Clijsters on her 2nd Slam

what a shitty performance by serena williams. i always knew she could pull some shit, but this is next level stupidity.

oh bullshit maybe tennis should pull up it's panties and quit being such a pussy. that was nothing compared to old mcenroe stuff.

also that was NO WAY a foot fault and you don't fucking call that in that match in that situation.

your a judge that's your fucking job to deal with shit. that is like nothing compared to the jawing the NBA or NFL or baseball.

why would serena fucking williams of all people need more publicity (?!) as opposed to another chance at a Slam? sorry lorax but that's about the dumbest thing i've ever heard.

Fixed matches are all about the money.. millions and millions of $. And fixed tennis matches are not uncommon.
The best way to hide a fixed match would have been a temper tantrum in Serena's case
This whole event was bizarre to begin with but there was something else off about it. For instance, Serena didn't show any signs of shame during her interview afterward. Her expressions suggested that she was lying about something and struggling to perfectly deny any suspicion upon herself. (I'm not gonna go into the details of all the 'Lie To Me' stuff that kept popping up during Serena's fishy interview).

In my conspiracy theory the mafia were the ones working with Serena (through Serena's coach or someone similar).

Why would Serena need more publicity? You're right she doesn't need anymore. It might help sell her book some but what ends up getting more publicity is the US Open and tennis in general with the wonderful Kim Clijsters story underway. But like I said, I don't think the fixed match was for publicity but the millions upon millions of $.

I will not speak of my conspiracy theory anymore.

not to dignify the notion, but if serena's intent had been to throw the match, she was well on her way to that without a tantrum that just drew attention to the weirdness of it all.

yeah right. it's a judge's line to hear "i will shove this ball down your fucking throat."

coming of the heels of many a tantrum from her, it's just ugly, and boring.

and i really don't care how it compares to NBA or NFL or mcenroe. i'm not watching the nba or the nfl.

*judge's job

For instance, Serena didn't show any signs of shame during her interview afterward. Her expressions suggested that she was lying about something and struggling to perfectly deny any suspicion upon herself.

watch more of Serena's pressers and you'll realize this is perfectly normal behaviour for her, especially after an on-court tantrum. She wasn't lying as much as trying to divert criticism from herself - she knew what she did wrong.

i'm pretty sure fixed matches do exist as much as i'd like to believe that they don't but serena doesn't need money either - she's the highest earner in the WTA, even without endorsements.

meanwhile, this JMDP-nadal match is turning into an awesome slugfest, just great shotmaking from both. del pony's up a break.

nadal 1st serves - 93%
nadal first serves won - 58%

wow @ this, but the empty stands for the 2nd SF is the thing I feel even sadder about.

And well done Clijsters. Don't care for the hate -- she came back, took it seriously, and if the women's game is in a state its not exactly her fault.

Wozniacki and Wickmayer's run => good thing, surely.

not an awesome match. I get to be butthurt now and I'm going back to bed.

if we somehow end up with a del potro/djokovic final, on top of clijsters/wozniacki, there's gonna be a lot of stomachaches in the tv ratings dept.

Disappointing Nadal. It's because you had sleeves on. You can't play tennis with sleeves.

oh bullshit maybe tennis should pull up it's panties and quit being such a pussy. that was nothing compared to old mcenroe stuff.

― President Emeritus, Fancy Chord Club (M@tt He1ges0n), Sunday, September 13, 2009 4:20 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I don't remember McEnroe ever threatening to assault a chair ump or linesman. Any NBA player would be ejected for saying that to a ref, as they should.

seriously, do you think an NBA player could walk up to a ref and say "I'm gonna shove this ball down your fucking throat?" That's an instant ejection.

yeah, serena deserved the point penalty no doubt

Technically that judge may have been right, but calling a foot fault at such a moment in the match is a very shitty thing to do. Srsly, how much advantage could Serena have gotten from those (maybe) couple of millimeters? The law is the law, but come on.

Of course, you don't threaten anyone with anything, so she indeed deserved some kind of penalty, but still.

i can't remember rafa ever losing in straight sets in a best-of-five - so shocked to see him looking so flat and frustrated. to be fair though, Del Po was just pounding him off the court, dude just would not miss today.

Technically that judge may have been right, but calling a foot fault at such a moment in the match is a very shitty thing to do. Srsly, how much advantage could Serena have gotten from those (maybe) couple of millimeters? The law is the law, but come on.

Of course, you don't threaten anyone with anything, so she indeed deserved some kind of penalty, but still.

― StanM, Sunday, September 13, 2009 2:50 PM (12 minutes ago)

no this is otm - it was a poor judgment call on the foot fault

yeah i agree it was a bad call except the thing with calling these faults is that it's often automatic for a linesperson - they don't really get time to think of whether or not to call it. they see it, they call it.

