A Writerly Serve & Volley
A few strands of confetti are still pirouetting about Melbourne Park, especially in and around Rod Laver Arena, but most of the Australian Open fanfare has dissipated and moved-on, perhaps similar to a kind of circus or country fair. The excitement of Roger Federer's victory and 20th major certainly has some fans and tennis professionals …
Continue reading The Aftermath of Federer’s 6th Australian Open Title
How would you describe this final between Federer and Cilic? Better than 2017 Wimbledon? Illustrative of both mens' tennis character, Federer the best at managing a less-than-stellar form and Cilic so close, so strong at times, but a little clumsy in the end? Erratic. Uneven. I saw someone else describe it as "lumpy;" not bad. …
Continue reading AO Final: Federer Denies Cilic, Claims 20th Major Title
But Cilic bails him out. Too bad. The big guy was starting to really find his form.
Here's an article with five reasons why Cilic can beat Federer tonight:The first reason concerns the fact that Cilic has beaten Federer at a grand slam, and then it narrows the point down to having beaten him in a GS SF. As the logic goes, if he's already done this, I will do it again. …
As hard as this is to believe, I don't have much to say. Federer should win this match v Cilic for a number of reasons. His level, variety, history, career confidence, H2H with the Croatian, the players' friendship (it's genuine), the night match conditions, his staying power helped by his reduced draw rigor, possibility of …
The second SF lifts off for us on the U.S. west coast at around 12:30am. Do you know how many times I've been up at 3 and even 4am watching these ATP blokes slug-it-out down-under? Too many. We have another one tonight. If we take a more basic approach to this match, Federer should win. …
The Nadal loss is. . . stunning for some, predictable for others, symptomatic of the plague of injury, somehow an injustice . . . My crap detector condemned the premature ejaculation over Nadal's championship form against this or that also-ran (I sound pretty disrespectful in these over-generalizations of ATP talent, but I think my point …
This is late. Didn't have time to write this preview, but have started thinking about my Nadal Melbourne eulogy and will post that tomorrow along with reaction to this last QF. Like Nadal, we're having a tough time reading Federer, but from what I've seen the tennis hasn't been lights-out; but neither have his opponents, …
We said this yesterday: "But as we said in our preview, I’m not necessarily sold on [Dimitrov] vs. Nadal. And would it shock you if he lost to a surging Edmund, who, as I said in my draw analysis, has a very solid (big) game." We also just argued how the power game is really …
Ваy, 와우, wow. . . Would love to have live blogged this match. So many thoughts racing through my imagination while these two genius' raced along the baseline to-and-fro, chasing their dreams, running from their nightmares. There's a bit of context to a match like this. Penetration. The man with the most violent ground stroke …
