ATP Notes: Fast and Furious.

I’ve completely neglected ATP tennis this week. Me bad. But really, men’s tennis without Federer, Nadal or Djokovic is a grim wasteland on which only the occasional wild flower is worth the pause to appreciate. 
Managed to catch two of Jo-Willy’s matches this week against Chiudinelli and Gulbis. And frankly, I got enough power tennis from [...]

Wotevs. You’re still on bandwagon suspension.

What do you know? Ernests Gulbis won a match. Against Rendy Lu no less, 75 62.
I don’t know what to say about Ernie. He explained during Wimbledon that his unimpressive results this year were due to the physical training he’s been going through that will hopefully benefit his game in the long run. 
I don’t know. [...]

Weekly Mosaics: go thug yourself!

Mirror mirror on the wall,
Who’s the fugliest of them all? 
 

 

 

 

 

 
Yes folks, those are indeed the new mug shots the ATP put up on its website for their players’ profiles. Were the instructions “pretend the photographer’s Etienne de Villiers?”
Epic success.
 
Go-Thug-Yourself Honourable Mention: Fernando Gonzalez for his “big eye small eye” stare-down. 
Go-Thug-Yourself Third Place: Gilles Simon, for [...]

Ernie explains.

I’ve been both perplexed and saddened by Gulbis’s non-performance this year. I know he’s still young, but he’s a month older than Juan Martin del Potro, and the difference between the two is stark. 
 
One has so much talent, but plays with so little consistency and heart, while the other plays truly monotonous tennis, but has [...]

You say mono, I say duo.

No predictions from me, as promised. I dare say you’ll read enough of it in the next few days anyway. Some thoughts on the draw and just a little shoutout to a notable first round match - Roger Federer v Lu Yen-Hsun.
 
Of all the people Roger could’ve gotten for round 1, he gets “mono guy”. Yup [...]

Bandwagon Suspension

Oh Ernie, you cutie patootie, won’t you play some pretty tennis for me? 
 

 
Don’t get me wrong – Dootsie loves her beautiful men, but she loves them a whole lot more when her beautiful men play beautiful tennis. Right now however, Ernests Gulbis, the baby faced ‘heartthrob’ from Latvia, has all but sunken into a tennis quagmire. 
 
The [...]

Larceny Alert.

Thief! Who stole Roger Federer’s forehand? It was YOU Juan Monaco. Oh yeth … feel the death glares of my Federeralist jury. We hereby find you guilty as charged, now give it back to Roger! 
 
Seriously though, I tuned in during the third set of Murray v Monaco, and floved every minute of Juan’s fearless play. [...]

Team Dootsiez Day 2 Results

The Scorers

Ernests Gulbis (14 points = 10 points for the win, 2 for straight sets, 2 for beating a higher ranked opponent)
Rafael Nadal (12 points = 10 for the win, 2 for straight sets)
Andy Murray (12 points, as above)
Ivo Karlovic (12 points, as above)
Serena Williams (as above)
Venus Williams (as above) 
Radek Stepanek (10 points for the [...]

AO Preview: Supertennis Team and More

Instead of doing some preview where I talk about the chances of every single seeded player and come to a useless conclusion, I thought I might try a different format. 
 
This Australian Open, I’m entering my local newspaper’s Super Tennis team competition. The rules are fairly standard – you choose 3 players from the top 25, [...]

Week 1 Wrap Up – Part 1: Ready? Setty? Go!

 
I’m starting my weekly wrap-up early this week, mainly because I’ve watched a lot of tennis over the last few days. With so much tennis played over different time zones from Qatar to New Zealand this week, according to my calculations, on Tuesday, Planet Earth clocked about 21 hours of non-stop tennis. Personally, the TV [...]