[crystal_t33rs]

Mexteur, lol. There are plenty of Rafa fans! I'm also a Rafa fan, it's just that I'm(and many others in here are) a bigger Roger fan. XD Don't get me wrong, Rafa is one talented dude!

And dOotsiez! HOLY WOW. I swear it was almost like seeing Roger back in like earlier 2000's! O___O He actually kind of reminds me of Tsonga too! ^___^;

[aeroshaastranger :)]

::Mexteur:: !! i'm a rafa fan
haha i'm like probably one of the rarely ones here who loves RAFA MORE than fed
lol his on court and off court stuff totallly rocks!
not to mention that traditional biscuit thing, the on court interview during the 2nd or is it 3rd round of Rotterdam

monfils next~! tough! and i'm not watching cos it'll be 2.30am here! so tired now! lol may be able to watch a bit.

[dOotsiez]

^ LOL that's true. I think most people here like Rafa, just not as much as the Swiss guy.

Rafa beat Monfils pretty easily. Murray up next, should be an interesting one.

For Fed fans, the aussie ones esp -

http://www.dailymotion.com/user/vid-boy/vi...ennispt1_people
http://www.dailymotion.com/user/vid-boy/vi...ennispt2_people

for anyone wanting to download tennis matches, t3nnis.tv has opened registration until they reach 20K users, so get in

[cecilia]

so murray wins another against rafa.....
injury so early for rafa in the season...
hmmmmmm
i cant help but sigh a bit
no injury after a 5 hr match but now ><
ok dont kill me rafa fans but i cant help but think this

[dOotsiez]

^ Rafa's had a tough week. Apart from his match against Monfils, every other match he played went to 3 sets. And all this just a week after playing two five setters back to back in Melbourne, I can't say I'm surprised. If I were him, I would've pulled out of Rotterdam, it's such a random tournament I wonder why he's playing it to begin with. What I do find funny is that injuries are never an issue when a player is winning....

Dunno if anyone's read this -

http://www.tennis.com/news/news.aspx?id=164764

I think it's so wrong. What's happening in the Gaza region hardly has anything to do with Shahar Peer, if Dubai wants to be the next big sports city, it had better learn to leave politics out of sport.

[aeroshaastranger :)]

haha yeah poor rafa!
haha i was hoping that after the second set, he'd retire!
but ah rafa being rafa will not retire in a final.
ah well!

yeah he shouldnt have played in rotterdam but it's over soo..
haha

plsplspls rafa skip some tourneys!

haha i guess he was tired and all after AO and this has probably taken a toll on him...

[dOotsiez]

ahhh - sad news, Fed's pulled out of both Dubai and Davis Cup, and using the time to rehabilitate his back. I thought there was something wrong with his serve during the Australian Open, he couldn't just fall back on it and get some quick points the way he did at Wimbledon and the US Open last year, even though his baseline game was so much better than it was last year. This explains a lot actually. Find that serve of yours Fed

[cecilia]

omg i do have to say that i'm disappointed since i was really looking forward to watching him play again
didnt know that his back was bothering him

have to wait til indian wells now

[wonderbang]

Dunno if anyone's read this -

http://www.tennis.com/news/news.aspx?id=164764

I think it's so wrong. What's happening in the Gaza region hardly has anything to do with Shahar Peer, if Dubai wants to be the next big sports city, it had better learn to leave politics out of sport.

This has got to be one of the most infuriating tennis stories I've read in awhile. Completely unfair and I'm glad to see the WTA imposing stiff sanctions on the tournament. Luckily Andy Ram is allowed to play for the ATP or else it would have been doubly bad. But with all of that said, good luck to Venus in the final. She put in great effort against Serena in the semis.

[kmalancer]

anyone picking up the michael chang court victory IIs? I'm getting a pair later, but they arent going to be court use I have a pair of princes that have hardly been touched still. I need someone in houston to go out and hit with

[leftys_rock]

^HAHAHA yeah "back in the day", this thread used to be a two-person effort it's actually a lot more active now


Why don't the Williamses play Fed Cup?

Anyway - they call him Federer 2.0, he won junior Wimbledon on the 10 year aniversary of Federer's own junior wimbledon title. He has a single handed backhand just like Fed. He's 17. He took down Berdych second round in Rotterdam, yesterday he lost to Nadal in a very close match, 75 36 62. Tell me this guy doesn't remind you of Federer, just a teenyweeny bit? Take notice of Grigor Dimitrov I say!

The captain of the Fed Cup team has changed for the US from Zina Garrison to Mary Joe Fernandez and I think it's mainly a matter of convincing them to just play the event? Garrison was pretty good friends w/ the Williams sisters but even then it was really hard to get them to play Fed Cup with all of their other things that they do so I think it'll be even harder now to get the Williamses to play Fed Cup.

I'd love to see more of Dimitrov in the future! He has an awesome game + he's pretty decent looking.

