The Tennis Thread

[Reg]

Some big players crumbling in the final set this tournament.

Looking forward to the finals, both the women's and men's should be a treat.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Stan was almost unplayable from the second half of the fourth set to the end of the match.

The final should be a cracker.

[Reg]

Rafa just too good! Not far off the perfect performance. I don't think he was as good as in the Aus final, as he wasn't pushed like he was by Federer. Stan unfortunately far from his best.

The women's final yesterday was good fun. I thought it'd be too much for Ostapenko but she made a good comeback. Really unorthodox form, you'd never coach her forehand especially. Gets her in holes sometimes but she hits plenty of cracking shots. I love the stats, they sum up the styles perfectly:
Ostapenko with 54 winners and 54 unforced errors;
Halep with 8 winners and 10 unforced errors.

[Pleb]

Murray :harold:

[Spikey M]

Andy Mahowry :harold:

[Shindig]

Aljaz Bedene's fault entirely.

[Dquincy]

Murray :harold:

Donating his winnings from this tournament for the Grenfell Tower victims.

Knocked out 1st round.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Donating his winnings from this tournament for the Grenfell Tower victims.

Knocked out 1st round.

The Scots just can't do charity, it makes them physically sick.

[Reg]

Bizarrely, Murray, Wawrinka and Raonic (the top three seeds) are all out.

The next four - Cilic, Tsonga, Dimitrov, Berdych - are still in. I'd pick one of Cilic / Dimitrov, who have both won it before.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

It's Tsonga's year :nodd:

[Shindig]

Dan Evans explaining he took cocaine out of competition like it means something. Top. Man.

[Reg]

How do you mean?

A ban can be up to 4 years. Wonder how this will go down.

[Shindig]

"I want to stress, this was taken out of competition." I mean, that's fine for performance enhancers. Recreational drugs, it doesn't hold much. Unless he was hoping it was out of his system. Hingis got two years for it. Dan is not Martina Hingis.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-40452270

Ms Williams' car suddenly darted into their path and was unable to clear the junction in time due to traffic jams, according to witness statements in a police report obtained by US media.

Mrs Barson was also taken to hospital but survived.

"[Ms Williams] is at fault for violating the right of way of [the other driver]," the report said, adding that there were no other factors like drugs, alcohol or mobile phone distractions.

I wonder how far this will go.

[niko_cee]

Being America it's going to cost her a great deal of money, but it doesn't sound like there's a lot more to it.

[Reg]

Should be a fun day at Eastbourne tomorrow. Djokovic/Monfils will be tasty, providing Monfils hangs in there long enough. http://www.atpworldtour.com/en/scores/current/eastbourne/741/daily-schedule

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

I thought they didn't allow men at Eastbourne?

I feel bad for lolling at a radio reporter for saying 'No Murray at Eastbourne' earlier in the week.

[Reg]

Yeah it's been women only traditionally. Djokovic was a wildcard - he doesn't usually play any grass tourneys before Wimbledon. Could work out perfectly for him.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Already some rain :drool:

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

We should give Laura Robson back to Australia.

8 appearances at Wimbledon, 6 times she's lost in the first round with 3 of those being in consecutive years.

She hasn't won a match at any Grand Slam (including Qualifiers for the Aussie Open) since 2013 although she has missed 7 through injury.

[Disco]

She sounds quintessentially British to me.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Stan is 1 set down but he's up a break in the second.

Edit: Won the second but dropped the third.

Wawrinka looks a bit wobbly.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Broken in the fourth. Medvedev is playing some great stuff.

Stan on the ropes.

Pretty much thrown in the towel, double break.

First match at the actual draw of Wimbledon and he's smacked Stan the Man. 6-4, 3-6, 6-4, 6-1. Looked great too, hope he goes far.

[Reg]

Only saw the last half hour or so but felt sorry for Stan, clearly hindered by injury. Medvedev seems a nice chap though.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

The amount of flying ants :sick:

I'd fucking hate to be there.

Murray vs Brown should be fun a little later. Dustin Brown is great to watch.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Donna Vekic :wub:

[Reg]

Agreed.

Watched the end of Konta, and the whole of Murray/Brown (at various times).

Konta must be one of the faves.

Murray's the most awkward player in the world for Brown. I actually skimmed the start of this thread recently and read myself saying Murray struggled against net players, no clue what that was in reference to. He's a nightmare for a player like Brown or Karlovic. Brown obviously a lot more unpredictable but it'd be a huge shock if he beat Murray really. Making just 5 unforced errors in 3 sets is brilliant.

'Today at Wimbledon' has been pretty good these first few days. It was good seeing Pat Cash and Navratilova slate Tomic (who was "bored", lacked motivation - for Wimbledon ffs, and admitted to faking a medical timeout).

[ItalAussie]

Tomic might be the least popular person in Australia at the moment. :D

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Which is some going to beat Kygrios.

[Shindig]

John McEnroe implying Djokovic's marriage is on the rocks. :|

[John]

Tomic has lost his racquet sponsor off the back of this. If he was being genuine with his comments he should just pack it in.

[Reg]

He's earned almost 5 million US dollars, in prize money alone, for coasting on a third of his potential. He'll carry on turning up and not caring.

[randomlegend]

God that Mattek-Sands knee injury looked horrible.

[Byron]

Yeah that was a gruesome injury, and to one of the nicest and most colourful players on the tour as well.

[Kikó]

This Rogers playing Kerber of a beast.

[Reg]

Come ooooon Djok. I like Agassi. He seemed very cheerful just then. Interesting that he says, "I wouldn't call it 'coach'". Just some pointers etc.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

£5 on Gulbis to beat Djokovic @ 9
£2.50 E/W on Cillic and Muguruza to win Wimbledon.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

What a fucking winner that was to secure the break.

[Reg]

Didn't exactly look tight with nerves thumping those winners.

I think his serve will break down. Harder to keep your rhythm with such a high ball toss. Although this is the first full match I'm watching of his, so the serve may be great and I may be talking bollocks.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

He's done.

[John Arne]

I thought the authorities were going to stop this whole getting your towel after every serve shit? It's a complete joke.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

883645217043251200

Pissing hell.

[John]

I thought the authorities were going to stop this whole getting your towel after every serve shit? It's a complete joke.

It must be getting on for about half of your posts at the moment that are just complaining about the rules of various sports.

[John Arne]

It must be getting on for about 90% of your posts just pissing and moaning about everything.

[mugbull]

It must be getting on for about half of your posts at the moment that are just complaining about the rules of various sports.

:lol:

You're so fucking self-unaware

[John]

It must be getting on for about 90% of your posts just pissing and moaning about everything.

Because I'm a moany, joyless cunt, etc. It's the specificity I'm remarking on.


:lol:

You're so fucking self-unaware

You spent six months arguing with yourself using various accounts. A thousand years could pass and you still wouldn't have put enough distance between yourself and that episode to be anything other than a laughing stock. Off you pop.

[mugbull]

Yeah, but I don't act a shitbag to everyone i meet

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

This has been great.

Zverev looks handy.

[Reg]

Men's last 16:

Murray v Paire
Querrey v Anderson
Nadal v Muller
Bautista Agut v Cilic

Raonic v A. Zverev
Dimitrov v Federer
Thiem v Berdych
Mannarino v Djokovic
--------

My guesses: Murray, Querrey, Nadal, Cilic ; Zverev, Federer, Thiem, Djokovic

Raonic hasn't had the best year and Zverev will make him defend if they get into longer rallies.

Berdych more accustomed to grass than Thiem, but the former struggles under pressure sometimes and Thiem is a fighter and one of the best players now.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Yeah I go with that.

Querrey/Anderson is the closest for me, the rest seem pretty cut and dry.

I do think that one of the big four will be going out sooner rather than later.

[Reg]

Yeah 2/3 tiebreaks at least in that one, I think.

I think the 4 of them will make the semis.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Assuming our picks are right then you've got Murray with a relatively easy match, Nadal against Cillic (I have Cillic), Federer over Raonic and Thiem against Djokovic and I can see Thiem doing Novak over.

Cillic/Federer final :nodd:

[Reg]

I think it'll be Zverev over Raonic, but yeah Federer's beating either of them.

I've stopped being sure about Novak since wrongly predicting "He's back!" (as in best-in-the-world-back) about six times since November.

Guessing everyone would be up for another Fed-Nadal final; I think they'll both get there.

-----
Monfils being even more Monfils-y than usual :cool: - https://www.facebook.com/wimbledon/videos/10154972033048732/?hc_ref=NEWSFEED

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Paire seems to swing quite wildly between utterly brilliant and absolute dogshit with little in the middle.

[Mellberg]

Very strange player. Looks like a tempermant issue. Obviously has a lot of ability but seems quite...French.

[bruhnaldo]

i thought Monfils was supposed to be the next big thing

[ItalAussie]

Ages ago. He's a fairly senior figure on the tour these days.

Dominic Thiem is the big up-and-comer. And possibly Nick Kyrgios if he doesn't pitch it all away in a fit of pique.

