| I guess I'll start the tennis thread. Too bad no matches have started due to the rain delay. I'll just give my predictions for now Mens Singles: Gold: Rafael Nadal Silver: Roger Federer Bronze: Fernando Gonzalez Despite the loss the Djokovic last week, I believe Nadal should have had enough rest to get back to top form to take the gold. Even though Federer has been in a slump lately, his draw should allow him to make it to the finals with relative ease. Mens Doubles: Gold: Bob and Mike Bryan Silver: Jonathon Erlich and Andy Ram Bronze: Mahesh Bhupathi Leander Paes A lot of the top double teams aren't from the same country so most will have to play with a different partner, leaving those that don't have to with an advantage. Womens Singles: Gold: Dinara Safina Silver: Elena Dementieva Bronze: Svetlana Kuznetsova Safina is hot right now. Coming off winning back to back titles in LA and Montreal, she is the one to beat. Womens Doubles: Gold: Serena and Venus Williams Silver: Liezel Huber and Lindsay Davenport Bronze: Zi Yan and Jie Zheng Coming off a Wimbledon title, the Williams sisters have shown why they still have it. They will power there way to the gold. |
Faust721Aug 10, 2008 10:56 AM
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| Man, I hope Federer will come back on top :/ |
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| poor olga getting pwnd by Serena right now :) |
  "What happens when we die?" I know that the ones who love us will miss us. |
| Does anyone know how fast are the tennis courts and how well they are taking the spin? I have not seen any matches yet so I can't say yet. I read that it was a DecoTurf II Hard Court but they can be pretty slow or super fast. The Chinese girls prefer the courts slightly faster, so I thought the courts may have been made faster to increase the chances of Chinese medals but apparently the Argentines are saying they happy because the courts are slower than they expected... I hope its a bit faster, I'm getting slightly fed up all these slowed down surfaces, if it is a slower court then Nadal holds a massive advantage. Federer will always be a major contender, despite his absolutely awful start in the American hard court season. Djokovic will be dangerous as he comes onto his favourite court surface and GB's Murray stands a slight chance to cause some upsets! He has beaten Federer a few times in the past as well as Novak, he is certainly closing the gap on the worlds elite 3. Oh btw Ivanovic has pulled out of the tourny because of a thumb injury. Hope she'll be okay for the US Open. I'll comment more about the medal contenders later on. Edit: Forgot to mention, Davenport is out of the tourny too :( |
Strawberry_Aug 10, 2008 6:06 AM
| yeah, i just read the Ivanovic pulled out. Its a shame. Same with Davenport, but she is still playing doubles I believe. |
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| Well at least the williams sisters are still playing... Venus should beat Timea pretty easily |
| "What happens when we die?" I know that the ones who love us will miss us. |
| what an upset by Lu over Murray. I watched most of the match and it was quite exciting. Seriously, some of the games felt like forever. So many dueces. I wish I caught the end of bit but the stupid NBC site stopped showing anything all of a sudden. |
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| Yeah I just saw that Lu v Murray match, pretty disappointing for Murray and his fans but in his defence he didn't play a bad match, Lu on the other hand played some pretty impressive tennis! The conditions looked tough for the players today, it seemed so incredibly humid. I did wonder how Murray was going to cope since his physical strength is somewhat questionable but even the likes of Federer who is extremely fit was sweating like mad. Not something you see very often. Good win by Federer since Im talking about him now :P His relatively easy win comes as a big relief for me because I was geniuenly worried when I saw that his first round opponent was Tursunov. I didn't see his match but apparently after a slightly shaky first set, Federer was almost flawless in the second. Nadal on the other hand struggled a bit as it took him 3 sets to get past Starace. He is known to start off tournaments a bit slow but I read that he looked a bit tired as he battled through the humid conditions with his pretty heavy energy usage style of play. Murray's match is the only one Ive seen so far but the courts seem pretty fast actually, I was expecting a lot slower after I read what the Argentines said. I have to say the fast court surface is slightly bad news for Nadal and will definately favour the likes of Federer and Djokovic. |
| I'm watching the Jankovic v. Black game and Jankovic seems to be having issues with the line judge (the horizontal one that goes across the tv screen or whatever he's called) than her actual tennis opponent. She actually had to use up 2 challenges in 2 sets because the guy doesnt know what he's doing. |
| "What happens when we die?" I know that the ones who love us will miss us. |
| Line judges have it tough, the ball doesn't exactly travel slow and the fact that every call can be challenged (as long as they have challenges remaining) adds a bit more pressure on them. But if they are really making wrong calls frequently, at least the players can win back challenges and have points replayed if needs be providing they challenge successfully. Anyways Im super glad Federer got off to a winning start! He's suffered a very disappointing season by his standards and he will be desperate to not only prove to himself, but to the rest of the world that he is still capable of winning tournaments. Plus the olympics mean a hell of a lot to Roger. But I honestly don't have an idea who will win the men's tournament, I'm tempted to say some other random person outside of the top 3 will win the tournament. And I'm not sure how motivated a lot of players will be especially with the US Open just around the corner. |
| Just finish watching the Hewitt-Nadal match. I must say, it was quite an entertaining one. Despite the score (6-1, 6-2), it was not as one sided as its suggested. No matter how much I watch Nadal, I am always in awe. Seriously, this guy is a beast. His forhand down the line is deadly. |
