I think the key will be the doubles as I reckon Niland and McGee will lose their singles against the Turk who's ranked 121.
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I think the key will be the doubles as I reckon Niland and McGee will lose their singles against the Turk who's ranked 121.
yeah, it nearly always is the key when it comes to davis cup ties. Niland will have a chance against the Turk this evening and has the ability to surprise. He usually keeps his biggest performances for the DC. McGee is a good young player but needs more experience at this level, so I'd expect him to be turned over by the Turk on Sunday. King and McGee should work well together for the doubles but that same Turkish player is in the doubles as well.
There is a lot riding on Niland in the match running at the moment!
Wow that was some result from Niland. Bring on team GB.
Told you he pulls out the big performances for the Davis cup. :D
it's one apiece between Lithuania and Britain at the moment...
Thats what we all want :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Grey Boy
Sure is, and the best thing is we would have a great chance of beating them, if they win against Lithuania chances are Murray won't play as they won't have the fear of delegation hanging over their heads. Without Murray Britain are a two bit team and home advantage Ireland couldeasy take them to the cleaners.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheBoss
Just hope we can win one more rubber this weekend before any chickens get counted
Is there an new scoring system introduced in Davis Cup Tennis?Quote:
Originally Posted by sixesandsevens
Fitzwilliam is sold-out a few days before hand (which is always nice)
http://www.herald.ie/sport/other-spo...h-2088466.html
Today Barry King and James McGee versus Marsel Ilhan and Hayuk Akkoyun
Send a short message of support
http://www.tennisireland.ie/home/davis_cup_2010
No don't think the scoring system for DC has changed over the past few years. Simple first to three wins the tie, so we only need to win one more rubber to win the tie and niland should have no problem of beating the weaker Turk on Sunday. If King and Mcgee win this afternoon (hopefully they will) the last two ties become dead rubbers. The matches still get played but three sets are played instead of five
Great stuff. The tie already won at 3-0 and not even a set dropped yet.
fair play thanks for covering that.
Tennis Ireland send a goodwill message to the team.
http://www.tennisireland.ie/home/davis_cup_2010
It's brilliant.
Future opponents at the moment.
1-2 LTU - GBR
Great Britain won there doubles as expected.
http://www.daviscup.com/ties/tie.asp?tie=100014434
Berants (LTU) may win his singles so it is down to Laurynas Grigelis versus Daniel Evans.
GB win Ireland get home advantage.
LTU and it is a toss of a coin ( denomination nor currency are undetermined).
Great news!! The Brits are 2-1 up in their tie against Lithuania so the dream tie is looking good in the summer!!!
The GB Lithuania tie is in the balance again. GB will be favourites as Evans is ranked 252. The Lithuanian is ranked in the 500's, but home advantage and all that. Goes against the grain but I hope GB win.
Ireland win 4-1. Lithuania bet GB 3-2 so we'll meet Lithuania next round.
Disappointment on all sides of the Irish Sea as
Great Britain suffer humiliating Davis Cup defeat
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/tennis/8554231.stm
"Laurynas Grigelis's 6-7 7-5 6-0 2-6 6-4 win earned Lithuania a tie with Ireland while Great Britain will face Turkey. "
Last time GBR fell through the floor in the mid-nineties, they spent two years in the Davis Cup third tier before climbing out and being a yo-yo team between World group and Group I.
The World Group ties are interesting Spain, France, Russia, Croatia and Czech republic have won their first round ties. Serbia's Djorkvic is on court at the minute against USA's John Isner. He's 2 sets to 1 up.
Chile are 2-0 on Israel. That tie is a day behind because of the earthquake there.
Israel should win the doubles but Chile haveFernando Gonzalez again in the singles.
damn. Too bad. Ive been following this thread with interest. Good to read the opinions of enthusiasts on minority sports in Ireland.
still, onwards and upwards for our boys. Thats the main thing.
Congrats to the Irish team even if we didn't get the dream tie in the next round
Mightn't be as high profile but Lithunia had guy in the 500s playing today. Tie is winnable
Not the tie we were all hoping for but, as has been said, it's one we can win. Good luck to the lads and here's hoping for a home tie!
Yep a winnable tie alright, but I would have preferred the GB team, as much as an embarrassment as it was for GB to lose to Lithuania they'll be no pushovers. The best thing about the Lithuanians will be the fact that they don't have a major player to pull out of their hat the likes of Britain and Cyprus had last year. If Sorensen can stay fit for the tie in the summer I think we should win.
On the Davis Cup site it says that we have a choice of where the tie is played, so it looks like a home tie is on the cards, no doubt it'll be played on grass which the Lithuanians will hate :DQuote:
Not the tie we were all hoping for but, as has been said, it's one we can win. Good luck to the lads and here's hoping for a home tie!
Looks like Conor Niland will be well placed in the top 200 after the Israel open. Hes in the final tomorrow having knocked out the 75th and 122nd ranked players in the world. Also Louk Sorenson should be back in action next week. It's great to have 2 players pushing for the top tournaments and doing so well in the Challenger tour. Augurs well for the upcoming Davis cup tie against Lithuania.
Niland won the Israel open. Beat some serious quality to do it too.