[Reg]

Don't forget Zverev. The biggest 'next big thing' of all. Future no1 for sure.

[Kikó]

Easy for Murray. Hopefully his form is starting to come beck.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Nadal on the ropes here.

First time he's lost a set since the Aussie Open final.

[Reg]

Eh? He's lost matches.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

I ripped it from the BBC:

Game and first set - Muller

Nadal 3-6 Muller
Posted at 16:21

Now then.

Gilles Muller has served his way to a first set win over Rafa Nadal. It's the first time since the Australian Open final against Federer that Rafa has dropped a set. That's 10 matches and 28 sets ago...

They actually mean Grand Slam matches. Straight set wins through Roland Garros and then 3 in Wimbledon.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Those 2 serves when he was facing match point were brilliant.

Edit: Make that 4 to win the game.

[Mellberg]

Muller has a lot more to his game than I thought. Far more than just a big server. Been a brilliant match so far.

[Byron]

This does feel like peak Nadal.

Muller has been playing brilliantly as well mind you.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Such a fucking good match.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Reflective balcony :harold:

[Byron]

Can safely say this is one of the best matches I've watched in a while.

Another Isner-Mahut please :drool:

[ItalAussie]

He's only gone and done it.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Heroic stuff.

[Byron]

Absolutely superb.

Muller to win the whole thing please :drool:

[Kikó]

Great stuff and it leaves it with Fed to win.

[Spoonsky]

Muller. :cool:

Only watched the fifth set but it was more than enough, epic match.

[Spoonsky]

Ages ago. He's a fairly senior figure on the tour these days.

Dominic Thiem is the big up-and-comer. And possibly Nick Kyrgios if he doesn't pitch it all away in a fit of pique.

I read this article about Kyrgios yesterday, quite interesting: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/07/10/nick-kyrgios-the-reluctant-rising-star-of-tennis

I have to sympathize with him tbh, I would hate to be a pro tennis player, it sounds like a miserable life unless you truly love the game, which it sounds like he doesn't.

[phonics]

I'm not sure there's anything more depressing than being really, really, really good at a sport you don't particularly like. It'll always be the only career choice you can make but you subject yourself to everything you hate about it every day only for the occasional thing to go your way which is immediately forgotten a week later.

[Reg]

Ooo thanks for that link Spoon, looks good, when the New Yorker get involved in tennis it's good news.

Got to be Fed now. Djokovic now having to play tomorrow puts him at a disadvantage as well.

[phonics]

New Yorker articles on troubled sport stars are always amazing. See this one on Ronnie O'Sullivan.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/30/follow-the-white-ball

[Reg]

Not a snooker fan, but it'll probably be good, cheers.

edit- "You've read your last complimentary article this month." Poo.

[Disco]

Would it be as simple as deleting a cookie or something?

[phonics]

Do you have a preferred reading format Reg? I could post it here but I find it a nightmare to read longreads on here.



arly on a Tuesday morning last fall, Ronnie O’Sullivan was running through the woods near his home, in Chigwell, Essex, northeast of London. It was damp and muddy, England in November. O’Sullivan, who is thirty-nine, loves the anonymity of running. About ten years ago, he discovered that it was one thing that truly takes him out of himself—more than the drink and the drugs and the antidepressants—and suspends the otherwise unavoidable fact that he is the most talented snooker player of all time. At the age of eleven, O’Sullivan was making good money in the sport, and in the past three decades he has won five World Championships and set a number of records while enduring a bewildering odyssey of breakdowns, addictions, and redemptions, largely precipitated by the imprisonment of his father, whom he loves, for murder. O’Sullivan is frequently described as a genius. But he does not see how this can be so. Most days, he feels like a fraud. His game comes only in fits and starts. He wins because the others lose. He has wondered for a long time whether he would be happier doing something else. He has moved nine times in the past ten years. “I’m fucking, you know, searching,” he told me recently. “I kind of know who I am but I don’t like who I am, do you know what I mean? I wish I was a bit more fucking stable.”O’Sullivan tries to run six or seven miles a day. That morning, he was with his best friend from school, George Palacaros. (O’Sullivan grew up a short distance from Chigwell, in the town of Ilford.) It was a final run before the U.K. Championship, snooker’s second-biggest tournament, in York, two hundred miles to the north. O’Sullivan’s first-round match, against an amateur named Daniel Wells, was two days away. About five miles into the run, Palacaros called out to O’Sullivan to check the heart-rate monitor that he wears on his wrist. As O’Sullivan turned to reply, he slipped and fell, breaking his left ankle.
He tried to carry on. “I thought, I ain’t going to waddle back,” he said. He jogged another mile, but whenever he looked down he saw his ankle swelling up. By the time O’Sullivan reached the changing room at his running club, he couldn’t put any weight on his leg.
At the hospital, O’Sullivan was told that he had a simple fracture. His ankle wouldn’t need surgery, but it would take twelve weeks to heal and he would have to wear a protective brace. He called his psychiatrist. In the afternoon, O’Sullivan posted a picture of his ankle, bulging alarmingly, on Twitter, with the message “Might be one legged Snooker at the #UKChampionship on Thursday.” He found a pair of soft blue boots in his closet that fit over the brace. The next day, a friend drove him to York so that he could keep his foot elevated on the way.
Snooker, like its poor relation pool, is a cue sport. Unlike pool, snooker has twenty-two balls: fifteen red, six of other colors, and one white. (Pool and its variants involve sixteen balls or fewer.) Players take turns attempting to clear the table and earn as many points as possible, using the white cue ball to “pot” a red, then a colored ball (which is returned to the table), then a red, and so on. When all the reds are gone, the players dispatch the colors in order of their value, from the yellow, which is worth two points, up to the black, which is worth seven. If a player fails to pot a ball at any point, he must yield the table to his opponent. Matches are divided into frames, each won by whichever player scores the most points. In the professional game, frames tend to unfold with vivid, unsettling ease—the balls slide into the pockets as if there were nowhere else for them to go—or with staggering, metaphysical difficulty, as the players foil one another by arranging the balls in illogical patterns, a type of play known as “safety,” and everyone’s nerves go to hell.
Snooker’s civilized appearance belies its vicious and enervating nature. A snooker table is three times larger than a pool table and its pockets are an inch smaller. Even the most basic shot is a concatenation of foresight, friction, and various Newtonian laws. Players seek to control where at least two balls are going: the red or colored “object” ball, preferably toward a pocket; and the white ball, its rate of braking and spin carefully calibrated, either to stop near another object ball, so the process can begin again, or to continue toward some hostile district of the table, from where the opponent will be unlikely to score. The best players string together thirty shots in a row, in a hushed environment of thick carpet and dinner suits. (Snooker’s dress code recalls, more or less, that of a nineteen-thirties music hall.) Players compete to pot the same balls, so every shot has a psychological echo: What is good for me is bad for you. The longer I am at the table, the longer you must watch and fret. Players avoid eye contact. No one speaks.
At the U.K. Championship, all matches except the final were the best of eleven frames. O’Sullivan was reluctant to put weight on his ankle. “I feel like a baby that’s trying to learn to walk,” he told reporters. He limped through his first match but won, 6–2. Three days later, in the second round, he faced Peter Lines, a forty-four-year-old journeyman pro. I travelled north to watch him play. I reached the Barbican theatre in York, just outside the city’s medieval walls, early in the evening.
O’Sullivan had been debating whether to pull out of the tournament. His balance wasn’t right. There was no sign of him by the practice table, where the other players, dressed in bow ties and waistcoats, waited, leaning on their cues. Referees pulled on white gloves. Nevertheless, at 7 p.m., O’Sullivan appeared, walking out under the lights in answer to the snookering nickname that he has had since he was a teen-ager, “Ronnie (the Rocket) O’Sullivan!” In a dinner suit and his blue boots, his sideburns shot with gray, he looked like a croupier on his way home from work.
“You don’t feel comfortable when Ronnie’s playing,” Barry Hearn told me. Hearn has been snooker’s dominant impresario since the nineteen-eighties. He controls the commercial rights to the sport and has managed O’Sullivan three times, on and off, throughout his turbulent career. (O’Sullivan fired two managers during the reporting of this article.) “You’re almost watching an accident waiting to happen,” Hearn said. Against Lines, O’Sullivan was obviously out of sorts. Most snooker players, obsessed with repetition, seek to become robotic versions of themselves. But O’Sullivan in full flow is always in motion, checking this, squinting at that, buzzing backward and forward around the table, grimacing at the balls, fussing at chalk marks on the baize. His ankle made that impossible. Every movement was an effort.
Still, it was too much for Lines. Ranked sixty-first in the world, he seemed unnerved by the television cameras and missed a number of easy shots. Many lower-ranked players find it hard to concentrate when they play O’Sullivan. The crowd is against them, and they wonder what he thinks of their game. The match was untidy. In the fifth frame, with the score at 3–1, O’Sullivan potted a fluky red and the balls suddenly opened. In the course of twenty-nine strokes, he scored a hundred and six points—a “century”—and it seemed as if he might race away. But Lines came back. O’Sullivan was distracted; he picked his teeth and watched the game under way at a nearby table. “Come on, Ronnie, our son,” a Yorkshire voice called out from the crowd. By the time the game finished—6–3, to O’Sullivan—it was ten-thirty. O’Sullivan was exhausted. I caught up with him in the corridor as he hobbled back to his dressing room. In person, he can be disarming—trouble, but you want him to like you. I congratulated him on the match and said I enjoyed it. “Fucking hell,” he said. “I didn’t.”