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| Yeah so much for Nadal's slow start to tournaments, he was on fire today! He's even making more frequent net approaches! Just shows how much more developed his game is. Im always in awe of his tennis as well these days, he is ridiculously good. The commentator did however doubt whether he could actually go onto win though, given the physically draining conditions. I also managed to watch Federer for the first time in the tournament as he beat Arevalo 6-2, 6-4. Though Roger played okay in the first set, he didn't do too well in the second. He was far superior from the baseline as you would expect but he decided to do a lot of experimenting at the net I think. He made some pretty silly net approaches and almost handed his opponent a break towards the end of the second set. He sets up an interesting meeting with Berdych who beat Roger in the 2004 Olympics. |
| oh damn, since it was raining i decided to hit the sack early only to wake up and find out that Federer and both Williams sisters lost. Very surprising results but congrats to Blake, Dementieva and Li for the wins. Can't wait for the Nadal-Djokovic match tonight. Gotta see my man Nadal get revenge for the loss at Cincy. |
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| Blake NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! had 3 match points T_T edit: woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Go NADAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Djokovic totally shanked that last point. So Gonzo and Nadal. Interesting matchup. |
Faust721Aug 15, 2008 9:16 AM
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| That last point summed up the match. As expected Djokovic was by far the more aggressive but Nadal has got such ridiculous defensive abilities and can switch to offensive dangerously fast! Good match though, I didn't think Djokovic would have been able to keep up his performance from the second set when he was hitting almost everything perfectly. Nadal is looking good to take home the gold and also his more than impressive tournament on this fast hard court surely shows he is more than capable of winning the US Open. I laughed quite a lot when the commentators were talking about warnings and the huge amount of time it takes both players to actually serve, then one commentator said "they should both get a warning for ball abuse", refering to how insanely hard they were hitting the tennis balls :P |
| As expected Nadal got the gold. While Gonzo did put up a nice fight, Nadal was just beastly in his game. Overall results Men's Singles: Gold - Rafael Nadal Silver: Fernando Gonzalez Bronze: Noval Djokovic Men's Doubles: Gold - Roger Federer & Stanislas Wawrinka Silver - Simon Aspelin & Thomas Johansson Bronze - Bob & Mike Bryan Women's Singles: Gold - Elena Demetieva Silver - Dinara Safina Bronze - Vera Zvonareva Womens's Doubles: Gold - Serena & Venus Williams Silver - Anabel Medina Garrigues & Virginia Ruano Pascual Bronze - Yan Zi & Zheng Jie Of the 12, 3 of my predictions were correct. Would've been 5 if it wasn't for Safina losing. The men's singles results were of no surprise for the most part. Other than the Federer upset, it went as expected. Doubles on the other hand, I did not expect either the Swiss and the Swedes to take gold and silver. This doubles win should get Federer a bit out of his slump and ready for the US open. On the womens side, it was no surprise that it ended up all Russia. What i did not expect was Na Li making it to the top 4. I had her losing in the first round to Kuznetsova. A good job to her especially since she came form behind in a lot of her wins. As for doubles the top 4 teams were the same as if it were any other tournement and they are all in the top 10 iirc. So it could've gone any ways. Seems like the Williams sisters got more hungry after bowing out in the quarters. Overall, it was quite an enjoyable tournament. Well, as long as it doesn't cost me money to watch a bunch of matches will always end up good :p |
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| Well I thought the Nadal v Gonzalez match may have been a bit closer but the result really shows how well Rafael is playing atm. He will begin next week as the newly crowded number 1 and fully deserves it. Normally Nadal gets tired around this part of the year and tends to be disappointing for the rest of the season but there are very few signs of weakness from him right now. Though it was another disappointing tournament for Federer, in reality I don't think it is really that much of a shock. Before the Olympics started he had won just 1 match since Wimbledon so he had nowhere near enough match practice going into the tournament. His low confidence and low amount of matches played this year is seriously contributing to his high number of UE's that he has been hitting for most of this year. Though come the US Open it will be tougher for players to beat Roger in best of 5 sets, there is a realistic possibility that he could lose quite early on, but it would be insane to see Federer not win a grand slam this year. I've been browsing the tennis forums and its funny to see how many many people are writing him off in the forums yet the polls in those threads are not fully reflecting it at all. Anyways I knew Gonzalez has improved a lot since Athens, I really didn't think he would win silver. And even though Djokovic had to settle for bronze, I still believe he can go all the way in the US Open if he plays like he did at AO or even last year's US Open when he was desperately unlucky to lose. As for the women, well I didn't follow the women's tournament much but I'm pretty surprised to see Zvonareva winning a bronze. Safina continues to keep up her extremely impressive form but I did expect her to beat Elena to take the gold. But I am very pleased for Dementieva to have won gold, she doesn't win enough things for someone of her ability :( Its been an interesting tournament to watch, further justification that Nadal is the righful holder of the no.1 spot and that he is a MAJOR threat not just on clay anymore. The Russian girls have also shown that they remain a powerful force as always in the tennis world despite the Serb duo arguably being more successful this year prior to the Olympics. Can't wait for the US Open to begin :) |
Strawberry_Aug 17, 2008 4:28 PM
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