Australian Open 2014 : MOTD : Day 6

Very quicky before there is another power outage I suffer here.

1. Teymuraz Gabashvili (RUS) [33]
vs.
Roger Federer (SUI) [6]


2. Andy Murray (GBR) [11]
vs.
Feliciano Lopez (ESP) [33]


3. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (FRA) [25]
vs.
Gilles Simon (FRA) [33]


4. Milos Raonic (CAN) [22]
vs.
Grigor Dimitrov (BUL) [33]


5. Donald Young (USA) [33]
vs.
Kei Nishikori (JPN) [16]




My picks:


1. Fed
2. Murray
3. Simon
4. Dimi
5. Nishikori

Feds, Murray, tsonga, raonic, young.

Federer, Murray, Tsonga, Dimitrov, Nishikori

Federer, Murray, Tsonga, Dimitrov, Nishikori

Federer
Murray
Tsonga
Raonic
Nishikori

 WHAT???? NO NADAL MONFILS? ROTLA ARE YOU KIDDING? !

1. Roger Federer (SUI) [6]


2. Andy Murray (GBR) [11]


3. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (FRA) [25]


4. Milos Raonic (CAN) [22]


5. Donald Young (USA) [33]


And MONFILS of course!!!!
Everybody make up your mind on that one.

Pretty good schedule today.  The plan is:

1. stay up until 1am or so - that should cover Federer, Dimi/Raonic and hopefully most or all of Andy.

2. then go to sleep and get up sometime around 5-6am.  I will miss Tsonga/Simon and Nishikori, but should be good for most or all of Rafa.

My plan is for Monfils to beat Nadal.

noleisthebest wrote:My plan is for Monfils to beat Nadal.

That is a good plan as long as you can stick with it and execute.

I just saw Paire is playing tonight, as well!
Does court 2 get televised?

noleisthebest wrote:I just saw Paire is playing tonight, as well!
Does court 2 get televised?

Yes, it does.  Don't know where you can catch it but here in the US ESPN definitely has a stream from that court.

Roger

Roger looking solid and comfortable so far.  Gabashvili playing quite decent himself, yet the first set was no contest.

Also:   Dimi

Dimi breaks Rao to love and then serves out the first set - so far so good.

Only watching Fed with a corner of my eye now, but he has been pretty impressive so far.  He won the second set 6:2 also, still looking very comfortable while doing it.

Very nice and clean from Fed; flashes of the old Fed there.

Rao takes the second set.  Bautista-Agut seems to be destroying Paire - 6:2, 6:1 the first two sets.

Missed 20 minutes of action and Dimi has in the meantime taken the third set.  One more Dimi!

Dimitrov wins.  That was a very good performance.  Very mature tennis, and very watchable too.  AO website claims he had 49Ws to 13UEs.  That seems a little too generous, but he was good.  Hit some brilliant shots in the process.  His movement is so much better than two years ago.  He used to seem like he was always off-balance, much much better now.

I think he is getting close to being able to break through.  Top 10 or better this year?

Tie-break time in the first set of Andy's match.

Andy plays a very good TB and takes the first set.  That is curtains for my evening.  Will get maybe four hours of sleep and expect I will wake up to see most - if not all - of Rafa's match.

Very happy with both Fed's and Dimi's performances tonight though...

I woke up about 4 AM wanting to watch Fed and Paire, but my eyelids felt so heavy, I could only manage to see that Fed was serving for the match and Paire was a set down...
Fed and Murray as expected, but a bit surprised that Agut cleaned Paire with such ease.
He must be on such confidence high now and playing at the very top of his game.
Will be interesting to see how he does in the next match.

Agut has been the surprise of this tournament so far. Played fantastic till now.

Can Simon take Tsonga out?

raiders_of_the_lost_ark wrote:Can Simon take Tsonga out?

I would love to, but don't think he'll be physically up for it. His only chance is to start returning Tsonga's serve really well from the word go and underpin his confidence.
Tsonga's game falls apart very quickly without it.

summerblues wrote:Dimitrov wins.  That was a very good performance.  Very mature tennis, and very watchable too.  AO website claims he had 49Ws to 13UEs.  That seems a little too generous, but he was good.  Hit some brilliant shots in the process.  His movement is so much better than two years ago.  He used to seem like he was always off-balance, much much better now.

I think he is getting close to being able to break through.  Top 10 or better this year?

Wow, SB, you are emerging to be a Dimi fanboy  
Happy for him, as well. Not sure he is capable of top 10 this year. He'll need to start beating players from that group if he wants  to take their spot.

Edberg and Luthi watching Tsonga vs Simon.

noleisthebest wrote:

raiders_of_the_lost_ark wrote:Can Simon take Tsonga out?

