Almagro, Montanes, Kanepi, Szavay Win Titles: Weekend Wrap

Almagro is a dangerous player with a scary game who can beat almost anyone on the right day.

July 19th, 2010 at 11:49 am

is tennis still going on?

i just pulled on my yellow jersy. schleck popped his chain. oh well, that’s sport. i blew by him.

vamos contador!!

Kimmi-

getting excited for roger’s cup? the bracket game awaits!

meanwhile, GO DOLGOPOLOV! i think he’s playing somewhere this week..

hm, any news on gulbis, anybody? or on delpo?

July 19th, 2010 at 11:57 am

WOW, is Wertheim dishing it out to serena:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/jon_wertheim/07/19/best.three/index.html

July 19th, 2010 at 5:12 pm

contador – how r u ?

tennis is on ofcourse. Soda fizzled yesterday. he even had a double fault on match point…ouch!
I guess he didn’t hear me cheering for him at the top of my voice. Too bad. ;(

Yes, Rogers Cup. bring on the bracket challenge..i better be nice to you, you might just give me some great hints. no?

Dolgo..where is he playing? I think Gulbis is playing next week in LA. read this on one of sean’s threads. Can’t wait to see him again..its been too long. :)

July 19th, 2010 at 7:13 pm

hey Kimmi!

i’m fine. was on vacation last week. and how are you?

i feel down about soda popper. he needs some confidence, eh? tough for him losing in the RG final and at the wimble semi. boy, oh boy, ONE of my favorites ( large field of ’em ) better start winning! almagro isn’t one . boo…

i found dolgo in the link below….it’s an insanely early match time but definitely not missing the live TDF stage tomorrow on versus.com, so maybe i could wake up 30 minutes early and try streaming hamburg.

( i do enough mtn biking and love it! plus, i’ve gone over my handlebars and hit pavement enough times to get excited watching the elite cyclists suffer. and this tour has been brutal ) talk about tough athletes, three weeks of torture and mind games.

sorry, back to tennis…

dolgo match. and some other interesting ones.

http://german-open-hamburg.de/fileadmin/content/pdf/Draws/2010/OP/Order_of_play_tuesday_new.pdf

EG next week in LA? great. seems like forever but he is in. but hope the hamstring has mended and he comes out swinging.

imo the atp is less exciting without delpo, of course. hurry up JMDP!!

then, there’s the mental casualties post RG and wimbles…

ah well, at least watching live tennis is coming to a friendlier time zone, right?

i have serious doubts about picking on hc, Kimmi. you can be nice to me, i like that, but not sure i’ll be picking like on grass. and clay season was easy picking. roger’s cup will be a different story. i’m guessing hc will be more competitive. * crossing fingers*

July 19th, 2010 at 10:37 pm

ah contador – re delpo. where did I read it? I swear i read it somewhere, could be here..someone mentioned that they read on his website that delpo will be back in “paris bercy” and will also be available to help nalbandian in davis cup semi against France. don’t qoute me though :)

you know what, i am never too excited about davis cup but this time i am behind argentina. And i am glad delpo wants to help nalbandian. Go argentina.

glad to hear you enjoyed your vacation. talking about biking..did tour de france finish? and how did contador do? I usually follow the final rounds but this year i was side tracked by the world cup…football or is it soccer where you come from? congratulation to spain ofcourse!!

Yap..i gree that HC bracket challenge will be different. have to think of completely new tactics..funny time!

“then, there’s the mental casualties post RG and wimbles…”

ha ha ha and they are many. they needs to come back to earth. quickly. do I dare name some of them.. Roddick, federer, murray, djoko..the list goes on!!

looking forward to some HC tennis.

Will check out your link tomorrow. yap, crossing fingers for some competative HC tennis.

