Week 2 - Australian Open Qualifying

wolf · Tennis legend

Week 2 - Australian Open Qualifying

DJ · County player

Magnificent, Jamie! I'm just SO pleased for you - congratulations!

Happycynic · Pro player

Had never heard about this guy Koellerer's antics before, though strategic toilet breaks are alas all too often rumoured. Underarm serving, though.... like being back in the playground (or the Austalian cricket team a while back....).

If he comes to Wimby qualies, maybe we should get out a brigade to meet him and 'cheer him on'. Maybe raising up 'Toilet break?' signs every times he loses a point.

Sport is for fun, to entertain and at its best to inspire. Koellerer appears the antithesis.

Anyway, excellent stuff Jamie B. Karlo will be a hell of a test, but you've earnt respect, points and a nice cheque already. And Karlo can be beaten.

Sheddie · administrator

Jonathan Overend's courtside blog:

I've just got back to my hotel after a hot and sweaty day of watching tennis on Court 6 at Melbourne Park and I've got to tell you guys about the match involving Jamie Baker.

Baker's qualified for the main draw after winning his third successive match here. This time he beat Daniel Koellerer from Austria 6-4 6-4. But if you're waking up and seeing just the score, that's only half of it.

I'd never seen Koellerer play before but I'd heard all about him... well I'd heard a variety of uncomplimentary words one of which is a description a cake with fruit in it and the other a case which contains nuts.

I was looking forward to this.

First game - Baker breaks to love, Koellerer moans about two line calls, tells some spectators to sit down and gets a warning for ball abuse when he hits one out of the small arena.

The spectator thing becomes a common theme. Moving fans are hit with some fierce eyeballing and choice Austrian phrases.

Midway through the set, he snatches a ball from the ball-boy and serves underarm, winning the point.

He gets so annoyed about line-calls that at one stage he asks umpire Adel Aref; "Who are these people, are they pirates?" He then puts his hand over one eye to suggest they're wearing patches.

Hilarious.

A couple of points later, another exchange with Aref The Ref. "I love you, man. No, I do. I really am in love with you".

What a character.

Amidst the madness Baker is his usual composed self, head down, getting on with the job. He wins the first set 6-4 and gets a congratulatory eyeballing.

Just as we're thinking that Koellerer has quite a good personality, with cult-status potential, he turns nasty in the ninth game of the second set.

At 4-4 deuce, he double-faults giving Baker a potentially match-clinching break point.

Suddenly, Koellerer marches back to his chair, sits down and insists on seeing the trainer. As cries of "disgrace" bellow from one irate specatator, supervisor Andreas Egli strides onto court with his custom issue walkie-talkie.

Koellerer mutters something about a shoulder injury. Baker looks annoyed. Egli shrugs his shoulders. The spectator shouts "disgrace" slightly louder than before.

It was comical, farcical and disgraceful all at the same time.

Anyway, much to the delight of the crowd and the cleverly-disguised amusement of Baker, Koellerer returns from his treatment to double-fault again and hand the break to the Brit.

Match point is decided, in the following game, with a lucky net cord in Baker's favour. How everyone smirked.

So bye bye Mr Koellerer. I'd love to hear from anyone who has seen this guy before and has any other tales of on-court mischief.

Also, is it time that a rule was introduced to stop players calling for the trainer at inappropriate moments? On that break-point, there was nothing the umpire or supervisor could do to prevent Koellerer breaking up play and calling the trainer.

I'll be back with more blogs throughout the tournament to give you a feel for what I have to cheekily and quietly admit is my favourite of the four Grand Slams.

From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/606/A31003200

DUSTY DICK · Club Coach

Well done Jamie.
Will this now take him into the top 200?

RobC · All-time great

http://www.activeboard.com/forum.spark?forumID=61841&p=3&topicID=14943618

nicknack222 · Junior player

Hey all, great to hear that jamie won, Dani is a good player, when he is sane wink

. I have been a fan of dani's for ages, he is apparently disliked by a load of the challenger tour players, he is always causing problems. Apparently he was banned for a few months for casuing abuse to one of the Italian tour players while in South American, after one of thier matches, last year.
Someone has been video recording him on his macth last year in Poland on a challenger over there, its very funny.

Enjoy - http://uk.youtube.com/results?search_query=daniel+koellerer

john · Top national player

Sorry nicknac but tbh he seems like a right ****

nicknack222 · Junior player

Haha, i agrere with you on that one. I just find it hard how he has not decided to quit tennis, he must be hated by pretty much everyone on the challenger tour.

freerider · Futures level

the scottish really like the aus open!

As for this kolerrer chap everyone should just mexican wave when he is rallying that would really annoy him!!

