The US Open 2009 thread

[Doctor MJ]

Suck on it Roger, you and your cold wife can be humbled for a change.

Finally Roger's lucky streak runs out as I knew Juan Martin would win tonight. Great tournament, fun year of tennis.

'Lucky streak'?? LOL

Yeah, I was rolling with that post until I got there. Comical.

[Doctor MJ]

Well I think Del Potro has just clearly turned it a performance more impressive than we've seen in many years from anyone but the Big 2. We will have to see whether he can keep it up, but even as it stands only Nadal would be a better bet for Player of the 2010s. If his apparent matchup advantage over Nadal proves real, he could very quickly emerge as #1 in the world. Very exciting.

[GQStylin]

A lot here, much of it I don't take real issue with. Things I feel the need to respond to:

-That's great she said good things about Kim, but if you haven't seen her consistently dismiss others success after a loss, you haven't been paying attention. It's poor sportsmanship, simple as that.

Federer does that too at times. Just did that today abit after his loss to Del Potro. Quickly said that Delpony was the best today and then brought up his great streak at the US Open. Maybe Serena does it more often I don't know, but the fact is that alot of top athletes do it and have abit of a chip on their shoulders. How many basketball or football players diss people all the time?

-Re: rankings. Everyone paying attention has known for always known that the rankings are not the end-all be-all of "who's the best player". That's why they have "Player of the Year" awards that often deviate from who's technically "#1".

Something else I want you to consider. Before this tournament, Serena has made $3.6 mill this year in singles play, Safina $3.4. Had Serena got upset early, and Safina had another semi-final run, Safina would have the lead there. All your arguments would still hold, but Serena wouldn't have made the most money. Do you see how crazy it would then be to insist that Serena be #1? Your own statement is the truth here paraphrased: If you're going to be #1 then you should play like it most of the time and this far Serena hasn't. Bottom line, there's simply no mathematical formula that can exist to make sure the best player is always ranked number 1 if the best player refuses to actually give a full effort all the time. For Serena to harp on the subject, and mock Safina, when she knows that she could take the #1 slot if she just gave an effort comparable to every other player on the tour, it's childish in the extreme. If you don't care about something, for god's sake, shut up. If you do care, stop whining and freaking do something about it.

Here's the thing, Safina hasn't been playing like a #1 since she got there. She hasn't played well in alot of grandslams before she made world #1 and she's been worse after she was ranked #1. So has Safina been playing like a world #1? Hell no! Has Serena? I'd say for the most part yes. The main things you can knock her on is maybe not playing enough tournaments and perhaps not going as far in non grandslam events. But to me, she plays like a top player when it matters most in the GS events, something Safina hasn't done much of. So far, Safina is like a great regular season team that sucks in the playoffs while Serena is the opposite.

Also I think one reason why Safina is getting such a hard time is not just that she hasn't won a slam but is #1, but in how she has lost her matches in GS events. The three times she made it to a GS finals, they all turned into blowouts. And the two times that she got as far as the semis in a GS, she got blown out as well. I know every player has their off days and whatnot, but cmon at least play better in important matches and make the scores closer once in a while. Serena loses too, but most of the time you know she's going to be tough to beat as opposed to Safina who could be tough or easy depending on her mood.

Also going back to the incident, I think its a testament to how most tennis players are decent most of the time that when something like this happens, people are shocked. When you compare tennis players to athletes of other sports, its night and day. An outburst by a tennis player and its a surprise. An outburst by athletes from football or basketball etc and its sort of like 'Oh here we go again, who is it this time?'. An outburst like this wouldn't even be news if it happened in baseball or something. So in comparison to what I've seen in other sports and their athletes, this is relatively minor. Again, just really bad choice of words. If she had just stuck to calling the lineswoman a f**king moron, this would all have been water under the bridge already. So since she doesn't have a history of doing stuff like this, I give her a pass. If she does it again, then yeah something more drastic might be warranted.

[Mike Hunt]

I liked the acceptance speech by Del Potro.

Del Potro: "I'd like to say something in Spanish"
Dick Enberg: "We don't have time..."

I'm happy he got what he wanted in anyways.

[Doctor MJ]

Federer does that too at times. Just did that today abit after his loss to Del Potro. Quickly said that Delpony was the best today and then brought up his great streak at the US Open. Maybe Serena does it more often I don't know, but the fact is that alot of top athletes do it and have abit of a chip on their shoulders. How many basketball or football players diss people all the time?

Federer does do it a tad, which is more than I'd like, but it's not nearly so severe.

What about basketball or football players? Sure, but what is your point? The fact that Shaq and TO say all sorts of negative things that hurt perception of their sport and kill their own team's chemistry certainly doesn't make it any better than Serena behaves poorly as well.

Here's the thing, Safina hasn't been playing like a #1 since she got there. She hasn't played well in alot of grandslams before she made world #1 and she's been worse after she was ranked #1. So has Safina been playing like a world #1? Hell no! Has Serena? I'd say for the most part yes. The main things you can knock her on is maybe not playing enough tournaments and perhaps not going as far in non grandslam events. But to me, she plays like a top player when it matters most in the GS events, something Safina hasn't done much of. So far, Safina is like a great regular season team that sucks in the playoffs while Serena is the opposite.

Also I think one reason why Safina is getting such a hard time is not just that she hasn't won a slam but is #1, but in how she has lost her matches in GS events. The three times she made it to a GS finals, they all turned into blowouts. And the two times that she got as far as the semis in a GS, she got blown out as well. I know every player has their off days and whatnot, but cmon at least play better in important matches and make the scores closer once in a while. Serena loses too, but most of the time you know she's going to be tough to beat as opposed to Safina who could be tough or easy depending on her mood.

Hey, I totally understand why Safina's become a lightning rod. That someone as weak as her is the #1 in the women's game drives me nuts. She's not a #1 level player, it's obvious. The question is this: Should the #1 slot be handed to a more talented player who isn't competing like she's supposed to rather than give it to a person who's performing consistently solid (tournament-wise that is)? I think the answer is pretty clear: To have a system that ranks thousands of players without using math is not realistic, so there's no choice here. Give Serena the Player of the Year award, but there's no way to rig math equations to insure that the best player wins out when the best player refuses to do what is asked of her.