July 19th, 2010 at 11:06 pm

kimmi, the TDF finishes this Sunday. the ride into paris is a formality. but… there’s going to be big show down in the pyrenees tomorrow and i’m as excited as if it was a fedal wimbledon 2007!

contador will probably win but…andy schleck was matching him climbing the mountains and even looked stronger. but bad luck for schleck when he popped a chain. now only 8 seconds between them.

and i’m in the yellow jersey. if my man wins i’ll be jumping up and down! i don’t think anyone can take it off contador, he’ll be on the top spot in paris! his 3rd TDF

armstrong of course has 7. 7 consecutive TDF wins, more than anyone. by this sunday i will turn into tennis junkie again, no worries. a hard court junkie combing them over! looking for that dark horse. please oh please. who will it be,

definitely kimmi! GO Argentina!

July 20th, 2010 at 12:27 am

I’m rooting for Argentina to win the Davis Cup for Nalbandian’s sake. It’s about time David gets his wish. So I’ll echo Kimmi by saYing, GO ARGENTINA!!

July 20th, 2010 at 1:01 am

Yes, Kimmi and Contador – someone did mention about delPo saying on Twitter that he’d be back for Parisbercy and davis cup. Hope the wrist is properly healed. I have no medical knowledge, but I just have this feeling that someone who hits the ball so relentlessly hard as delPotro – and the success of whose game depends on being able to do so – absolutely has to have utter confidence in his being able to unleash without re-awakening the old injury. Will there, at some level, be a hint of hesitation? Or perhaps that’s just something which will iron itself out with time.

I like Monfils as much as I like Nalbandian, and they are both equally infuriating. But Monfils is still young, France is very strong in tennis, so I’ll join the pro Argentina ranks.

July 20th, 2010 at 11:29 am

“Von Says:

I’m rooting for Argentina to win the Davis Cup for Nalbandian’s sake. It’s about time David gets his wish. So I’ll echo Kimmi by saYing, GO ARGENTINA!!”

Indeed Go Argentina!!!!!!!!!!!

July 20th, 2010 at 12:00 pm

BTW, belated congrats to the spaniards for winning the football WC. It can’t get any better for them!

July 20th, 2010 at 12:01 pm

oh brother-

the french were at it again, boo’ing and cat-calling contador today while on he’s on the podium pulling on his yellow jersey.

what about the french in general, do they usually boo spaniards?

Huh-
oh ya, it does get better. a spaniard is just 3 days from winning his 3rd TDF!! not a small achievement riding 2,200 miles, over 18 days (subtracting the two rest days in 3 weeks ) will be contador’s 3rd TDF win!

contador!

kimmi, it was a disappointing TDF stage today: no crash pile-ups, no dogs or sheep crossing the roads and no contador vs schleck duels on the climbs.

back to tennis.

and dolgo lost to florian mayer in hamburg. hamburg is of course clay though. maybe he’s tired of clay. hope to see how dolgo does on hc soon. not picking him, yet.

about gulbis: yes, yay, he’s supposed to be in LA. staying calm here is the rule and not getting too enthused, no expectations when thinking about erno. none, nada, zilch…

uh, yeah right. gulp

Grendel-

i have been laughing hard reading your posts on that other thread. many thanks to you because i’ve also been thinking about juan marteeen del Potro…not a good thing for me to do.

i miss his presence on the tour but have mixed feelings when i really think about his right wrist injury. carpel tunnel, as you probably know involves nerve damage. a prolonged rest and change in lifestyle is best. also, tendon(s) pinching the nerve require careful snipping, though it’s a common endoscopic procedure. guessing that is what he had done, here.

very frightening i would think, if i were JMDP. there is generally a reported 90% success rate. but no real promise of being pain-free even for the average person. someone like delpo would have a higher rate of re-injury. ughh ( makes me sick)

okay, now that i have thoroughly depressed myself…

hopefully he found a brilliant specialist at the mayo clinic.

YES YOU CAN JUAN!

