The Williamses have devalued tennis for twenty years with their reliance on brute force over actual skill, some obnoxious gamesmanship (such as how Serena's mid-rally shouting gets progressively louder the longer a rally goes on, and only seems to appear in close games and never when she's 40-0 up) and generally having ****ty attitudes such as expecting to be top seeds in spite playing approximately eight tournaments a year as well as Serena throwing a hissy fit in a post-match press conference as she felt slighted at playing on Court No2 a couple of years back. True you can level these accusations at most tennis players of the past thirty years one way or another, but the Williamses are the only ones who seem to consistently combine all three on such a regular basis.
I wonder how many of the Indian team took the bookies to the cleaners? Something was very very wrong about that match.
Good point - hadn't thought that on this occasion but you could be right. Dhoni's performance has to be suspect.
He threw the match. Hit out or get out when you need 10 plus per over. Even at club level your captain would send that message.
More like the opposition have not had high enough levels of skill to make their power less of an issue. This battle also played out in the Evert vs Navratilova sagas of the 80s. Navratilova was the most powerful female player, and also one of few who played the "serve and volley" game (more typical of men) . So Evert had to rely on better technique to overcome the raw power. However in contrast to clan Williams, Navratilova was also a skilful player without the power, and with a lot more tactical nous too. I do wonder whether a decent female player, if regularly training with a man playing at full power, would "get their eye in" such that their reaction to the likes of clan Williams would be deadly.
That's the problem though: the average Williams service game is like facing a howitzer so the opponent regularly gets blitzed, quite often to 0, and due to the women's game being the best of three sets it's far easier to rain down aces as the Williamses would only be serving ten to twelve games in a match maximum - yet in the men's game players who rained down aces like Mark Philippoussis, Greg Rusedski or Goran Ivanisevic would not be able to maintain the power as they would be playing a maximum of five sets which would tire out their serving arm the longer the game goes on, just like how in baseball they tend to sub out their starting pitcher with two or three innings to go - and that's before taking into account that (outside of the hard court game anyway) it's far less likely to win by nothing more than brute strength, which is why baseline players in the men's game haven't really been a force since Sampras was boring the **** out of everyone in the mid-90s.
...oh yeah, Overwatch League Having lost the first round of their semi-final against Los Angeles Gladiators 3-0 on Thursday, London Spitfire rallied to pick up 3-0 wins in both the second and third match on Saturday night. The first round of their semi final against Los Angeles Valiant takes place at 3am on Thursday, with the second and third round played in the small hours of Saturday morning. Round one: https://overwatchleague.com/en-us/videos?v=FrGqbQ9h37n Round two: https://overwatchleague.com/en-us/videos?v=83c3NKZXe7Z Round three: https://overwatchleague.com/en-us/videos?v=9sX8hWe6FQw Since their entire squad is South Korean, I believe the phrase we should all be tweeting is 그것은 집으로 돌아온다
Great stage today in the Tour up the iconic Alpe d'Huez. And a first time British winner there - although not the expected one.
London Spitfire have reached the final of the Overwatch League after swatting aside Los Angeles Valiant in the semi finals, winning the first two matches 3-1 and 3-0 before coasting to a 0-0 draw in the dead rubber third match Their opponents will be decided in the small hours of Sunday morning as Philadelphia Fusion face New York Excelsior in the second and third matches, with Fusion currently leading after a 3-0 win in the first game on Thursday.
I'm a high volume drinker, the super strong stuff has a habit of causing me amnesia and balancing issues.