Talk About Tennis 2.0

Rybakina, I think, is one of those very good players who lacks an extra gear.. if she can blow away her opponent, she will, but if it gets close, sometimes her opponent is someone like Swiatek or Sabalenka or even Gauff, who have enough great defense to make her raise her game, but she has no fifth gear, so she cant. we saw that at the FO when she couldnt stamp out Swiatek's resistance, and earlier at the AO a couple years ago, when she lost to Sabalenka, I thought she could have won, but when it became tight, she became passive, while Saba went for her shots.

meanwhile, I really dislike Tiafoe's forehand - all arm, no body weight behind it... he will get injured sooner or later, and anyway it is not as effective as it could be.

Davidovich Fokina has been an eye-opener to me, I hadnt seen him much - very impressive win over Shelton - great court sense, generally good all-round game..

I mean, Townsend was out of shape and her singles career has been negligible and nowhere near what people thought it would be.

She is playing an athletic sport. I always felt PMac was skewered unfairly.

jazzyg wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 5:32 am I mean, Townsend was out of shape and her singles career has been negligible and nowhere near what people thought it would be.

She is playing an athletic sport. I always felt PMac was skewered unfairly.

is doubles not tennis?

jazzyg wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 5:32 am I mean, Townsend was out of shape and her singles career has been negligible and nowhere near what people thought it would be.

She is playing an athletic sport. I always felt PMac was skewered unfairly.

Exactly. Given the current trajectory of tennis as a whole, the large stress is on the performance in singles. Her career record of 54-74 is subpar for someone who was touted as future star as a junior. The whole narrative of "body shaming" is an attempt to bring politics to where it shouldn't belong. Top level athletes shall be in shape - it's a given.

ashkor87 wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 1:56 am Meanwhile I hope Patrick McEnroe and the entire USTA setup apologized to TT for body-shaming a kid ..all hail the new #1 in the world!

Patrick only made it to #3 in Doubles. Always rode his brother's coattails.......(right into the booth)

But nobody ever claimed that Patrick was ever going to be as good as John, much less that he was going to become a dominant force in the sport. Which was said about Townsend, in singles.
And it has always been obvious that the level of physicality demanded in doubles is not the same as in singles.

When somebody points out that a female player needs to get in better shape, it is body shaming. When we said, on many occasions, that Nalbandian or Baghdatis had to get in better shape, it was taken as a proper assessment of an area in which two very good players were not working hard enough.
There was a bit of a double standard there.

ashkor87 wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 4:21 am meanwhile, I really dislike Tiafoe's forehand - all arm, no body weight behind it... he will get injured sooner or later, and anyway it is not as effective as it could be.

His FH and his serve are very unorthodox. He gets away with them because he is, obviously, extremely strong and a superb athlete.
His hand-eye coordination is also extreme. But if that goes away just by a little bit, and it will sooner or later, he will be framing a lot of balls.

I do want to point out that TT was the number 1 ranked junior player at the time his comments, so she actually was at the top of her game. Even if true, McEnroe’s comments didn’t need to be made publicly, or about a 16 year old girl. They clearly affected her as a player going forward.

To his credit, he walked back this comment and apologized years ago.

I have watched two junior matches in my life. One was Townsend-Bencic in the 2013 Wimbledon final and the other was Gauff-McNally in the 2018 Roland Garros final.

Townsend was considered a surefire top 20 player and probable slam title contender when she was the No. 1 junior. The match with Bencic was high quality (I remember being siper impressed by Bencic), but by any measure, Townsend's singles career was a massive dissppointment even before she had a kid. Despite her denisls, it is pretty clear her conditioning was a major factor in her generally terrible singles results. She has fantastic hands but she simply does not move well enough.

From the book of odd shots.
I am watching Monfils/Barrios Vera. BV hits his drop shot, from the FH side, by sliding his hand all the way up to the throat of the racquet, and htting the shot then.
Truly unseen by me before. But is does work; he has good touch with it.

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Anna Kalinskaya after losing to Leylah Fernandez in Washington final

“It’s been a pleasure to play in front of you all. I want to congratulate Leylah. Amazing fight this week. You truly deserve it. See you soon, maybe next week we’ll play each other. You never know”




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Leylah Fernandez after beating Kalinskaya to win her biggest title in Washington:

“I want to congratulate Anna and your team. You guys have done a tremendous job all year long. You’re a tough opponent to play against, so congratulations. Hope for the best for the future.”