2023 general tennis thread

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Tennis doesn't seem to move OTFers to posting these days, does it? I have checked a few times (cue someone revealing my inability to spot something obvious) and as far as I can tell there is still no general 2023 tennis thread. We had a short one on the Aussie Open, and I tried a predictathon with (predictably, ha ha) almost no takers, but otherwise nothing since Rogin's 2022 general tennis thread, and it's now mid-March.

So just to note that, at Indian Wells, Raducanu and Draper have both made it to the last 16 of their respective singles tournaments (Draper by beating Murray in R32). So has Norrie, but I couldn't really care less about him since he played that Saudi exhibition tournament a few months ago (cue somebody destroying my love of Murray by referencing his doing the same in the past, surely that can't be the case?)

Raducanu's reward: R16 match up against world no.1 Swiatek. Draper's reward: R16 match up against number one seed, and recent and surely soon to be again world number 1 Alcaraz. Tough breaks.

[slackster]

I like tennis, and might check results and watch a bit of the Slams. But that’s about it nowadays, really.

[San Bernardhinault]

I am actually off to watch some real, physical, in-person tennis in a couple of weeks at the Charleston Credit One open. They have what appears to be a decent, custom-built tennis stadium here. Which is more than a bit odd given the desperate paucity of top-end (non-golf) sport elsewhere in the region.

[Janik]

The Charleston event is, or at least was, something of an oddity and a throwback as the surface is (or used to be) American green clay. It’s about the only event on that still standing, particularly at full tour level.

[multipleman78]

Murray has been fantastic this year. Not to the same level as his heyday, clearly, but putting on wonderful entertainment everywhere he goes.

It's a year littered with epic matches for him. Two wins over 11 hours at the Aussie Open, four wins in Dubai with multiple matches being won from match point down and another tour level final.

His inability to win anything easy is affecting his chances but the quality of his play is stellar and his mentality is up there with the best. Until his ranking gets above 32, none of the seeds want him in the early stages when he is fresh.

[Logan Mountstuart]

I'll definitely be watching the Rybakina - Sabalenka final at Indian Wells hoping it's as good as their Aussie Open final. These 2 look the most likely to break the Swiatek hegenomy.

I find women's tennis much more watchable. I just haven't got the attention span for long 5 setters, unless it's a really big match in a slam.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

I just watched the Indian Wells men's singles final. Alcaraz beat Medvedev 6-3, 6-2, and goes no.1 again. He was absolutely stunningly good, strong in every aspect of the game, especially his disguised drop shots. It will be good to see him against Djokovic.

[Jimski]

Today marks the end of an era. On 25 April 2005, Rafael Nadal entered the top 10 after winning the Barcelona Open (a tournament I actually attended on one of its earlier days, saw him arrive for a doubles match, already the centre of attention, but didn't see him play).

He then spent 912* weeks in the top 10 without ever leaving it until today. Despite all the injuries. Almost 18 years. I doubt this record will ever be beaten. Perhaps the most impressive men's tennis record of our time. (Navratilova did something even more incredible on the women's side.)


* the 912 weeks are actually more in proper elapsed time - some are removed from the record to account for the Covid lockdown period when tennis didn't happen.

[Satchmo Distel]

Federer had 968 weeks nonconsecutive in the Top 10, 859 in the Top 5, but really for the Big 3 it's about how many injuries interrupt their career and for how long.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Just seen the men's singles draw for Miami. Murray sure isn't going to get any further than R3! Here's hoping he wins in R1 and R2 anyway.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Challenging draw for Raducanu - Andreescu in R1 and, if she wins that, Sakkari (whom she beat in her US Open title run of course) in R2. In the unlikely event of her winning both of those, she will really have shown that she is back in business.

Edit: she's the sole British woman in the main singles draw btw, as none of the four British women in the qualifiers made it.

[pebblethefish]

Today marks the end of an era. On 25 April 2005, Rafael Nadal entered the top 10 after winning the Barcelona Open (a tournament I actually attended on one of its earlier days, saw him arrive for a doubles match, already the centre of attention, but didn't see him play).

He then spent 912* weeks in the top 10 without ever leaving it until today. Despite all the injuries. Almost 18 years. I doubt this record will ever be beaten. Perhaps the most impressive men's tennis record of our time. (Navratilova did something even more incredible on the women's side.)


* the 912 weeks are actually more in proper elapsed time - some are removed from the record to account for the Covid lockdown period when tennis didn't happen.

I'm going to mark this post, and remind you of it in 2039 when Alcarez beats it.

2039!!

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

2040 surely, by my arithmetic?

[edit: Alcaraz first entered the top 10 on 25th April last year, by bizarre coincidence the exact 17th anniversary of Nadal's doing so.]

