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Wimbledon and the grass court season


lichtie23

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Disappointing to see both women's semi-finals be so lopsided. Have a feeling the final will be a good bit closer. 

Really looking forward to tomorrow. Novak should be able to take care of business, but I'm tipping Bautista-Agut to take a set off him and make things a bit more uncomfortable than some might expect. Rafa v Roger has the potential to be great. Ordinarily I would fancy Federer to have the edge on grass but Rafa is playing so well just now. It feels like a coin flip match to me. Hope it goes to five sets and is yet another classic between two of the best to ever do it. I don't really mind who wins. If Roger wins I like Novak's chances better in the final but if Rafa wins then the final will be a better match to watch. Novak's style v Rafa's style just seems to click and matches between them are bloody awesome to watch.

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I think Federer is well overpriced at 2.10 against Rafa, Roger's win % is 17 points better on surfaces of similar speed since 2016.

Novak should wipe the floor with Bautista Agut as his win % is 28.5 points better on surfaces of similar speed since 2016, hope it's closer but his 2 most recent losses to Bautista Agut are on surfaces that played a lot slower than Wimbledon.

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I have a question that hopefully big tennis fans might help me with. Why do countries like Romania produce so many top tennis players? Do they have much better training than average, or do much more people play like it's a main sport there so the talent pool is bigger? Or is it just luck/timing and goes in cycles?

I don't get how the can produce so many top players, especially in the womans game when we (britain) have such top notch facilities and presumably lots of finance going into it.

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Yeah Romania seems a bit arbitrary.  Someone like Serbia you could say with Djokovic, Ivanovic, Jankovic, Tipsarevic, Zimonij.  But who have Romaina produced? Halep and Nastase in the 70's?

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9 hours ago, Stevieda said:

I have a question that hopefully big tennis fans might help me with. Why do countries like Romania produce so many top tennis players? Do they have much better training than average, or do much more people play like it's a main sport there so the talent pool is bigger? Or is it just luck/timing and goes in cycles?

I don't get how the can produce so many top players, especially in the womans game when we (britain) have such top notch facilities and presumably lots of finance going into it.

I would imagine it is more to do with access to the facilities.  Off the top of my head Romania have produced Halep, Buzarnescu, Bogdan, Cristea, Begu, Niculescuand all been in the top 100 recently.  All with less significant investment than the LTA.  Across Europe clay courts are everywhere and they are very cheap to hire, and there is a better culture of tennis participation in other countries.  Here it can still be an elitist sport.  Although the LTA have promised to spend more money in more rural areas - but I imagine this will be cities like Glasgow and Edinburgh, certainly more rural than London and Birmingham.

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I don't like John Inverdale as a commentator.  His best role is as a presenter. I would like to hear Chris Bradnam or Mark Petchey commentating on the semis and final, they are both really good. At least Mac is in the booth, he's always good to listen to. 

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I’d imagine that all the good commentators are working with Amazon or Eurosport for Wimbledon.

They spend shitloads on Becker and McEnroe. Would love to see ITV take the domestic coverage from them, although don’t think they could cover each court the way the BBC does.

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55 minutes ago, Estragon IS NOT a fud said:

Most of them are. The BBC Wimbledon commentator clique is the biggest form of cronyism in the country. Boris, Lloyd, Castle and Henman should have been emptied years ago. Inverdale isn't even a commentator by-trade which makes it all more puzzling.

 

The ITV and Eurosport commentators are miles better.

Andrew Cotter is decent enough.

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