Genie has one of the best returns in women's tennis. It's awesome and her power is fine. That part of her game is legitimately world elite.
her serve is not where it needs to be for her to win a major. Her second serve was exposed this week. She'll be able to generate break opportunities against her opponent, but will be facing break points on her own serve all day long until she gets this cleaned up.
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"OOOOOOHHHHHHH those Russians" - Boney M
Genie has one of the best returns in women's tennis. It's awesome and her power is fine. That part of her game is legitimately world elite.
her serve is not where it needs to be for her to win a major. Her second serve was exposed this week. She'll be able to generate break opportunities against her opponent, but will be facing break points on her own serve all day long until she gets this cleaned up.
Can Andre Agassi be a coach!? Pay him a lot.
The story on the broadcast the other day was that Berdych couldn't beat the Big 4 (including losing to Nadal 17 times in a row). When he was playing in the league event in India he was on Agassi's team and Andre grabbed him and basically said "You can't beat these guys because your 2nd serve is rubbish. It's in the same place every time at the same speed and these top players all know that." So Berdych has been working on that for a month and he's on a roll this Aussie Open serving with more variety.
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I see Raonic's upside like Berdych. A consistent top ten player who can threaten the elite guys, win a few masters, and with inevitable retirement/decline of the big three, perhaps a major or two. But never considered an elite player in the way Federer, Nole and Nadal are elite.
Don' bash me.
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Genie has one of the best returns in women's tennis. It's awesome and her power is fine. That part of her game is legitimately world elite.
her serve is not where it needs to be for her to win a major. Her second serve was exposed this week. She'll be able to generate break opportunities against her opponent, but will be facing break points on her own serve all day long until she gets this cleaned up.
But it's not world elite. The narrative she's a great returner is really not grounded in reality, she didn't finish in the top 10 of a single returning stat last year. Can she become elite? Yes, but she is not that right now. Halep for instance is clearly better in terms of returning skill, so is Sharapova, so is Radwanska.
And it's not even her second serve...her first serve is becoming incredibly problematic. She's averaged under 100MPH first serve in Australia. That simply is not going to cut it when the top women are hitting 110MPH consistently (and Serena routinely over 115MPH). Her first serve needs as much work as the second serve.
Genie still has great potential but a lot of work to do to become a true top 5 player. She is only 9-17 against top 10 players. That has to get better or she'll top out pretty much exactly where she is right now.
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Originally Posted by nemanja2306
I see Raonic's upside like Berdych. A consistent top ten player who can threaten the elite guys, win a few masters, and with inevitable retirement/decline of the big three, perhaps a major or two. But never considered an elite player in the way Federer, Nole and Nadal are elite.
Don' bash me.
Nothing to bash. This is a pretty accurate summation of Milos right now.
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"Think I'm gonna be the scapegoat for the whole damn machine? Sheeee......."
I am so not a fan of Nole/Andy matches, yes the tennis is very high level but they're so similar that the rallies are endless and often mind destroyingly boring. at least when you get a Fed or Rafa in there you can see a battle of styles, but if this plays out how I expect, it'll be as exciting as an electronic Pong championship.
that being said, I legitimately see either of these guys having a shot at the calendar slam this year. no real rooting interest for me this time, so I can watch stress free.
Nobody talking about Serena and nobody's watching this awesome Novak/Andy match? Shame.
Too tired to stay up. Recorded and watched it now. That second set was pretty epic but then it all fell apart for Murray. Those first two sets probably took 2.5 hours to complete. Congrats to Djokovic! It's like the flu made him even better, if that's possible.
Murray just cannot keep his head. He did for a little bit with Lendl as his coach but he's too susceptible to mental breakdowns. Credit to Djokovic for getting into his head too. Novak will have a very good look at the calendar slam, at this point I think he's clearly a level above everyone else.
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"Think I'm gonna be the scapegoat for the whole damn machine? Sheeee......."
I watched live, but was drifting in and out of consciousness so not in any condition to live blog it. the match pretty much played out like the majority of previous ones; rallying so long and consistently that you could set your watch to it. Nole has a momentary dip and Andy briefly gets some inspiration by taking a set. but in the end, when you have two guys doing almost the same thing, the guy who can do it 5% better will almost always prevail. Nole's shots land a couple feet deeper, have a few more MPH behind them and are just a bit more reliable. over a best of 5, that inevitably means Murray runs out of gas, and hope. it's like comparing their tennis Corsi (sorry).
I now give the Djoker a 50/50 shot at going for the calendar slam, especially with all the questions surrounding his big 4 colleagues. if he stays healthy, there's a couple more productive years in which he could actually close the gap on Rafa. Imagine having #1, 2 and 3 greatest players of all time, all within 6 years of each other.
one more, I didn't realize Hingis won mixed doubles. I don't even think HDTV existed the last time she was in the spotlight for anything other than coke. her partner Leander Paes automatically wins the award for shot of the year, this will not be beaten:
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Nobody talking about Serena and nobody's watching this awesome Novak/Andy match? Shame.
I watched the Williams/Sharapova match live. Always a pleasure seeing Sharapova eat her cake (particularly when Serena is feeding her) as I can't stand her. Serena continues to absolutely dominate Maria whilst fighting a bad cold.
Too many unforced errors from Serena in the 2nd set but with that dominant serve she get's it done. Great to see Serena move into 2nd place behind Steffi with 19 slams. Will be interesting to see if she can get to 22 as she pushes through the twilight of her career.
I had no interest in the Novak/Andy match unfortunately....
