T1B

LS wrote:Why the hell are these matches finishing after 2:00 am?

Screw_Michigan wrote:WGAF about sausage tennis?

Where's your analysis of the chicks?

Softball Bat wrote:Tennis matches?
The length of matches varies greatly

Softball Bat wrote:

LS wrote:Why the hell are these matches finishing after 2:00 am?

Tennis matches?
The length of matches varies greatly.

Stadium court has a daily schedule of matches.
Nadal and Thiem can't go on court until the match scheduled before their match is over.

Then Nadal and Thiem played a match that lasted over 4 hours.

Add all of that up and you get a finish after 2:00 am.

ML@Coyote wrote:

Softball Bat wrote:Tennis matches?
The length of matches varies greatly

The 1881 Wimbledon final in which William Renshaw defeated John Hartley is the shortest, 6–0, 6–1, 6–1, lasted 36 minutes.

The Isner–Mahut match at the 2010 Wimbledon Championships holds the record for the longest. 11 hours 5 minutes, 1st Round: John Isner def. Nicolas Mahut, 6–4, 3–6, 6–7, 7–6, 70–68 (3 days).

shutyomouth wrote:Isn’t Osaka a Japgro?

Papa Willie wrote:Don't know if Nadal can survive in the next. Talk about blowing all your shit out. That was insane...

BSmack wrote:Funny, I saw Jimbo Fisher scream down a ref in the A&M V Clemson game. All the announcers did was mention how competitive he was.

ML@Coyote wrote:Cops and refs are a lot alike. Years ago, I got pulled over for flicking sunflower seed shells out of my car window while I was driving. Rather than just speak calmly to the officer, I read him the riot act. I mean, sunflower seed shells? Really? I barked at the officer for about fifteen minutes, while my son was in the passenger seat. The guy not only gave me a ticket for littering, but also a ticket for tinted windows and the rabbit's foot that hung on my rear view mirror. I had to pay my attorney to get the ticket dropped, and they did drop it. But I'm embarrassed to say what my attorney charged me. If I'd just acted civil when I got pulled over, I would probably have just got a friendly warning. It was stupid on my part to give the guy such a hard time. Even if I disagreed with him, he was just doing his job.

Slap wrote:

ML@Coyote wrote:Cops and refs are a lot alike. Years ago, I got pulled over for flicking sunflower seed shells out of my car window while I was driving. Rather than just speak calmly to the officer, I read him the riot act. I mean, sunflower seed shells? Really? I barked at the officer for about fifteen minutes, while my son was in the passenger seat. The guy not only gave me a ticket for littering, but also a ticket for tinted windows and the rabbit's foot that hung on my rear view mirror. I had to pay my attorney to get the ticket dropped, and they did drop it. But I'm embarrassed to say what my attorney charged me. If I'd just acted civil when I got pulled over, I would probably have just got a friendly warning. It was stupid on my part to give the guy such a hard time. Even if I disagreed with him, he was just doing his job.

The officer should have put you in a sleeper hold in front of your son.

BSmack wrote:Funny, I saw Jimbo Fisher scream down a ref in the A&M V Clemson game. All the announcers did was mention how competitive he was.

So was the chair umpire Carlos Ramos truly a thief in Saturday’s United States Open women’s final? Not by the letter of tennis law.

But Ramos, Serena Williams’s coach Patrick Mouratoglou and, above all, Williams herself bear responsibility for the way an intense, gripping final between a great champion and a great young talent turned ugly.

The only full-blown victim on Saturday was the winner: Naomi Osaka.

She has the trophy after a 6-2, 6-4 victory — an extraordinary achievement for a 20-year-old playing in her first Grand Slam final in what felt like a road game from the start. Cheers for Williams reverberated under the closed roof in Arthur Ashe Stadium, the biggest showplace in the sport.

But Osaka will never get her breakthrough moment back. If there was bona fide thievery on Saturday — this was only a tennis match, after all — it was in that.

Williams got the experience her talent and commitment deserved in 1999. It came in the same Ashe Stadium, where she played boldly and often brilliantly at age 17 to upset top-ranked Martina Hingis and win her first Grand Slam singles title in her first Grand Slam final.

There were no caveats, no boos raining down as her trophy ceremony began, no tears brought on by mixed emotions on a day that was rightfully all about wide-eyed joy (unless you were Hingis).

But Osaka had to deal with all of the above after one of the finest matches ever played by a youngster in her position.

She absorbed everything that Williams and the chaotic circumstances could hurl at her and somehow stayed in the zone.

“I felt like I shouldn’t let myself be overcome by nerves or anything,” Osaka said. “And I should just really focus on playing tennis because that’s what’s gotten me to this point.”

That is easily said but rarely achieved, and though Osaka was the portrait of poise and focus on Saturday, that has not been the case throughout her short career. She has struggled with negativity, self doubt, shot selection under pressure and consistency.

