ILE rolling non-slam Tennis thread

serena williams, definitely. she pretty much comes across as an overgrown toddler 50% of the time anyway. andy roddick ditto.
novak djokovic was nicknamed the djoker for a reason, though he seems to have toned it down of late.
jelena jankovic does her eurotrash-lady-gaga thing pretty well.
nikolay davydenko and svetlana kuznetsova both come across as super-dour on court but have reputations as being two of the funniest characters around off court.
kim clijsters and caroline wozniacki will both do the i'm-so-nice-my-favourite-hobby-is-visiting-sick-children-in-hospital thing if that's what you're after.
i get the impression gael monfils would be super-fun in a setting like this, also francesca schiavone.
flavia pennetta is terrific fun though this mostly seems to centre around her regaling audiences with tales of shagging atp players in the physio room, locker room, anywhere and everywhere on a tournament site, so maybe not totally child-friendly.
all of those are current top 20 players. dmitry tursunov is ALWAYS good for a laugh though he's fallen out of the top 100, so i'm not sure how available he'd be (he's a former top 20 player though) -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV99EqADFyE

oh and i'm pretty sure roger & rafa would be tremendously professional, if not funny, but their sheer level of success and legendary status would appeal to any child.

yeah we defo would love someone like roger/rafa but chances of them doing it fairly slim...

either way the plus side of this is I get paid to go to wimbledon for a few days this year! :)

yeah when he couldn't think of anything to say or do except aim a serve at andre like some neanderthal, that was so typical. but he could've made a meth/roids joke and didn't! open goal missed.

― لوووووووووووووووووووول (lex pretend), Tuesday, March 16, 2010 3:02 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark

He should have brought up Streisand IMO.

either way the plus side of this is I get paid to go to wimbledon for a few days this year! :)

jealz! u know where to come if u need a freelancer innit.

laura robson might be a good choice actually, she seems to be quite funny and game for a laugh.

on the mens side lex is right djokovic is the obv choice but monfils is goofy/lol in an appealing way. and roddick is kind of a douche but hes got a good (if sarcastic) sense of humor & can be really funny.

i also think mikhail youzhny is hilarious but im not sure this is a widely shared opinion

I hate him but the kids would like Roddick, doubly so if they've never watched a tennis match amirite?

You know, I'm a Stosur skeptic. But her match against Na Li was downright brilliant. Maybe she deserves to rise up to #9. Barely a mistake in sight. Not sure what Li's claycourt credentials are but I guess those flat strokes are more hard-court weapons.

Henin vs Ivanovic is terrible.

Apparently Stosur's Charleston performance was really, really outstandingly brilliant. idk, who'd have ever thought a couple of years ago that the woman would magically learn how to hit groundstrokes rather than framing them 5 miles out all the time?

Only saw the last few games of Henin vs Jankovic - was impressed by how disciplined and calm JJ is being. Could be her first win over Justine in 10 tries.

SimO_Ona of the formerly-gigantic breasts has reached her first WTA final in Morocco, btw.

(last few games of the first set, that is. my stream seems to have cut out now.)

Shit, that was a typo. No idea how I came to type Jankovic as Ivanovic, the person facing Justine was actually playing like a non-retard!

Well, she still is playing well. Henin isn't serving very well.

That is to say, she's not gtting the first ones in in good spots. But she is actually placing some fine second ones.

laura robson might be a good choice actually, she seems to be quite funny and game for a laugh.

yeah i kinda love her. her latest tweet:

Probably shouldn't have watched the new M.I.A video whilst eating breakfast.

Lex, find another stream! Henin has been hitting some seriously savage angled shots, especially (oddly?) on her forehand, and is intermixing that with flubbing basic mid-court shots. But she's won the second set.

well obviously it was Jankovic who blinked first in the TB. sigh. she will never beat Justine. this is a great match though, high quality and tense. both playing pretty well I think.

randomly, Andrea Petkovic's twitter is really good - like, entertaining and witty in a dry, sarcastic way, not in the point-and-laugh way of Sweta and Silliams.

that said, i wouldn't be remotely surprised if jankovic now lost this set to love. that double fault to give up the opening game? brr.

and then blowing a 40-0 lead on justine's serve! well DONE jj.

zomg! She didn't blow that 0-40.

that volley, though :O

it was basically an epic flail

Okay, Jelena, wait for her to actually be ready before you serve, you'll lose quickly enough now.

well, that wasn't a quintessential Women's Tennis scoreline at all. still, a really good match i thought, apart from the last couple of games when jelena just crumbled.

also, she will never beat justine, ever.

also, scant consolation for JJ, but i thought she had the right gameplan - being aggressive, moving the ball around the court, perfect mix of defense and offense. justine was just too good on the big points and played the match (as opposed to points or games) better.

We have laura robson booked already! Also want to do something about umpires since none of us have a clue about these shadowy figures we thought it'd be good to explain them to the kids. Think we had roddick before I worked there and it was really good..I've heard.