Impressive! I suppose Schuettler was the biggest scalp, although his heyday wasn't quite yesterday or the day before. Well done to Conor :)
The French Open is on at the moment. Murray came from two sets down to beat Gasquet today. It was a terrific match for two and a half sets but Gasquet ran out of gas and Murray knew he just had to outlast him, without necessarily playing that well. Gasquet had played ten matches in the previous fourteen days and requested that this match be played tomorrow. I was happy enough with the outcome, seeing as I put money on Murray when he went two sets down :)
Federer coasted through against Luczak. Nadal should find it easy enough tomorrow, and is the clear, clear, favourite to win the event. I'm personally nervously looking forward to Hewitt - Chardy, though Eurosport will be showing a womens match instead.. damn women! :D
Womens semi finalists mean there will be a first time Grand Slam winner
Dementieva v Schiavone
Stosur v Jelena Jankovic
Schiavone wins it! She would have been the least fancied of the last four, and wouldn't have even been considered a contender before the tournament but she shocked the world.
Well done to her.
Nadal takes on Soderling in the mens final tomorrow. A real grudge match between two guys who don't like each other, but more importantly a match for the French Open crown.
Nobody watching this game then? :D
57-57 atm
'mon Isner.
I'm up for Mahut myself, but it'll be terrible for whoever loses.. not to mention the fact that whoever wins is fudgucked for the next round!
Truly sensational.. it'll surely never happen again!
Sat gobsmacked at that match...Athletes...Isner was out on his feet...it was like two boxers going blow for blow.
Incredible stuff and the first and last time it'll ever happen because the rules will almost certainly be changed after this. Fascinating as it is, it sort of sums up all that's wrong with men’s tennis; two big servers completely unable to get a break point, just monotonous.
It is fascinating but as passinginterest says it sums up men's tennis. 155 games and only 2 breaks. Only 20 odd break points! The two boys have now almost doubled the previous record for aces in a match - I think they are on 95 and 98, the previous record being 51. It would be a pity to introduce a tie-break in the final set, but probably inevitable. There's a strong case for slowing down the men's game or raising the net a couple of inches. Isner is 6 foot 9!
I think it's a little harsh as there's a lot more to it than the pair of them being big servers. In order for something this insanely close you need a few things to happen. Firstly fitness is a factor, crazy long sets usually don't reach a 30 game total because one player will give way to fatigue first. Their fitness level has to be remarkably tightly balanced (as in far more than two pros typically are) to be still going this long, ditto on mental strength. Their overall ability on the surface (Isner is a much better all-rounder but both have shaky grass records) must in turn be phenomenally close. Finally this must give way to the advantage of serve, in that if neither player shows a sufficient difference in fatigue (although Isner looked more likely to go first it wasn't requisitely different to end the match) then the difference in energy being expended on service games as opposed to return games becomes more pronounced. While the amount of effort required to serve as opposed to returning is neglible early it becomes more prevalent the longer a match goes and once you reach a 150 total game count well then it's really quite big. Essentially this match is a perfect storm.
Raising the net would make it even harder for smaller guys to compete. A guy under 6 feet tall would have to hit heaps of top spin serves.. and a guy like Isner would probably enjoy that. As for slowing down the game - Wimbledon has actually slowed down a fair bit already, and there are much longer rallies from the baseline these days than there were twenty years back. The balls in use are heavier, the grass composition is different and the advances in racket technology make it easier to hit passing shots and heavy strokes from the back of the court.Quote:
Originally Posted by seand
I agree that guys like Karlovic and Isner have an advantage because of their height, but you can't really do anything to combat that without hurting others - Roddick for example is a brilliant server, but at 6'2 that is a stroke that he has perfected and is no less fair than any other player's best stroke. You could also argue that a guy like Isner is disadvantaged by his height when it comes to dealing with low slices etc
While Isner has always been a bug server, you have to give huge credit to Mahut for continuosly holding serve while serving to stay in the match, the mental strain is huge. Also, Mahut came through qualifying where he won his last two matches 24-22 in a third set against Bogdanovic before coming from two sets down in the final qualifying round, which is played in the best of 5 format. Including qualifying he has spent about 20 hours on the court and he's still in the first round!
Also, I doubt that Wimbledon will introduce a final set tiebreak at 6-6, perhaps at 20-20 or something like that.
I didn't see it but it smacks of a fix. Were there no service games broken in the earlier sets?
A break each in the first two sets, but then two sets to serve won by tie-breaks followed by 137 games to serve, followed by a final break.
It also has to be remembered this is a freak 5th set. There have been plenty of astonishing servers playing each other in past campaigns and yet the record was only 24-22. There's no need to change the rules on the back of one match.
Federer finished?
I suppose we should have seen the signs after he went two sets behind in his opening match Monday week, but after today's shock defeat, we may have seen the end of Federer, it's difficult to see him returning to the Grand Slam circuit if he feels he can't regain his peak standards. That said, Nadal has looked far from invincible this fortnight either, so Murray may never have a better opportunity to reach his first Wimbledon final.
On the challenger tour, Conor Niland had a decent win over former World No 1 Thomas Muster in Germany (Niland was last direct qualifier so even one win helps his cause)
With Muster's style of play, it'll be tough for him to beat many pro's at 42 years of age.
Rafael Nadal wins Wimbledon 2010. Congratulations to one of the all time greats.
Looks like the Irish are having a tough time of it this weekend in Davis cup. Niland and McGee lost their opening matches to the Lithuanians last night. It's all up to Cluskey and King to keep the tie alive in the doubles!
Niland's also getting some slagging from Off the Ball for suggesting Serena Williams couldn't beat any male players in the top 1,000 (to be fair, he was only responding to Murray's comments). On a serious note though, it's surprising that women's tennis hasn't become a five-set game to date, physically the players are a lot stronger than previously, so they'd be able to go the full distance.