Does this young American with a bit of confidence have enough to postpone the Tower of Tandil's hopeful comeback? This match starts in about an hour and a half. There is a bunch of tennis to get caught-up on. How about the 20 year-old French "kid," Ugo Humbert, who knocked Coric around in Marseille? Very …
Author: Matt
Sofia and Montpellier
Let's hear it for Daniil (Sofia) and Jo Willy (Montpellier), your Euro hard court champions of the week! Actually, of course, these two 250 finals are all set for tomorrow and Medvedev probably doesn't exactly have a free pass to his fourth ATP title (won his first three in 2018: Tokoyo, Winston-Salem and Sydney); and …
Nadalism in the AO Aftermath
Did you read Steve Tignor's really poor reflection after the Nadal v Djokovic AO final? The guy makes a ridiculous comparison between this 2019 AO final and those of Federer v Djokovic a few years ago. He actually wrote this line here: "The Serb’s startlingly one-sided 6-3, 6-2, 6-3 win was reminiscent of some of …
My First Post of the Year, Again
Probably no need to really write about anymore ATP during the 2019 season as I covered everything to a "T" in this first post of the year. Ha ha ha. Actually, stay-tuned, I have a nice response to some weak tennis journalism relating to Nadal and the AO; I then proceed to take another big …
2019 AO: Djokovic Wins #7
What I really liked about the 2019 AO final last night between Novak and Rafa, their 53rd meeting, is how, true to form, this in-form Djokovic makes things so crystal clear for the audience, a crowd we could describe as a bit unhinged in their fanaticism, delusional perhaps: certainly unbalanced. Djokovic's balanced tennis brings all …
Djokodal By the Numbers
Ha ha. No, I'm not going to parade a bunch of statistics before your eyes and say: "therefore, . . . " That's not usually what we do. We'll make some references, push a superficial tennis sabermetrics alongside our more interesting analysis, but I leave the numbers galleries to the tongue-tied stat boy and stat …
Here We Go: Djokodal LIII
Djokovic took care of business, brilliantly we might add. Indeed, we get the 53rd edition of Djokovic v Nadal, which Novak leads 27-25. Calling this rivalry a war is not doing it justice. This should be very good. Novak's 0 2 and 2 v Pouille is perhaps more impressive than Nadal's 3 4 and 0 …
Is 2019 Nadal Unplayable?
Nadalism is the study of a sport anomaly. I have enough material already for this proposed vignette, a crafty account of the infamous toro de Mallorca. His present form is berserk. Having watched a lot of Nadal over the years, this form is not really something I've seen from him. It's Nadal more aggressive than …
We Need Djokodal LIII
Or do we? Pouille's run has been a brilliant surprise. If this was closer to 2017, we'd have given him more consideration. But he's been in a bit of a spiral. No question. He stone-walled Raonic. The Canadian had converted 94% of his serve coming-in, had shown glimpses of a 2016 Milos, Wimbledon finalist, etc. …
