2013 U. S. Open Championships...New York, New York

[bottle]

No, it was watchable. I know because I watched it. But I would be more agreeable about the judgments in this thread leveled upon the attractiveness of the two gladiators if I knew more about the psychological makeup of each and every critic, as in, "Where you cummin from, man?"

I can see that the women's final of the 2013 U.S. Open was a good chance for certain guys to unleash their latent fear of women, fear of black persons, and fear of bad fashion.

For Vika and Serena could not have chosen costumes that were less crowd friendly. First, they both wore salmon. Where did that come from? Didn't representatives of the two camps correspond before the match? Did they think for a moment that when two opponents wear the same color they are reducing the possibility of differentiation between them? The finalists next year should each bring along a play director and a costumer of considerable theatrical experience. Or did this already happen? Did the camps decide that if both gladiators wore pink, the blackness of Serena and the whiteness of Vika would be emphasized?

And if both sweated a lot (which they did), the perspiration would show up better in salmon pink (which it did). This would suggest the sleeveless armor that the saluting slaves about to die always wore in the Roman Coliseum if we are to believe our comic books. And there was design in the Del Potro like costumes. All emphasis went to the arm pits.

I'll leave the topic of fear of women to the imagination, other than to say, "I really fear women." They have screwed me up in the most royal if often delightful way.

But about black persons, this, although it's personal (I think). One is usually better off tending toward the personal rather than stereotypes. Since my brother-in-law was a dean at Wake Forest University, and the electrical construction business where I worked was close to a good cafeteria, I frequently had lunch with a group of deans, one of whom was beautiful, black, and the only woman among the four.

She was a 4.5 tennis player, too.

She and I would often want to talk about tennis but that was difficult. The conversation, frequently enlightening, philosophical, linguistic, behavioral and educationist, could nevertheless tend toward the latest meeting with the university president or the hip replacement which one of the deans had a year or two before. (And he was limping-- man was he limping. So don't always believe what you hear.)

There was some stolen tennis conversation nevertheless, and all three male deans got to hear about Richard Williams and his different approach to junior tennis and not from me.

Eventually the beautiful, impeccably dressed woman I'm thinking about right now jumped from Wake Forest to North Carolina School for the Arts and married a black scriptwriter and became a glamorous Hollywood movie star.

And no, she declined, i.e., didn't answer my email the one time I asked if we could play.

[stroke]

The information on the NIMH site doesn't say anything about taking performance enhancing or even recreational drugs. There are an awful lot of people who have OCD or at least some symptoms of it. While there are probably a lot of them that have problems with drugs, there is nothing that says a person with OCD is more likely to be taking PED's or recreational drugs. If they did start to take them, they probably couldn't control it enough to ever pass the repeated drug tests that Nadal and Djokovic are subjected to.

It's amazing what Nadal has done. Perhaps he did take some PED's to help him heal in the break after Wimbledon, but he certainly didn't come back quickly after last year's Wimbledon. He took 7 months and did tremendous rehab. When he came back after Wimbledon this year, he looked really rusty the first couple of matches. I believe he really rested as much as he said he did. And that is a legitimate explanation for his recovery.

He got the upper hand on Djokovic physically, but he didn't knock him out with the physical edge. He knocked him out with psychological blow of coming back from that 0-40 game at 4-4 in the third. I think he still faced a couple of break points after that 0-40 comeback in that game, but Rafa stayed tough. Just a few minutes before, he looked like he was toast. But he never stopped mentally, as he almost never does. Then, once he got the edge, he gained confidence and became more aggressive even as Novak folded his tent.

It's not fair to keep saying Rafa is doing PED's without some evidence. I think he did something in the break after Wimby 2012, but we don't know that it was illegal. He may have done what Kobe Bryant did with the German doctors for his knees. Or something similar. Not illegal.

You have to give credit for the tremendous effort Nadal put forward. Yes there is something different about him. He got a genetic gift. Whether or not he's enhanced it illegally, we have no evidence of that. That display he and Nole put up in the first three sets stands as the single best argument I've seen that the best tennis players are the best athletes in the world: strength, speed, endurance, patience, perseverance and immense skill all administered with strategy and tactics guided by intelligence. He may not be as pretty and graceful as Federer, but there is plenty of creativity in what he was doing. Some of those angles off drop shots were unbelievable. And there is no question he is constantly striving to improve. You gotta love that!