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Watched some of another Alcaraz match last night - his R4 Miami match against Tommy Paul. Alcaraz is just wonderful to watch. So many "wow!" moments, stunning athleticism combined with awesome quick thinking, shot selection and deftness of touch. If he stays free of major or recurrent injuries, he has every chance of overtaking the slam singes title record by the end of his career, he could do it in his 20s frankly. It's so good that there's an attractive personality at the top of men's tennis who looks likely to beat his considerably less appealing rivals most of the time.

In other news, Pegula beat the recently Spartak top-sporting Potapova in their Miami QF match, thank Christ.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Watching Alcaraz again right now, in his QF v Fritz. I know I’m going on about this, but bloody hell, Alcaraz is brilliant.

Edit: it’s on Amazon Prime in the UK.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Fritz playing well too, mind.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Wimbledon see sense in relation to Russian and Belarussian players. How the hell they ever thought going it alone with a ban would work well is beyond me. [Edit: I mean, I think the arguments for and against a worldwide ban are finely balanced, but what is clear is that the only action which would make sense would be co-ordinated and consistent action across most of the globe, and ideally across more than one sport.]

[Tony C]

The recently released Netflix documentary ‘Break Point’ is very good, the behind the scenes part of the 2022 season quite illuminating at times.

Ons Jabeur’s story is pretty inspiring - and her drop shots are a thing of real beauty.

[Jon]

Bille Jean king cup is on the red button and the iPlayer from noon. I went yesterday, two singles matches and two losses for great Britain so it'll be hard going for them today. The first match - Katie Boulter - was especially absorbing. She was up against Caroline Garcia, a top ten player. Each of the three sets went to a tiebreak. The match lasted a mammoth 3 hours and 26 minutes.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Given we do now seem, finally, to be in the dying of the light for Nadal and Djokovic, would you prefer the men's game to go through a bit of a period where several players all jostle for number one but none dominate - I'm remembering the Kuerten-Roddick-Safin-Hewitt years after Sampras - or one to emerge quickly as an established number one (like Federer did after that period), to be the man for the to rest to all challenge for a few years? Which makes things more interesting for you?

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

I don't particularly care about how "interesting" the rivalries are, I just want the bad guys to get frustrated. So I'd be very happy to see Alcaraz dominate with nobody close to his level for a while if that's what it takes to stop Tstitsipas or Zverev ever winning a major. Also it would be good if Carlito could stop Djokovic from overtaking Nadal in slam titles.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

I remember that, on one of our tennis threads some years ago, Rogin expressed a fascination with the "lucky loser" concept in tennis tournament draws, and asked what the best result ever achieved by a lucky loser in a slam singles tournament was

Well, I can't remember whether anyone was able to supply the answer to Rogin's question, nor what the correct answer is, and this post is not strictly relevant to it as it relates to a Masters 1000 tournament rather than a slam, but there is some striking news to report in that general area, so here goes.

The men's singles final of the currently ongoing Madrid Open (a Masters 1000 tournament) will be between no.1 seed Alcaraz and the lucky loser Jan-Lennard Struff. And he had to win as many matches to get there as lucky loser as he would have had to win to get to a slam final, because the draw is 96 (with the top 32 having a bye to the second round, so all others play as many matches as in a 128 draw slam event).

Struff lost his final qualifying match to Karatsev. He then entered the tournament as a lucky loser, and won the following matches:

R1 against Sonego, 6-3. 6-1
R2 against Shelton, 4-6, 7-6, 7-5
R3 against Lajovic, 6-7, 6-3, 6-3
R4 against Cachin, 7-6. 6-7, 6-3
QF against Tstitsipas, 7-6. 5-7. 6-3
SF against Karatsev, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4.

Yes, that's right, the player he just beat in the semis is the same player who beat him in the qualifying tournament! I wonder if that has ever happened before.

Anyway, this is quite the lifetime best run for Jan-Lennard: before this tournament, over his long career to date (he's 33 years old) he had only ever made it to the QFs of a 1000 level or higher tournament twice, and never beyond the QFs of any such tournament. It is very unlikely he will take things one step further, though, given who his opponent in the final is.

[Etienne]

There's a headline today "Kyrgios out [of the French Open] due to injury sustained during alleged armed robbery". He's probably the only tennis player where I would wonder if he was the culprit rather than the victim in that situation.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

ha ha, very good.

Meanwhile, in the Rome tournament ("Italian Open" or whatever it's called):

- we have, no doubt not for the first time, a women's semi-final line up where all 4 contestants are affiliated to nations from the former USSR (I use "affiliated" as a guess for the appropriate word, as players don't "represent" their countries in such tournaments - that would be an issue for Russians of course at present - and Rybakina is clearly not "from" Kazakhstan). The 4 nations being Russia, Ukraine, Latvia and Kazakhstan.

- a QF exit for Djokovic against Rune. Which is a bit of a shame as I was looking forward to tuning in and hearing the umpire, whenever Djoker had won a game, announcing "gioco Djokovic!"

[ursus arctos]

Nadal is out of Roland Garros