Mostly agree with this take though i wouldn't be so lenient with serena either - she definitely overreacted. it was a fuck up by both parties that just happened to be on match point.

no i don't sympathize w/ her either, serena was way out of line

Technically that judge may have been right, but calling a foot fault at such a moment in the match is a very shitty thing to do. Srsly, how much advantage could Serena have gotten from those (maybe) couple of millimeters? The law is the law, but come on.

Of course, you don't threaten anyone with anything, so she indeed deserved some kind of penalty, but still.

― StanM, Sunday, 13 September 2009 18:50 (30 minutes ago) Permalink

"come on" is your argument? please -- if it were up to each linesperson to decide when or how shitty it is to call a foot fault, there would be no game.

lolz was at a wedding all weekend and missed the drama! serena williams being a dumb bitch once again, shocker. honestly as she grows older i swear she gets more and more childish. i'm no clijsters fan and have no intention of watching the final, but i'm so glad that serena's endless bullshit backfired on her here.

even without the drama, she should be ashamed of herself in losing to someone playing her 3rd tournament after a 2-year baby break. maybe if we tried harder in smaller events, our game wouldn't be so rusty here?

del pony! knew he'd do it. obv nadal's ab injury played a role, plus he still gets a comeback pass i think, but it still comes down to pony being mentally ready to win matches like this. he's stepped up!

its deeply retarded to expect linesppl to start making judgment calls about whether/when to call faults - not really their job imo

i remember hantuchova getting docked a penalty point on match point a few years ago, for time wasting (taking longer than the allotted time between serves - hantuchova is TERRIBLE for this). foot faults get called, bad calls happen and penalties are levied at all stages of a match.

the only issue is serena's hideous behaviour. it's not remotely unfair to her, i've seen players defaulted outright for less.

also fuk all of u - i really like woznak & think shes got an interesting game its too bad she doesnt have the athleticism to really step up but shes a really hard worker and really smart

xp - i remember that too and it was completely deserved

its deeply retarded to

Gee, thanks.

also, lolz at serena refusing to repeat what she said in her presser.

i can only imagine the tongue-lashing she got from her mother after the match. doubt oracene would hold back at all.

hopefully her mom called her a dumb bitch just like you did

that'll show her!

i hope she did too. "self-entitled" might go a long way, too.

sorry stan but the idea that a linesperson should be able to decide when to play by the rules is pretty much just retarded.

shut up que

TennisReporters saying that Nadal has a 15mm tear in his abdominal muscle and will be out for at least a month. :(

dude can't catch a break. i feel like 2009 was supposed to be his year, you know?

Right. Two of you have called me RETARDED over something like THIS? Who the fuck do you think you are?

... Bitchy tennis fans?

are you being serious? can't tell if this is one of your bad jokes xp

have been reading everything i can find on the silliams incident. ugh, can't believe anyone's defending her on this. so much stupidity out there, not least a ton of people who seem to think that serena's being singled out unfairly. code violations and penalty points get applied all the time. there wasn't even any controversy b/c the rules were followed at every stage. of course line judges should call foot faults at every stage of the match. whether or not this line judge got it right isn't even the issue. there's no conspiracy or weirdness, serena acted like she did b/c she thought she could get away with it - no news here! she's been a petulant, entitled brat since forever - but this time she went waaaay over the line. she'll get fined but there'll be no other repercussions (lolz even if she is suspended...hey another excuse not to show at non-slams!), and in a month this will have gone away completely.

thx for crapping out on me again for the fed/djoke TB, wifi.

at the very least saying a line judge shouldn't call a foot fault or a normal fault or a ball just out or a ball just in, just because of the scoreline, is deeply weird. they should call what they see at all times. this is basic!

I don't remember McEnroe ever threatening to assault a chair ump or linesman.

Pretty sure during his USO 3r vs Zivojinovic in '87 he threatened to stick the CBS courtside guy's mic up his ass (not his own ass, I assume). Mac got three code violations in that match, the last of which cost him the third set outright (I think it was 6-6). He eventually won in five. Of course, by the time he pushed things that far vs Pernfors in the '90 AO, they changed the rules and the third CV was a default.

i can't remember rafa ever losing in straight sets in a best-of-five

Aus Open sf last year vs Tsonga. Nadal only won one more game in that match than he did tonight.

Just here to remind folks of things they may have forgotten. Sorry, but after a weekend with my 82-y-o mother it's hard to break the habit.

