ILE rolling non-slam Tennis thread

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 ?

The Cincinatti organizers have got to be happy with Clijsters, Ivanovic and Sharapova in the semis.

Stayed up last night watching Berdych-Federer as far as Fed missing a few break-points at 4-4 in the 2nd (having coasted the first). "I'll bet he loses this now," I thought as I went to bed. He nearly did too - Berd led 5-2 in the decider but Fed won the breaker. World top four in the Toronto semis.

Fuck me, Ivanovic gets her game back and then injures her foot three game into the semi against Clijsters. Brutal fate.

lol Murray

man, two amazing thrillers in a row for fed. About the best non-slam tennis I can remember that was on US TV.

in the last 10 years at least.

Federer never used to keep me up until 2:40am. He really should've finished that in two sets. Really have no idea how today's final will go.

aaaaaaaand it's 3-0 with two Murray breaks. Very noble of Federer to run out his career by making things interesting like this.

what on earth is this yelling.

oops I forgot about this during the rain delay. Uh, well done Andrew.

nice piece on date-krumm here - http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/Ageless+Date+Krumm+finding+ways/3410520/story.html

found this quite interesting -

“I enjoy being on Tour. In the first career, I couldn’t enjoy it,” she said Tuesday. “I don’t speak so much English, don’t like Western food, don’t like hotels, so I always had stress.”

This generation of tennis players can’t imagine all that tournament downtime without texting, iPads, and Twitter. But back in those days, the Internet was just an infant, and cellphones were nonexistent. It was a huge challenge for Date-Krumm to handle the isolation.

Serena is out of the US Open. Everything can happen... again.

^^based on current rankings, this means the top seed at the Open will be... Caroline Wozniacki. ;_;

OMG Wozniacki as top seed in a Slam. Actual lulz.

Serena and Justine out, Venus injured, Jankovic and Demented in dreadful form, Clijsters hit about 50 UEs and picked up an injury just now while losing to Bepa again...this has the potential to be even nutsier than RG.

Wozniacki vs Sharapova rnd of 16. Let's knock the dane out.

(WC) Kimiko Date Krumm (JPN) d. (12) Maria Sharapova (RUS) 75 36 63

A day before her 40th birthday! BEST RESULT OF THE YEAR, ilu Mrs. Krumm. Really hope highlights get on youtube soon, didn't get to see a point of it.

So much for the argument that '90s players couldn't cope w/today's power game, btw. Steffi could return next year and win the Australian Open, seriously. Hell, we should probably expect comebacks from Huber, Majoli, Schett, Rubin, Spirlea, Testud and Tauziat at this rate. Just to get the Slams which eluded them first time round.

Majoli won a slam though!

I always felt so bad for Anke Huber, such a great big hitter but always falling short of glory. Most of those players you mentioned could totally win a slam nowadays (in peak form), considering how lousy the WTA is, barring Serena (and I guess Clijsters at the US Open).

So happy for Kimiko, she was always my #2 fave in the mid-90s.

omg if Chanda Rubin came back I would do backflips

also I saw that result and was like "lol I bet the only person on Earth happier than me right now is Lex"

Francesca Schiavone (ITA) d. Kaia Kanepi (EST) 75 46 75

man this was such an awesome match

Caroline Wozniacki is your new Women's Tennis No 1, everyone! RIP WTA.

more like RIP Caroline Wozniacki; it seems like that ranking has been a complete curse for everyone except Serena in the past few years

Also, Venus is calling a presser this afternoon, and the Italian press is speculating that she'll announce her retirement, which...seems unlikely, given that just one or two days ago she released a statement saying she was looking forward to the 2011 season. But what on earth is the presser for, then? She's already announced she's ending her year.

looool seriously I quite like Caro shameless flirt that she is but looooollllll

re venus: Possibly announcing her retirement after 2011? Making a final go-round ala Safin... I don't know why any player would do that though - surely they know they're going to get the same questions over and over and over again for a whole year.

Wozniacki is a nice girl and obviously because she is a raging Pollack I can't hate her. But the idea that she would even get five games off an in-form Serena is surely highly amusing.

Oh hello:

http://s3.amazonaws.com/twitpic/photos/large/176746250.jpg