I would love to, but don't think he'll be physically up for it. His only chance is to start returning Tsonga's serve really well from the word go and underpin his confidence.
Tsonga's game falls apart very quickly without it.

Easy holds both both players till now. But Tsonga is serving bombs.

raiders_of_the_lost_ark wrote:Edberg and Luthi watching Tsonga vs Simon.

I'd better start watching then, too.

ALLEEEEEEEZ!!!!!!!!!  

TB time..

And Tsonga takes the 2nd set.
Simon playing well, unfortunately allowed Tsonga to find his groove and will be almost impossible to dislodge from it now.
Still...enjoy watching him craft his points out like a cat!

Am I the only one blocked on Eurosportplayer? It suddenly stopped working!

You must have been watching all those steaming hot WTA players and melted the stream....
Mine's working fine  

lol....You know me I prefer to watch men!

Tenez wrote:Am I the only one blocked on Eurosportplayer? It suddenly stopped working!

No, same for me too- i'm watching it on iPad.

The only way I can get it to work, is deleting the app, and re-downloading it, logging in again; if you do that it works. However you can't exit the app, or do anything else, as soon as I go onto something else and back to Eurosport Player it stops working.

And Tsonga wins in straight sets.
Looked good and comfortable on the court, FH firing really well.
Still, Simon allowed him into the match, so that was a natural consequence.
Enjoyed watching them play in friendly spirit as Frenchies do, I only wish Monfils was there instead of Tsonga, as the crowd was in fantastic carnival mood and Monf & Simon would have played up to it and go alongside so well.

Now that I've had my tennis enjoyment fix, time to put on the masochistic  hat and venture into the dark world of Gruntael Kneedul.

Hope Monf is doing well there.

ALLEEEEEZ!!!!!!!!!

It's 'kneedull' not 'kneedul'- you have to have 2ls or it doesn't work.

What do you mean by "work"?

Julia Santamaria wrote:

Tenez wrote:Am I the only one blocked on Eurosportplayer? It suddenly stopped working!

No, same for me too- i'm watching it on iPad.

The only way I can get it to work, is deleting the app, and re-downloading it, logging in again; if you do that it works. However you can't exit the app, or do anything else, as soon as I go onto something else and back to Eurosport Player it stops working.

Thanks. works again for some reasons.

Nadal is sweating like mad. I hope Monf drains the last drop out of him today.

Brutal! Wilander picks the right word as usual!

Those conds are perfect for Nadal....he has plenty of time to whack the ball. Never rushed but his spin forces his opponents so much running!

Nadal pretending to have a niggle.....

Tenez wrote:Those conds are perfect for Nadal....he has plenty of time to whack the ball. Never rushed but his spin forces his opponents so much running!

They are: slow surface, high-bouncing ball...
It will require a beast with nerves of steel to outlast him. Shame Sod never came back. He was great!

I know it's selfish of me, but I wish Monf would forget about fast points and just grind Nadal.
He is capable of doing it I think.

noleisthebest wrote:What do you mean by "work"?

Well it's meant to be to a combination of Knee and Dull.
Anyway i'm off to play tennis now, and also will do an interesting 'Nadal forehand' experiment that my coach has agreed with the group… will write a thread on it later probably.

noleisthebest wrote:I know it's selfish of me, but I wish Monf would forget about fast points and just grind Nadal.
He is capable of doing it I think.

mhhh...He looks very exhausted....even without rallying. The spin is such an advantage on those courts.

Tenez wrote:

noleisthebest wrote:I know it's selfish of me, but I wish Monf would forget about fast points and just grind Nadal.
He is capable of doing it I think.

mhhh...He looks very exhausted....even without rallying. The spin is such an advantage on those courts.

I am well aware of it. If he took the pace of and just went for safe counterpunching mode...I love watching Nadal's "power grunting" subside and shots begin to lose that zip deep into long rallies. Nole does it so well against him.

Monf is too inconsistent and Nadal is too solid. Monf has not much chance today.

Julia Santamaria wrote:

noleisthebest wrote:What do you mean by "work"?

Well it's meant to be to a combination of Knee and Dull.
Anyway i'm off to play tennis now, and also will do an interesting 'Nadal forehand' experiment that my coach has agreed with the group… will write a thread on it later probably.

Silly club lever players and their idea that more spin will help them...even worse - the ambitious recs!
Make sure you wear your Nadal kit, it may help  

Nadal's BH catching up with his FH.
Dull and efficient, just like the rest of his artificial game. Nothing graceful or natural about it. Pure hard graft and hours of relentless practice.
Yet, it would all be completely useless in proper playing conditions.

Allez le Monf!
Such a high risk game! I honestly cannot understand how people don't think that taking the ball so early is difficult. It's so much more risky!