People who grew up in Britain in the nineteen-eighties, as I did, found themselves steeped in snooker whether they liked it or not. The game was invented in 1875, by British military officers in colonial India, but for the next hundred years it was confined mostly to gentlemen’s clubs and dubious billiards halls. (In the nineteen-fifties, Charlie, Ronnie, and Reggie Kray—London’s best-known gangsters—got their start running a snooker hall in East London.) In 1978, however, the BBC broadcast the sport’s thirteen-day World Championship, at the Crucible Theatre, in Sheffield, for the first time. Television transformed snooker: the game’s slow, hypnotic quality; the trapped, pacing players; even the acidic colors of the balls seemed made for the small screen. Tobacco companies poured money into events. In 1985, almost twenty million people stayed up past midnight to watch the World Championship final, in which the top player of the era, Steve (the Nugget) Davis, was beaten by Dennis Taylor, an underdog with specially adapted eyeglasses to help him see down the table.
In the sport’s heyday, two snookering archetypes seemed to be at war, and television dramatized the duality. There were the champions, clean-cut automatons who ruled the game for years at a time before abruptly burning out: Ray Reardon, a former policeman, in the nineteen-seventies; Davis, in the nineteen-eighties; Stephen Hendry, a baby-faced Scot who won a record seven world titles, in the nineteen-nineties. And there were the broken and the beautiful, who produced exquisite passages of play but couldn’t keep their heads together: Kirk Stevens, a Canadian cocaine addict who played in a white suit; Alex (the Hurricane) Higgins, who died, furious and alcoholic, of throat cancer, in 2010; and Jimmy (the Whirlwind) White, who reached six world finals and lost them all.
Ronald Antonio O’Sullivan was born in 1975. His parents, Ron and Maria, had met a couple of years earlier, as teen-agers, working at a vacation camp. They moved to London and cleaned cars to make ends meet. When their son hit the professional snooker scene, in the early nineteen-nineties, he was younger, more gifted, and ruder than anyone else. He won his first major title at seventeen. In 1996, O’Sullivan was accused by a Canadian opponent, Alain Robidoux, of disrespecting him by playing left-handed. O’Sullivan arranged to be certified as good enough to play professional snooker with either hand. That same year, he was suspended for head-butting an official. He drank too much and saw too many first-round exits. He talked openly about his loathing for the game, and for himself. In 2000, O’Sullivan went to rehab, to seek treatment for an addiction to marijuana. By the time he turned thirty, the age at which other great players, such as Davis and Hendry, were beginning their decline, O’Sullivan had won two world titles, the same number as Alex Higgins—respectable, but well short of his potential. Between late 2009 and early 2012, O’Sullivan failed to win a single ranking tournament.
“My arsehole had gone,” he told me. “My fight. I had nothing in me.” But the following year, at the age of thirty-six, and long after he had given up on the possibility, O’Sullivan began to win again, rediscovering a consistency and a freedom of play he had not experienced since he was sixteen. Since 2012, he has reached three successive World Championship finals, winning two of them. At this year’s tournament, which starts on April 18th, in Sheffield, O’Sullivan will be expected to reach his fourth final in as many years. This late, unexpected flowering has altered his standing in the game. “Ronnie is the genius that sort of sits over everyone,” Hearn said. “He is not a normal bloke.” Earlier this year, O’Sullivan overtook Stephen Hendry’s record of seven hundred and seventy-five century breaks. Many wonder whether O’Sullivan can equal Hendry’s record of seven world titles and officially become, in his forties, the greatest player the game has ever known.




He remains fragile, though, and amazed by the turn of events. Damien Hirst, the artist, is fascinated by snooker: the promise of its seemingly straight lines, “the grid over the landscape,” as he calls it, and the struggle of the players caught up in its geometry. Hirst is close friends with O’Sullivan and often accompanies him to tournaments. When we met, I asked Hirst if he thought O’Sullivan was afraid of the future and of what would happen when his talent eventually faded. “I think he’s scared of everything,” Hirst said. “That’s his beauty—that he is absolutely shitting himself. Do you know what I mean? He doesn’t know what the fuck is going on.” [cartoon id="a19019"]

The evening after O’Sullivan defeated Lines, he had dinner at Toto’s, an Italian restaurant in York, with Gary Smith, his manager, and Chic Gourlay, a friend from Glasgow. O’Sullivan was in good spirits. He flirted with the waitress and ordered a steak. His ankle was feeling stronger, and he had found a pair of black sneakers, which looked better with his suit. “I feel all right now,” he said. “I feel like a snooker player again.”
At the next table, Ken Doherty, a crafty Irish player who won the world title in 1997, was eating with friends. Doherty and O’Sullivan have known each other since Doherty, at the age of eighteen, became the club pro at the Ilford Snooker Centre. O’Sullivan, six years younger, would take the bus there to play after school. It was the late nineteen-eighties—peak snooker—and O’Sullivan was the game’s prodigy. He won his first tournament at the age of nine and made his first century break at age ten; his chubby face was all over the snooker magazines. He stuck out at the club in Ilford: prepubescent, foulmouthed, his afternoons at the table bankrolled by a seemingly limitless supply of five-pound notes from his father, Big Ron, who had become wealthy running a chain of sex shops in London’s West End.
“He would just smile at you sometimes when you were playing,” Fin Ruane, another young Irishman who hung around the club, told me. O’Sullivan’s father would drop by: good-looking, thickset, ready with jokes. “Ron’s the name, porn’s the game,” he used to say. “He would come in, and if there was twenty people in the room he would have to buy twenty teas,” Doherty recalled. “No one put their hand in their pocket. It would have been an insult.” People liked Big Ron, but they didn’t cross him. He told everyone that his boy was going to be world champion. His uncles had been boxers, and he taught his son to think like one: “Take his head off.” “Don’t get beat.” “Fuck ’em, son.” Ruane said, “I remember his dad, he would be playing cards and someone would say, ‘Ron, it’s your deal.’ But he would just be looking over at his kid playing. He just loved him, loved watching him.”
The young O’Sullivan worshipped Steve Davis, the champion at the time. He wore the same waistcoat, without a cinch. When he was nine, O’Sullivan heard Bill King, the father of a rival junior player, say that Davis was “never a foot away” in snooker, and it struck him as a profound truth. Unlike the other players, who relied on forms of backspin (“stun” and “screw”) to position the white ball for their next shot, Davis played with topspin and used the cushions to play longer and more inventive strokes that flowed around the table. It was riskier and more technically challenging, and often got the white only a few inches closer to the object ball, but it was worth it. When O’Sullivan finally beat Doherty at a local tournament, he decided to become a professional. “That was the day,” he told me. “I’d done everything. I used the cushions. I beat Ken. I played to a level where, fucking hell, I fancied it.”
At Toto’s that night, the two men swapped stories about Goffs, in County Kildare, a sporting resort where the Irish Masters tournament used to be held. In 1998, O’Sullivan beat Doherty in the final but was stripped of his title a few weeks later; he had eaten a hash cake, and failed a drug test. It was a beautiful place to play. “Everyone used to go, take their wives,” O’Sullivan said, shaking his head. “Lovely.”
The next day, in his third-round match, O’Sullivan found that he could move more easily. He won, 6–2, against Ben Woollaston, a player ranked twenty-seventh in the world. Woollaston took the lead in the third frame but lost his nerve. “It was embarrassing to be out there,” he said afterward. In O’Sullivan’s fourth-round match, a twenty-nine-year-old named Matthew Selt disintegrated completely. Once O’Sullivan was ahead 4–0, he started looking for a maximum. A maximum in snooker is the perfect break: fifteen reds, fifteen blacks, and the rest of the colors—a hundred and forty-seven points in a single spell at the table. It is the sport’s equivalent of a hole in one or a pitcher’s perfect game. Joe Davis, snooker’s undefeated world champion from 1927 to 1946, made the first official hundred and forty-seven, in 1955, at the age of fifty-three. O’Sullivan made his first maximum when he was fifteen. Against Selt, he recorded the thirteenth of his career—two more than Hendry, the nearest player. “Nothing special,” O’Sullivan told me later. “If he had made it hard, I could never have got there.”