I thought the Peer situation in Dubai was quite disgraceful for the sport. Considering Dubai wants to hold more large tennis tournaments, it should leave politics and other bs out of the equation. (although tennis seems to be all about money these days so Dubai probably will still get a lot of big tennis events since it pays the WTA lots of $$$$$$$$$ even if some of the decisions it makes are questionable )

It was nice to see Venus win the tourney last week after having a not so hot AO. I still find it very odd though that she doesn't play consistently well outside of grass?

Do any of you tennis fans post on tennisforum.com by the way? It's soley about women's tennis but it's got some interesting dicussions and is very up to date with news. xD

[dOotsiez]

^ hi leftys, and welcome to the thread

Maybe it's a good thing that the Williamses don't play the Fed Cup - they could seriously just turn Team USA into the Sisters' Show and win the Fed Cup year in year out.

I'm glad to see Venus playing well. Theoretically, Venus's game should translate well onto other surfaces, even clay - she's certainly better than your ivanovics and jankovics on clay, but often she's just not committed enough to the other surfaces. She has the tendency to just walk off for months to go to fashion school or whatever and forget about tennis, then come back to win Wimbledon out of the blue, and then trail off again! Luckily for her, she's got enough talent to just turn up at the slams without much preparation, but I think she looks much more committed to the WTA tour this year, so fingers crossed she'll have a good one. There's not a whole lot you can do about the Australian Open. Bad luck running into a floater on a hot streak I guess.


And I do browse on tennisforum sometimes, it's a good place to get news and gossip on the WTA, but I don't post there: some of the fangirls there are slightly nuts and freak me out ....

[leftys_rock]

Thanks for the welcome!

Yea, I think that's pretty unfortunate since I think she could definitely have a RG title by now, but she seems to just become an unforced error machine at random matches on surfaces other than grass. Nice to see her turn it around somewhat this year. Both Williamses are actually playing more tournaments which is great I think; and their tennis has become a lot more consistent opposed to when they would just show up like once a month and have some random losses. Oh, I just saw Venus' result for today and it looks like she had a pretty inconsistent day but at least she got through with a win. But it's her first clay tournament this year so I guess some struggles were expected. xD

Ahh yea tennisforum can be quite nutty and nasty between fanbases. xD I'm actually the moderator of the Russian forum on there so i'm quite familiar with how crazy some posters can be. (my username is Lefty. if you've seen me post xD) Some posters get updates on player entries into tournaments really quickly though, so it's nice. And there are some good discussion topics on there, but most of them degenerate into some pointless argument like Graf vs. Seles or something along those lines.

[wonderbang]

Welcome Lefty!!!

I'm so glad to see a new name, particularly one that's a fan of the WTA. Outside of dOotsiez, I think I'm the only one that tries to regularly bring in WTA conversation here. I watch ALL tennis but I talk more about the WTA here since we already have many ATP fans. Not that it's bad but I like to balance it out.

I'm also a lurker at tennisforum but don't post. I agree that the news is very updated over there....good luck with the moderating

[leftys_rock]

Thanks wonderbang!

Yea, I noticed on a lot of forums with a thread on tennis that usually there's no WTA talk at all except during grand slams and even then it's still mostly ATP. I'm personally much more of a WTA fan but I definitely still keep up with ATP matches(since I take in all the tennis I can watch since it's really not aired much on tv xD).

Sorry if you guys have talked about it earlier in the thread , but who are you guys' favorite players?

[dOotsiez]

^ Yes it'll be nice to see more WTA action in this thread. The WTA was actually my first love, I used to follow it exclusively back in the early noughties. But I've become quite disillusioned with women's tennis recently. The field is plagued by a bunch of cupcakes and their neurosis. Aside from the two Williamses, no one else seems to have the champions mentality and determination it takes to dominate or just to be a consistent slam contender. The likes of Kuznetsova, and Ivanovic spend half their time freaking out over their own successes, and people like Wozniacki and Radwanska aren't exactly stepping up to fill the void. Anyway, enough of my rant, can't wait til Sharapova gets back.

As for my favourite players - obviously the two Williamses and Sharapova on the women's side of things. And before them, Steffi Graf. I had good days and bad days with Martina Hingis.

I started following men's tennis with the advent of Roger Federer, so of course he's my fave by far. Take Fed out of the equation, and I have soft spots for Tsonga, Gasquet, Verdasco, and Lopez. It's a yay for Rafa, a nay for Djokovic, and I'm ambiguous about Murray - call me crazy but he reminds me of an ostrich bizarrely enough, and the teeth freak me out. I also have good days and bad days with Marat Safin and David Nalbandian - as we all do. Oh and Agassi was one hell of a human being.

[Volts]

^ can't agree more with the state of the WTA right now. If only Henin didn't retire !

