ROMEING

Posted by: freakyfrites , May 6, 2008

1. Tennis Sweetheart, David Ferrer, has a nice blog running on the atp site. Turns out that “pizza is forbidden” for him, poor man. Check it out here.

2. Can you think of a less attractive pairing on clay than Roddick v. Fish? All that pounding around the court as if sliding was against the rules. Thank God the match was short.

3. Can you think of a more (physically) attractive pairing than Moya v. Verdasco?

4. Gonzo fought past Tipsarevic today, showing some major passion in the final set tie break. He’s been so meek lately (with a couple fiery exceptions, like when he beat Roger during the round robin portion of last year’s Masters Cup.) Has he finally convalesced from his success at the ’07 Aussie Open? Given his past success at the Athens Olympics, (he won the doubles gold medal with Nicolas Massu and the bronze in singles), it will be interesting to see what he can accomplish in Beijing. Perhaps his focus on the Games is pumping him up.

5. Wow, Roger played great today. It was fun to see him go full out Maestro on Willy “the Badass Backboard” Canas, pulling out drop shots, elastic forehands (one of the commentators called his forehand side “venomous”), and a grab bag of fierce first serves. He hit almost 40 winners. He’s playing like he has something to prove.

6. BREAKING NEWS! Gilles Simon is the lovechild of Mr. Frodo and Johnny Cash.

+ =

7. I hate to jinx anyone, but I forsee some great round of 16 matches: Djokovic v. Monaco (GO JUAN!), Murray v. Rafa, Blake v. Verdasco, and Gonzo v. Almagro or Nalbandian. My DVR’s on overdrive this week.

8. Andy Murray and Juan Martin del Potro started yelling at each other during their match yesterday. Here is the Telegraph’s take on it:

The soundtrack on television recordings indicated that the flare-up began during a change of ends in the second set, after Murray raised the issue of why Del Potro had not said sorry after drilling a ball towards his head. Murray has known Del Potro since their junior days, and they have since chatted on the internet, and so he expected an apology. But Del Potro responded by snapping that Murray and his mother had not changed, and were “always the same”.

It’s sad that after such a clash of egos, del Potro was forced to retire with a painful back injury. Reportedly, he was near tears because of the pain, but I bet it was his pride that was really hurting. This guy is already one of the top “retirees” on tour and he’s only 19 years old. How much longer until he retires for good?

The youtube clip of the incident is quite amusing: