RICKY

By the way TP it’s my birthday (big one) on thursday the 29th, could you post me a nice picture of Roger and his lovely hair?

Thanks xxxxxx Ricky

Hi TP, for my birthday on oct 29, could I ask which YOU consider being the best match of the year 2010 so far, my choice could have been Ferrer-Federer in Madrid, I forgot, was it that good?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omLgw9kfrQ4&feature=related
maybe not… But which is yours?
Thanks in advance!

M

Courier picked to replace P. McEnroe as Davis Cup coach

http://www.cbssports.com/tennis/story/14196412/courier-picked-to-replace-mcenroe-as-davis-cup-coach/

JENNY

Jamie Murray gets married – Congratulations!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1324634/Andy-Murray-plays-best-man-brother-Jamie-Murray-weds-Colombian-girlfriend.html

i dont want Murray & Gasquet pics this year. =) I want Safina & Rafa. (:

I want Rafa/Murray/Gasquet pics for my birthday.

Slams:

8-3 Sampras.

Masters:

5-5.

WTF

4-2 Sampras.

Overall H2H:

20-14 Sampras.

What’s going on with Federer and Nadal?

‘Palm trees are the last ones to uproot amidst strong winds’ – because of their ability to bend. Nadal appears to have struck a seemingly healthy balance by always leaving a door open for when things go south – even when at the peak of his game / career. That makes it harder for you to become a target – within reason – as you have already laid the foundation to admit your deficiency / fall without sounding defensive and combative. It also makes it a lot easier to change course from the initial plan – despite it being a massive billboard of your open admission of being incorrect or incapable of handling the task at hand.

That’s the most efficient use of ego to ensure you are always moving forward while clearing the brush at your feet instead of bulldozing through it for fear of seeming weak and incapable. This quality is almost impossible to possess at 24. Heck there are clowns at age 60 still flailing for it. Heard of Donald Trump? So how come Nadal’s in possession? It is the most far-reaching and ground shattering influence of his team headed by Tony.  It’s kind of like a bedrock Nadal’s life and career has been built on making him virtually immune to life’s fickleness to where returning to where you were dropped from is just a matter of time – and nothing else.

The most stark contrast to this BS in tennisdom has to be Borg. Borg retired largely because he was not willing to bend to the possibility of not being the center of attention any longer – among other minor factors. That’s also the main reason he failed to return to even watch Wimbledon for five freaking years before the stupidity of it all dawned on him producing the desperate phase of his career to return to glory with failed attempts.

For most the realization is forced upon by conditions beyond their control with no option but to bend. But to carry the quality from the get go of your career is a hallmark of someone you cannot defeat – win or lose. It gives power to the word ‘relentless’.

Multi-tasking?

I found this text on internet, for policy reasons can’t say where but I just want to make clear that these are not my words, and may not completely agree with them but I consider that it’s worth it to read it.

“Roger Federer’s “sore loser” remarks, as well as his left-handed compliments to Nadal describing him as a great clay courter, have been well-documented and decried. Now, we have his latest innuendos about slowing down of surfaces.

Before the US Open, Federer remarked that the fast courts at Flushing Meadows might prove to be a challenge for Rafa. He hinted that the courts were faster than the grass courts of Wimbledon, a remark not supported by Nadal or Murray.

After Nadal won, the refrain now is that all the surfaces have been slowed down.

At Stockholm recently, Roger Federer claimed that the Grand Slam was achievable because all the surfaces have been slowed down. In another interview in Stockholm, he acknowledged that he too might have benefited from the slower courts, but “it is getting a little bit too extreme” and “I am sure it helps Rafa.”

Are the surfaces being continuously slowed down?

Wimbledon had changed to rye grass in 2001, resulting in some slower pace. There is no record of any other Grand Slam surface being altered since 2003.

So, what is Roger talking about? Clearly, he is trying to discount Nadal’s achievements on the faster surfaces.

I don’t know what Roger hopes to achieve by these petty remarks. Does he seriously think that history is going to place an asterisk against Nadal’s achievements based on his allegations of surfaces being slowed down? No. He is only harming his image; the gracious image he had built up during his winning years.

Federer’s remarks are all the more difficult to stomach considering that his great rival never fails to call him the “greatest.”

As Federer’s remarks are being made in public, Nadal must be aware of them.

Sooner or later, the moment will come when Nadal will do a Voltaire. If you don’t know what I am talking about, let me tell you the story of the famous Voltaire repartee.

Voltaire was talking to a visitor who mentioned having met Albrecht von Haller, a Swiss (ah, the Swiss connection!) poet and physiologist. Voltaire immediately expressed a lot of praise for Haller, describing him as a great poet, a man of great knowledge, etc. The visitor told Voltaire that his praise was to be commended all the more as Haller always spoke disparagingly of Voltaire and his works.

