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re: Official French Open Discussion Thread
Posted on 6/1/12 at 6:04 am to Unbiased Bama Fan
Posted on 6/1/12 at 6:04 am to Unbiased Bama Fan
Sloane Stephens through in straights and is the first American in the Round of 16.
This post was edited on 6/1/12 at 7:31 am
2
Posted on 6/1/12 at 7:29 am to jclem11
Sharapova dominates again: 6-1, 6-1.
Posted on 6/1/12 at 1:37 pm to jclem11
quote:
Sloane Stephens
Making a nice run through the tourney so far. Seems like we have a ton of up and coming American women who will be making waves in the next few years.
The American men, on the other hand, seem to be still a ways a way.
Posted on 6/1/12 at 1:38 pm to Roscoe
Sharapova and Djokovic win it all.
Posted on 6/1/12 at 1:44 pm to Roscoe
Harrison isn't that far away
He needs to up his ranking so he's not playing top 10 players in the first round of grand slams. I'll go on record and say he cracks the top 10 next year on his way to the top 5.
He's 19. Love his game.
He needs to up his ranking so he's not playing top 10 players in the first round of grand slams. I'll go on record and say he cracks the top 10 next year on his way to the top 5.
He's 19. Love his game.
Posted on 6/1/12 at 1:46 pm to CajunFootball
quote:
Djokovic win it all.
He certainly can...but I think he's going to have multiple challenges to get to the finals. Nadal is going to cruise to the final and will hands down be the favorite no matter who he plays. The guy is 40 something - 1 at RG. Hard to bet against him.
Sharapova is a nice pick, especially with how she's playing and who is left in the draw. At this point, I would be more interested in watching some of the men's doubles or mixed doubles than watching the rest of the women's draw play out.
Posted on 6/1/12 at 2:16 pm to Roscoe
Djokovic isn't fricking around today.
Posted on 6/1/12 at 5:08 pm to Unbiased Bama Fan
quote:
Well, I think there's a huge difference between being the best player of all-time and the greatest player of all-time. Serena certainly has a case for being the best player of all-time but she has no case for being the greatest player of all-time. At her absolute peak, I don't see any women's player beating her including Graf or Navratilova. However, she will never be greater than them. She trails them big-time in every major category such as Grand Slams won, weeks at #1, match winning percentage, and total tournaments won. I don't see her ever being ranked higher than 4th in any all-time great women's tennis player list unless she gets herself in shape and starts dominating again.
Your defintion of greatest is just a resume comparison. You're simply counting up trophies.
Assume:
(i) Lucy Longevity has lots and lots of trophies in her trophy room.
(ii) Sarah Sparingly has lots of trophies herself, but far fewer than Lucy.
(iii) Sarah will kick Lucy's arse in tennis every single day of the week and twice on Sunday.
Which of these is the most important consideration? If you're ranking players, do you rank Lucy or Sarah higher? What you're telling me is that you rank Lucy higher, and I think that's silly. That's like ranking Robert Horry as a better basketball player than Bernard King.
On my list, since Sarah is better at tennis than Lucy, I'm ranking her above Lucy. I like the alien test because it allows for a more meaningful apples to apples comparison. It really focuses the analysis.
This post was edited on 6/1/12 at 5:21 pm
Posted on 6/1/12 at 5:09 pm to castorinho
quote:
Djokovic isn't fricking around today
Posted on 6/1/12 at 5:16 pm to tuptiger
quote:
He's 19. Love his game.
He is 20. In tennis, if you're an elite talent it's crystal clear by the age of 20 that you're an elite talent. With Harrison, it's about as clear as mud.
I don't love Harrison's game at all. What are his weapons? He reminds me of a poor man's Giles Simon. I don't get what all the hype is about. I see him as a top 20 player and nothing more.
Posted on 6/1/12 at 5:19 pm to CajunFootball
quote:
Sharapova and Djokovic win it all.
Smart money is on Nadal.
Posted on 6/1/12 at 5:31 pm to bobbyray21
quote:
Assume:
(i) Lucy Longevity has lots and lots of trophies in her trophy room.
(ii) Sarah Sparingly has lots of trophies herself, but far fewer than Lucy.
(iii) Sarah will kick Lucy's arse in tennis every single day of the week and twice on Sunday.
Which of these is the most important consideration? If you're ranking players, do you rank Lucy or Sarah higher? What you're telling me is that you rank Lucy higher, and I think that's silly. That's like ranking Robert Horry as a better basketball player than Bernard King.
On my list, since Sarah is better at tennis than Lucy, I'm ranking her above Lucy. I like the alien test because it allows for a more meaningful apples to apples comparison. It really focuses the analysis.
Except three's definitely not the case. I believe peak Serena's probably the best ever but she's not often at her peak. I mean Serena's only 10-7 against Jennifer Capriati, 8-6 against Justine Henin, and 7-6 against Martina Hingis. None of those three players could shine Steffi Graf's shoes yet they were able to have a respectable head-to-head record against Serena. And the Robert Horry/Bernard King comparison might be the dumbest comparison ever. Unlike tennis, basketball is a team sport. You can compare tennis players statistically because it's an individual sport. You don't rely on teammates to win matches. You're out there all by yourself unlike a sport like basketball where Horry was lucky enough to win rings playing with prime Shaq, Hakeem, Kobe, and Duncan.
Posted on 6/1/12 at 5:43 pm to bobbyray21
quote:
He is 20. In tennis, if you're an elite talent it's crystal clear by the age of 20 that you're an elite talent. With Harrison, it's about as clear as mud.
