The Tennis thread

I see Mark Knight was rightly cleared of any wrong doing by the press council for his Serena cartoon :smile:

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This guy is top 5 on talent.

Shame he cant keep it together long enough.

Saw the clip on the news - the under arm serve, yelling at the crowd and that celebration after the win? Absolute flog.

I don’t mind a bit of theatrics personally.

Most athletes today are robots.

I actually take more exception with Nadals “time wasting” allegations considering his history with his serving routine.

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This great for tennis :rofl:

Love it!

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Think we have extremely different views on what’s considered “great” for tennis.

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Yeah, he’s going to polarize opinion.

I think there is more than enough robotic sportsman to go around though.

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Do you think the fans would be put off tennis after his game or want to go and watch again after that performance?

That’s hard to answer without seeing the whole match. Certainly if there is heaps of the stupid antics it would wear thin very quickly with me. But I’m not against the occasional underarm serve

I don’t thin Kyrgios has ever had a problem drawing a crowd.
At the very least they come to boo him

Absolutely nothing wrong with the underarm serve given where Nadal stands or Nick’s celebration after he won. Yelling at the crowd, and his box, is immature and distracting and he needs to get more focused on what he can control.
But it’s a real worry that Kyrgios is living entirely off the power and quality of his serve. He is not breaking the better players’ serves as the consistency and depth of his ground shots and tactics within the rally are poor. He needs coaching really badly otherwise he will never have a chance to fix the technical weaknesses in his game.
Then he has to deal with the mental fragility and lack of fitness as he has no chance to get through the two weeks of a slam.

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Kyrgios braves cut and cramps to down old foe Wawrinka

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Nick Kyrgios overcame a hand injury, leg cramps and a solid performance from Stan Wawrinka to prevail 7-5, 6-7(3), 6-4 and advance to the semi-finals of the Acapulco International.

The mercurial Australian, who defeated Rafal Nadal the night before in a match where the Spaniard later criticised Kyrgios’ on-court demeanor, was focused in the quarter-final and outplayed Wawrinka in the match’s biggest moments despite crowd that vocally backed the Swiss.

Nick Kyrgios: On the charge.Credit:AP

The night did not begin well for the hard-hitting Kyrgios, who slipped while hitting a backhand in the match’s opening game, opening up a cut on his right hand that required medical attention.

Leg cramps, which also required a visit from the trainers, followed in the deciding set but nothing could derail Kyrgios, who won his final service game at love to keep his hopes of a maiden championship at the tournament alive.

Next up for Kyrgios is either big-serving American John Isner or his eighth seeded countryman John Millman, who play later on Thursday.

Earlier in the day Briton Cameron Norrie cruised past American Mackenzie McDonald 6-3 6-2 to book his ticket to the semis.

Norrie will face second-seeded German Alexander Zverev, who did not face a break point en route to a 6-4, 6-4 win over Australian Alex de Minaur.

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Kyrgios and Nadal have some serious beef.

That tweet from Kyrgios with the drug reference was something else.

what tweet?

I can’t find it now. Maybe it was instagram.

It was in relation to the doping accusations that Nadal was under suspicion for a decade ago.

Kyrgios said something along the lines of “I can smell blood”.

He was saying it in context of beating Nadal but it was clear he was actually talking about drugs because he had a syringe emoji in the quote.

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Well Kyrgios had to pull out his finger seeing he is now ranked 74 in the world - Slip any further down the rankings and he has to play a less desired schedule - Agree with Stir Fry that Kyrgios’ return of serve has gone back to pre 2017 levels - This was the biggest improvement in his game in 2017.

I’d be surprised if kyrgios was suggesting nadal was a drug cheat. maybe he meant there is always a lot of needle in their matches and nadal is haunted by the ghost of nick beating him at wimbeldon when nick was still in nappies.

OK, that’s not very convincing but why would nick refer to a drug accusation made 10 years ago when he was busy on his playstation 24/7 whilst skipping year 7?

Nick should beat Isner - if he turns up mentally - but if he plays Zverev the problem is Zverev is much fitter and he knows he can outlast him. That forces nick to pull the trigger too early in the rally. All the top players just have enormous capacity to play with sustained controlled aggression in every rally hitting 10+ shots if needed. Nick’s got a big serve and can hit winners, but it’s not enough.