Then Voltaire made his famous remark, “Perhaps we are both mistaken!””

Amongst the above listed couples, it appears just ONE duet has taken it past the sports field to keep the rivalry alive, possibly providing a clue as to what triggers that pattern in contrast to the ones that fail to ignite after retirement.

And that will be the Magic-Jordan one, don’t you think? I feel Magic’s five championships motivated Jordan more than any other factor to get to six championships and then fade away. It may also be the main reason Jordan ran around with six fingers around the court after getting there. Wonder why he didn’t produce the act at No. 5.

Magic has his own statue in Los Angeles. Jordan made sure he had his in Chicago. Magic had a late night show that failed allowing Jordan to pass on it. Magic owned 5% of the team he played all his career – the Lakers. Jordan had no such option so he decided to trump Magic and buy the whole freaking team. Magic languished in the prestige of owing a team like Lakers to convince him of being ahead of Jordan but that finally wore down to where he is now looking to buy the Detroit Pistons AFTER relinquishing Laker ownership.

Magic has also established himself as a shrewd and successful businessman owning theaters, gyms, real estate etc. but Jordan owning a team pushed him to follow Jordan and wrest that ‘title’ back – without doubt.

For rock people, most sports pundits rate Jordan as No. 1 (a) and Magic as No. 1 (b) as the most talented to ever play the sport of basketball. When you are as ultra competitive as the two of them, being shrugged behind ANYONE is beyond painful – even by a hair – possibly revealing the secret of extending the fight beyond the field and into the parking lot.

Could it be the proximity of the two rivals on the totem pole vis-a-vis each other? I mean, once the incumbent has established ample credentials to leave no doubt as to who is boss, the need to extend it any further and possibly risk it being overturned or even debated, is ridiculous. All this while it also provides the punching bag little motivation if he is unable to engage the tormentor making the effort scream even louder of the ‘real’ reason for it.

Are you freaking getting this BS?

Bottom line: As things stand today, there appears a very strong possibility that Nadal-Federer rivalry WILL spill over unless Nadal can establish an indisputable lead to thwart Federer from even making an effort for fear of being looked upon as being oozing with inferiority complex.

Age or Prime years? The relevant comparison for projecting career totals.

It’s a commonly repeated fact that at the same age Rafa is now (24), Roger had 6 slams to Rafa’s current 9. The implication, of course, is that Rafa is on course to surpass whatever career total Roger achieves. But what this misses is that age is arguably much less relevant than another category: years into one’s prime. And on that measure, Rafa is in fact quite “behind” Roger’s pace and unlikely to equal his total, given the basic pattern in the Open-era of 7 years prime for a top player.

Below is a list of the great Open-era players and their prime years, as book-ended by the first and last slam wins.

Players with primes of 7 years or less:

Borg: 1975-81
McEnroe: 1979-84
Wilander: 1982-88
Lendl: 1984-90
Edberg: 1986-92 (actually, December 1985 when the Australian was still held at the end of the year)

With two other players, Becker and Sampras, the prime seems a bit longer if we measure it by first and last slams, but it becomes 7 or less if we take a more realistic assessment of the years where slam wins were most concentrated, and treat early or late single-slam years as outliers:

Becker: 5 out of 6 slams in the years 1985-91, with the sixth picked up in 1996.

Sampras: 12 out of 14 won between 1993-2000, with one in 1990 and another in 2002.

So, thus far, the pattern seems pretty strong: top players win most or all of their slams within a stretch of seven years start to finish, which we can call their prime.

There are only two real exceptions to this: Connors and Agassi.

Connors: 5 out of 8 won b/t 1974-1978, then another 3 b/t 1982-83.

Agassi: 3 out of 8 won b/t 1992-95, then another 4 b/t 1999 and 2003.

So even Connors won all his slams in 7 years – they were just separated by a 3-year hiatus marked by Borg/McEnroe dominance. This leaves Agassi as the one true exception: winning slams over two concentrated periods coming to 9 years in total. And he seems precisely the sort of exception that proves the rule: his distinctive life trajectory, personality and talent explain both the long interruption and late-blossoming second prime.

Where does that leave Roger and Rafa? First, the basic measures:

Federer: 14 out of 16 slams won b/t 2004-09, with 1 in 2003 and 1 in 2010.

Nadal: 9 slams won b/t 2005-10.