GET KADER NOUNI!!!

http://www.sport365.fr/medias/sporever/sport365_664x376/tennis/78118_Arbitre.jpg

he's great - loved when he umpired victoria azarenka's meltdown in doha last year and when she went mental after her second code violation (smashing her racquet on the chair, the ground, everywhere) he was just looking down at her with this "wtf is this crazy wench doing, smh" expression on his face.

eva asderaki is cool too.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3155/2647038484_3af9ee3653.jpg

also, anne keothavong's brother james is an ump as well...

also, they're retired now, but i hear that both marat safin and anna kournikova will be playing the senior tournament at wimbledon this year (now how's that to make you feel old), and they're both terrific in these kid-friendly events

Whoa all amazing info...thanks lex. If I can wrangle any passes I'll let you know tho it's a military op I think, we had to apply two weeks ago.

J-Ho thrashes Peer to get through to final. SHe'll play... um who knows? Lapuschenkova had a 4-1 lead and then promptly fell apart to 5-5. She looks very pale but has a good backhand!

from what i saw yesterday, Lapushchenkova is kind of amazing - route-one MUST-HIT-WINNER-NOW ballbashing. i dread to think how many unforced errors she must usually hit given her career results though.

Nadal d. Gulbis was a great match! Hitting ~50 winners vs Nadal on clay = amazing. But Nadal just can't be hit through in the end.

it definitely confirms what's been apparent for a few months though - this is the year when Gulbis stops being an idiot underachiever. he's steppin' up.

He needs a lot of prizemoney to pay for hookers. Unless his parents pay for those.

Lapushchenkova's service motion = fussy, shoulder-ruining looking thing. Not quite Sharapova-esque, but... that kind of worry.

getting more ambitious now as basically our first bid was for ana ivanovic and her agent emailed back instantly like "yeah this sounds good, certainly."

love sports that aren't football and how nice they all are at giving you access...

lol poor Dinara

ivanovic's default mode is "i am so exciting to be here and i am so exciting to do charity work for children!!! :D " - lol i completely forgot about her now she's fallen out of the top 50. weirdly she signed a career-long deal with adidas a few months ago despite her two-year slump, so it figures that her team are all about the off-court marketing opportunities.

lol dinara. dulgheru's not a bad clay-courter though. but if the back is as bad as dinara's implied...eek.

most lol result of the week - Schnyder d. Dulko 6-7 6-2 7-6. Batty Patty led 5-0 in the third set, with match points I think. Choked, Dulko won six games in a row, served for the match, led 6-5 40-0. CHOKED and Batty won in the TB.

and today so-called "up and comer" Polona Hercog lost to Peer from 6-2, 5-1, 40-30 up.

Women's tennis!

Lol Ivanovic has won two matches in a row.

YAY NADAL

Sounded like a good match judging from the to-and-fro and the stats (very high 1st-serve %age from both); couldn't find a working stream and didn't fancy signing up at bet365 to watch theirs, so just relied on score updates.

Fed's clearly on an upswing though, after his sloppy results since Melbourne, whereas Nadal is back somewhere near his 2008 level.

What a rubbish tennis town Birmingham is. Feels like every AEGON tournament there has rained away. Tomorrow Sharapova will finish her FIRST match, and the tournament started sunday.

Haven't been able to watch mutch of Queens, but I did watch some Halle. That's a sweet grass court tennis stadium.

lol @ Queens; the top six seeds are gone

http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/tennis/news/story?id=5275429

love the end of this article

Li Na vs Sharapova in tomorrow's Eastbourne final, the two top seeds. Could be a good match.

Chewitt beat Fed in three sets at Halle! Blimey.

Sad to see Mardy Fish lose at Queens, I saw him play some absolutely lovely shots when I went on Monday.

For some reason the losses to people like Chewitt bother me far more than losses to randoms do, re: Fed.

Li absolutely hammered Sharapova in the Edgbaston final. Totally clinical, and she only lost seven points in the second set. She served brilliantly. Anyone else notice Mirjana Lucic reach the 3rd round there? She's back in the top 200 and will play Wimbledon qualies...can't believe her amazing SF run was ELEVEN YEARS AGO.

The first set of the 1R match between Safina and Rybarikova in 's-Hertogenbosch was possibly THE WORST tennis I have seen all year, which says something. Safina obviously lost in the end to take her losing streak to 5.

Yes, could not believe Halle final result! It's one thing losing to people who've never beaten you before (in a dozen attempts, see: Kolya, Sod), it's another losing to people who surely never expected to beat you again. What is this, 2002?

(I've been away this weekend - I'll watch Halle highlights now to see if it really happened).

Hewitt won it on a net-cord (though Fed's break in the first set was earned the same way). Horrible shadow on the court at the Gerry Weber.

Dementieva will miss Wimbledon after appearing in 46 straight slams. Which is a pretty damn amazing stat considering how hard she works on the regular tour.

FML @ Wimbledon draw

First time in 133-year history of the tournament: no English men in the singles draw. There are two Scots.

LTA, rather than chuck about wildcards this year, placed a cutoff at #250 (and banished Bogdanovic - eight straight 1st-round losses at Wimb but ranked 160-odd - to the qualies) and no one made it (James Ward failed to defend his Sarasota Challenger title in May and dipped into the 300s). All the Brits failed in qualifying, Bogdan losing 24-22 final set in the 2nd round. Kinda funny but will it achieve anything?

so Nicole Vaidisova and the fugliest man in tennis finally got hitched:

http://cowbell.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83423e30253ef0133f25c643e970b-500wi

aw Steps actually looks vaguely human there.

For some reason I can't envision Vaidisova as anything but deeply unhappy under the iron rule thumb of Radek. That's purely based on... aura.

Anyway, is Ivanovic BACK ?