No question, Rafa is a little bit OCD, but that's not breaking the rules.



don

I like you thoughts here. I completely agree that no athlete has ever shown the mental strength of Nadal. He simply just not ever get discouraged or negative out there to the point it even effects his play for even one point. Just as Fed may be forever the benchmark for elegant, effortless tennis, Nadal has established his own benchmark.

Also, I agree completely with Don that professional men's tennis players are the best in the world. And I also agree with Don Budge about that women's final. Simply unwatchable.

[stotty]

Depends where you're looking...

Sometimes the most obvious of things are staring you in the face and you fail to see it. Sometimes it is a case of denial...and man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest.

A lot depends where a person is looking. We all see the same things from a different point of view...and through different spectacles.

I was looking more at Djokovic. At the 2012 Aussie Open he played two long and sapping matches back to back in searing temperatures...no problem. How did he do that? And he had less than 24 hours to recover between each match! That was the most extraordinary physical feat ever in tennis. Nowadays he doesn't have that kind of stamina. In the recent Wimbledon final against Murray, Djokovic was a physically under par after his long five setter against Del Potro. And, unlike at the Aussie Open, he had had a days rest inbetween. He tried to cut rallies down against Murray by coming to the net way more than usual, and in situations that meant he had to play volleys beyond his ability. He only goes to the net to mop up or to throw something in the mix, never as a matching winning ploy.

So that is where I was looking. Not at Nadal's physical prowess...more at Djokovic's inexplicable physical decline compared to the 2012 Aussie Open.

[tennis_chiro]

Ocd

Sometimes the most obvious of things are staring you in the face and you fail to see it. Sometimes it is a case of denial...and man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest.

We are conditioned from very early on to accept professional athletes as our heroes and role models. But anyone with half a brain figures out early on that athletes feet are also made of clay and they are subject to the very same shortcomings as the rest of the herd. Nothing that Madison Avenue promotes can change that.

The subject of performance enhancing drugs comes up from time to time. Athletes get caught from time to time and there is a little blurb in the news just to give us a bare sense of honesty in news reporting. Sort of like a POTUS going on television and glossing over reality as if it never existed and selling a new military adventure under the auspices of freedom to the American people in the guise of something that is actually going to better the world. This from a Nobel Peace Prize winner. So much for that award.

But when it comes to Rafael Nadal...something really seems to be amiss. That 54 stroke rally is a good place to start. I don't know how many meters each player covered in the duel but the stopping and starting coupled with the changing of direction depleted one of the players and by all appearances the other one was virtually unfazed. The player that was unfazed had been off the tour for a number of weeks supposedly rehabilitating a knee injury for the umpteenth time but he returned to capture two huge hard court titles and goes on to win the granddaddy of them all...the 2013 U. S. Open Championships.

For three consecutive tournaments running the man was a human wrecking machine up against the best field of tennis players in the world and each and every opponent that stood in his way...he mowed down with impunity. The whole audience takes it in...just as they take in the President's speech as some semblance of reality. Not all of us were born yesterday.

A couple of years ago Novak Djokovic was the toast of the tennis world as he had arguably the most dominating year of any tennis player ever...certainly in the modern era. But the other day he looked a bit like a tired horse who has been through the wringer. Suddenly Roger Federer cannot fight his way out of a paper bag. Another also ran...when compared to the Spanish Rafael Nadal. I regard the facts as very suspicious.

But just take a look at the behavior of Rafael Nadal. The compulsive and tickish behavior that never seems to let up in front of the glare of the camera. From the opening coin toss...he waits and fidgets with his water bottles. Then there is the sprint to the baseline. There is the long drawn out pre-serve routine that includes perfunctory grabbing of his shorts out of his ass and it seems that now he has added crotch clutching to his repertoire. But this is only the beginning...the ten or twenty other little grabs, pulls, brushing motions...all repeated every time he addresses the ball to serve. The constant toweling off as if he is sweating copiously nonstop. Now he needs two towels. The guy is just one compulsive behavior after another. It's nonstop. The nervous energy that is reflected in this slew of mannerisms is just strange. He never relaxes at changeovers...just constant nonstop jittery behavior. He looks like a guy that has just drank about three pots of coffee. Is this a sign that someone is taking drugs?

Completely unfazed by the 54 stroke rally.

The information on the NIMH site doesn't say anything about taking performance enhancing or even recreational drugs. There are an awful lot of people who have OCD or at least some symptoms of it. While there are probably a lot of them that have problems with drugs, there is nothing that says a person with OCD is more likely to be taking PED's or recreational drugs. If they did start to take them, they probably couldn't control it enough to ever pass the repeated drug tests that Nadal and Djokovic are subjected to.