Sheddie · administrator

lol thanks for those clips nicknack...been wanting to see the infamous Koellerer in action for a while !! Loved the story about him and fellow crazy guy Federico Luzzi who got so wound up by Koellerer that he punched him in the face at the net and they had a mini punch-up....both got fined and banned for that I think

Sheddie · administrator

here's another mini-report from someone at am.com who was courtside:

"Jamie got off to a flyer, booming in some big winners off both wings and breaking Koellerer immediately. Kollerer responded by smacking a ball straight over the fence, and received a warning from the umpire! I couldn't believe it - a code violation in the very first game! This was going to be interesting...

Baker played a phenomenal first set, serving incredibly well and moving around the court energetically to hit some big groundstrokes. He also made a couple of impossible gets which paid off as an infuriated Koellerer missed the resulting put-aways. The one break was enough, and Baker took the first set 6-4. Jamie was psyched up, and responded to the crowd with war-like "c'mon"s and muscular fist pumps.

The second set was tighter, and went with serve until Jamie finally broke at 4-4. Koellerer, by this point, had become completely unbalanced, berating line-judges, the umpire and even hassling the ball kids. At one point he approached the chair and asked whether the umpire was a pirate with an eye patch! Other ridiculous performances included hitting an underarm serve and taking a convenient injury time out at break point down in the second! Jamie, to his credit, kept his cool, and dispatched the bad mannered Austrian with a business-like service game.

The victory clearly meant a lot to the Scot, who fell to the ground upon securing his place in the main draw. "

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

john wrote:

Sorry nicknac but tbh he seems like a right ****

Further proof - as if it were needed - that the man's a complete psycho who deserves to be locked up (not on The Times web site, so far as I've been able to establish - I saw it in the print edition - so I have had to type it out! Any typos, therefore, are mine...):

Commentary, by Neil Harman

How much longer must game put up with a disease called Köllerer?

Whatever fate befell Jamie Baker last night in the first grand-slam tournament main-draw match for which the Briton has successfully qualified, the behaviour of Daniel Köllerer, the Austrian whom the 21-year-old defeated on Saturday in the last qualifying round of the competition, was the worst example of bringing tennis into disrepute that I have had the misfortune to witness. Once again, tennis wrung its hands and looked on powerlessly at his flagrant abuse of the values of fair play and sportsmanship that are integral to sport, especially at this, its highest level.

Köllerer, a 25-year-old with an appalling attitude, is a serial offender. There was once a petition signed by more than 200 of his fellow professionals to have him expelled from tennis for a period, while an Italian player threatened to punch his lights out. Baker said that what got him most was Köllerer's attitude to the ballboys and girls, youngsters who do a difficult job in extremely hot conditions and do not need supposed professionals shouting at them: "I said ball, ball. Don't you speak English in this country?"

He was given a warning for ball abuse after three points of the match, he mimicked the noises Baker made when stiking the ball, stopped play any time someone fidgeted in his eyeline and, worst of all, stopped the match when he trailed 4-4 with advantage to Baker after a failed first service. Köllerer stormed up the umpire and demanded to see the physiotherapist when it was clear he was not hurt.

After eight wasted minutes that could have done no end of damage to Baker's concentration, Köllerer returned to complete a double fault, losing that game and, in the subsequent one, the match. Unless the sport tightens its rules and enforces them with a measure of backbone, people such as this will continue to spoil a beautiful sport. Someone needs to do something about him.

Making a racket: more top-spin terrors

* Jeff Tarango, the American, had various run-ins with officials, but the most notable was at Wimbledon in 1995, when, having yelled at Bruno Rebeuh, the umpire, that he was "one of the most corrupt officials in the game", Tarango stormed off court, defaulting the match. His wife, Bénédicte, then slapped Rebeuh in the face twice.

* David Nalbandian, of Argentina, lost his cool in a third-round defeat at Wimbledon in 2006, informing the crowd that they were "f***ing English whores". It was in Spanish, but he was still reprimanded.

* Marat Safin, of Russia, is another hothead, regularly being warned for his party trick of smashing rackets.

* Even mild-mannered Tim Henman had the odd rush of blood, being disqualified from the Wimbledon men's doubles in 1995 after smashing a ball at a ballgirl. At the French Open in 2006, he was given a warning for bellowing a rude word.

Words by Patrick Kidd

I remember the tennis JT & Timbo ballgirl incidents quite well, but the others (apart from Marat's antics, which seem to be par for the course...

)...?

-- Edited by Stircrazy at 23:13, 2008-01-14

mjd · Challenger qualifying

DUSTY DICK wrote:

Well done Jamie.
Will this now take him into the top 200?

No! he was defending 45 points so will be around 240-245

MrBaseliner · Social player

I've seen the footage from Szezcin on youtube and although quite amusing, I'd hate to play him and I can see why the challenger lot want him censured, he's too much. We all know the types that stop you mid-service action to walk to the back of the court and move a ball that wasn't anywhere near the court in the first place just to disrupt you, well he's a turbo-charged version of that.