July 20th, 2010 at 6:41 pm

For what it’s worth, DelPotro had cubital tunnel syndrome, which is far more complex than carpal tunnel syndrome, as it involves the compression/impingement of the ulnar nerve. This would make hitting and serving a lot more difficult and will also place more strain on the upper arm and shoulder, going into the brachial plexus. It’s the reason he wore a splint on his elbow and not his wrist, except for the wrist bands which most of them wear. Additionally, he has tendinitis of the wrist, which is understandable, as inflammation of the nerve is a domino effect — it spreads.

I hhis recovery path will be long and very frustrating, but hopefully, it won’t be so. I wish him well.

BTW, wasn’t his specialist a member of the staff of Cornell Medical Center in NYC?

July 20th, 2010 at 6:56 pm

s/b to grendel

“that other thread” not referring to the roddick thread. no comment there. roddick is one of my favorites, most always anyway.

on another note, luxenbourger (sp) gilles muller is back. maybe in winning form? x-man is taking his winning grass form to hc.

one must note these things, Kimmi. : ) have to be tuned in to the possible qualie winners. it’s tricky picking..

July 20th, 2010 at 6:58 pm

aha argentina have to win. look at all this support from tennis-x. C’MON!

Conty, read something about armstrong missing out on a stage win today. a sprint finish that sees somebody else winning..hmmm! I think his days could be over now? you know, the older one get the harder it is to compete with the youngsters…just speculating!

Dolgo is losing a lot of close matches. sure must hurt. Still cant stop thinking about that marathon match with tsonga at wimbles.

Hope he is learning, so that one day he will learn to win them.

Lots of pull outs in hamburg. monfils and ferrer both had some injury last week. Hope davydenko can find something. Still not the davydenko of end of last year yet.

I remember gilles muller contador..the guy who had the best run at the us open, can’t remember the year. I though that could be his break thru.. what happened to him?.

Picking..arrrg we will have fun. its HC, very trick, I agree.

July 20th, 2010 at 7:50 pm

Contador – you are tactful! Re wrist injury, as I said, I have no medical knowledge – I defer to you, Anna and Von in this field- but this is the sense I have. I have had trouble with both shoulders which is pretty inexplicable – physiotherapy, surgery have helped but not cured. And I am aware in quite small actions of pulling back a bit, in instinctive fear of pain. This makes me fear for del Potro, because of all the tennis players I can think of, he has an action which demands complete freedom of movement. I absolutely do not agree with the criticism of him (and Soderling, Berdych etc) as being a ball basher. On the contrary, I find his tennis exhilerating. But he’s got to feel free to smack the living hell out of that damn ball. The point is: will he?

July 20th, 2010 at 8:06 pm

grendel @ 11:29am

So it was twitter that delpo mentioned he will be back not his website as i mentioned. With all this talk about his wrist..this sure depresses me too.

Without delpo, on hardcourt..wacking the ball as hard as he has done..tennis will sure be boring. fingers crossed.

July 20th, 2010 at 8:30 pm

hey there you are, Kimmi. someone willing to talk a little TDF on the side.

lance is over, Kimmi. he has crashed so many times, on easy stages and hard ones. he never used to do that. last year he was pretty good or by human standards, great. he was 3rd overall in paris. but hey, the guy has 7 TDF wins = goat of cycling.

some entertainment is youtubing the TDF 2010 crashes and the fight i mentioned above.

about muller. he had a pretty good 2008 US Open. but the rumor on his is he’s lazy and tends to gain too much, doesn’t have much motivation despite a good amount of talent.

picking summer court hc won’t be easy. the one going in with the most confidence obviously is nadal. we’ll see.

would like to see belgian x-man malisse on hc. he’s not very young but his stock seems to be rising a little. dolgo is unkown on outdoor hc. he started his move on indoor hc last fall. hoping….he’s fun to watch anyway.

btw, the dent v blake match is bored me stupid.