I don't love Harrison's game at all. What are his weapons? He reminds me of a poor man's Giles Simon. I don't get what all the hype is about. I see him as a top 20 player and nothing more.
You're absolutely right about Harrison. I've never been impressed with him whenever I've seen him play. The only young player I really like is Milos Raonic. Now, that kid has weapons. That's why I laugh at people who think Djokovic and Nadal only have a few years left to win slams because of their age. Who are the great young players that will knock them off their perch in the next five years? There aren't any. Federer's considered a late bloomer yet he still beat Sampras in Wimbledon at age 19 and was a top 15 player in his teens. None of the current teenage crop comes close to matching Federer's feats at an early age. It sort of reminds me of the late '90s, early '00s when an aging Agassi and Sampras racked up slams because the caliber of players born in the late '70s were unbelievably weak. I believe Djokovic and Nadal still have plenty of years to win slams especially Djokovic since he doesn't have the mileage on his body that Nadal does.
Posted on 6/1/12 at 6:26 pm to Unbiased Bama Fan
quote:
Except three's definitely not the case. I believe peak Serena's probably the best ever
(1)
but she's not often at her peak. I mean Serena's only 10-7 against Jennifer Capriati, 8-6 against Justine Henin, and 7-6 against Martina Hingis. None of those three players could shine Steffi Graf's shoes yet they were able to have a respectable head-to-head record against Serena.
(2)
And the Robert Horry/Bernard King comparison might be the dumbest comparison ever. Unlike tennis, basketball is a team sport. You can compare tennis players statistically because it's an individual sport. You don't rely on teammates to win matches. You're out there all by yourself unlike a sport like basketball where Horry was lucky enough to win rings playing with prime Shaq, Hakeem, Kobe, and Duncan.
Not your best effort.
(1)
First of all, if you agree that Serena at her peak is the best ever, then you absolutely agree with (iii). Secondly, why in the world would you respond to that hypo with the above-bolded? The very purpose of the hypo was to avoid a response like the above-bolded. Why do you think I called her Sarah Sparingly?
(2)
It's a perfectly apt comparison. The only way you could have had any problem understanding the analogue of the comparison is if you didn't immediately recognize that Bernard King was a better basketball player than Robert Horry by several orders of magnitude.* Hopefully you did, and you would have understood that it was illustrating how a "trophy room" analysis can lead to absurd results. But this wasn't your best effort, so I guess you didn't.
I mean, if you yourself are applying the alien test and selecting Serena, why did you even reply to my post? The point I'm making is that a prime vs. prime "alien test" analysis is simply a better, more illustrative test. It's more meaningful. It's apples to apples. It's a focused analysis. It doesn't worrry about how many titles Monica Seles won -- it asks whether Steffi at her best could beat Seles at her best -- and so it doesn't disadvantage a player who got stabbed during a changeover. Or, similarly, a player who was injury prone.
*If you didn't recognize that, then that's a major issue we should address another time.
This post was edited on 6/1/12 at 6:30 pm
Posted on 6/1/12 at 8:01 pm to bobbyray21
quote:
Not your best effort.
(1)
First of all, if you agree that Serena at her peak is the best ever, then you absolutely agree with (iii). Secondly, why in the world would you respond to that hypo with the above-bolded? The very purpose of the hypo was to avoid a response like the above-bolded. Why do you think I called her Sarah Sparingly?
(2)
It's a perfectly apt comparison. The only way you could have had any problem understanding the analogue of the comparison is if you didn't immediately recognize that Bernard King was a better basketball player than Robert Horry by several orders of magnitude.* Hopefully you did, and you would have understood that it was illustrating how a "trophy room" analysis can lead to absurd results. But this wasn't your best effort, so I guess you didn't.
I mean, if you yourself are applying the alien test and selecting Serena, why did you even reply to my post? The point I'm making is that a prime vs. prime "alien test" analysis is simply a better, more illustrative test. It's more meaningful. It's apples to apples. It's a focused analysis. It doesn't worrry about how many titles Monica Seles won -- it asks whether Steffi at her best could beat Seles at her best -- and so it doesn't disadvantage a player who got stabbed during a changeover. Or, similarly, a player who was injury prone.
I was probably more of a dick than I needed to be here. I hadn't gotten my workout in yet. Was grumpy.
I understand what you're saying about the King/Horry comparison, but it wasn't meant to be read that literally. And, most importantly, I wasn't able to think of a tennis player from Bama off the top of my head, so I just went with the first Vol/Bama-based analogy that popped in my head. And I've seen enough people on this board cite championship rings as a metric for evaluating players -- this is normally done while simultaneously performing cyber fellatio on Kobe Bryant -- that I figured people would get the point I was trying to get across.*
*To be clear, I do agree that championship rings are a terrible terrible metric for evaluating the individual merits of NBA basketball player.**
**But not nearly as bad as using championship rings as a metric to evaluate NFL quarterbacks.
Posted on 6/1/12 at 9:13 pm to bobbyray21
Speaking of Graf, Sloane Stephens' footwork immediately reminded me of her. When she is in a baseline rally, she split steps just as her opponent is hitting the ball. On every shot. Graf did that as well.
Posted on 6/2/12 at 1:08 pm to bobbyray21
Rafa rolled today 6-1,6-3,6-4
Posted on 6/2/12 at 1:19 pm to bigt41
Kanepi melting down
Again
Again
Posted on 6/2/12 at 1:21 pm to LanierSpots
Kanepi choked this match away after five match points
Posted on 6/2/12 at 1:29 pm to bigt41
they finally put on the raonic match, on match point
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