TENNIS: Wimbledon - Day Four
Jun. 29th, 2012 07:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllDID YOU SEE IT? Ahem.
This is how I navigated the tennis on offer. I came home to see Murray win, and then surprised myself by choosing to watch Ward vs. Fish. I think Ward should be disappointed after losing the fifth set, frankly. He could have won it. Fish did find the right serves, probably because of his experience, but he could just as easily have lost it. He will next be playing Goffin - I feel obliged to insert 'the talented youngster' Goffin, such is the influence of BBC commentary epithets - who has to look at the match as winnable.
I then saw the end of the first set of Nadal vs. Rosol. Before then, I had been excited about seeing Nadal play (he is possibly my favourite) but ugh, he was playing so badly (for him). Rosol should have won that set. Nadal continued playing badly - that was the main thing that I noticed, not that Rosol hadn't followed the script and gone down after losing a set he should have won.
I chose instead to watch Kvitova vs. Baltacha and was glad that I did, because Kvitova was playing like a dream for the first set and a bit. Baltacha was completely shut out, as, in her defence, most players would have been. She was denied 1-1, and I think the umpire could have let that go. But suddenly Kvitova wavered/returned to earth and we could stop worrying about the double-bagel humiliation for Baltacha who fought well to earn a respectable second set. I was left thinking that if Kvitova could attain that level more consistently, she could indeed defend her title. And then I thought 'that's tantamount to jinxing it, because this is the women's side'. (By the way, well done Pironkova or badly done Sharapova for their match to run to three sets.)
So then we were guided to Nadal vs. Rosol, where I saw, with shock, the Czech unknown (he'd had a run of losing at the first round of the Wimbledon qualifiers. WHAT?) win the third set. And this is the thing: he outplayed Nadal, hitting serves and ground-strokes that were awkward for Nadal - Nadal! - to return. Nadal got things back to a semblance of his normal run in the fourth, and then the light-roof equation came into play. In hindsight, will Nadal be tormented by the loss of momentum. Stopping it then was more sensible than letting them play however many games and then doing it, and Rosol would have seen his coach (whenever the camera turned to him, I wondered had he always known his man was this good), so who knows?
So we had the cobbled together Today at Wimbledon, where Lindsay Davenport played polite non-British superstar at the 'Jimmy Hill' suggestion, which was funny. Sarcastic, entertaining but diplomatic Tim forecast a return to the normal order of things: 6-3 to Nadal, who wasn't playing badly by that point.
Rosol, often doing a good bit of between the points pacing, hadn't heard him. The commentators were reduced to 'Oh, stop it', 'Was that a joke?' and 'I've never...' Nadal dropped his serve and, although he then kept it, and you thought Rosol might falter, his serve improved, he kept hitting winners and impossible shots. John Lloyd often uses the phrase 'playing out of his mind'. Well, this felt like an ultimate example of that. I was reminded of Soderling's game, a little, which no commentators mentioned in the parts that I saw (and possibly Del Potro. Speaking of, he, Tsonga and Murray, not to mention Djokovic and Federer, will surely have watched that with small smiles when their jaws weren't dropping.) The question is whether Rosol can keep it up or build on it.
It is remarkable in the men's game, because although there has been talk of the depth - and Ward is but one example of a player who can be very good at times - the top players (the greats) squash them. If this was the women's side, the no. 2 seed losing would be run of the mill. Not expected, because you might as well expect nearly all the seeds to go through equally as much as the opposite, but Nadal doesn't lose in the first week. Relative unknowns don't play at that standard against him for so many sets.
Time will tell if it was a freak (and what it will mean for Nadal. At least he won his seventh French, beating Djokovic this year) but...well, I'm still shaking my head in wonder. And I thought Wimbledon would be less crazy than the French!
This is how I navigated the tennis on offer. I came home to see Murray win, and then surprised myself by choosing to watch Ward vs. Fish. I think Ward should be disappointed after losing the fifth set, frankly. He could have won it. Fish did find the right serves, probably because of his experience, but he could just as easily have lost it. He will next be playing Goffin - I feel obliged to insert 'the talented youngster' Goffin, such is the influence of BBC commentary epithets - who has to look at the match as winnable.
I then saw the end of the first set of Nadal vs. Rosol. Before then, I had been excited about seeing Nadal play (he is possibly my favourite) but ugh, he was playing so badly (for him). Rosol should have won that set. Nadal continued playing badly - that was the main thing that I noticed, not that Rosol hadn't followed the script and gone down after losing a set he should have won.
I chose instead to watch Kvitova vs. Baltacha and was glad that I did, because Kvitova was playing like a dream for the first set and a bit. Baltacha was completely shut out, as, in her defence, most players would have been. She was denied 1-1, and I think the umpire could have let that go. But suddenly Kvitova wavered/returned to earth and we could stop worrying about the double-bagel humiliation for Baltacha who fought well to earn a respectable second set. I was left thinking that if Kvitova could attain that level more consistently, she could indeed defend her title. And then I thought 'that's tantamount to jinxing it, because this is the women's side'. (By the way, well done Pironkova or badly done Sharapova for their match to run to three sets.)
So then we were guided to Nadal vs. Rosol, where I saw, with shock, the Czech unknown (he'd had a run of losing at the first round of the Wimbledon qualifiers. WHAT?) win the third set. And this is the thing: he outplayed Nadal, hitting serves and ground-strokes that were awkward for Nadal - Nadal! - to return. Nadal got things back to a semblance of his normal run in the fourth, and then the light-roof equation came into play. In hindsight, will Nadal be tormented by the loss of momentum. Stopping it then was more sensible than letting them play however many games and then doing it, and Rosol would have seen his coach (whenever the camera turned to him, I wondered had he always known his man was this good), so who knows?
So we had the cobbled together Today at Wimbledon, where Lindsay Davenport played polite non-British superstar at the 'Jimmy Hill' suggestion, which was funny. Sarcastic, entertaining but diplomatic Tim forecast a return to the normal order of things: 6-3 to Nadal, who wasn't playing badly by that point.
Rosol, often doing a good bit of between the points pacing, hadn't heard him. The commentators were reduced to 'Oh, stop it', 'Was that a joke?' and 'I've never...' Nadal dropped his serve and, although he then kept it, and you thought Rosol might falter, his serve improved, he kept hitting winners and impossible shots. John Lloyd often uses the phrase 'playing out of his mind'. Well, this felt like an ultimate example of that. I was reminded of Soderling's game, a little, which no commentators mentioned in the parts that I saw (and possibly Del Potro. Speaking of, he, Tsonga and Murray, not to mention Djokovic and Federer, will surely have watched that with small smiles when their jaws weren't dropping.) The question is whether Rosol can keep it up or build on it.
It is remarkable in the men's game, because although there has been talk of the depth - and Ward is but one example of a player who can be very good at times - the top players (the greats) squash them. If this was the women's side, the no. 2 seed losing would be run of the mill. Not expected, because you might as well expect nearly all the seeds to go through equally as much as the opposite, but Nadal doesn't lose in the first week. Relative unknowns don't play at that standard against him for so many sets.
Time will tell if it was a freak (and what it will mean for Nadal. At least he won his seventh French, beating Djokovic this year) but...well, I'm still shaking my head in wonder. And I thought Wimbledon would be less crazy than the French!
