Talk About Tennis 2.0

When I said arrived, I meant Gauff as a top contender to win every slam on the same footing as Sabalenka, which they repeated ad nauseum. There were people picking her to win Wimbledon, which is ludicrous. She went in as the underdog to Yastremska in my book. She's just not very good on grass, which has been proven year after year after year.

Very impressed with Rybakina for staying calm amid all this devastation...impressive wins by Anisimova and Lamens...Anisimova has done well here in the past .beat Coco a few years back..i can't think of her as being good on grass because she is too slow on her feet but she does have tg hard, flat shots -offense is great, defense is not..

ponchi101 wrote:

jazzyg wrote: ↑Tue Jul 01, 2025 8:53 pm Seeing as how Gauff did not really play well at Roland Garros besides competing incredibly hard, her disintegration on a surface that exposes her two glaring weaknesses was predictable against a streaky power player who can get really hot.

Gauff will be fine because she has a fantastic head on her shoulders and a great support group, but she still has a lot of work to do on her game. The American media idea that she had arrived after beating Sabalenka again was off base.

A player that age 21 already has 2 slams and multiple Slam qf's has not arrived?
That is a bit tough. She is ranked #2, has the above trophies and for sure will add a few more. But it seems to me that we are still under the spell that anybody that does not produce Serena/Steffi/Martina/Chris numbers has yet to achieve much.
C'mon, she has arrived. Is she invincible? Nah, precisely for the reasons you mention (she does have weaknesses).

“A bit tough” is a bit soft of an assessment. “Utter nonsense” is more like it. Gauff is a Hall of Famer at 21 with 2 majors and a tour final championship, a fixture in the Top 5, and the world’s highest-earning female athlete.


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But I am still surprised and disappointed Gauff has not been able to fix her forehand problems.. everyone has a different diagosis, to be sure, but I dont see her trying anything, other than looping it more to try to get more depth somehow...

Gauff has a losing career record against top 100 players at Wimbledon.

That is not utter nonsense. It is fact.

mick1303 wrote: ↑Tue Jul 01, 2025 8:21 pm

Suliso wrote: ↑Tue Jul 01, 2025 7:57 pm Gauff has reached 4R+ for seven straight Slams, but now in great danger of R1 exit. Doesn't happen very often with reigning GS champions.

Historically it happened with this specific pair of slams more often than with the others. Or so it seems

I've build a query to check the performance of each Slam winner in the next slam. So far it is not complete in a sense that it ignores if player was missing the next slam and ignores if he won it, looking only at losses. And out of those losses it looks only at R128. So it also ignores all old Australian Opens with 64 players draws (later I may rectify this). But the results is that on WTA side first round losses are distributed almost evenly AO - 2, FO - 3, W - 2, USO - 2. However on ATP side I was correct: AO - 1, FO - 4, USO - 4, W - 7

Polina doesn't look much like Veronika does she? Her game is quite different too...
Looks more like Potapova if anything

jazzyg wrote: ↑Wed Jul 02, 2025 5:13 am Gauff has a losing career record against top 100 players at Wimbledon.

That is not utter nonsense. It is fact.

But we were not talking about that. We were talking about whether she had arrived or not.
Is her record at Wimbledon a factual thing that shows she is not that good there? As you say, that is numerically verifiable.
Has a player with two slams by the age of 22 not arrived? Well, that is reason I said "tough crowd". Those are very good credentials.

That was my mistake. I was typing on my phone and what I should have written was ARRIVED AS ONE OF THE FAVORITES TO WIN EVERY SLAM SHE PLAYED. I was reacting to the number of ESPN people who picked her to win Wimbledon, which I consider absurd beyond belief with the serving yips she has in addition to the problematic forehand.

I apologize for causing the kerfuffle, although if there's anyone out there who does not think she still has to make a lot of improvements to become a consistent contender away from Roland Garros, we're watching a different player. I also mentioned in my post she would be fine because of her good head and the people around her. People acted like I was savaging her. Strange. I mean, Megan's on here touting her hall of fame credentials as if that's been called into question. Of course she's a hall of famer. No sane person would think otherwise.

It used to be rare for anyone to win the Roland Garros/Wimbledon tournaments back to back. Gauff is following that tradition I think. I'm not a statistics person and I'm only looking at the WTA.

Winning both tournaments back to back was reserved for the great ones. That is factual and tautological.
The "problem" is that she won RG and went out in 1R at W. But I am sure that, if in March, you had told Coco "you will win RG and lose in 1R at W", she would have taken that deal. She has still collected another slam and will have one slam for the year. That is a successful year, for anyone.

ponchi101 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 03, 2025 2:17 pm Winning both tournaments back to back was reserved for the great ones. That is factual and tautological.
The "problem" is that she won RG and went out in 1R at W. But I am sure that, if in March, you had told Coco "you will win RG and lose in 1R at W", she would have taken that deal. She has still collected another slam and will have one slam for the year. That is a successful year, for anyone.

Oh no doubt.

And she's still young at what, 22 when careers now extend well into a player's 30's?

Coco will win majors because she is a great athlete and a great fighter.. but if she wants to be GOAT (she has said she does) she needs to fix that forehand and serve.. I am not quite sure what the problem is with the serve (just mental?) but I have heard some of you say her impact point is too low, with the ball on the way down.. if that is so, it should be easy to fix..But I remember Connors had a similar problem, I thought he used to connect with the ball too late in his swing, after the peak momentum point.. never fixed it but did fine without, anyway.

She's not going to GOAT or anything close to it. Serena like talent she does not have.