Fed up a set, meanwhile.

that sucks about nadal

lol cheers michael

Yeah, obv Serena deserved the penalty but if I'd been in her shoes I'd have started yelling at the umpire to overrule the fault (however ineffectual that would be) instead of kicking off at the line judge who is in far less of a position to change their mind - I mean what exactly did she hope to achieve by that?

This might be a daft q but would it be utterly pointless using Hawkeye for foot fault challenges? Does this EVER come up?

i'm sure it's possible judge foot faults electronically but not with hawkeye as it stands, i don't think.

serena wasn't defaulted - it was just a code violation - but coincidentally enough, the one top 100 player who has been defaulted this year was...the other SFist, yanina wickmayer, in the clearwater challenger final, for hitting a linejudge with a ball (she claimed accidentally, and wasn't widely believed, but it's a default either way).

mexican player bruno echagaray getting foot faulted on a second serve, match point down in a 3rd set TB -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnQp9YoLl68

also, i just have to say that while in phone signal-free devon this morning, we did manage to get one internet page to load, at a snail's pace, onto a friend's iphone, just enough for me to see the headline "CLIJSTERS WINS AS SERENA ERUPTS". and for about 10 hours i had NO IDEA what had actually happened and it was kinda torturous.

sorry to divert attention from this again, but i just lol'd at djokovic looking to the sky and crossing himself del potro-style. maybe prayer does help.

I had no idea I made so many bad jokes, k3vin, thank you for letting me know.

And I may be influenced by football/soccer too much in this foot fault thing. I've seen way too many matches that were totally destroyed by the referee interpreting the rules too literally, hence the feeling that rules are guidelines, to be interpreted in varying circumstances. If this isn't the case in tennis, then so be it, but I don't accept the retard insult. Ever.

u maaad

anyway i know "it's the rule" but calling a foot fault at such a crucial juncture is unheard of, and for good reason. let the kids play

i can recall tons of foot faults getting called on big points!

if anything, at a crucial stage of the match rules should be tightened, not relaxed. no one would ever argue that a normal fault should be ignored b/c it brings up match point - this is the same thing. and like every other call made by linejudges, there's an element of human error (not that i've seen any conclusive proof either way as to whether it was a foot fault).

Stan, I'm not ever going to defend the insult "retarded," but you actually seem surprised that that's the level of discourse on the internet!

a foot fault is a much more obscure rule than a regular fault, lex, which is the point. not one person is glad the match ended that way.

whoops the match didnt end that way - serena brought it on herself but the call shouldnt have been made to begin w/

one of the greatest things about tennis is that things get called the same way at all times. There are no "star calls," and the officiating doesn't change just because we're at a dramatic point in a match.

If the lineswoman saw a foot fault, she was right to call it. I wish NBA officials had that courage.

only reason that it's considered an obscure rule b/c it only crops up in amateur/unofficiated matches when it's really egregious - neither server nor opponent are looking at the server's feet when they serve, so it can only be called if a baseline judge is present. it's in place for a good reason though, and it's not really reworkable.

Ok, THAT is how you go to match point. And that's how you finish it. Incredible.

Heh, he just called it the greatest shot he's ever hit in his life!

True, though, whenever I go to match point that's usually how I do it too. Amazing shot!

a federer moment if there ever was one. dude is unstoppable.

Right. Two of you have called me RETARDED over something like THIS? Who the fuck do you think you are?

― StanM, Sunday, 13 September 2009 21:55 (1 hour ago) Permalink

i said what you were suggesting is retarded, not you. i have respect for you and enjoy your posts. but a line call is a line call.

my friend john's post on the matter:

Serena's bad temper has never cost her a match quite like this, but controversy seems to follow her wherever she goes. There was the moment in the 2003 French Open semifinal when she was booed off the court. There was the moment in the 2004 quarterfinals when she was the victim of an egregiously bad call. In 2007, in the quarterfinals against Justine Henin, Serena called her a bitch. At the French Open this year, after Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez tried to claim a ball had not hit her (which would have given Serena the point), Serena was caught on mic saying to Sanchez, "I'm going to get you in the locker room for that. You don't know me."

...

also, the "let the kids play" attitude doesn't work. a linesperson is trained to eye the ball, and the line, and to call it like he/she sees it. not to get lost in contemplation regarding the ethics of a call. you don't really have time to do in tennis. the ball lands, and you call it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVQhIEPbM0g

u ridiculous man

holy shit

i love him

I like how even Djokovic couldn't help but smile

fed <3

fed's celebration for that shot was 10 times greater than for actually winning the match.

i love when he gets like that

amazing

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/46372000/jpg/_46372433_hiotd_getty_282.jpg

i still don't know what to say about wozniacki's outfit

potato sack w/unfortunate ruffles?

i know! i was saying, it would be better if the top were tight at least

my new conspiracy theory is that serena has to be on steroids or something similar

even "conspiracy theory" would be generous there. do take it elsewhere, thx

i love how pam shriver is always in the stands

it was just gonna be that one liner - chill

Weird match happening here. Clijsters hit a few errors early to give the break, but Wozniacki's punchless forehand squandered a few double-break chances and then she double-faulted to give it back. WIth new balls to boot.