O’Sullivan trains in a first-floor office in an industrial park in Romford, a few miles from his house. The surrounding blocks are occupied by accountants, insurance brokers, and gas-meter retailers. The office belongs to one of his former managers, Django Fung, who allows him to practice there as much as he wants. Fung, who is from Hong Kong, represents several Chinese players, but they are often out of the country. When I arrived to watch O’Sullivan train one day in January, there was no one else in the building. The blinds were down. Five snooker tables sat under fluorescent lights, on a spartan floor of blue carpet tiles. O’Sullivan was looking in the fridge for milk, to add to a cup of tea. Often, he craves company. Since 2011, he has worked without a coach, hitting balls in myriad patterns for three or four hours a day.
When discussing O’Sullivan’s game, commentators and rivals often talk about his unusual sequencing—the way he links shots together around the table. Phil Yates, who was the snooker correspondent for the Times of London for twenty years, compares O’Sullivan to a savant, able to perceive mathematical solutions without knowing how or why. “I don’t think he can break down why he is as good as he is,” Yates said. “He just is.” According to Hirst, O’Sullivan often comes off the table in a fugue state: “I go, ‘What about that pink you potted?’ And he’ll go, ‘What pink?’ He’s blank. He’s totally startled. It’s like van Gogh. I go, ‘You did brilliantly there.’ And he goes, ‘Did I?’ ”
O’Sullivan spends a lot of time thinking about the white ball. He has come to believe that the quality of the initial contact between his chalked, pressed-leather cue tip and the phenolic-resin sphere—the momentary grip, the transfer of energy and intent—is what decides everything else. If the white responds, he will not lose. “You’re using force,” he said, after making his tea. “You’re using your hands. You’re creating. You’re making that white dance.”
When the connection isn’t there, O’Sullivan feels it right away. “It’s invisible, but it’s night and day to me,” he said. During the good days and the good months, he senses it in every stroke. When he is cueing well, he leaves fat chalk streaks on the surface of the table, like a golfer’s divots, and the white ball topspins extravagantly, slowing down across the nap and then accelerating again, as if late for an appointment. There is a particular echo as balls hit the middle of the pocket. He disregards the score. “I know I’m playing a different game from what they’re playing,” he said. And, because of the duel-like intimacy of snooker, O’Sullivan is able to observe the mesmerizing effect that his skill has on his opponents: “You’re thinking, ‘You’ve got that on a string, mate. That cue ball. It’s just . . .’ And you just sit there. And that is what beats you.”
In 1992, when he was sixteen and had just turned professional, O’Sullivan went to snooker’s “qualifying school”—a three-month marathon of knockout matches, in Blackpool, during which fringe players competed to enter the tournaments of the season ahead. Matches were played on twenty-four snooker tables in the Norbreck Castle Hotel, a colossal sand-colored structure on the city’s seafront. O’Sullivan was one of the youngest competitors. “Up against the world,” Hearn, his manager at the time, recalled. “Everything was new.”
The previous summer, O’Sullivan’s father had been arrested after a fight in a night club, during which a man had died. (O’Sullivan found out while playing in a junior tournament in Thailand.) The dead man, Bruce Bryan, had worked as a driver for Charlie Kray, the gangster. He was stabbed after what Big Ron later claimed was an argument over the bill. While O’Sullivan was in Blackpool, his father was out on bail, charged with murder. He came up to stay with his son. Each day, the seats around O’Sullivan’s snooker table filled a little faster. “All the old soaks and all the old dyed-in-the-wool players would go and watch him play,” Yates, who was covering the event, said. “Because they couldn’t believe what they were seeing.”
In Blackpool, O’Sullivan won his first thirty-eight matches as a professional snooker player—a record for consecutive victories that still stands. He won thirty-six of the next thirty-eight as well, losing just two games at the qualifying school. People who saw him there like to argue about whether he has ever played as well since. “It was a bit like Tiger Woods or Mike Tyson, when they came along,” O’Sullivan told me. “That is how my life should have been, if my dad didn’t go away.” O’Sullivan played his last match in Blackpool on September 20, 1992. The next day, his father was found guilty of murder. In his summation, the judge referred to “racial overtones” in the case—Bryan was black—and sentenced Big Ron to eighteen years in prison. The story made all the newspapers. O’Sullivan said, “From that moment onward, everything was shit, to be fair.”
Three years later, O’Sullivan’s mother, Maria, was also sent to prison. She had taken over the management of the sex shops and was found guilty of tax evasion. She served seven months. During her absence, O’Sullivan’s younger sister, Danielle, who was twelve, went to live with family friends. O’Sullivan, who was nineteen, went off the rails. He partied in his parents’ house, got stoned, and put on weight. When he turned up at tournaments, he would look at the other players and envy the small, stable groups they travelled with: parents, managers, drivers. “They had this wall built around them,” he said. “I had no wall.” For several years, O’Sullivan was accompanied on tour by a man known as the Yunzi, a friend of one of his father’s friends in prison. He thought about his father constantly and sought to win on his behalf. “It was me and Dad, fighting the fucking world,” he said. But he also held his father responsible for the chaos that had enveloped his life. The table became complicated, loaded with meaning. His game went haywire.
The white ball could dance, or not, at any time. In the first round of the World Championship in 1997, O’Sullivan made a maximum in five minutes and twenty seconds, surpassing the previous record by almost two minutes. He was knocked out in the next round. The British press called him “the Two Ronnies,” after a comic duo who were big in the nineteen-seventies. During the 2001 World Championship, in Sheffield, where he won the title for the first time, at the age of twenty-five, O’Sullivan called the Samaritans, a suicide hot line, and started taking Prozac. The unpredictability was exhausting. He was desperate for a thought system that would make sense of his life. He saw shrinks and gurus. He tried Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam. After recovering from his addiction to marijuana, O’Sullivan tried all of the Anonymouses, out of a sense of completism. He went to sex-addiction meetings even though he was not addicted to sex.
Nothing helped. During the 2008 season, by any measure one of his most successful, O’Sullivan would get drunk every weekend. His long-term relationship with Jo Langley, the mother of two of his three children, whom he met in rehab, was falling apart. (O’Sullivan has an eighteen-year-old daughter, Taylor, from an earlier relationship.) “I was cueing well, but I had no family, no home,” he said. Between tournaments, he stayed on a friend’s sofa, reading “How I Play Snooker,” Joe Davis’s classic manual from 1949.
O’Sullivan’s father was allowed out of prison on day release for the first time in early 2009. In the latter stages of his sentence, he had been held at a low-security facility in Sudbury, in the Midlands. O’Sullivan went to meet him at the gates. He was shocked by his father’s appearance. “He looked like a burglar,” he said. They spent the day at a hotel. When Big Ron called O’Sullivan’s mother, his hands shook. In the evening, O’Sullivan dropped his father off in the prison parking lot and watched him troop inside with the other inmates; he seemed happy to be back. “I just thought, Where do we go from here? I’ve been waiting twenty years,” O’Sullivan said. Since his father’s final release, his parents have lived apart. After one or two experiments, Big Ron decided to stay away from O’Sullivan’s snooker matches as well. (He declined to speak with me for this article.) [cartoon id="a19035"]
When O’Sullivan took a break at the training facility in Romford, he invited me to share his lunch—salmon with ginger, which he had cooked and brought from home. “This game can fuck your head up like no other game,” he said. Another player had come in to practice, and in the background there was the quiet, irregular sound of colliding balls. “I have told my son he ain’t fucking playing snooker, because I love him too much.” His son, Ronnie, is seven years old. “I love him too much to see him coming in here. Because, you know what, there should be no money in this game. There should be no fame in this game. They should take TV away from this game. They should take it away. This is like a fucking”—O’Sullivan hesitated, grasping for a word of sufficient violence—“an eccentric sport.”