It's amazing what Nadal has done. Perhaps he did take some PED's to help him heal in the break after Wimbledon, but he certainly didn't come back quickly after last year's Wimbledon. He took 7 months and did tremendous rehab. When he came back after Wimbledon this year, he looked really rusty the first couple of matches. I believe he really rested as much as he said he did. And that is a legitimate explanation for his recovery.

He got the upper hand on Djokovic physically, but he didn't knock him out with the physical edge. He knocked him out with psychological blow of coming back from that 0-40 game at 4-4 in the third. I think he still faced a couple of break points after that 0-40 comeback in that game, but Rafa stayed tough. Just a few minutes before, he looked like he was toast. But he never stopped mentally, as he almost never does. Then, once he got the edge, he gained confidence and became more aggressive even as Novak folded his tent.

It's not fair to keep saying Rafa is doing PED's without some evidence. I think he did something in the break after Wimby 2012, but we don't know that it was illegal. He may have done what Kobe Bryant did with the German doctors for his knees. Or something similar. Not illegal.

You have to give credit for the tremendous effort Nadal put forward. Yes there is something different about him. He got a genetic gift. Whether or not he's enhanced it illegally, we have no evidence of that. That display he and Nole put up in the first three sets stands as the single best argument I've seen that the best tennis players are the best athletes in the world: strength, speed, endurance, patience, perseverance and immense skill all administered with strategy and tactics guided by intelligence. He may not be as pretty and graceful as Federer, but there is plenty of creativity in what he was doing. Some of those angles off drop shots were unbelievable. And there is no question he is constantly striving to improve. You gotta love that!

No question, Rafa is a little bit OCD, but that's not breaking the rules.

don

[don_budge]

The Difference...what is it? It's rather mysterious...whatever it is.

Nadal is so resilient, so tough, so unbelievably good. Not that Djokovic isn’t, but not quite to the same degree. The difference is minimal, but it’s there.

Sometimes the most obvious of things are staring you in the face and you fail to see it. Sometimes it is a case of denial...and man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest.

We are conditioned from very early on to accept professional athletes as our heroes and role models. But anyone with half a brain figures out early on that athletes feet are also made of clay and they are subject to the very same shortcomings as the rest of the herd. Nothing that Madison Avenue promotes can change that.

The subject of performance enhancing drugs comes up from time to time. Athletes get caught from time to time and there is a little blurb in the news just to give us a bare sense of honesty in news reporting. Sort of like a POTUS going on television and glossing over reality as if it never existed and selling a new military adventure under the auspices of freedom to the American people in the guise of something that is actually going to better the world. This from a Nobel Peace Prize winner. So much for that award.

But when it comes to Rafael Nadal...something really seems to be amiss. That 54 stroke rally is a good place to start. I don't know how many meters each player covered in the duel but the stopping and starting coupled with the changing of direction depleted one of the players and by all appearances the other one was virtually unfazed. The player that was unfazed had been off the tour for a number of weeks supposedly rehabilitating a knee injury for the umpteenth time but he returned to capture two huge hard court titles and goes on to win the granddaddy of them all...the 2013 U. S. Open Championships.

For three consecutive tournaments running the man was a human wrecking machine up against the best field of tennis players in the world and each and every opponent that stood in his way...he mowed down with impunity. The whole audience takes it in...just as they take in the President's speech as some semblance of reality. Not all of us were born yesterday.

A couple of years ago Novak Djokovic was the toast of the tennis world as he had arguably the most dominating year of any tennis player ever...certainly in the modern era. But the other day he looked a bit like a tired horse who has been through the wringer. Suddenly Roger Federer cannot fight his way out of a paper bag. Another also ran...when compared to the Spanish Rafael Nadal. I regard the facts as very suspicious.

But just take a look at the behavior of Rafael Nadal. The compulsive and tickish behavior that never seems to let up in front of the glare of the camera. From the opening coin toss...he waits and fidgets with his water bottles. Then there is the sprint to the baseline. There is the long drawn out pre-serve routine that includes perfunctory grabbing of his shorts out of his ass and it seems that now he has added crotch clutching to his repertoire. But this is only the beginning...the ten or twenty other little grabs, pulls, brushing motions...all repeated every time he addresses the ball to serve. The constant toweling off as if he is sweating copiously nonstop. Now he needs two towels. The guy is just one compulsive behavior after another. It's nonstop. The nervous energy that is reflected in this slew of mannerisms is just strange. He never relaxes at changeovers...just constant nonstop jittery behavior. He looks like a guy that has just drank about three pots of coffee. Is this a sign that someone is taking drugs?

