Does Anyone Want To Discuss Tennis?

First topic message reminder :

606v2 used to be a tennis discussion forum. However as of 10.49am today when Mad for Chelsea made a comment about the British Fed Cup team the only topic being discussed is Nadal... and mainly limited to a few posters repeating how much they dislike him.

Does anyone else want to discuss tennis? If so please post a new article or use this space to talk about something of interest. I did try with my article about the Davis Cup final but that sadly has died as has every other article on 606v2 apart from one...

Del Po looking ver y good.

Did anyone notice Raonic has successfully defended his SAP Open (San Jose) title beating Istomin?

Did anyone notice, Tomic lost to Dodig in three sets (75 46 67(8) ) in Memphis?

hadn't noticed that LF, very poor result for Tomic, Dodig is the sort of player he should be putting away reasonably comfortably if he wants to make it to the very top (something I believe he's capable of doing).

As for Raonic, did he have to beat any other top 30 players, or was it a pretty easy ride? Still not convinced by him TBH, huge serve, decent FH but don't see what else he has...

Agree that Tomic is very frustrating - these young guys have to try for more consistency if they are going to threaten the big names.

It would be lovely to see them look like this is just what they are going to be capable of doing in a year or so from now.

Tomic is a good grass player, off grass though he doesn't have a patch on his fellow croat younggun. Allez Raonic!

Has anyone noticed Hawky's lack of input on tennis outside Federer, Nadal and Murray?

legendkiller

I do my best

general tennis

https://www.606v2.com/t24075-tennis-emotion-intellect-personal-investment-and-relgion

https://www.606v2.com/t22949-is-20-seconds-too-short

and of course this one...

Djokovic

https://www.606v2.com/t23190-the-new-lendl

https://www.606v2.com/t22793-why-was-djokovic-hiding-under-the-towel

And even a rare mention of womens tennis

https://www.606v2.com/t23589-best-match-at-the-australian-open

These are just the recent ones. If you want to read any more you will have to look back further.

I have strayed off the rugby forum for the 1st time......interested to know what tennis fans know and think about our girls? It appears that Watson and Robson are not quite fulfilling their potential and promise in their singles careers? Is this unfair or should they be doing better?

Thanks.

hugehandoff wrote:I have strayed off the rugby forum for the 1st time......interested to know what tennis fans know and think about our girls? It appears that Watson and Robson are not quite fulfilling their potential and promise in their singles careers? Is this unfair or should they be doing better?

Thanks.

I don't believe Watson is going to be good enough to be a top 20 player. She might get around 40-45 at her best. Robson will be top 20 eventually she has massive talent, don't know when but she will get top 20 i'm certain!!

Robson has a lot of talent, with some pretty big weapons in her game. She's had a few set-backs with injuries over the last couple of years, and her movement was poor, though it's improving. Did really well to qualify for the AO, but needs to find some consistency in her performances. Real potential there, she should make the world's top 50, and could well finish much higher.

Watson is a tougher one. Moves really well, but doesn't have any real weapons in her armoury, and her serve is a big weakness. She's steadily moving up, but IMO if she ever makes it to the top 50 in the worl she'll have done great. See her more as hovering around the 70-80 mark myself.

Not quite fulfilling their potential? Seems a bit harsh to me, if not completely wrong. Let's not forget they're both still very young, and each tennis player matures at their own pace, Robson winning Wimbledon Juniors so young probably raised people's expectations too quickly, but the potential's there.

The depth in the girls game is quite interesting, we've got four girls of roughly similar levels (with Baltascha a bit above the three others admittedly) who should be making the main draw of most slams.

hugehandoff wrote:I have strayed off the rugby forum for the 1st time......interested to know what tennis fans know and think about our girls? It appears that Watson and Robson are not quite fulfilling their potential and promise in their singles careers? Is this unfair or should they be doing better?

Thanks.

It's still too early to say, we probably need another year to predict how well Heather Watsons career will turn out and two years for Laura. Heathers career high was end of Sep last year (87 in world) and she has dropped back a little to around 124. Laura is around her career high of 120. Both need to build up fitness levels, stamina, physical power (and for Laura court mobility) as well as improving technically and in terms of match awareness.

I look at Kvitova and dream of Robson following her. Perhaps my view is over-inflated, but I do see potential.

ATP is more noticeably brutal, but WTA is equally brutal, if not more. It is a very tough proposition to break. When Robson played with Murray @Hopman, I was hoping that that 'association' would be positive and perhaps inspirational, but my over-optimism did not pay off.

As NS says, we should re-evaluate these in 12 months from now.

Mad for Chelsea wrote:hadn't noticed that LF, very poor result for Tomic, Dodig is the sort of player he should be putting away reasonably comfortably if he wants to make it to the very top (something I believe he's capable of doing).

Tomic, as JM says, needs to consider development on surfaces other than Grass. Grass is a very short season, with very few opportunities.

Mad for Chelsea wrote:As for Raonic, did he have to beat any other top 30 players, or was it a pretty easy ride? Still not convinced by him TBH, huge serve, decent FH but don't see what else he has...

If Monfils had not been injured, it would have been better, but he did well against a big server Istomin. Istomin did have some errors and he gave away the first set, when he could have won it.

On a separate and "forbidden" topic its probably this period of a tennis players career (the first few years on the senior circuit) where "supplements" might be turned to. [On that now banned thread, when djlove mentioned (if I recall correctly) that British players tend to get tested more than others, it got me thinking that maybe one reason why Britain doesn't do so well at senior level compared to junior level might be due to other players elsewhere turning to the dark side.]

NS... Standardizing 'it' across different countries would require significant investment from WADA/ITF.
You should look at the ITF web-site and look at the news section to see that the published cases are not that heavily biased one way or another.

Thanks for all your replies re Watson and Robson. Generally people seem to think that Robson has the greater potential due to her having more weapons (serving big and powerful ground strokes) whereas Watson will have to rely on her speed and ability to keep getting the ball back in play. I have not seen enough of her to know if she can play the skillful Hingis type touch game as well. And yes it is harsh to describe things in terms of unfulfilled potential when they are still so young, but the reality is I expected some better results to date. Not winning tournaments but a few more successes would be nice. Robson has had injury problems and is still growing so I guess the physical side with improved court speed will come when her body is ready to take the training. We need them to do well to encourage more girls to get involved.

L'fan. Sadly, Watson - and Baltacha - was well beaten in Memphis yesterday. For every encouraging performance there seems to be an absolutely crushing defeat.
Not sure "weaponless" Watson is gonna amount to much. We'll have to wait and see with Robson, but it was hardly encouraging to see both of them losing to Anne K last week.

There is a huge jump in quality between:

a) getting to but losing regularly in the final round of qualifying and in the first round of a WTA tournament.

b) winning regularly in the first round of a WTA tournament.

Keathavong and Baltacha appear to win about 50% of the time in the first round and about 15% in the second round and about 0% in the third round of WTA tournaments. This maintains them in the 80 - 50 ranking bracket. Watson and Robson have yet to reach that level. They are more successful on the ITF circuit (of course) - but need to be regularly getting beyond quarter-finals in them.

Watson might have better successes on clay than hard court, she moves fantastically well but can't summon much power to hurt the quality players. I've seen Robson in spells play like a top 10 womens player, and shes still very young. She had Sharapova on the ropes for a while in a slam 1st round. No doubting her potential!!

Good thing for Heather is she spends 3/4 of the year in Florida practising against the best so you never know if she might unearth some weapons within a yar or 2.