By 2009, O’Sullivan was thirty-four, old for a snooker champion, and playing poorly. He came to believe that his decline was permanent. His breakup with Langley dragged through the courts. They fought over money and the custody of Ronnie and his older sister, Lily. O’Sullivan lived on a barge. He lost in the first round of four consecutive major tournaments. His income from snooker fell from around seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year ($1.1 million) to a hundred and fifty thousand (two hundred and twenty thousand dollars). He pulled out of risky shots. He lost the conviction necessary for topspin. “I was stuck inside,” he said. “I couldn’t really deliver the cue.”
His manager persuaded him to see Steve Peters, a professor of psychiatry at Sheffield University. Peters used to be a doctor at Rampton Hospital, one of England’s three maximum-security psychiatric facilities, but in the past ten years he has enjoyed a second, high-profile career working with élite athletes, including the British Olympic cycling team, to improve their mental performance. Peters, who is sixty-one, lives in a gloomy villa in the Peak District, a region of gaunt beauty in northern England. O’Sullivan arrived in the spring of 2011. “He was in a really bad place,” Peters said. “It was quite disturbing to see.”
Many of the surfaces in the psychiatrist’s house are filled with plastic, china, or knitted figures of chimpanzees. In the nineteen-nineties, Peters came up with what he calls the “chimp paradox” to explain to first-year medical students how the mind functions. According to his analogy, there is a contest within the brain between its more rational, “human” parts and its anciently evolved “chimp” regions. The chimp fulfills essential functions, but it is also powerful and prone to panic. “A chimpanzee is five times stronger than us,” Peters told me. “If you have this animal sharing your life with you, you have to treat it with respect.” Peters does not call himself a doctor when he is dealing with athletes. He thinks of himself as a coach, teaching them how to manage their chimps.
O’Sullivan immediately related to the idea: “I was, like, ‘That’s how I’ve been living my life for seventeen years.’ ” Since his father’s imprisonment and the subsequent fracturing of his snooker and his life, O’Sullivan had alternated between searching for inner peace and trying to stop thinking altogether. Peters encouraged him to write down his negative thoughts—O’Sullivan’s chimp worries a lot about his right arm—and then rebut them with proven facts about his ability and his achievements. Peters calls this inner dialogue “boxing the chimp.” For O’Sullivan, it was revelatory. “I didn’t know I could behave like this,” he said. “I didn’t know I had the ability to hold it down.”
At first, seeing Peters had no effect on his snooker. At the U.K. Championship in 2011, O’Sullivan suffered a particularly dispiriting defeat to a player named Judd Trump. Trump, who was twenty-two at the time, has a flamboyant potting style, which he calls “naughty snooker,” and he is often described as the closest thing to O’Sullivan’s heir. He plays in spiked Christian Louboutin loafers and has black stars sewn into the collar of his shirt. In York that year, O’Sullivan lost to Trump even though his mind felt clear and he thought he had played well. “I didn’t think that was possible,” he said.
The following spring, the white ball came back. In the quarter-finals of the China Open, in Beijing, O’Sullivan was clearing the table and on his way to victory in the game’s deciding frame. He faced a routine backspin stroke to position the white for the final red. “I remember thinking, Well, I know that is the right shot to play,” he said. “Ten times out of ten, it will go in.” Instead, O’Sullivan went for a subtle, almost impossibly difficult topspin shot—entirely needless under the circumstances. The ball loped across the table, touched the cushion, and rolled a few inches too far. It cost O’Sullivan the match, but he was elated. No one else plays like that. “That shot still sticks in my mind, because it was the wrong shot to play but I didn’t care,” he said.
He won his next tournament, the 2012 World Championship, and put his cue away. He fully intended to retire. He went running, and spent time with his children. Away from the table, O’Sullivan’s life is modest. He goes to the gym, and buys bagels in Chigwell. He likes finding new Chinese restaurants. He hardly played for the rest of that year. In the winter, he volunteered to work on a local farm. He dug ditches and fed the pigs. He was somewhat afraid of the goats. People didn’t ask him questions or seem to know who he was. He enjoyed the quiet solidarity of the farm and of his running clubs, spending time with ordinary people, with ordinary lives and families. But life without snooker was boring, and frightening, too. “It’s scary,” he said. “I thought I could look at it, and then I looked at it and I didn’t like it.”
O’Sullivan became anxious about money. He fell behind on his children’s school fees and realized he hadn’t planned adequately for the future. “I was quite happy not playing,” he said. “But then it hit me—‘Fuck, I’ve got another forty years to get through, here.’ ” He announced that he would defend his title in Sheffield. The bookmakers made him one of the favorites. O’Sullivan practiced for six weeks. Even if he lost in the first round, he reasoned, he would still make twelve thousand pounds, enough for a semester of school fees. In the end, he won his fifth World Championship and two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, becoming the first player since Stephen Hendry to win in successive years. “This is my last farewell,” he told reporters during the tournament. “I can’t keep putting myself through being unhappy.” A month later, O’Sullivan decided to rejoin the tour.

Since his return, in 2013, O’Sullivan has thought more about what comes after snooker. He has his own TV program, “The Ronnie O’Sullivan Show,” on Eurosport, and wants to do more broadcasting. But preparing for the rest of his life is distracting. This past winter, he was worried about his form. He felt vulnerable and wondered if he was sufficiently focussed on his game. In early February, he began to prepare for this year’s World Championship. But on any given day, he said, his mind throbs with what he should or shouldn’t be doing: “Should I be playing more? Am I taking on too much other stuff? Am I becoming a jack-of-all-trades and master of none? Am I now becoming this person, a commercial animal?”
In tournaments, he remains a bully, a greedy old king. In December, at the U.K. Championship, the injured O’Sullivan was, by turns, kindly and vicious toward opponents. After he beat Anthony McGill, a young Scottish player whom he admires, he spent ten minutes advising him on his technique. (McGill stayed up all night replaying the game and texted O’Sullivan to thank him.) In the semifinal, O’Sullivan found himself 4–1 down and on the brink of losing to Stuart Bingham, the ninth-ranked player in the world. “That was a match where I just thought, I’m not going to be pushed around by someone like Stuart,” O’Sullivan told me afterward. “I’m not ready to accept that role yet. I fucking hated that match.” He won, 6–5.
The final was against Judd Trump. Their rivalry is now snooker’s main attraction. The match spanned nineteen frames; the winner would be the first to ten. It started at lunchtime on a Sunday, twelve days after O’Sullivan had broken his ankle. Outside, it was a sunny winter afternoon. Inside the Barbican, it was the perpetual midnight of snooker. A thousand people were there. Trump walked out first. “The ace in the pack,” the m.c. hollered, “with his own brand of naughty snooker!” Tall and thin, Trump retained the disconcerting legginess of a teen-ager who’s grown too fast.
In the early frames, Trump drew frequent gasps for the skill of his potting. When he arranges himself for a shot, it is like watching a heron preparing to catch a fish. But he found himself in dead ends. He would pot five or six balls and then have to cede the table to O’Sullivan. Most of the match was played in silence. Spectators at snooker matches often wear earpieces, to listen to commentary on the subtler points of the game. Through a trick of acoustics, this commentary sometimes drifted into the hall, and the players heard themselves being described. In the fourth frame, O’Sullivan lifted his injured ankle up on the table behind him to sink an awkward brown. “He makes shots look so easy,” a voice said. At the end of the afternoon session, O’Sullivan was ahead, 5–3.
In the evening, he took control. Every time Trump faltered, O’Sullivan rose to clear the table. He won four of the next five frames. In the twelfth, he made a break of a hundred and thirty-three, zigzagging the balls home around the black. Two red balls hugged each other in the middle of the table, seemingly inseparable, until O’Sullivan broke them apart with a ricochet that bordered on the abstract, like a thought. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” a man behind me murmured.
When O’Sullivan got to 9–4, a frame from victory, his friend Chic Gourlay emerged from the dressing room to watch. Then Trump woke up. With nothing to lose, he began to hit balls even harder than before, and now they flew in. Trump reclaimed a frame, and then three. In the space of twenty-six minutes, he scored three hundred and thirty-three points. O’Sullivan, more or less stuck to his chair, scored eight. “O’Sullivanesque,” the wandering voice of the commentator said, describing Trump. The score moved to 9–9.
How does it end? O’Sullivan’s untrustworthy mind leaves him fearing that he will not recognize the signs. “I could lose it for the next two years, and then come back for another two years,” he said. “That’s the worrying thing, in some ways. How do you get closure on something like that?”
The players came out for the final frame. They shook hands. A spectator near the front wore a T-shirt that said, “Keep Calm and Play Snooker.” Trump broke. O’Sullivan potted an early red. Suddenly, it seemed dangerous to go first. With sixteen points on the board, O’Sullivan missed and gave up the table. But Trump couldn’t take advantage. The men exchanged safety shots: long flicks of the white ball, down the table, to catch the edge of a red, hit a cushion, and then retreat up behind a barrier of colored balls. They did this until Trump snagged a red and brought it back up the table as well. “All the fancy fucking footwork, the control that he has had for maybe twenty, thirty shots,” O’Sullivan told me once about the art of safety. “Bang, I’m going to pounce on him.” He blocked the white ball behind the green. Trump missed his shot, and O’Sullivan had the freedom of the table. He opened his mouth slightly and padded faster in his sneakers. The match clock showed four hours, fifty-three minutes, and six seconds.
There was a moment, only a moment, after that when O’Sullivan was in trouble. He got too close to the blue and had to sneak around it. But for the rest of the match the balls were where he wanted them to be. Red followed by pink, red followed by yellow. The white stayed with him. He got to the end. Later, after the confetti and the prize, I found him backstage. Workmen were dismantling snooker tables, to transport them to the next tournament. “It came back,” O’Sullivan said. He looked relieved and haunted at the same time. “Sometimes you know it will.” ♦

[Disco]

Can you do attachments these days? Pdfing the whole page would be simple.

[phonics]

If you can be bothered to do it (I can't) upload it to https://www.docdroid.net/

[Disco]

Bugger that, PM me an email address if you like Reg, I'll send it on.

[Reg]

Thanks guys, pm sent Disco. :thbup:

[Byron]

Murray is not moving very well at all here. Limping and missing points he really should be chasing down were he fit.