[leftys_rock]

^ Yes it'll be nice to see more WTA action in this thread. The WTA was actually my first love, I used to follow it exclusively back in the early noughties. But I've become quite disillusioned with women's tennis recently. The field is plagued by a bunch of cupcakes and their neurosis. Aside from the two Williamses, no one else seems to have the champions mentality and determination it takes to dominate or just to be a consistent slam contender. The likes of Kuznetsova, and Ivanovic spend half their time freaking out over their own successes, and people like Wozniacki and Radwanska aren't exactly stepping up to fill the void. Anyway, enough of my rant, can't wait til Sharapova gets back.

As for my favourite players - obviously the two Williamses and Sharapova on the women's side of things. And before them, Steffi Graf. I had good days and bad days with Martina Hingis.

I started following men's tennis with the advent of Roger Federer, so of course he's my fave by far. Take Fed out of the equation, and I have soft spots for Tsonga, Gasquet, Verdasco, and Lopez. It's a yay for Rafa, a nay for Djokovic, and I'm ambiguous about Murray - call me crazy but he reminds me of an ostrich bizarrely enough, and the teeth freak me out. I also have good days and bad days with Marat Safin and David Nalbandian - as we all do. Oh and Agassi was one hell of a human being.

I'm unfortunately not old enough to remember the days of Graf and Seles in the 90's but i've watched some classic matches from then and they're still quite exciting to see. But yeah, the quality of women's tennis has gone down the drain in the past couple years; the last honestly exciting good quality match I remember was the 2005 Wimbledon final between Venus and Davenport. Ever since then, the WTA has been kinda bland unfortunately. And the last player that burst on the scene that had the capabilities of winning multiple slams was Sharapova and that was 5 years ago but ever since, there hasn't really been anybody new that we see as contenders for slams. Ivanovic did well to win RG last year but that was honestly one of the easiest paths to a slam win i've seen and she's been terrible ever since so i'm not sure where her career is going after this. And Safina made 2 slam finals within the past year but I honestly can't stand her or her game; it seems just so clunky to me and she can be a major headcase at times. It would be quite disappointing for me if she won a slam and it would really show how weak the tour is imo. And as much as I like Jankovic's game, it's tough for me to see her win a slam especially since she's been complaining of her like 117240917209710th injury in the past year and never seems to bring her best tennis when it matters.

My favorites are Sharapova and Henin(even though she's retired). I can't say i'm truly a fan of the Williams sisters (I have posters on tennisforum to thank for that lol) but I think they're tremendous players and I would much much much rather see them win a slam than like 99% of the rest of the tour. I quite liked Tatiana Golovin as well but she's been injured for the past like 2 years so not much to cheer for with her which sucks because I thought she had some potential.

My men's favorites are Federer and Djokovic(although that is sadly changing since his attitude has been quite crappy since he's won a slam). I quite like Davydenko as well, even if he is pretty boring and very easily forgettable. xD Nadal is warming up to me, I used to hate him (especially since he beat Federer so much! haha) but I think it's great that he's such a respectful guy to everybody. Still not the biggest fan of his game tho lol.

[wonderbang]

I think you all summed up the current WTA state very well. It's really love-hate for me these days since I follow it out of loyalty but I wish there were more compelling storylines and rivalries. I have to give love to the Williams since they brought me into my tennis obsession single..err..(double?) handedly. I do agree that most Williams "fans" are ridiculous and exist on the internet only to provoke trouble and controversy. I always hope that people are insightful enough to realize that not all their fans are like that....

Anyways, I have many other favorites for various reasons but I idolize Andre Agassi--even after his playing days. I just think not only is he an awesome tennis player but an amazing person off the court also. The only person to me that's close to his overall image right now is Roger and we all know how he's an ambassador for tennis. It's really players like that that transcend the sport and keeps me coming back for more.

[dOotsiez]

I'm unfortunately not old enough to remember the days of Graf and Seles in the 90's but i've watched some classic matches from then and they're still quite exciting to see. But yeah, the quality of women's tennis has gone down the drain in the past couple years; the last honestly exciting good quality match I remember was the 2005 Wimbledon final between Venus and Davenport. Ever since then, the WTA has been kinda bland unfortunately. And the last player that burst on the scene that had the capabilities of winning multiple slams was Sharapova and that was 5 years ago but ever since, there hasn't really been anybody new that we see as contenders for slams. ........

I don't remember much of Graf/Seles either, I only caught the very end of Graf in 99, and since she retired after losing to Davenport at Wimbledon, I've always had her as a sentimental favourite, and actually went back to rewatch some of her older matches against Seles and ASV. After Graf, the players who brought up my interest in tennis were Venus and Serena. Then I lost interest again, before finding Federer.

Actually, the last really exciting WTA match I watched was the 2007 Madrid YEC final between Henin and Sharapova. The one that went for 3 hours - 3 sets without any tiebreakers. Amazing stuff. I remember thinking back then that it would be great if we developed Henin-Sharapova rivalry, nice contrasting styles. *sigh*

For a while I thought Nicole Vaidisova was going to be "the next big thing". Oh my, how wrong was I ... Now I'm rethinking my predictions for Wozniacki too

And it seems like we have the same faves, aside from Djokovic.