Running tennis thread 2024

Nadal loses 6-3, 7-6, 6-3.

 

The King is dead.

 

Only one top 15 stumble so far (unless I missed one): No. 6 Maria Sakkari ousted by 88th-ranked Varvara Gracheva 3-6, 6-4, 6-3.

Tiafoe just barely survived against No. 173 Marta Bellucci in five tight sets. Bellucci, a 22-year-old lefty from Italy, has played exclusively in Challenger tournaments this year and had played a grand total of one (1) ATP main draw match in his career before today.

 

Tough to figure Tiafoe out; I thought he was finally going to be a solid Top 10 guy with maybe more. Perhaps the Netflix exposure got to his head. He's slipping badly (as Fritz and others push upward.)

 

BTW, autocorrect messed up Bellucci’s first name. It’s Mattia.

 

Is the French on ESPN like the other slams?

 

No. Tennis Channel, NBC and Peacock.

 

Ah, back to the days of café et croissants, the less heralded precursor to Breakfast at Wimbledon.

 

At least NBC shows the women's final live now.

For years they showed it in a 3-5 p.m. window on tape delay. With the occasional commercial break thrown in during an EVEN number of games (just because they could). Player A leads Player B 6-4, 4-4, and it's 4:47 p.m. Hmmmmm, wonder who's going to win?

 

They played a lot of shenanigans with Wimbledon as well. I remember casually watching one afternoon as they go from match to match, and Dick Enberg and his partner are calling every match. Like, how did they go around to every court??

 

I loved HBO's coverage of Wimbledon back in the day. It was like a wonderful 6-hour weekday window with Jim Lampley and Arthur Ashe doing a lot of the calls. So much better than NBC's weekend coverage.

 

That must have been on the middle Saturday, where they would do some tape-delay stuff there as well (with a noon-3 p.m. broadcast window).
Middle Sunday no one played, and the next time NBC swooped in was for the semifinals and finals (with nothing of note going on outside the stadium).

With no commercials, it was probably better than anyone's coverage (given the lesser technology of 1975-99).