Clijsters' backhand up to shit fwiw

Wow, that game with Clijsters serving at 4-4 after being down 2-4 was absolutely appalling. Slam champions shouldn't lose from 40-15 up, and double fault when it's their advantage. Some nice lobs from Wozniacki, mind, she should stop being surprised by them.

wozniacki is getting everything back, and with precision

Oh so after that Kim hits a gorgeous series of backhand crosscourts.

barely won that point though!

Clijsters is constructing points well but often not doing enough to get the "kill".

Though much better that game@

man i really wanted clijsters to dominate this, just so someone could seem in control in the women's draw.

also, the "let the kids play" attitude doesn't work. a linesperson is trained to eye the ball, and the line, and to call it like he/she sees it. not to get lost in contemplation regarding the ethics of a call. you don't really have time to do in tennis. the ball lands, and you call it.

― surm, Sunday, September 13, 2009 7:50 PM (2 hours ago)

it wasnt a line call

wtf Clijsters double faults on ad AGAIN.

uh, the call involved her foot touching the line. that's a line call.

either way, point stands.

A HOLD! AT LAST! Good thing someone did, otherwise several of us would have been forced to type w***** t***** a few times.

x-post that's totally a line call.

I was on the phone to my mother last night who, when my bro used to play tennis at a club as a kid, once had a running feud with the organiser that certain players would constantly foot-fault egregiously and it was never called. And SHE told me that the foot fault shouldn't have been called. MADNESS! Hypocricy! I don't understand.

the ball lands, and you call it.

talking bout the "ball" of her foot here or?

you wanna argue words kev?

the point stands. you call as fast as you can, you don't think about it.

my point is that there's a clear difference b/w a "line call" (ie, a normal is-the-ball-in-or-out) and judging foot faults - the two aren't interchangeable ideas!

you're watching for contact with the line in both.

...

either you see it touch the line, or you don't. there's no "oh wait but it's serena williams and this is match point"

Clijsters looking better now, though this form would still get her destroyed against usual-final-standard Silliams. Or Henin, for that matter! She will cruise the second - Wozniacki can only get so much back and I think the pace will ratchet up a bit. Thought though, if Woz were to dig this out in three, would anyone have ever won a Slam with as low an average ranking of opponents - Kuznetsova, sure, and Cirstea's a 16-32 who did well at the French.. but Wickmayer and Oudin were overperformers who took out seeds (or those who took out seeds).

lol backhand volley looks like something I would have done

Anyway not to be mean about Wozniacki, she's lovely and pretty and on some angles vaguely DOES resemble Taylor Swift. And obv despite the Danish flag she is a raging Polack, so <3 . But her winning a slam would have been like if Anke Huber or Nathalie Tauziat or Helena Sukova had done it - WILL NOT HAPPEN AN SHOULD NOT.

i like her a lot tho, and her game. but yes.

yeah to think she could get a slam before dinara, demented or jj - gotta admit that's pretty hilarious.

and ;_;

dear eurosport commentators: pls to be retiring the cliche "she's asking the question of (opponent)".

i don't hate wozniacki or anything, but the more i watch her the more lex's commentary upthread seems otm. i can't even tell what her game is. other than hitting the ball back, which she's pretty good at.

i think pam put it just right: she gets the ball back with just enough offense to make her opponents lose their balance.

Yeah, are we being unkind to expect slam winners to be play-makers? Even Sanchez-Vicario had more firepower!

Woz's groundstrokes fascinate me. She seems to whack the forehand hard and it barely goes anywhere with any speed but even when the backhand isn't hit that hard it goes for miiiiiles.

i wonder if this is going to be some kind of record for least winners in a slam final.

"Yeah, are we being unkind to expect slam winners to be play-makers"

absolutely not

I still don't like Wozniacki's nothingy passivity, but the more I watch her the more I'm grateful that it's not another ball-bashing UE fest, as with Safina. Not a boring match by any means. It's 4am, why am I still up.

well out of the possible storylines available at the start of the tournament, a clijsters win is one of the nicer ones. if you just sort of ignore a lot of the tennis-playing by assorted parties that led to it.

True dat but the men's final is going to be more than making up for lots of the dodgy women's tennis. Er, one hopes.

I'd enjoy this a lot more if I wasn't so anti-Clijsters.