Completely unfazed by the 54 stroke rally.

[don_budge]

The Craw...

Well, she won. Must really stick in yours crawses.

Not in mine. If there is anything that I could care less about other than women's tennis...I can't think of what it is.

One of the most annoying spectacles under the sun as far as I am concerned is having a couple of these beastly women pounding it out against each other...grunting and screaming on every single shot as if they are giving birth right there on center court.

There is no dignity...no demurity. No sense of elegance or femininity. Completely lacking in grace and comely beauty. Forever lacking in any kind of sex appeal. Weaker sex? Weaker than what?

Complete lack of common sense when it comes to everything. Fashion. Manners. The list goes on. Sure...she makes a ton of money. But after that???

From the Comptons? But of course...it has to do with culture. Somewhat. But what about parenting? What is his name anyways...Richard? I am not certain. But what a character. I remember him dancing on the roof at Wimbledon after Venus' first victory there. He had a sign with him...it said, "it's Venus' party and you are not invited". Whatever the hell that meant.

In the end...it doesn't matter to me. Not a tiny bit. That's entertainment...2013 style. It's garish...but it passes nevertheless.

[stotty]

Dare I say I was just slightly disappointed with Nadal. He wasn’t ripping forehands with the same velocity he has been over the last two months. He had a great, assertive first set but then started to revert slowly back to type. By the middle of the third set he was right back to type. Returning serves standing way behind the baseline, looping returns up high and deep, just like the Roland Garros final all over again....but on a hard court.

Once Djokovic started to impose himself with aggression it seemed one-way traffic for a while. There’s nothing quite like Djokovic when his back is to the wall and he suddenly rips five or six games out of nowhere. I think it’s the best sight in modern tennis when he does that.

Djokovic’s lapse during the latter stages of the third set seemed inexplicable. He was motoring, completely in charge. He then lapsed, lost focus. Nadal did nothing different other than maintain his relentlessness. But Djokovic has lapsed like this before in other matches...in matches he’s both won and lost. Against Nadal these days he cannot afford to lapse.

Actually we’ve seen the whole match before, with it’s the ebb and flow and shifts in momentum. I found it a bit deja vu.

Djokovic should have gone 3-0 in the third but Nadal hung on to win that game and stay in with a chance of winning the set. Just like at Roland Garros, Nadal managed to hang in and stem Djokovic’s onslaught just in time and against the odds. He stemmed Djokovic at the start of the fifth in the French Open in the same way. Had Djokovic pulled further away from Nadal at the start of the fifth in Paris, it would have been curtains for Nadal.

There were two things that really stood out for me in the US final: The 54 stroke rally that left Djokovic emotionally and physically spent, so much so he lost the next game to love, while Nadal, remarkably, hardly seemed to pant. And Nadal’s comeback from 0-40 at 4-4 in the third. I found both incidents monumental. The latter sums up the difference between the two players. Nadal is so resilient, so tough, so unbelievably good. Not that Djokovic isn’t, but not quite to the same degree. The difference is minimal, but it’s there.

[bottle]

Well, she won. Must really stick in yours crawses.

[stroke]

When Fed had a littel red nike stripe on his tennis shoe, Wimbledon fined him. When naked butt girl wore bright red underpants, and a pretense of a skirt, no one said a thing. If I was in charge, it would have been, "Change those or you will be defaulted." Scum is scum, whether it's from Compton or not. Google serena twerkin video. Am I the only one tired of the sisters naked asses?

I don't even want to watch her play tennis, much less twerking.

[GeoffWilliams]

To be honest...I missed it. The acceptance speech. The truth is that I only watched the second set tiebreak. Coincidently Frankie decided to make a nature call here in the woods at that precise same moment. Azeranka won the tiebreak. Lights out. Why tempt fate? One more nauseating acceptance speech from Serena and tennis takes another hit. Ad nauseum.

Her neck is disappearing. The musculature of the shoulders will soon consume all of the real estate right up to the chin. The wardrobe and attire...it doesn't fit. How would it be possible to modestly cover that body? The wind blowing everything this way and that. That is a woman? A woman's body? Has evolution bypassed the normal cycle of a million years or so that it requires to transform things.

The gestures. That wind blowing antics. The face and expressions. What an act? It is boring. But not nearly so boring as the fake gratitude and fake modesty and the obvious shallow regard for anything other than herself.