I reckon he's in danger here, despite having an extra set on Querrey.

[Byron]

Yeah, lump it all on Querrey in 5 sets. Murray is gone at this point.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

I've got £5 on the lanky bastard @ 2.3

Cillic is looking damn good.

[Byron]

Christ, that 4th set couldn't have been any longer than 20 mins. Murray was pasted.

[SvN]

Murray is totally done.

[Mellberg]

Just managed to get on at evens before Querry broke in the fifth. This is over.

[GS]

All aboard the Fed Express.

[SvN]

Could see a bagel in this 5th.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Surprised he managed to get 1 in this set.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

That last point was mental.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

£5 on Federer to win 3-1
£6.50 on Cillic to win.

[Reg]

6-1 6-1 final two sets. :| Was he not running at all by the end?

Home in time for Federer. Looking forward to this one.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

He wasn't moving too badly (for a normal player, by his standards he was fairly immobile) but he had trouble planting to execute his shots.

[SvN]

Today is the first day I've properly watched any of the event. How has Federer been playing up until now?

[Jimmy Floyd]

Ah, the best day in the sporting calendar finally upon us I see.

[phonics]

If Federer wins this one, he's got to be in top 3-5 sportsman of all time surely?

[Magic]

Andy Blurry. :harold:

[Reg]

Today is the first day I've properly watched any of the event. How has Federer been playing up until now?
Cruised through first few matches after not being challenged (I didn't see complete matches.) Was on fire in Halle.

[Spoonsky]

Federer making this look too easy.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

That was a glorious shot by Raonic.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Yeah I go with that.

Querrey/Anderson is the closest for me, the rest seem pretty cut and dry.

I do think that one of the big four will be going out sooner rather than later.
3 of the 4 gone then.

Cillic's year :drool:

[Ian]

That shot from Federer to go 5-3 was fucking arousing.

[Reg]

Heheh, that shot was fantastic. Glad that 3rd set had some action after the 1st and 2nd which were a bit flat. Federer played some great shots, that Raonic pass after Federer's drop volley was good as well.

Real shame about Djokovic. :( Can't say I'm thrilled with the semi-finals lineup. Also means my prediction that all of the 'big 4' would make it was, er, 75% wrong.

[Jimmy Floyd]

Going down a twitter wormhole into tennis fans, the fanboys of each of the 'big 4' are fucking bizarre, like football ultras in some cases. Why can't you just enjoy watching all four.

[Shindig]

Federer having a renaissance whilst every one else retires injured. Playing til 40, lads.

[Reg]

Going down a twitter wormhole into tennis fans, the fanboys of each of the 'big 4' are fucking bizarre, like football ultras in some cases. Why can't you just enjoy watching all four.
Federer fans vs Nadal fans is the worst.

[phonics]

TBF I have it on good authority that Nadal was told to take a year off in 2014(?) because his PEDs were off the charts and that whole Spanish doping scandal was going on. (This is from someone at the firm who insured him)

Hopp Roger.

[Spoonsky]

Nostalgia trip. :drool:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1yfWb0-jqQ

The tiebreak at the end of the fourth set (14:10) is unreal.

[Reg]

I loved that Nadal. In his vest and pirate pants. The point from 15:19 is great.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Didn't see her match but I'll be stunned if Muguruza doesn't win the whole thing.

[ItalAussie]

Nice to see Muguruza doing well again. She took a tumble in the rankings after a bad French Open.

[Byron]

This is about as good as I've ever seen Williams play.

[Reg]

Feel for Konta, looked like she was going to cry. I thought Konta played very well until serving to stay in the first set. Venus just a bit better at doing the same thing.

It'll be interesting to see whether Muguruza can deal better with Venus' high return position, because Konta was a bit shaken by that I think. Difficult to deal with when she's hardly missing.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Querrey doesn't look like he has much left in him.

Really struggling to hold his serve whilst Cillic is wiping him out quickly on his serve.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

£2.50 E/W on Cillic and Muguruza to win Wimbledon.
Profit even if Muguruza and/or Cillic lose.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Federer isn't human at times.

He shouldn't be playing this well at his age.

[Reg]

Couldn't watch much today but yeah Federer is stupid. Wouldn't be surprised if he wins on Sunday, takes the rest of July off, comes back and wins the two Masters and then the US Open.

[Adamski]

Is there anything more boring than Roger Federer?

[Shindig]

West Brom. Toast with nothing on it.

[Reg]

How can you find him boring? If you don't like tennis at all then yeah.

[Adamski]

I love tennis. He's the most vapid, soulless professional sportsman I've ever seen. Dead behind the eyes.

[mugbull]

Is there anything more boring than Roger Federer?

He's the best his sport has ever had, yet he's not clearly a beast at any one thing. It's fucking crazy, he's as good as you'll ever get and that's worth watching.

[mugbull]

I love tennis. He's the most vapid, soulless professional sportsman I've ever seen. Dead behind the eyes.

Yeah we should all strive to be Nick Kyrgios

[Adamski]

Yeah we should all strive to be Nick Kyrgios

You should strive to look like a male, baby steps bro.

[Shindig]

A team of Marat Safins.

[mugbull]

You should strive to look like a male, baby steps bro.

bizarre, but i appreciate the effort

[Reg]

Adamski Yeah, I thought you did so I was surprised. I'm far from his biggest fan but from a pure tennis perspective he's amazing. One of the most imaginative players (the most?). And his technique is so perfect it's hard not to admire.

Saying that, in 2015 when he was constantly meeting Djokovic in finals I pretty much couldn't stand him. But I'm biased.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Muguruza could be the most dominant female player (and most consistent) since the Williams.

[Reg]

:nodd: Really pleased for her and about the prospect of having another true great. Her game is almost complete already but I think she'll just get better at everything.

[Yevrah]

Is it left to me to point out that a 6-0 set in a final is a bit shambolic?

[Reg]

I think some of it was to do with how well Muguruza was playing and the rest to do with Venus being shaken mentally after losing the first set. Commentators seemed to think it was physical.

[Byron]

Is it left to me to point out that a 6-0 set in a final is a bit shambolic?

It was shocking, but Muguruza was playing pretty much perfect tennis during that set.

[Spoonsky]

I'll be that guy, I'm slightly in love with Muguruza (and she's brilliant, haven't seen anyone as focused as she was in the semi and final).

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Cillic looks nervous.

[phonics]

That backspin shot from Federer was gorgeous.

[Ian]

Cilic muttering away to himself while he's readying to serve and then twats his chair with his racket at just a set down.

He's definitely not shat himself here.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

He's gone completely.

[Ian]

Jesus Christ he's fucking crying.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Christ it's tough to watch him crying his eyes out on his chair here :(

[mugbull]

Sobbing

[Gray Fox]

Is he playing injured?

EDIT: Turned on to see Doctors out there. Gutted.

[Reg]

How can you not feel sorry for him. One of the biggest moments of his life and it goes like this.

[Gray Fox]

That's all done now surely?

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

He's just too good.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

http://i.imgur.com/v85sJz8.png

Shame Cillic didn't win, would have given me another £340 or so.

[Adamski]

Adamski Yeah, I thought you did so I was surprised. I'm far from his biggest fan but from a pure tennis perspective he's amazing. One of the most imaginative players (the most?). And his technique is so perfect it's hard not to admire.

Saying that, in 2015 when he was constantly meeting Djokovic in finals I pretty much couldn't stand him. But I'm biased.

It's akin to wanting the computer to win when you're playing FIFA.

[Reg]

I dare you to go watch a YouTube compilation of Federer's greatest shots and not enjoy it.

[Ian]

Federer is a bit soulless and hard to root for on a personal level but he's brilliant to watch. I'd watch him ahead of Nadal or Djokovic every time.

[Kikó]

3 set final in the men's. They surely should be asking questions after that.

[Magic]

He was injured though.

[Reg]

You can't be that desperate for a conspiracy.

[John]

Konspiracy Kiko. :drool:

[Yevrah]

3 set final in the men's. They surely should be asking questions after that.

And despite one of the players being injured and breaking down in tears there still wasn't a 6-0 set.

[Shindig]

In before Cilic fails another test.

[Spoonsky]

Aw, Federer in tears at the end there.

[Reg]

Federer 'joining Sue in the studio' in a couple mins. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/live/bbctwo

[Spikey M]

I think people liking Tennis is a conspiracy.

[niko_cee]

Don't worry, it's over for another year.

[Reg]

Three Wimbledon matches to be reviewed for possible match-fixing. (http://www.skysports.com/tennis/news/32498/10954731/three-wimbledon-matches-to-be-reviewed-for-possible-match-fixing)

Two in qualifying, one in main draw.

Tonnes since April, mainly in Challengers etc.

[Kikó]

Not surprising considering how easy it is to fix and how little money there is at the lower levels of the game.

[Reg]

Yeah, some players stuck on Challenger events with such a varied income are going to go for it, unfortunately.

