2022 Tennis

jezza1918

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Big showdown in Madrid QF between Nadal and Carlos Alcarez who is already in the top 10 at age 19. He’s my sleeper pick to win the French Open.
So annoyed I can't watch this match. I think Alcaraz is a year away from winning a slam though...IMO his style and the physical toll he puts on his body will make it tougher to win seven consecutive 3/5 set matches. I'll contradict myself a little because the physical toll on a point to point basis actually reminds me a bit of Nadal early in his career. Nadal could withstand it at the French though because he was just so freaking dominant on clay even early in his career (24 straight clay court wins in 2005, dropped a total of 3 sets at Roland Garros that year).
 

HomeRunBaker

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Big showdown in Madrid QF between Nadal and Carlos Alcarez who is already in the top 10 at age 19. He’s my sleeper pick to win the French Open.
Carlos isn’t a sleeper anymore…..he’s the second favorite behind Nadal. Anyone watching this match? It’s going to be a tough ask of Nadal to bounce back off yesterdays Goffin match here. If anyone can do it though…..
 

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Carlos turns his ankle and loses next 5 points after being taped up. Now a spectator is being attended to for what appears could be a heart attack and Nadal complaining about them not starting the match back up. Not the best look imo.
 

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Nadal now a -270 favorite as we go to the 3rd set against a both physically and mentally hobbled Carlos Alcaraz. He apparently injured his thumb on the fall as well. Top forehand went from 127 to 110 following the fall and backhand from 110 to 107.
 

jezza1918

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I want this in writing before the outcome because I am rooting hard for Alcaraz - but no matter what I think this is the most fun non-slam men’s match I can remember watching. Just incredible stuff.
 

jsinger121

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Alcaraz wins in a 3 set thriller. What a start to 2022 for him. Reached the third round in Melbourne losing a 5 set match to Berrettini coming back from two sets down. Semifinals at Indians Wells (Masters). Won Miami Open (Masters). Also won the Rio Open and Barcelona Open both clay 500 Series tournaments and now is in the final at Madrid. His worst result in a big tournament this year is a second round loss to up and coming American Sebastian Korda. On the live rankings he jumped from 9th to 6th with the win over Novak.
 

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Anyone have eyes on that third set? Did Alcaraz fully recover from that fall or did Nadal falter? Some of both?
Alcaraz recovered. Fun one coming up in a couple hours, Nadal vs Isner. Well, depending what you call fun.
 

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There are a ton of reasons I should like isner (being a ‘canes fan sure ain’t one of them), I just really struggle to root for him when I watch him play
I played him +4.5 games. In their 8 career matches, 4 of them on clay, Nadal has not once covered this number.
 

jezza1918

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I played him +4.5 games. In their 8 career matches, 4 of them on clay, Nadal has not once covered this number.
For the match?!? That seems absurdly low. I know it’s nadal but isner has had some decent success on clay in his career for a guy without much of a ground stroke game (relatively speaking of course). The clay might slow his serve down but the height of the bounce makes it very difficult on returners
 

jezza1918

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No I agreed with you and when I looked at the history the past competitiveness was there. 7 of their 8 matches had at least one tiebreaker and the one that didn’t was 6-4, 6-4. Oh well.
Yeah I more meant from a jinxing standpoint! Lucky loser American Marcus Giron demolished 12th seeded Schwartzman in the first set, would be a huge win for him. And have the silver lining of letting Schwartzman and Iser solely focus on staying alive as long as possible in doubles, which is terrific for everyone.
FSUbSduVkAEohyJ.jpg
 

jezza1918

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No I agreed with you and when I looked at the history the past competitiveness was there. 7 of their 8 matches had at least one tiebreaker and the one that didn’t was 6-4, 6-4. Oh well.
Yeah I more meant from a jinxing standpoint! Lucky loser American Marcus Giron demolished 12th seeded Schwartzman in the first set, would be a huge win for him. And have the silver lining of letting Schwartzman and Iser solely focus on staying alive as long as possible in doubles, which is terrific for everyone.
View attachment 51506
 

shawnrbu

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Djokovic and Nadal potentially to meet in the French Quarterfinals. Alcaraz would be the likely semifinal opponent.

Tsitsipas with an easy draw as he can make the Final without having to play any of the 3 aforementioned superstars.
 

jsinger121

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French Open has kicked off. Dominic Thiem bounced in straight sets in the first round. He’s fallen off a cliff after injuries. Also FAA is in major trouble already down 2 sets to a qualifier.
 

jsinger121

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Gutsy come from behind win from FAA to come back from 2 sets down to pull out a win in the first round.
 

jezza1918

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And an even bigger surprise is #2 and defending champ Krejcikova going out.
Probably splitting hairs to a degree but Jabeur was coming off winning her first 1000 level event at Madrid, Krejcikova was coming off 3 months of DNPs due to injury. But if a seed is upset in the first round in a tournament Swiatek is going to win anyway...does that upset really matter? I'm only partially kidding.
Rough, but unsurprising start, for American men as seeds Opelka & Brooksby went down in straight sets.
 

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Djokovic and Nadal potentially to meet in the French Quarterfinals. Alcaraz would be the likely semifinal opponent.

Tsitsipas with an easy draw as he can make the Final without having to play any of the 3 aforementioned superstars.
This is so ridiculous. I’m not familiar with how they seed these majors but an unconditioned Medvedev on clay being a 2 gives an inherent advantage to whoever is the 1 on his side of the draw. How isn’t something like this an easy fix?
 

jon abbey

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Wawrinka loses, only notable because he would have played Nadal next.
 

shawnrbu

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Zverev rallies from 2 sets down to Baez to win in 5. 7-5 5th set.

