Great Matches

I just remembered that one. Fed v Davydenko. Fed won in 3 but could have easily lost in 3. Plenty of beautiful points. 2 amazing talents at their best. Very gutsy play under heavy pressure....a rarity nowadays.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yMzGbFbsAg

Davy on fire is quite a spectacle.

I remember him playing Novak in Davis Cup in Moscow about 5-6 years ago. Nole played with flu and had to retire in the third set (best of 5), but while it lasted it was crazy!
I don't remember sever seeing such fast tennis.

However, I have always faulted Davy for not playing all court tennis, although even as he is, he has carved out a unique niche among tennis characters.

You once posted a link with Blake playing somebody else a while ago, I can't remember who the other player was but tennis was really superb.

I saw Davy beat Fed in the WTF semi-final in 2009 (and after that beating Delpo for the title) live; that was his first ever win over Fed after 13 straight losses, he was so funny in the speech after the match...in his own way, of course!
Tennis was excellent, too.

Peak Fed vs peak Davy on carpet would've been interesting!

PS
I wonder what Borg thought of that RG SF match, esp in the light of proclaiming Nadal "an artist" the other day....

Wow, that has to
be one of the most breathtakingly intense GS matches. Both are so damn aggressive.

Funny thing is I never understood what nadal fans are talking about, game-wise, when they
praise nadal as being “intense” and all I see is a robot with little problem-solving
ability but excels in endlessly and tirelessly repeating the same shots over
and over. Now it seems they’re not referring to nadal’s game-plan but sub-consciously
admiring their idol’s sex appeal.

Incredible that Davy is virtually gone but Fed is still in RG playing with the same sense
of aggression, albeit a step or two slower, less consistent and increasing
errors. I think Fed is accustomed to playing on his terms, hitting winners and
ending points in the quickest way he knows how. But winning or losing, it seems
to me Roger is a stubborn and old-fashioned purist. He just won’t change to play in a way opposite to his natural attacker’s instinct. Is that the reason he’d rather lose than revising his game to play in nadal’s terms that entirely contradicts his own tennis ideals?

A great match and some awesome display of tennis skill from both. These kind of contests are easier for Fed to win, this is essentially a battle of timing, tennis ball striking, shots-making, taking the ball on the rise, etc. Meaning skills as a tennis player and Fed is supreme that one has ever been in that regard.

raiders_of_the_lost_ark wrote:A great match and some awesome display of tennis skill from both. These kind of contests are easier for Fed to win, this is essentially a battle of timing, tennis ball striking, shots-making, taking the ball on the rise, etc. Meaning skills as a tennis player and Fed is supreme that one has ever been in that regard.

It is essentially about delivering that fine timing in the toughest, pressure times. That is what it was all about and not easy at all....especially as Fed has SHBH....but I thought it was one of Davydenko's best match and really weird how he lost it. It was about that time also he gave Nadal a scare in Hamburg and I feel that this Davydenko coudl possibly have sorted out Nadal. Same with Nalby in 2007 or 06? Fed had to play his best game and since those 2 (Nalby and Davydenko) have DHBH they woudl have handled much better. Nadal was once again only very lucky to have to play PHM instead of Nalby and Davy....it woudl have been a very different matter.

Another 15mns of great tennis, still between the two. I think Davydenko at his peak was one of Federer's toughest opponent. The score rarely reflects how tight were those matches.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFaH4bPw_Jw

Nice friendly handshake at the end showing certainly genuine, albeit boring for some, respect.

As far as I am concerned, it's easy to give a respectful warm handshake when you are winning.
Davy & co who were regularly losing to Fed, naturally respected him and expressed it in the hand-shakes. More a mix of admiration and inferiority complex you develop from constant losing to the same guy.
Do it after a bitter loss and I take my hat off.
Nole is genuinely superb like that.

Strangely, at tennis matches (I am talking about the ticket paying fans here), from my experience, I'd say about 20% of people max are proper tennis fans that know the game. The rest want the show and to them Davydenko will be the boring guy.

On my way back from Paris on the train I was listening to a group of people who also went and they were showing off trying to outdo each other with their "knowledge"...

One guy was particularly painful:


"I saw Tommy Haas! " he announced proudly to the bamboozled faces of his audience who obviously didn't know much about Tommy Haas.
Then one of them, a woman, mentioned how Rosol beat Nadal at Wimbledon, so the same guy butted in (obviously a Nadal fan) saying how he got "thrashed by a "nobody" ( Kohlschreber) in the next round....and finished it off with an Ode to Andy Murray who: "has every shot in the book, and demolished Federer at the Olympics"...oh, it was sheer pain!!!!
And that's your tennis crowd, the "better" minority of the ignorant majority!

I was cringing in my seat as I wanted to drop off and at the same time wanted to get up and tell them what rubbish they were saying.....

LOL! funny story in that train. Even in my tennis club I realise not many grasp what makes those top players so good.

I'd say the general consensus amongst tennis fans is that if someone is number 1 in the world he is good at everything and does everything better than the rest. So concretely, the number 1 is the most talented, has teh best FH and BH and is the mentally strongest player.

I'd say only from experience on forums, 10 to 20 % of real tennis fans (those regular posters) an really distinguish weapons/strenghes of a number one making the real difference on court.

Monfils strength for instance is not so much is ability of retrieving the impossible balls, it's actually the ease with which he retrieves good attacking balls. When Gulbis hot a good shot, it would not have been a winner but unbalanced a few players. Monfils however was there with ease and pushing the ball back confortably. Even 2 hard shots on opposite corners would be retrieved without too much difficulty. That puts a lot of pressure on the attacking player who sees teh goal posts narrowing against such player.

It's also Murray main strength. It's also one Djoko's strength.