Southern and Western Tennis Tournament

[+ WilliamM]

Enjoyed watching the match between Borno Cilic and Rafa Nadal tonight

[BSR]

So did I, partly for the tennis, partly for the aesthetics.  Borna was sidelined for more than a year with a shoulder injury.  Given that he hit a number of serves at 130+mph, the shoulder is obviously as fit as a fiddle.  Rafa, sidelined with an ab injury since he withdrew from the Wimbledon semi, showed clear signs of rust, most glaring of which was the easy putaway he sent wide on set point in the 1st and the doublefault on set point against.  Gotta give credit to Borna though, his world-class backhand withstood the onslaught from Rafa's crosscourt forehand.  Of all active players, only 2 have winning records against Rafa (minimum 5 matches), Novak and Borna Coric.

An interesting but useless factoid:  Rafa is a natural right-hander who plays lefty whereas Borna is a natural lefty who plays right-handed.  Borna says that when he started playing tennis, no one taught or pressured him to play righty.  The racket just felt more comfortable in his right hand.  

I gotta like Borna just on his looks alone.  What makes him even more appealing is unlike most guys who look like he does, he seems quite humble about his sex appeal, even though he's got plenty of it.

[BSR]

Borna continues to bang in huge serves.  Against Felix Auger-Aliassime, he won an astonishing 31 of 32 points when he got his 1st serve in.  Wow, even the monster servers (Isner, Opelka) don't win that high a percentage.  This week in Cincinnati, Coric has averaged an eye-popping 127mph on 1st serve.  The only guys who serve bigger than that are Opelka (6'11"), Isner (6'10"), Zverev (6'6"), and Berrettini (6'5").  Note that Borna is the "shrimp" of the group at just 6'2".

Rafa's loss to Coric doesn't look so bad now that Borna beat Roberto Bautista Agut and FAA.  Coric started the tournament ranked 152.  He is now up to 66 in the live rankings, goes up to 48 if he beats Norrie in the semi, and 29 if he wins the tournament.  Most players in the US Open draw would probably be relieved if Coric won the title because that way he'd be seeded at the Open.  Nobody wants to face Borna in the 1st round given how he's playing.

Norrie got the other spot in the bottom-half semi by upsetting Alcaraz, although lower-ranked players beating Carlos is less and less of an upset lately.  Carlos has spoken about how nerves are getting the better of him, and once he feels the pressure, he starts spraying the ball.  Well, he just turned 19 in May, oodles of time to sort things out.

The top-half semi is one of my favorite matchups, albeit more for the drama than the tennis.  Medvedev and Tsitsipas just f*ckin' hate each other, so I crack up whenever they face off.  I wonder if they'll start cussing at each other in Russian again (Tsitsipas speaks Russian because his mother is Russian).  Here is the confrontation that started their animosity ...

https://youtu.be/mDX6K7t-JcE

(Hahaha, I could only post the link because YouTube doesn't allow the video to be embedded.)

[+ Charlie]

After a rocky start, Coric beat Norrie with surprising ease. Tsitsipas beat Medvedev, who seemed somewhat rattled by the occasion, in 3 sets. Coric is looking more attractive than ever, so I would like to see him rise in the ranks to the point that his matches get a lot of TV coverage again. It's not like I am distracted by his looks, of course😜

[BSR]

6 hours ago, Charlie said:

After a rocky start, Coric beat Norrie with surprising ease. Tsitsipas beat Medvedev, who seemed somewhat rattled by the occasion, in 3 sets. Coric is looking more attractive than ever, so I would like to see him rise in the ranks to the point that his matches get a lot of TV coverage again. It's not like I am distracted by his looks, of course😜

The number 1 ranking, along with all accompanying pressure, seems to freak Medvedev out.  Whenever the #1 is on the line, Daniil turns into a head case.  This bodes poorly for him at the US Open, where Carlos could snatch the #1 ranking away by winning the title.  Even if Meddy defends, Rafa could overtake the #1 spot just by reaching the final.  In other words, gobs of stress on the Russian, who hasn't handled the pressure of the top ranking at all well so far.

Apparently Coric's new beefed up serve is thanks to dropping weight from his racket, going from 330 grams to 315.  Hard to believe that such a minor tweak could make such a big difference, but he claims he hasn't changed anything else about his serve.

[BSR]

Coric wins his first Masters 1000!  Coric was solid, but frankly, Tsitsipas played like sh*t.  Tsitsi needs time to hit a decent backhand, which is why clay is his best surface.  Unfortunately for the Greek, the ball shoots off the lightning-fast Cincinnati courts like a hockey puck.  Also, he stopped running after a few balls that he easily could have reached.  During other points, he was slow to recover to center, giving Borna an open court and a chance at an easy winner.  I couldn't figure out whether Tsitsi's problem was physical (fatigue) or mental (simply gave up trying to win).

With his win, Borna jumps 123 spots in the ATP ranking, from 152 to the 29.  He'll be seeded at the US Open, which makes both him and the 31 other seeded players quite happy.  He'll also get direct entry into any tournament he wants, which is good because he was running out of protected-ranking tournaments (Cinci was his 9th, the USO his 10th, you get only 12).

Jim Courier mentioned another couple of keys to Borna's beefed-up serve.  Besides dropping weight off his racket, Coric started stringing his rackets 5 pounds looser (a huge difference), giving the string bed much more of a trampoline effect.  Arguably most important, after surgery Borna spent 7 long months in the gym to rehab the shoulder.  The joint had been bothering him since 2018, but all that hard work obviously paid off because the shoulder is working like a charm now.  Here's a photo of his rehab ...

(uh, try to keep your eyes on his shoulder)

[+ Charlie]

My impression was that Tsitsipas pulled out mentally during the second set--those easy balls in the middle of the court that he didn't even try to hit gave it away. I don't speak Greek, so I don't know what was in that constant chatter from his father (I didn't see Philippoussis speak at all), but Tsitsipas looked almost like a sulky child rejecting parental coaching.

[BSR]

7 hours ago, Charlie said:

My impression was that Tsitsipas pulled out mentally during the second set--those easy balls in the middle of the court that he didn't even try to hit gave it away. I don't speak Greek, so I don't know what was in that constant chatter from his father (I didn't see Philippoussis speak at all), but Tsitsipas looked almost like a sulky child rejecting parental coaching.

I like your theory.  I've thought for a long time that Stefanos needs to make a clean break (tennis-wise) from his father.  If I were Stefanos, I'd offer a top-notch coach (Marian Vajda, Darren Cahill) a ridiculous amount of money to be my one & only coach, then tell dad to stay home.

[+ Charlie]

Apostolos doesn't strike me as an easy person to tell to stay home. Then there is the further problem that Steph's mother was a successful tennis player, which probably complicates the family dynamic.