[Shindig]

Victoria Azarenka's career might be a bit knackered. I could've told her he was a cunt just by looking at him.

[niko_cee]

Should probably just call off the US Open this year.

[Reg]

It's a time to be excited if anything. The next generation are finally taking over. I'd even have Zverev as favourite, his form is amazing and Federer/Nadal are in the other half of the draw.

[mugbull]

I've been having a lot of fun watching this Open. Shapovalov is an incredible player to watch, I can't think of a player quite like him.

[Reg]

I've been having a lot of fun watching this Open. Shapovalov is an incredible player to watch, I can't think of a player quite like him.
Agreed, and his game looks amazingly complete considering his age.

Who would you make favourite for the title now? I called Zverev completely wrong.

Shapovalov v Edmund on at around 6pm UK time for anyone interested.

[mugbull]

Agreed, and his game looks amazingly complete considering his age.

Who would you make favourite for the title now? I called Zverev completely wrong.

Shapovalov v Edmund on at around 6pm UK time for anyone interested.

I'm also impressed by the physical side of his game, he's got strength and stamina for days. Only 6 foot as well, which is fairly short these days it seems.

I think Nadal has got the best chance, but I wouldn't be surprised if Thiem won, he's been looking so good this year.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/41564893

It's time to just (properly) ban him from the sport now.

[Byron]

It must be strange to be so good at something you really don't give a shit about. That said, fuck him he's a massive thundercunt and just needs to be punted out of the sport.

[phonics]

I was rather against him until reading this: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/07/10/nick-kyrgios-the-reluctant-rising-star-of-tennis

Where he comes across as someone who genuinely hates his lifestyle but it's all he knows/was allowed to know. Must be tough.

[Disco]

Is he good enough to win big tournaments? Surely if you're that good you just knuckle down for a couple of years and set yourself up for life. It must be better than getting a real job.

[Reg]

Enjoyed that article by the way phonics, had a read when you mentioned it some other time.

Even with all these problems, frustrations, mental weaknesses, whatever, his talent gets him so close to the top. He beat Zverev to reach the final in Beijing on the weekend. Unfortunately a bad line call in the very first game of the final had him miffed for the entire match.

He'll surely get banned for the above. You can't just walk off without an injury.

[John]

Troicki v Isner currently being played in a cavernous and almost completely empty stadium. Between games they're piping in little snippets of music, one of which was an excerpt from the Leftovers soundtrack, a wonderful joke if it was deliberate.

[Shindig]

Maria Sharapova under investigation for conspiracy (https://www.sbnation.com/tennis/2017/11/21/16687346/maria-sharapova-cheating-criminal-conspiracy-india-police-endorsement)

Awesome.

[Reg]

Anyone watched any of the Australian Open? It's all on Eurosport (and their Eurosport Player online).

Not that many upsets so far. The Americans had a rough time of it on the first day - 2 of 14 going through (Venus and Isner both out). Wawrinka out early but he was out injured for months.

Zverev out to Chung, one of the 'Next Gen' promising young players. Zverev can't seem to crack the slams, despite finishing last year ranked 4 in the world. Edmund knocked out Anderson in 5 sets.

The matches I've watched in full are Djokovic's first two. He's showing signs of peak Djokovic. There's some talk about whether the organisers should allow the players to continue in these temperatures. He played Monfils in 45-50C (on court) and Monfils was repeatedly keeling over from the heat.

Dimitrov v Kyrgios is on at 8am tomorrow, UK time. Jimmy Floyd Before you give up hope there's a modern tennis player out there for you, watch Dimitrov.

Order of play: https://ausopen.com/schedules/C7

[ItalAussie]

Kyrgios has been really great so far, and knocked out Tsonga. He's probably looked the form player outside the Big 3. Given Dimitrov's stuttering tournament, he's a very real shot at going further.

[niko_cee]

Hopefully Edmund keeps his run going, but this really doesn't hold much interest for me. With the top top lads all being injured/old/getting on and the young ones not really seriously challenging (what's left of) them it all feels a bit like that time Johansson (was it?) won it (aka the Hewitt years).

[Jimmy Floyd]

I've seen Dimitrov Reg, I like him. I also like that fancy-footed Belgian (Goffin?).

[Byron]

Goffin is a serious talent, although he got knocked out by Benneteau, who started his career sometime around the Battle of Hastings.

This is probably Kyrgios's best chance of a slam and I'd make him favourite against Dimitrov if he can keep himself from imploding because Dimitrov really hasn't looked brilliant.

[Shindig]

He's got more bottle than Tomic, that's for sure.

[ItalAussie]

Kyrgios, Zverev, and Thiem should all win majors in their career. If they don't, they'll have underachieved.

[mugbull]

Shapovalov is easily the best of the new crop.

Fucsovics, who's playing Federer in round 4, is actually a dude i know personally. I went to a tennis academy in germany in my heyday and he was a living legend there (he was 18 or so at the time). Was a big name on the junior circuit and all, I remember i played Counter Strike with the whole dorm when he was there.

[ItalAussie]

I've been really encouraged by this tournament. A lot of the really young guys have played years ahead of where they're at. No matter what happens with Chung here, he's been great, as have a number of other players in both the men and women's draw.

EDIT: If you're at all interested, get on this Djokovic-Chung match. There have been some amazing rallies. Chung's retrieval to go up 6-5 in the third was unbelievable.

[Reg]

Pity to see Thiem going out though. I don't think he's figured out hardcourts yet.

Got some highlights recording so will have to check out the Djokovic match.

Did you see Dimitrov v Kyrgios, Ital? I thought Dimitrov kept his cool really well with all of the Kyrgios histrionics going on. Lovely player to watch.

[ItalAussie]

Did you see Dimitrov v Kyrgios, Ital? I thought Dimitrov kept his cool really well with all of the Kyrgios histrionics going on. Lovely player to watch.
I really like both players, and it was a great match. Lots of mutual respect. Kyrgios will always be easily riled, but he's come a long way in not letting it affect his game too much.

Dimitrov needs to break through soon. I think they both eventually will.

[Reg]

Yep, he is very sporting, Kyrgios. Always willing to tell the other guy to challenge etc. There's some times where I wonder about his groans during important points but lots of them are guilty of that.

Break through as in win a slam? I think Dimitrov will this year. He's turned into a great mixture of Federer and Djokovic, I think, with the single-hander, volleys, slice and elegant play and then the crazy speed and flexibility.

[ItalAussie]

Yeah, win or get to a final, at least. Both of them should do it at some stage.

Apparently the unseeded American who knocked out Thiem is a massive alt-right racist. :face:

[niko_cee]

Edmund?

:|

Two unseeded players in the semis can't have happened in the mens game for a while.

[Jimmy Floyd]

Yeah, win or get to a final, at least. Both of them should do it at some stage.

Apparently the unseeded American who knocked out Thiem is a massive alt-right racist. :face:

Always got to be careful with the yankee doodle sportsmen. I like most of their top golfers until I realise they are all massive lackeys of President Donald J. Trump. Doubt there's a Democrat voter in their Ryder Cup team.

[Ian]

Yeah, win or get to a final, at least. Both of them should do it at some stage.

Apparently the unseeded American who knocked out Thiem is a massive alt-right racist. :face:

I googled this only to learn that the poor fucker's name is "Tennys." I mean, we all love a bit of nominative determinism but come the fuck on.

[Disco]

They could name one of their courts after him.

[Shindig]

Nadal should crush Edmund but I'd fancy his chances against Cilic. What a weird time for British tennis. Konta goes off the boil and then Kyle steps it up.

[ItalAussie]

Always got to be careful with the yankee doodle sportsmen. I like most of their top golfers until I realise they are all massive lackeys of President Donald J. Trump. Doubt there's a Democrat voter in their Ryder Cup team.

I didn't need to know that about Phil Mickelson to know that about Phil Mickelson. :D

[Jimmy Floyd]

Phil and he probably share a tooth whitener, but I wanted to believe people like Matt Kuchar and Jimmy Walker weren't evil monsters.

[ItalAussie]

Halep v Kerber was sensational. I was particularly impressed when Halep was on song. If she plays like this on her favoured clay, she should walk the French.

Also, it's great to see Kerber playing well again. I was quite disappointed when she went off the boil last year.

[ItalAussie]

Not a great final in terms of quality, which dropped off significantly halfway through. Not that there weren't some amazing shots and rallies, but it was clear that the heat played a high role. But that wasn't really what it was about - there was so much riding on it emotionally from both players (both having lost two major finals before, and never won one), and it was absolutely gripping viewing. Delighted with the choice to watch the whole thing.

It's very different to watching two players with two dozen majors and finals between them. Halep was visibly trying not to cry at the start of the ceremony, but I reckon she'll win the French this year unless something crazy happens. Got it together to give a nice speech, too.

Amazing when you consider that Wozniacki was down 5-1 and 40-15 in the second round third set.

[Reg]

Yeah, the quality did dip but what fantastic tennis in the first set and, as you say, great drama throughout. Really enjoyable final. Both very likable players. They both must absolutely shattered after these two weeks.

