Tennis

[Aziraphale]

^ LOL. Well, I guess it's always gonna be hard if he wants to play in all the Masters Series tournaments, all of which offer valuable ranking points. Hamburg's always been after Rome, although Monte Carlo is usually a good three weeks before Rome - minus the other tourneys in between. It boils down to a matter of planning and how much practice he should get in before Roland Garros.

Btw, what's "bogan"? I'm not Aussie, so I don't quite get that word. But "pommies" remind me of cricket

[Guest wonderbang]

LOL....yes blame the Americans. And yup, no bogan or pommies in American....we're deprived.

Anyhow, you know the only reason Nadal is complaining is because clay is his turf. The more the ATP cracks down on tournies, especially clay ones, the more it hurts Nadal's chances at ranking points AND money. It's basically a matter of self-interest at most. But I don't blame him since having 3 Masters Series in 4 weeks is beyond harsh.

Then again, tennis bureaucracy has never remotely impressed me with the way they handle things so I'm not surprised they messed this up too...

[Guest dOotsiez]

^ the arts nerd in me is ROFL-ing at the prospect of having to explain what a 'bogan' is, so i've enlisted the help of our trusty wiki, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogan

apparently im not the only one who finds Hewitt 'bogan', if you scroll down to the heading 'Use in Marketing', somewhere close to the phrase 'cashed up bogan', I think you'll find our golden couple. :D

completely OT, but my french teacher once told me that word 'pommy' actually comes from the french word 'pomme' for apples, apparently the Brits get sunburnt very easily and turn into a pretty shade of 'apple' in Aus. LOL....

yeah Nadal's playing 4 tournaments in 4 weeks and then has a week to prepare for RG, the poor thing's gonna be exhausted. if Fed wants his career slam, then this would be a good year to do it. cant wait for Rome tho, looks like the Americans have decided to join the party there. but our favourite 'bogan' has decided to pull out, he's not getting any younger is it....

[Guest wonderbang]

so according to wiki, bogan's equivalent in american is "white trash?" LOL...that throws a whole new connotation than i think bogan intended...oh well, you gotta love these linguistic differences

nadal is still on a clay hot streak though.....cruising along like there's no tomorrow...hopefully he won't be fatigued by roland garros....then again, it doesn't seem like he ever REALLY gets tired playing on clay....even last year he played a ton of matches and still won RG so i'm thinking he's not too concerned....although your chances of getting injured are probably still very high...

in other news, i'm going to make a very very very shocking guess in rome that the americans will either 1) pull out last minute or 2) lose early

[Guest S O U R*]

i play tennis sometimes only when i don't feel lazy

i'm not a huge fan of it though like watching tournaments plus i'm not good at it

[Guest dOotsiez]

^ I suck at tennis too, badly, but I play coz I love wearing tennis dresses. :blush:

so according to wiki, bogan's equivalent in american is "white trash?" LOL...that throws a whole new connotation than i think bogan intended...oh well, you gotta love these linguistic differences

nadal is still on a clay hot streak though.....cruising along like there's no tomorrow...hopefully he won't be fatigued by roland garros....then again, it doesn't seem like he ever REALLY gets tired playing on clay....even last year he played a ton of matches and still won RG so i'm thinking he's not too concerned....although your chances of getting injured are probably still very high...

in other news, i'm going to make a very very very shocking guess in rome that the americans will either 1) pull out last minute or 2) lose early

I'm not sure how much love Americans feel for 'white trash', but we Aussies certainly love our bogans, in some situations, it's quite an affectionate term, something that i would call ... err.. some of my friends....LOL *PROUD*

yeah saying that Nadal might win RG is like saying that Fed might win Wimbledon.... but u never know, they might do a swap this year just to spice it up for tennis fans.

LOL indeed shocking predictions wonderbang. im keeping my fingers crossed for (2) tho, and hoping that a certain A.Rod gets drawn into the same quarter as Fed. Vengeance is sweet, esp when ur opponent has a tennis racket up his ...

[Guest wonderbang]

lol..."white trash" is not much of an affectionate term...so i don't really think we have much of an equivalent..

anyhow, that would be pretty shocking if fed and nadal trade their home slams like that.....it's almost like a spoken compromise:

nadal: so you know how you won the last.......bazillion wimbledons...?

fed: yes i am informed of that.

nadal: how about we trade this year? you french; me wimby? *puppy dog eyes*

[Guest dOotsiez]

slight nosebleed from the thought of Nadal with puppy dog eyes. but im not sure that Nadal's mono-syllabic vocab could make up a sentence as long as that...

possibly one of the most amusing analysis of Novak Djokovic I've read to date. http://tennisworld.typepad.com/tennisworld...8/04/novak.html

this guy's got me intrigued....

