Canada/Cincinnati Masters Series

Federer's sensible withdrawal and Nadal's currently unassailable position at #1 deprives the Toronto draw of a lot of interest for me.

Djoko is seeded to face Zverev in the QF with Anderson/Dimitrov seeded for their half's SF; Nadal is seeded to meet Cilic in QF and Del Potro in SF - with a possible 3rd round encounter vs. Wawrinka or Kyrgios.

Probably the most 'interesting' questions are posed by the possible Djoko/Zverev encounter, but it's early days yet on the US hardcourt season and at this stage in their respective careers it's how they do at the USO that counts.

Rafa vs Paire. A little odd. It all looked ordinary at 6:2 2:0 but now we have had six consecutive breaks of serve. At one point, 13 consecutive points went against the server. Needless to say, not the highest quality of tennis.

And now seven consecutive breaks and Rafa is serving for the match at 5:3.

Rafa holds this time and takes the match.

interesting next match

kyrgios again a loser

Djoko beaten badly hahahaah

Shapo lost to Hasse in st. sets.. I was certain he would struggle to keep his SF points from last year. Nothing abnormal, the usual from the next gen.

Wawrinka lost a close match. He looks okay fitness wise, but lacks confidence on key moments. Nadal was ordinary.

if he was really ordinary he will find it hard against cilic

didnt see him

And Tsitsipas continues his good run of form by beating Zverev in dramatic fashion but playing well when needed from 3-6, 2-5 down. He saved a couple of MPs in the 2nd set TB to win the match 3-6, 7-6(13-11), 6-4. Next is KA in SF. If I were Tsitsipas, I'd feel like the favorite to win this one and get to my first Master 1000 final. Will he feel the pressure, or will he go all the way and win a Master 1000, emulating his fellow #NextGen he just beat...

cilic hard as expected

nadal always competitive

Barcelona´s final repeat

different surface and wiser tsitsipas

He may be knackered though, not sure it matters mind.

9th hardcourt master for the claycourter

Stan making some progress. Djoko up-&-down continues. Fed cant say much, seems okay, but its only one match passed.

Glad to see Zverev lose to Haase, he is such a pussy, could of won it 5 times over only if he had balls to approach the net, his tennis sucks and brings nothing interesting.

Shapo just went home too from Rao.

Hope Djoko is crushed by Dimi.

Jahu wrote:Glad to see Zverev lose to Haase, he is such a pussy, could of won it 5 times over only if he had balls to approach the net, his tennis sucks and brings nothing interesting.

Shapo just went home too from Rao.

Hope Djoko is crushed by Dimi.

Dimi? haha.. Naah.. You perhaps didn't see how utter crap Djokovic was playing. Dimi hardly had to do anything to win points. Slicing on over 85% of the points on BH and Djo would throw a regulation error.

And yet this went into the 3rd sets and Djo is a break up 2*-1.

Rain has screwed up scheduling in Cincy. Almost everyone has to play 2 matches today.

Would have thought Federer is a bit stuffed by this, unless he totally steamrollers them both.

Now come on Raonic, beat this fuker!!!

Fed in quick 2 with Stan....

Come on Raonic, wake the fuck up you giant moron.

ffs, usual meltdown from Raonic.

High quality here from a Federer & Stan.

89th (!) consecutive hold of serve in Cincinnati takes Fed to 5-2 in the 3rd.

And a love break ends a close match. It was 6-6 in the 2nd set tiebreaker, though Federer never faced a break point.

Goff to pay today for that totally unnecessary win he did over Fed at last WTF.

I have only seen bits and pieces of matches this summer, but it will be a nail biting USO as long as Rafa is in it.  He looks the strongest of them all.  Neither Fed - from the few games I have seen of him - nor Nole look very consistent.

From among the rest, Cilic is probably playing best - and Rafa beat him already in Canada.

Somebody somehow has to beat Rafa or it will be very gloomy off-season. 

Well sure Cilic is crushing this prick in second set.

Maybe Nadal has a bad first week and goes home at USO

Fed was acceptable last night, Stan was in the zone quite good.

Djoko has his best chance to win Cincu. He had to wait for Federer to reach 37 to finally wim on the fastest surface.