So, one question is whether Roger’s prime longer than the Open-era average of 7 years, or is his prime 2003-2009, with 2010 as a last-stand slam akin to Becker’s and Sampras’? No matter how you phrase, seems to me that if anyone is a candidate to have longer period of slam-winning years, its Federer given his the comparative toll his game takes physically. So although the pattern predicts Fed is done for slams, I’m comfortable predicting one or two more still, for a grand total of 18 (tying Nicklaus’s golf mark), based partly on the intangible of his sheer talent and the physical factor.

As for Rafa, based on the pattern, he has one only more prime slam-winning year left. Of course one might counter that by saying 2005 at least is an “outlier” year and that his prime really begin in 2006. Or, alternatively, that he will be either an exception or at least win one or two French’s in outlier years beyond his prime. It seems to me that if anyone is not a good candidate for the exception, it’s Rafa given the toll his game takes. But there’s no denying either his clay court prowess (although it should be noted that it’s much harder to win a late-slam on one’s favorite surface when that is clay like Rafa than grass like it was for Sampras) or the intangible of his sheer competitiveness. In any case, though, to forecast more than 14 slams in total for Rafa (i.e., 2-3 next year and then 1-2 in outliers) is really to fly in the face of a very strong historical pattern.

So even though I think Roger and Rafa’s greatness requires factoring in some “intangible” to exceed the usual pattern, it seems clear that the common idea that Rafa is “on track” to equal Fed’s numbers is way off (and this apart from the injury factor).

Thoughts?

M

Rafa and Roger’s charity match in Spain for Rafa’s foundation to take place the day after the one in Zurich for Roger’s foundation

Click here.

Federer, on the other hand, has finally managed to squeeze in another title for the season, pulling next to Sampras as fourth on the all-time title list. Psychologically, this latest win should appear to suggest that the tide is turning for Federer. Past Wimbledon, he has now won a Masters event, reclaimed the No. 2 rank and has reached another milestone. Not too shabby given where the train was headed just few short months ago.

Of course, no one in the right mind can make too much of it all. With Basel next – place where he was born and was a ball boy – with home crowd advantage, it can only get better, unless Djokovic refuses the bribe Soderling fell for here.

“You never know when it’s your last one. That’s why you want to savor every tournament victory.” Is that some kind of reality setting in deep enough to receive such articulation – something completely denied in the past? The run he has been on this season, particularly in the light of the last seven years, WILL evoke the thought with much more authenticity than any casual reference to it as a matter of fact.

Next title stop is 77 owned by McEnroe – that’s 13 titles away. Unless Federer starts visiting more 250 events hosted by a planted man from now on, that number is not getting eclipsed at current rate of three titles per season. I remember hearing of some cricket fast bowlers wanting to reach a record by going after the tail end line up of their opposing team. Same concept. After all, who talks about the quality at this platform. It’s all quantity, isn’t it? For rock people, Connors heads the list with 109.

I know I’m jumping the gun but here are the total points to defend next year(I assumed they would have the same results at remaining tournaments)

Nadal – 11,640
Federer – 7,185
Djokovic – 6,765
Murray – 6,125

But then Nadal will go into next season with what 3,000+ points ahead of the pack!

Click here.

And why is a man included?

What kind of BS hairstyle is that? Or is it 11:59 already?

That’s Stosur? Geeeeeezzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Russian tennis player Mikhail Yuzhny (2nd R) takes part in an everyday 12.00′s shot in central Saint-Petersburg on October 24, 2010, as the International tennis tournament Saint Petersburg Open 2010 started today. (Photo by Kirill Kudryavtsev /AFP/Getty Images)

Swedish Crown Princess Victoria (L) and her husband Prince Daniel (R) arrive at the final of the 2010 ATP Stockholm Open tennis tournament between Switzerland tennis player Roger Federer and German’s Florian Mayerstarts in Stockholm, Sweden on October 24, 2010. Roger Federer beat Florian Mayer 6-4, 6-3. (Photo by Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images)

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That’s a Prince? Give me a freaking break. My computer tech guy looks better. Geeeezzzz!!!!!

This is so freaking creative and smart and original. What the………….?

Princess eying the trophy she is missing from that computer repair man?

Don’t you think the Turkey necks could have made this match a little more competitive if they had informed that the loser will be standing with hands in his pocket – without even able to get to something worthwhile – before the match?

Former British Number One Greg Rusedski (L) poses with a Giant Panda mascot, after defeating Pete Sampras, a 14-time Grand Slam Champion and seven-time winner of the Wimbledon singles crown, in the final of the Chengdu Open, a senior event of ATP Champions Tour, in Chengdu, southwest China’s Sichuan province on October 24, 2010. Rusedski beat Sampras 6-4, 6-2. CHINA OUT AFP PHOTO