[Reg]

Spain v Britain tomorrow and over the weekend. BBC has coverage. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/42565357

Tough tie with Edmund expected to miss all of it now. Need the doubles guys to get a win and a couple of upsets from somewhere. https://www.daviscup.com/en/draws-results/tie.aspx?id=M-DC-2018-WG-M-GBR-ESP-01

[Jimmy Floyd]

The radio news earlier made it sound like a 5-0 drubbing in waiting, with Johnny English and Boris Johnson bravely going down in straight sets to the Duke of Alba and El Cid.

[Byron]

We'll win the Doubles match, but yeah no Edmund and no Murray means we're almost certain to lose.

The wildcard is if Ferrer can't get his zimmerframe across the court quickly enough.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Switched the Djokovic/Cecchinato match off with Djokovic leading 4-1 in the fourth set (The Italian winning 2 sets to 1 though) as Cecchinato looked gone. Just checked and he pulled that fourth set back to win 7-6 and win the match.

[mugbull]

Didn’t watch this match in full but I’ve seen the 4th set tiebreak highlights and Cecchinato was on some next level shit. The tension was crazy. This is why RG is so fun to watch, way more randos make it far than in any of the other Slams

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Didn’t watch this match in full but I’ve seen the 4th set tiebreak highlights and Cecchinato was on some next level shit. The tension was crazy. This is why RG is so fun to watch, way more randos make it far than in any of the other Slams

The problem with Garros, is the French fans.

Fuck them and their shitty noise chant they always fucking do.

[Reg]

The lower tier seats (sponsors, VIPs) are often half empty or worse. Zverev-Thiem, a quarter final, today for example. One of the reasons why it's not my favourite slam. They do appreciate good tennis (when they happen to be watching), though.

[Jimmy Floyd]

That is the French all over. They really dislike the competitive nature of sport, they just attach themselves to it when it suits their poncing-around agenda.

The only proper French sports fans are Olympique Marseille fans and those in club rugby.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Nadal has just dropped his first set at Roland Garros since 2015 against Schwartzman.

Nadal is having his limp wrist taped too, he's losing this.

£10 on Schwartzman @ 3.6.

Edit: Nadal only won 48% of his first serve points in the first set. The only other time he's failed to win more than 51% in a set on clay was in 2003. He's on the ropes.

[Reg]

That match is set up nicely for tomorrow. With the break and time to plan with his coach Nadal might storm it.

Muguruza v Sharapova is a nice tie. Such a shame, though, about the potential for eardrum-bursting grunts/screams in any women's match. I caught a few points of Halep today and it was just silly - she's such a fun player to watch otherwise as well. Pure cowardice from the WTA and slams not to crack down on it.

[Browning]

Hasn't that already happened, and it was completely one sided?

[Reg]

Oh shit yeah. I'd actually seen that Halep-Muguruza was one of the semis as well, haha.

Tough to call either of those semis. American tennis on the women's side is having a nice resurgence.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

The grunts is why I really can't watch women's tennis, which is strange as you'd assume it would make me like it more.

The first rain break really fucked Schwartzman mentally. Nadal came out stronger but Diego was a dribbling mess who was unable to make any shot.

Up to that point it was all him and I think the slight rain at the time was actually helping him.

[Reg]

Murray's return tomorrow at Queens (BBC and Amazon Prime). He plays Kyrgios.

Really strong lineup. Murray, Djokovic, Raonic and Wawrinka all unseeded.

[Baz]

Wimbledon without Murray but don’t worry Serena is back and looking sensational.

I’ve had a bet on Dennis Shapovalov to win it cos he seems like a dude. :cool: Won his first game, up against Benoit Paige next. Is TTH’s new favourite Canadian likely to beat him? Paire was meant to play Murray wasn’t he?

[ItalAussie]

i'd pick Shapovalov against Paire, but not confidently.

[mugbull]

Shapovalov has more talent than anyone since Federer, but he’s maddeningly inconsistent (so is Paire). Dude hits a double fault nearly every service game.

[mugbull]

Guido Pella has taken Cilic to a 5th set and I've just switched it on. Never seen Pella play but I don't think I've seen a worse forehand on tour. No idea how he's gotten this far

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

That forehand by him at match point was fucking laughable.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Fucking hell.

[ItalAussie]

Shapovalov has more talent than anyone since Federer, but he’s maddeningly inconsistent (so is Paire). Dude hits a double fault nearly every service game.

Yep, this is how I was thinking about it. Obvious talent, but all over the place.

You think he's more talented than Zverev?

[Reg]

Konta :( Didn't see all the match but in the 2nd set Cibulkova was playing brilliantly.

Shapovalov is indeed super talented. Aesthetically a great player to watch.

Zverev is starting to breeze through Federer-esque one-minute games. I think he could become near impossible to beat when he's on his game.

[mugbull]

Yep, this is how I was thinking about it. Obvious talent, but all over the place.

You think he's more talented than Zverev?

I think it takes a different sort of talent to be as aggressive as Shapovalov is. Zverev has talent too obviously, but it’s talent in consistency more than anything. Sort of like Djokovic. Shapovalov could either become a #1 player or a perennial top #20 who scalps the top guys a few times a year and then loses the next round. I think it depends on how he’s coached the next few years, I don’t know how realistic it is to expect to be the best player with a game that’s as high risk as his.

[mugbull]

He was awful against Paire just now. Missed the first set he breezed through, but the rest of the match he was just missing all the balls he needed to make. I almost feel as though he's regressed since last year.

[Baz]

Yep, he’s out. Kept glaring at his mum, ha.

[niko_cee]

Is he the one who hit the umpire in the head in the Davis Cup?

[Shindig]

Yep. And he cried about it afterwards.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

I know female seeds are known for the odd fuck up in grand slams but this is something:

1. Romania Simona Halep (Third round)
2. Denmark Caroline Wozniacki (Second round)
3. Spain Garbiñe Muguruza (Second round)
4. United States Sloane Stephens (First round)
5. Ukraine Elina Svitolina (First round)
6. France Caroline Garcia (First round)
7. Czech Republic Karolína Plíšková (Fourth round)
8. Czech Republic Petra Kvitová (First round)
9. United States Venus Williams (Third round)
10. United States Madison Keys (Third round)

[mugbull]

It’s because none of them are actually good (ever, or anymore)

[Jimmy Floyd]

Each time I watch women's tennis it seems like more of a total lottery than it was the last time. Service isn't that much of an advantage and any player, of any ranking is only ever one dodgy point away from a ten-game slide.

The fact that Venus, let alone Serena, is still competitive fully 20 years after her peak says it all.

[Yevrah]

The Women's game is a complete shambles, which is where the argument for equal pay should begin and end. Which is a shame, as when I started watching tennis it was probably better than the men's.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Federer 6-2 7-6 (7-5) 5-7 4-6 11-13 Anderson

Woof.

Federer even had match point at one point.

[Kikó]

The Women's game is a complete shambles, which is where the argument for equal pay should begin and end. Which is a shame, as when I started watching tennis it was probably better than the men's.

Why do you still debate this? Who cares if they're equally paid?

[Reg]

I was in for Djokovic and Nishikori and after seeing that and Djok-Edmund, I feel confident in saying Djokovic is officially BACK. Him to win it.

Women's tennis is getting stronger, not weaker. There is more depth. Seeds going out isn't always a bad thing.

[CJay]

There is no enjoyment in this game. Just two big twats winning their service games to love.

[mugbull]

The other semifinal will be pretty fuckin lit, Anderson is one of the worst players to watch and when you couple him with Isner, you’ll only ever get what you’re describing

[Yevrah]

This is where tennis gets absolutely ridiculous. The final was already going to be a non-contest, but they may as well not even bother playing it now. And that's assuming this match is finished by 2pm on Sunday.

[Baz]

Funny that it’s bloody Isner at it again. :D

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Isner is top 10 (possibly even 5) for his career in first serve percentage won. He's probably the dullest though.

[CJay]

This is such a farce. Why have they not adopted 5th set tie breaks yet? How late can match play go with the roof shut?

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

This is such a farce. Why have they not adopted 5th set tie breaks yet? How late can match play go with the roof shut?
10:30ish I think.

Edit: It's 11 actually.

[CJay]

Apparently there’s a curfew at 11. There’s a good chance Nadal - Djokovic would go to 5 as well (except through good tennis), so something’s going to have to be rearranged now.

They’re guaranteed a days rest in between too right?

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

I would be stunned if this didn't break (or at least come close) to the record.

Hopefully it will see the rule get changed. Well it will have to be if this isn't finished tonight.

[Browning]

The record is still a long way off. 70-68 was the last one.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Yeah I know...

I can't imagine we'll get anything less than something in the 40s here.

[Browning]

Give Anderson the match just for that.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

I really hope I've jinxed it.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Thank fuck for that.

[Jimmy Floyd]

Isner deserves only misery.