Grendel-

sorry to hear of your shoulder trouble, especially if it’s bad enough to have had surgery. i imagine you are guarded in movement in effort to prevent pain.

yep. not a happy thought for a delpo fan, that right wrist. PRP “infusions” being all the rage atm might be something they have thrown in as an adjunctive to surgery. who knows. it’s not known to help nerve cell regeneration (still working on it ) but ligaments are there to mend? hey, why not? like i said, i hope the surgeon is brilliant and he has had good results, whatever he/she has done.

i’m sure delpo is motivated for the recovery and rehab and guessing, pretty tentative when training. this is a huge deal for him.

the problem with both rafa and delpo is that they may benefit and have good results from whatever treatments they receive but i doubt anything in and of itself is a panacea. the best results, it would make sense, come directly from altering or changing the action that caused the damage in the first place, which really is not an option for either.

for delpo i think it will take a lot of confidence in his wrist to smack that forehand as he did last US Open. i mentioned this already but some friends of mine had corporate seats up close at the US Open final and said watching and hearing delpo smack that forehand was incredibly exciting. these friends are huge fedfanatics too. they said fed was really “out of it” in that match.

likely, the best goal and outcome could well be simply extending an elite athletes career. imo. quite possible, i want to believe.

yeah, i don’t clump ball bashers in to one heap either. i love watching each, speaking of delpo, berdych and soderling. but have to admit a soderling v berdych match lacks variety. but a “ball basher” has their individual charm when matched with a federer or murray and perhaps on hc, nadal.

as skeezer says:

out!

July 20th, 2010 at 8:57 pm

von-

perhaps the specialist was from NY but his repair was done at Mayo. that’s what i read on his fan site.

carpel tunnel/ cubital tunnel, yes both can involve pain and inflammation in the entire arm. even worse for delpo. i imagine he was having some corticosteroid therapy long before the repair this spring. not the best for a long-term plan.

July 20th, 2010 at 9:04 pm

oops, Kimmi i quess i didn’t mention the “fight” but it’s on youtube…”barredo and costa” TDF 2010 fight hahahhaaa

an this angry spaniard took his front wheel off his bike, came up from behind and knocked a portugese guy with it, which started a fight, a fight hardly seen in cycling.

very entertaininig!

July 20th, 2010 at 9:23 pm

ha ha ha conty – i saw the fight. crazy guys. I hope they got disqualified..unless if the fights are allowed, like ice hockey. (which I can never understand btw) :)

July 20th, 2010 at 9:51 pm

i’ll make a cycling fan out of you, Kimmi. watch out! : )

TDF is perfectly timed in the lull post wimbledon. i want to go be one of those crazy fans perched somewhere high in the pyrenees.

tour cyclists are geeks, man. plus they have to have an ability to tick off kilometers day after day and stay extremely alert for hours at a time, as in well over 100 miles per day. planning their strategy is team cooperation and involves lots of gamesmanship on the road. lance was a notorious bluffer when he was in shape.

to see those two, barredo and costa go at each other was rare. the sprinters head butt and elbow each other, that’s fairly common. buttt the head butting was the worst i’ve seen. the tour threw out, sent home, a brit for excessive head butting….not funny, but it sort of is in retrospect. no one really got hurt. they had to send mark renshaw home as an example. it’s the renshaw v dean head butting incident, all on youtube too, of course.

some very bad boys out there this year…hahaha

the time trial days (2) are boring. i’m hooked on the sprinter and climber stages.

i wonder how rafa would do? i bet he’d make a great sprinter. “get outta my way!”

i’m very certain roger federer wouldn’t have anything to do with it….hahhaha… can’t imagine him subjecting himself to possible road rash. i could be wrong. he is sort of built like a climber, nah….

July 20th, 2010 at 10:30 pm

Conty – i am fan of cycling but ofcourse not a BIG fan.. The only cyclic I watch is TDF ofcourse. last year i was on vacation in june and july..I got to watch the whole wimbles and then top it up with some TDF. watched contador winning and lance came second.

I also enjoy the mountain stage..its amazing. This is where you can separate the men and the boys. always wondered “how do these guys do it?” very fit..unbelivable! I think cycling especially TDF is the most gruelling sport out there.

as i said, I have not followed it this year at all..thanks for filling me in. Will check on the internet now and then… and please keep filling me in when you get a chance! Enjoy!

