Grasscourt Season
The famed Grasscourt Tennis season is upon us, and although it is too short, it will still provide us with some excitement. Up first are the Gerry Weber Open and the Artois (notice the lack of ‘Stella’) Championships for the Men, and the DFS Classic in Birmingham for the Women. Most of the top players are competing, with the big story being Federer withdrawing from Halle, citing fatigue. Whether that fatigue is physical fatigue (he lost only 1 set at the French before losing to Nadal) or mental is something only Roger himself knows. Although my guess is that it is some sort of combination of both, but the mental fatigue has a little more to do with it. I think its one thing for random player X to come up short each time against random player Y, but when player X is considered in many circles to be the best player of all time, it has to weigh him down knowing he has come up short on the biggest stages. But I digress.
I have not been able to watch any of the tennis so far this week, but I promise I won’t complain about that again (see a previous post for more on my TV thoughts). Followed most of the matches online though, and read some various reports. Two main things stand out in my mind. The first being Nadal’s thrashing of Juan Martin Del Potro in the first round at the Queen’s Club. 6-4, 6-4 does not seem like a complete blowout, but it’s more of how he did it. He served a total of 46 points, and won 40 of them, showing everyone that he had no trouble making the supposedly difficult transition from clay to grass. For those of you who though Nadal’s run to last year’s Wimbledon final was a fluke, you better think again. Of course, we should also not forget that Robert Kendrick was a couple of points away from taking Nadal down in three sets in the first round as well.
Another thing that jumps out to me is Blake winning his first two rounds to advance to the quarterfinals in Halle. He took out fellow American Sam Querrey in his first match, in a close 3-setter, but then had little trouble against young Russian Evgeny Korolev in today’s match. From all accounts his play improved dramatically, and for a guy who has been disappointingly inconsistent this year, a finals appearance or better would be a big boost for him heading into Wimbledon. With Federer pulling out, Blake, along with Berdych, is the heavy favorite to take home the title, especially since Davydenko struggles mightily on grass. After last years Wimbledon result, a terrible 3rd round loss to Max Miryni, Blake could really use a good run this year. He will take on young German Philipp Kolschreiber in the quarters.
On the Women’s side, it will be interesting to follow Sharapova closely during this grasscourt season. She had her best result ever at the French reaching the semis, but looked downright awful losing to Ivanovic. She won Wimbledon in 2004 as a relatively unheralded player, and will certainly be one of the favorites again, but it will be more important than ever for her to regain her confidence on her serve, which is beginning to look similar to Elena Dementiava’s. Besides Sharapova, I expect Serena Williams and Henin to be substantial threats over the next few weeks as well.
Not much to say on the pop culture front, I watched my Tivo’d season finale of Entourage, but considering the next season starts Sunday, it’s not as if there was much of a cliffhanger.
For anyone who actually read’s this blog consistently, I assure you, the fact that the Red Sox lead is down to 9.5 games has not affected me at all. I always knew the Yankees would make some what of a run, but if you asked me on opening day if I thought the Sox could be up 10 games on the Yankees on mid-June, I would’ve told you there was about as much chance of that happening as there is of Federer beating Nadal at Roland Garros.
Here are some tennis links to entertain you:
Enlightening article on the Artois Championship.
ESPN.com Greg Garber’s wrap up on Roland Garros.
All the Fed Cup information you need on the upcoming tie between the US and Russia.
And if you are really bored, here is Wikipedia’s tennis history. It’s actually pretty interesting stuff.