Only two years ago, she blew a 5-1 lead in the third set to lose to Madison Keys in the third round of the U.S. Open as her movement and nerves betrayed her. And though she was brilliant in winning the title at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif., in March this year, she lost in the first round in her two lead-in tournaments before this U.S. Open.

But with her new coach Sascha Bajin setting a positive tone, she became a champion in New York.

“Ultimately, you never know what you’re made out of until you’re tested,” Bajin said. “Naomi was thrown in there into deep water today. Got everything thrown at her: big bombs by Serena, the crowd, the drama. She remained with her composure. There are certain things you can train yourself to do; other things you just have, and I believe it’s a gift, what Naomi has.”

She arrived with no nagging injuries and her improved fitness allowed her to stay in rallies longer without feeling the need to go for broke. Her footwork, particularly the quick adjustment steps, is also much improved, and her leg drive has increased her serving power and her ability to hit flat, full-force serves to all sections of the box.

But many players have improved their fitness and technique on tour. So few could have managed an occasion like Saturday with this kind of aplomb. The final was remarkably intense from the opening point, an extended, big-hitting baseline duel won by Osaka.

Time and again, Williams tried to crank up the volume and the intensity. Time and again, Osaka held firm, trumped Williams at her own power game, and did not panic.

“She was exceptional from the start to the finish,” Mouratoglou said. “She never tried to overplay. She was under control the whole time, and she controlled everything including her emotions, which of course is the hardest thing when you play your first Grand Slam final. And this was true from the beginning to the end, when she served for the match. She was as calm and in control in the last game as in the first game of the match, and that is rare.”

It was reminiscent of 20-year-old Marat Safin’s straight-set, new-wave dismantling of the veteran American champion Pete Sampras in the 2000 U.S. Open final, which was also Safin’s first major moment.

But Safin’s breakthrough victory against the old guard had none of the drama of Saturday’s final, and what made this match all the more striking was the contrast between Osaka’s cool and Williams’s combustibility.

Williams, it seemed, had moved into a new phase in her career and her approach to adversity. Once tight-lipped in defeat, she has become a gracious loser in later years. She has increasingly used her hard-earned platform to speak out on significant social issues and repeatedly mentioned her desire to be a role model to her infant daughter, Olympia, since returning to the tour in March.

But it all unraveled again on Saturday on the same court where it has unraveled before. At least she did not physically threaten Ramos like she threatened a lineswoman who dared call her a foot fault in that 2009 semifinal versus Kim Clijsters, which ended with Williams losing the match on a point penalty.

She was trailing then, just as she was trailing on Saturday and just as she was trailing in the 2011 final, when she was called for hindrance in her loss to Sam Stosur after shouting in the middle of a rally and distracting her opponent.

That time, Williams berated the chair umpire Eva Asderaki and told her, “If you ever see me walking down the hall, look the other way.” She added: “You’re totally out of control. You’re a hater and you’re just unattractive inside.”

That time, she barked at Asderaki, “Don’t look at me.” On Saturday, after Ramos declined to offer her the apology she was demanding, she snapped, “Well, then don’t talk to me.”

If you notice a pattern here, you are not alone. Plenty of champions, male or female, have handled perceived injustices on court with much more class and much less entitlement, and though Williams was charming as she calmed the crowd and congratulated Osaka in the postmatch ceremony, the furor was also, in great part, a result of her overreaction.

No doubt, Ramos could have handled the situation better, but no doubt, Williams could have handled it a lot better, which is the same conclusion many of us reached in 2009 and 2011.

On Saturday, as in the 2011 final, she seemed confused about the code-of-conduct rules. She has been on tour too long not to know better. (Mouratoglou, a veteran coach, should also have been smart enough to avoid giving coaching signals so blatantly. Ramos’s reputation as a stickler for the rules should not have come as a surprise to a coach as committed to scouting and research as Mouratoglou.)

Williams is, of course, a supreme competitor: It is what has made her a 23-time Grand Slam singles champion and brought her back to the fore after injury, family tragedy, illness and now pregnancy.

But that internal fire can also become fuel for something else when defeat is looming in a floodlit match on Ashe Stadium.

It is a pity for all concerned, but it was, above all, a pity for Osaka.

You only win your first Grand Slam title once.

ML@Coyote wrote:I think this is hilarious. The battle cry seems to be, "We want to be allowed to be as equally as childish and obnoxious as men."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/t ... abf34c8ce2

What a weird viewpoint. Rather than taking steps to make the sport better, they want to make it even worse.

I don't get it.

Softball Bat wrote:Give a bitch an inch...

Goober McTuber wrote: I don't mind watching the women's game. As long as it features hot chicks from Eastern Europe.

Dinsdale wrote:So, if a black woman acts like a piece of shit, bringing up the fact she acted like a piece of classless shit (and she's doubling down on it)is "rayyyyysisssst"?