I saw the tiebreak and realized that it didn't get any better than that. The whining. The complaining. The choking. I also knew that the distinct possibility of her dominating the third set remained...so I opted for the sack. That God I missed the rest of it. Good night...Irene.

When Fed had a littel red nike stripe on his tennis shoe, Wimbledon fined him. When naked butt girl wore bright red underpants, and a pretense of a skirt, no one said a thing. If I was in charge, it would have been, "Change those or you will be defaulted." Scum is scum, whether it's from Compton or not. Google serena twerkin video. Am I the only one tired of the sisters naked asses?

[jasonfrausto]

Well, Nadal is well and truly back after seven months out which weren't really out after all. Turns out it was time out to reshape his shots and get his game up to Djokovic's standard. Wise move. Djokovic had his number, and Nadal's quest for being the greatest looked doomed.

You really cannot tell what is going on in the Nadal camp. I now don't trust any of their press releases or prepared statements. I am even beginning to think there is nothing wrong at all with those knees of his. These strategical time outs are baffling at times other than Nadal comes a better player.

I think Nadal is probably quite thick. He's never said or done anything that suggests he's intelligent as yet in any interview I've seen. I could be wrong but I think he's quite dumb. Certainly the dumbest of the top four. He was quite visibly puzzled and bemused when he was being crunched by Djokovic in 2011 and couldn't fathom anything for himself. I think the team around him tell him what to do and he just does it like a robot. Just thought I'd throw that in there.

Those seven months certainly did the trick. I make him a centimetre in front of Djokovic if both play at their best, which I am hoping they will in the upcoming final. The UK bookmakers cannot seem to decide who is favourite and are swinging backwards between one and the other.

I wonder if Djokovic can find his 2011 form and tactics against Nadal. He played Nadal so much better back then than he does now. Where were those angled forehands that pulled Nadal off the court in 2011 in this years French Open? He needs to find that wide serve to the deuce court in the final too if he can. I'm really looking forward to the game. I hope it's thriller.

I wonder if the top four are really still the top four...maybe Wawrinka is three or four. Perhaps Federer really is number seven...just a thought.

Agreed 100%. Injured? Doubtful! It looks like he took that time off and rebuilt his forehand and backhand evidenced by the side by side video comparison.

Nice post Stotty.

[stotty]

Something from the BBC website. Seems these IBM statistics are becoming more and more powerful at deciding the likely outcome of matches.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23979080

[jbill]

"...the fake gratitude and fake modesty and the obvious shallow regard for anything other than herself." I couldn't agree with you more don_budge. Serena doesn't even realize without her opponent she wouldn't be able to play the game, nor would she come out victorious. No opponent, no game, no victory!

At one time or another on the plane of a tennis court a tennis player, a human being, needs to sincerely honor that other human being who is the acting opponent in the game.

jbill

[don_budge]

Serena Williams...the acceptance speech

To be honest...I missed it. The acceptance speech. The truth is that I only watched the second set tiebreak. Coincidently Frankie decided to make a nature call here in the woods at that precise same moment. Azeranka won the tiebreak. Lights out. Why tempt fate? One more nauseating acceptance speech from Serena and tennis takes another hit. Ad nauseum.

Her neck is disappearing. The musculature of the shoulders will soon consume all of the real estate right up to the chin. The wardrobe and attire...it doesn't fit. How would it be possible to modestly cover that body? The wind blowing everything this way and that. That is a woman? A woman's body? Has evolution bypassed the normal cycle of a million years or so that it requires to transform things.

The gestures. That wind blowing antics. The face and expressions. What an act? It is boring. But not nearly so boring as the fake gratitude and fake modesty and the obvious shallow regard for anything other than herself.

I saw the tiebreak and realized that it didn't get any better than that. The whining. The complaining. The choking. I also knew that the distinct possibility of her dominating the third set remained...so I opted for the sack. That God I missed the rest of it. Good night...Irene.

[stotty]

don_budge:
Stotty: Nadal's bulb not seen as burning too bright (please excuse the paraphrase): I see this not as insult or challenge to read a few books but as humor: the old thing about the best tennis players being "beautiful animals," as my first tennis mentor Jim Kacian and former tour player and subsequent haiku editor used to say. O to be really stupid. Look around. Who succeeds?

Yes, being dumb can be a big advantage. However I wouldn't question Nadal's native intelligence on a tennis court, whereas I would other players. Nadal almost never makes stupid decisions on court. That said his tactics are simplicity itself.