The tournament favorite Alcaraz is down 2 sets to 1 to Ramos. Alcaraz still the favorite in the match at -185 heading into the 4th set.
 

jon abbey

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And Alcaraz breaks back, after saving one match point, 5-5 now.
 

jezza1918

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HomeRunBaker

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Lots of drama between Tsitsipas, Charlie Alvarez and Zverev.

I think Ruud could be the next high seed to face a challenge in the morning from Ruusuvuori. Alarm set for 4:58am!!
 

jon abbey

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#3 Badosa and #7 Sabalenka go out, so the second highest woman left after #1 Swiatek is now #11 Pegula. The highest seeded women in the bottom half are #17 Fernandez and #18 Gauff who could meet in a very fun semi if seeds hold from here (ha!).

On the men's side, I believe the top 9 are all still in.
 

jon abbey

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This has been a really good match. Rafa is being tested.
So dumb to have #5 vs #9 in the round of 16, just slot players exactly to their seeds. I complain about this all the time here, sorry, but it drives me nuts.

Similarly #1 Djokovic and #5 Nadal should not be playing in the semis, not the quarters, although it lines up as well as possible as is for Djokovic, his win over Schwartzman today took 2:15 and Nadal's battle was 4:21.
 
So dumb to have #5 vs #9 in the round of 16, just slot players exactly to their seeds. I complain about this all the time here, sorry, but it drives me nuts.

Similarly #1 Djokovic and #5 Nadal should not be playing in the semis, not the quarters, although it lines up as well as possible as is for Djokovic, his win over Schwartzman today took 2:15 and Nadal's battle was 4:21.
Hard disagree regarding the seedings. Reasonable minds may disagree, but I think the benefits of getting different matchups when the rankings are stable - and of making it impossible to manipulate your ranking in pursuit of specific matchups in particular tournaments - are more important than the downsides of getting lopsided draws from time to time. And frankly, isn't it better to get Nadal v Djokovic in the quarterfinals than potentially not at all? (If Nadal really wanted to avoid a possible QF matchup with a top seed, he could have tried harder to be amongst the top 4 seeds...)

Meanwhile, Holger Rune - who I'm not sure I'd heard of at all before today - defeated Tsitsipas despite a bad wobble when first serving for the match at 5-2 in the 4th. That half of the draw is looking very Scandinavian, with the Danish Rune now facing the Norwegian Ruud in the quarters.
 

jon abbey

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Hard disagree regarding the seedings. Reasonable minds may disagree, but I think the benefits of getting different matchups when the rankings are stable - and of making it impossible to manipulate your ranking in pursuit of specific matchups in particular tournaments - are more important than the downsides of getting lopsided draws from time to time. And frankly, isn't it better to get Nadal v Djokovic in the quarterfinals than potentially not at all? (If Nadal really wanted to avoid a possible QF matchup with a top seed, he could have tried harder to be amongst the top 4 seeds...)
I disagree that reasonable minds can disagree, it is impossible to manipulate your ranking that way and no one would do that anyway, and the 'different matchups' thing is supposedly why they do that but honestly I think it would be a non-issue. I am pretty sure I intensely investigated that at one point and found that we got just as many repeat matchups this way.

Swiatek loses a first set tiebreak to Zheng.
 

jon abbey

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To be clear, I don't care what they do in non-Slams as I don't care about those results, but I know back when I was a serious fencer, they seeded people exactly as they should and it was way better than if they had used this bullshit system. Slams should go exactly by the seeding, it quite often makes the tournament worse when they don't and this year's men's side of the French is an obvious extreme example, especially now with Tsitsipas out.
 

jon abbey

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Swiatek turns it around quickly, already up 3-0 in the second set including two breaks.
 
I disagree that reasonable minds can disagree
So you're the thought police now?
I am pretty sure I intensely investigated that at one point and found that we got just as many repeat matchups this way.
I'll defer to your research in this regard, but I'm still not sure I understand on what grounds you are so annoyed about this. What do you think the goal of seeding a tournament is? Because "to ensure the fairest possible matchups if the top seeds keep winning" isn't the only justifiable motivation. I mean, the FA Cup and many other soccer cup competitions use a totally random draw, so that the best two teams could face each other at the first possible opportunity...and nobody has ever thought any winners of those tournaments were somehow illegitimate because they got a kind draw. That system is probably the best way of generating potentially interesting matchups in every round, rather than pushing them all toward the latter stages. And if people find that to be more entertaining, even at the expense of potential fairness, is that really so wrong? Sports are in the entertainment business.
 

jon abbey

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If you’re going to seed a tournament at all, do it correctly. I’d be fine with them doing a full 1-128, that would make a lot more sense to me than the current system.

And there’s no increased entertainment value here, don’t even understand that argument, but you’re not going to get me to budge one iota on this opinion, and I will continue to annoyingly complain about it a few times per year, sorry to all.

As for soccer, the late seventies Cosmos were the only sports team I ever had season tickets to, my dad and I used to go when I was very young and I saw some of the most exciting sporting events of my life. Nevertheless I quit watching soccer entirely a few years ago largely because I find there is too much randomness and luck in the sport for my taste, not just the draws as you describe but the actual sport. I get that like most things in the world, I am in the minority here.
 

jon abbey

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Swiatek wins easily after losing the first set, 6-0, 6-2 in the second and third.