Today is the first day I've gotten to watch tennis since the French (I know, I know, I missed a little bit of grass in there somewhere, and a certain final people keep talking about for some reason, apparently it was pretty good), so I watched the fifth set of Djokovic & then most of the Federer match, and here a little bit of Roddick at the end. My question is this. During Djokovic-Robredo -- which by the way I was surprised that Novak won, given his body language, his fatigue and pain etc. in the fifth. The critical moment was not so much because Robredo fell by the way, it was the whole turnaround of that point, the first or second point in his service game I think, & Robredo had it won with a beautiful inside-out forehand that clipped the one line, following which he had a winner down the other, but the forehand was called out, and the call was over-ruled, rightly, so Robredo had to play the point again, and that's when Djokovic smoked the backhand return, Robredo fell, got rattled, and the wheels came off long enough for Novak to take the break and walk away -- anyway, during that match, somebody (Jim Courier?) said that Federer has been playing with mono the whole season, not just during the Australian. He suggested that it was a pretty remarkable thing to make a grand slam semi and two finals while suffering from a debilitating illness. So was Fed sick longer than he admitted, or is he still sick? Whatever the case, he played a relatively unremarkable match today, and only won because Andreev's level dropped in that 5th set and he started making more unforced errors. I do wish though that Roger were in better form, not just because I like him, but also because there's just nothing like watching Federer in full flow.
I'm excited about Fish / Nadal, I know Rafa's been in a tree lately but Mardy's tough on the hard stuff, he'll have good fan support and can really slap you out of your rhythm. Conventional wisdom tells me he's got a great chance.
& what's up with Dementieva? She's just firing on all cylinders all of a sudden? I'll look at your blog.
Chris
Oh, and I've always wondered: sometimes American commentators vacillate between pronouncing DementiEva and DeMENtia-va, though the former has been far more common of late. My guess, though I don't know any Russian, is that the stress is really on the second syllable, and that it should be DeMENti-e-va, except Americans can't say three unstressed syllables in a row, so if we put the stress on MEN we have to say Dementia, and then she sounds like a batty old woman when she is in fact a svelte Russian blonde with legs lean as helicopter blades. Does anybody actually know anything? (I might prefer it if no one does, and then I can just believe my theory.)
[This message has been edited by Chris Childers (edited September 02, 2008).]
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