[Guest wonderbang]

i just read that article too! you should read the latest one on sharapova.....she sounded pretty annoyed...i wonder how the WTA will react to this...it's like calling out your boss in public... :/

anyhow, i just recently subscribed to bodo's blog (i've been reading it off and on for a long time) but now i should be able to keep up with his posts....typically i read all of wertheim's posts over at SI.com and whatever i catch at yahoo sports. i'm no longer the hardcore news seeker i was a few years ago...i've gotten lazy lol

[Guest dOotsiez]

^ yeah i read that. I think it is terrible administration by the WTA. the WTA (and ATP for that matter) are both utterly incompetent compared to a lot of other sporting bodies out there, both in terms of their scheduling and in terms of their control over the players, players like Rafa and Maria just went straight to the media and their fans when they had an issue with the admin. if the WTA and ATP consider themselves 'employers' of these players, then they might want to hire better HR people to deal with employee disillusionment.

hardcore news seeker heh? lol yeah that's moi. just worked out that i'll be away skiing for the wimbledon final, absolutely shattered now. not only will i be in the wrong season (as always), but what if i come back to discover that the tennis world is in utter anarchy becoz Fed failed to win Wimby?

while reading some of the comments on the Djoker entry, i came across this video. Nadal's reaction was just priceless.

[Aziraphale]

^ LOL, well it'd be nice to see a new winner for Wimbledon

As for Sharapova... I don't know. I don't think it's the first time players have had to do shoots for tournaments, but have others complained in the past? If it's really bad timing and affects the players' game, then the WTA should take that into account and learn from past mistakes, but if it's standard practice and has been so for a long time, then... why speak out now?

Oh, and I read the "bogan" entry. Very interesting I wonder who in the tennis circuit qualifies to be called "bogan"?

[Guest dOotsiez]

i dunno. imo u need the aussie accent to pass urself as a bogan. it just seems so wrong with any other accent

anyone apart from Feddy winning wimby? sure not! LOL I only started liking tennis over the last few years, so I dont really know any other 'reign' apart from Fed's. he's kind of the norm for me, so it's always so 'abnormal' when he doesnt win. I think that's what he was talking about when he referred to the 'monster' he's created for himself after the AO this year. we hold him to such high standards and expects him to just pull it off.

i think it's customary for players to do shoots to promote tournaments and it's a good thing, particularly for women's tournaments. they certainly need the promotion. But Maria just has an issue with the timing, and the fact that the WTA is threatening her with a $300,000 fine if she doesn't do it. also Maria informed the WTA that she wont be playing in Berlin a couple of months ago, and the WTA went on to represent to the public that all the top players would be there, and that Maria 'pulled out'. Then they try to force her either to give an injury-related reason as to why she's not playing in Berlin, or to pay a $125,000 fine for it. Shoddy business if you ask me.

[Aziraphale]

^ Yeah, the fine is a bit excessive, I feel, and I agree the timing is not very good. Higher-ups have no sense of good timing The WTA seems a bit dodgy about the finer details of the shoot and all that, but I wonder if this was the first time Sharapova has protested over such shoots preceding a relatively important tournament. Well, we wouldn't know unless the WTA clarifies the situation, although it kind of strikes me as funny that Sharapova set up a "what should I do?" poll on her website just for this.

As for tennis reigns... well, the Sampras one was boring, so be glad you skipped that. Federer at least plays entertaining tennis and is an all-round nice guy. I still remember the time he got a cow when he returned to Switzerland after winning Wimbledon That cracked me up completely. I'll be sorry to see the day when he doesn't dominate men's tennis anymore.

[Guest wonderbang]

I am with you guys on pretty much everything. The Sampras era of Wimbledon was impressive to say the least but not interesting for me. Maybe because he's a serve-and-volleyer and so his game doesn't resonate as well with me as Federer's game. Anyhow, I still think Federer is going to be at the top for a while; I don't foresee his end yet but it's nice to know that he's....well.....human. He suffers from injuries and letdowns just like any other players; it's just that he's done so well recovering from them in the past that we don't really notice until now when he's experienced a prolong slump.

With Sharapova, I think she's not the only one to be frustrated with the timing of the shoot and just the overall management of the WTA. I'm willing to bet all the top players have similar complaints but realize they can't do much with such a convoluted and unresponsive entity like the WTA. It doesn't help that the WTA as well as the ATP actually has many conflicting interests between players, tournaments, and sponsors. Most of the time the players, unfortunately, get the short end of the stick because the tournies and sponsors are the big money machines of the tour......although this makes no sense to me since what's the use of accumulating millions of dollars when NONE of the top players can play. Again, it's one of those debilitating flaws we see so often on the men and women's tours.