Federers timing is way off so far, still you never know with him how hard he’s pushing it.

Goff gives up, sweet boy he is.

Good exercise for Fed to crush Djoko tumoro.

I thought Fed looked a little better today.

Yesterday vs Stan (mind you I only saw the first set) it looked like his shots did not have the usual pop.  He was keeping it close mostly by his variety - never a good sign if he has to do that.

Today he was still missing quite a lot, but I thought he was hitting his shots with more conviction.

Good luck tomorrow, but mostly at the USO.

I still think Rafa will need to lose to some surprise player early on.  If he reaches SF/F, he looks sturdier to me than either Fed or Nole, or anyone else for that matter.

Jahu wrote:Goff gives up, sweet boy he is.

Yeah, that was very nice.  Remember, he used to (used to?) have Fed's posters in his room when growing up.


On a similar topic, it would be nice if Fed got to play Auger Aliassime at the USO (or indeed anytime within the next 12 months).  He would play a player less than half his age.  That would probably be a first for Fed (?).

Speaking of Auger Aliassime.  I saw him the first time last week.  I saw the last few games vs Medvedev.

He looked quite good for an 18yo, even though I was not exactly blown away by him.

On the plus side, he plays fairly aggressive game, and he seems to have - as far as I can tell from seeing him for 20 minutes - much better focus than say Kyrgios.

On the other hand, he did not impress me quite the same as Kyrgios when I saw him the first time.  While he was playing quite aggressive, he did not hit many shots that would make me go "wow".

Also, one slightly worrisome thing:  He played quite aggressive - and quite successfully so - right through 4:1 in the deciding TB.  And then all of a sudden he became much more cautious, and started losing points.  Hopefully that was just a sign of immature lack of judgement, rather than a sign of mental frailty.

Still, it would be nice if we had another good young player come up and play well.

summerblues wrote:I thought Fed looked a little better today.

Yesterday vs Stan (mind you I only saw the first set) it looked like his shots did not have the usual pop.  He was keeping it close mostly by his variety - never a good sign if he has to do that.

That 1st set must have been awful. The later stages - 2nd and 3rd sets - of the Stan match were very high standard whereas today he looked as sloppy as Hell.

Amazing stat on his serve though; it’s now something like 98 consecutive holds of serve at Cincinnati. That’ll be tested tomorrow.

bogbrush wrote:Amazing stat on his serve though; it’s now something like 98 consecutive holds of serve at Cincinnati. That’ll be tested tomorrow.

No doubt it will.  He will be lucky to make it to 100.

I expect Federer to win IF he can play some decent tennis - but that's the question.

The BH has looked a mess this year and the aggressive return off that wing seems to have disappeared. Those are the keys to the match - if Fed can hit clean and consistently off the BH and apply some pressure on the return he should win on this court. 

Either way - the USO is looking wide open. Federer really messed it up last year - with Djokovic AWOL and Nadal his pet bunny at the time, it was the chance to seal the deal. He really screwed up the scheduling to play Montreal with little practice and subsequently get injured allowing Nadal to steal the title. 

If Rafa wins it again this year then in retrospect last year's USO could yet prove to be the most decisive move in this dogfight.

If Djokovic wins the USO - suddenly he has a sniff  - albeit a distant waft.

Feds' serve getting him out of trouble in the opening game. Saves a couple of bps but made quite a lot of UE;s.

Come Roger, beat the shit out of him.

go go gooooooooo (no silly mistakes)

luvsports! wrote:Feds' serve getting him out of trouble in the opening game. Saves a couple of bps but made quite a lot of UE;s.

...and 0 read or chances on Djokos serve.

Need to return some IN.

He doesn't seem to be timing the ball at all well. Strange after a week.

Broken

wake the fuck upppp, wtf is this? break his fucking neck

break him nowwwww

Gotta do it the hard way...

Very frustrating.
Gets the break handed to him and then hands it bacl.

wtf is going on? why is he nervous? like playing a first round match, and not final.

no power, no precision, bad at the net, serve sucks, silly UE's especially that DF

someone do fucking somethinggggg jesus

So its 25 seconds to serve from the moment you get up from the chair, Djoko just found out I guess.

3 dumb UE's in a row, ffs

4 !!!!