July 20th, 2010 at 11:12 pm

Contador: I got ya on the specialist and the venue the surgery took place for DelPotro.

I can only wish him well, but I don’t see him whacking the ball as hard as he did previously, when he initially returns. It will take some time, and I think psychologically, he’ll be guarding it, which will take his focus from the match and place it onto the arm. I wrote on another site, that it will cause him some psychological problems. In essence, he’ll be dealing with the fear of re-injury and frustration that he wouldn’t be able to play as well as he did previously, until he works out the cob-webs.

Sharapova is a prime example of how much surgery to a player’s arm can hamper them. She has still not gotten over her serving problems.

July 21st, 2010 at 7:14 am

von, well-

kudos to you then if ‘getting me’ floats your boat.

however his fansite the whole time was sending well-wishes to juan at the mayo.

also here is some evidence you might like delighting yourself further in correcting and refuting with your superior inside info. go for it. : )

http://www.gototennisblog.com/2010/05/04/juan-martin-del-potro-having-wrist-surgery-today/

but….maybe he also had some work done post or previous to the minnesota episode in NY. quite possible.

July 21st, 2010 at 12:09 pm

Hi Kimmi, re: that Delpo “will also be available to help nalbandian in davis cup semi against France.”

I believe that the DC semis are in September (can’t remember if they’re just after the USO or before). If so, it seems surprising that Delpo would be available for that, but then not again until Paris/Bercy, which I believe is in November. If he is okay to play DC semis in September, wouldn’t we assume he could also try to defend the USO title or play in the Asian swing thereafter, and not wait until November to resume the tour? Maybe he’d just be on back up for DC semis? Or maybe the quote/report meant that he’d be around for the DC finals if Argentina get there? As that’s much later.

Anyhow, whenever he’s back, I hope he is good and healed.

And speaking of being back, welcome back from vacation conty. Looking forward to watching Ernie and Nole in L.A.

July 21st, 2010 at 12:49 pm

hi Jane-

i know, i can’t wait!

er, i mean, no worries, right?

meanwhile, chardy killed PP in hamburg today. but that’s clay.

and looking at the results in hamburg, 1 of the stars of this clay season has fallen: montanes. and almagro is out. that’s his karma for beating mr. dimples in sweden, yup.

bellucci is in a decider against bolleli, of all things.

what i want is to see these clay favorites on hc.

off topic again, ryder hesjedal, a canadian on USA team garmin is hanging on to top ten spot in the TDF. a third podium spot is still very much up for grabs.

GO RYDER!

July 21st, 2010 at 1:21 pm

hi jane.

Yes, you got me thinking now. when I heard he will be back for davis cup, i automatically assumed the semi. it makes sense the semi, no? It does not make sense to be back in the final..how does he know argentina will be in the final?

Sounds like a mystery to me. we just have to wait and see. get well delpo.

Conty – I saw that too. montanez and almagro are out. istomin is one of the up and coming guys though..I see him moving up the ranking.

the last year finalist p.h mathieu was beaten in the first round. Now hamburg is so open. Unless davydenko finds his mojo..its anyones game out there.

Go bellucci.

July 21st, 2010 at 1:49 pm

ahhhh, bellucci made it.

he SHOULD beat bolleli.

bellucci on hc? how good is he?

July 21st, 2010 at 1:53 pm

contador:

when i said I got ya, I meant, I understand what you’re saying, not that I got one over on you. I don’t have any inside superior info on Juan, so, I’l just have to let you do the googling for me. Sorry for the miunderstanding., but you’re way ahead of me.

I read so much about too many things, and at times I get everything convoluted. All i know is that his doctor was supposedly from NY and is the best there i in the field. That sad, i think you’re the superior and knowledgeable one, and I’m the dummy. LOL.

July 21st, 2010 at 1:59 pm