[Guest dOotsiez]

was Pete Sampras boring? I've only ever seen him play against Fed in the exhibition matches, and they were good fun. Yeah I give Feddy another 2 years at the top, but would love to be proven wrong. Please please let Nadal take over once Fed's finished. Imagine a Djoker reign (given his current attitudes). and i wouldnt mind seeing some new players either, haven't seen many that exceed expectations yet. did they really give Fed a cow? as in MOooooo? i have an image of Fed standing in the swiss alps next to a cow in my head. LMAAAOOO

yeah the schedules are especially screwed this year because of the Olympics, but for women's, they just had 2 weeks with no major events, so there's no excuse. why couldn't they have started the clay season a little earlier, or did the shoot then. dodgy admin. and now all the girls who played in Berlin will have to go straight from Berlin to Rome, and do a photoshoot in between.

http://www.atptennis.com/en/common/TrackIt...008/416/mds.pdf

great draws for Rome: Fed and Ferrer in same quarter, Nadal and Blake, Djoko and Nalbandian, Davydenko and Roddick. The only person I'm sure about is Nadal. everyone else ... Fed has been quite human lately, but he's got the new coach, so you never know. I'd love to see another Fed v Djoko semi (that's if Djoko doesn't get another sore throat). but Djoko's got Ivan Ljubicic, Gonzalez, Nalbandian, so I honestly dont think he'd make it as far as the semi. despite he's good performance in Monte Carlo. u'd be right in saying that the two american players will be making an early exit. Roddick and Davydenko's quarter is probably the most interesting, since TSONGA is back! dunno how he would adjust to clay, but hoping to be pleasantly surprised. and you've got Ancic and Mardy Fish too, so i think there could be some surprise exits by the top seeds there (although it's not much of surprise for A.Rod to be making an early exit on clay).

[Guest wonderbang]

He got a cow alright.....and it even has a name!

^Say "Hi" to Juliette! lol.

And Sampras was a tremendous tennis player but was seriously lacking in the personality department. He was the opposite of charismatic basically. If it helps, he's basically a male version of Lindsay Davenport: great player, great person, but nothing to pull you in as a fan really.

[Guest dOotsiez]

^ actually that explanation does help! lol. but sometimes I find Fed lacking in the personality department too, he doesn't have as much flare as some of the other players out there, but what he lacks in personality he makes up by being charming and sweet, and Mr. Nice-Guy-I've-Been-With-the-Same-Girl-Since-I-was-19-and-she's-really-let-herself-go.

OMG the cow! LOL it's so random, wonder what he did with it. and OMG at his hair too. I've forgotten about that...*shivers* thank god his hair is nice now. LMAO.

[Guest wonderbang]

Same here. The ponytail was about the only mistake I could find with him at the time...I'm glad he chopped it off. lol.

I think I read somewhere he kept the cow on the land he owns......like a pet I guess. Although Federer took it pretty

well, if I were him, I don't think I would have kept it! haha. I mean....what am I going to do with a COW? I think I

would question the sincerity of whomever gave me it as a present Then again, with the price of a gallon of milk

being even more expensive than a gallon of gas in the US (ridiculous!), I think having a cow might actually be handy....

[Guest dOotsiez]

^ Geez. Well we have A LOT of cows here in Aus (no pun intended ) so that's not really a prob for us so much. maybe it's a swiss thing, to give ... err... cows. Although I'd opt for a lifetime's supply of Lindt choccies

so bored by the break between Monte Carlo and Rome (it's not like anyone thought Nadal wasn't going to win Barcelona). But im actually surprised that Ferrer managed to take a set off Nadal, it's the first set Nadal lost this clay season. The guy is invincible.

Debating whether to follow Rome next week, the time difference is crazy, I'm not sure if I'm up for staying up every night, but want to watch Blake, Roddick and Tsonga rejoin the party. hmm....

out of my boredom, i've been reading up some ... er ... tennis fashion, and saw this pic of Nole, it's hard to hate him when he's smokin' in Gucci.

Credits to Tennis Served Fresh

[Guest wonderbang]

woah. tennis fashion?! that's a first for me alright.....how interesting. lol.

yeah actually ferrer is a very tough customer....he's the type of grinder that you never want to play on a clay court....if i'm not mistaken, i think he did very well at roland garros last year or the year before....anyhow, i think i read nadal's record on clay is 103 matches won and 1 match lost...can you say WOW?

EDIT: oh look....i topped a page. i guess this calls for a mini-celebration....here's to nadal and his clay court domination!

^Nadal wants his shirt back....................or not. haha