Wimbledon 2010 'Battle of the Boards' pick 'em contest

Count Zero · Tennis legend

RE: Wimbledon 2010 'Battle of the Boards' pick 'em contest

Josh · Challenger level

Looking at Isner or Mahut's (28 all) 2nd round opponent and it will be either De Bakker or Giraldo who are currently at 14 all in the 5th!

LadyTigress · County player

Count Zero wrote:

Sasha is a common nickname for Alexander though.

In fact Boggo's real 1st name isnt Alex, but Aleksa, which is a girls name as i remind him a opportune moments

Sasha is Russian though, Count. Sashko is specifically Ukrainian. That's why I avoided calling him "Sasha".

EDIT:

Just looked up about Slabba for you Josh, he was born in what is now Ukraine but at the time was still the Soviet Union, when the country was still heavily Russified (random fact - Davydenko was also born in Ukraine but under the Soviet Union which is why after independence was gained he eventually chose to play for Russia).

Since independence (in 1991) there is a very strong pro-Ukrainian culture in the country, which heavily favours Ukrainian customs and language over the Russified forms and there's an undercurrent of rejection of all things Russian. Formerly, only Russian would be taught in the state schools and was compulsory, Ukrainian was not taught. Slabba (born in 1986) would've spent his early years under the Russified regime, and then the very beginnings of the independent regime before he of course moved to Britain, and I suspect may have been more used to the Russified customs and forms. In contrast Sashko is somewhat younger than Slabba (born Nov 1988), and has stayed in Ukraine to present date, and of course the pro-Ukrainian culture is very strong and dominant over there now.

-- Edited by LadyTigress on Wednesday 23rd of June 2010 04:49:38 PM

eblunt · Club Coach

I propose that Mahut should now be called "The French Tennis player formerly known as a GEM"

This is most un GEM-like from him.

steven · Tennis legend

Many thanks to Isner & Mahut for giving me time to get the main BOTB results table up before R1 has actually ended!

The individual results split by teams won't be up until later tonight, but the main individual and teams tables are up there now.

See http://www.freewebs.com/britishtennis/Competitions.html

LadyTigress · County player

Geez... I just turned on the tv and I literally couldn't believe what my eyes were seeing. FIFTY-FOUR games all in the fifth set of Isner vs Mahut?!?!?! This is hilarious. Tell me that this is making history?! I guess the other people waiting to play on Court 18 today had their matches moved?!

-- Edited by LadyTigress on Wednesday 23rd of June 2010 07:34:37 PM

steven · Tennis legend

Yes they have. It's the longest pro match of all time, the most games, the longest set, and the 5th set alone is about to pass the longest ever whole match at Wimbledon. It will be the match with (by miles) the most aces by a winning player and the most aces by a losing player - 95 for Isner and 89 for Mahut at the moment, I think, cf Ivo's old record of 51.

LadyTigress · County player

Hmmm... 58-58 in the fifth set.

I can't contain the hilarity. I think everyone must be gripped to this, we certainly are in my household.

Smidster · Challenger level

59 games all and into day 3

Silver · County player

Guess how I'm doing. I'll give you a hint: I HATE THIS FECKIN' GAME.

steven · Tennis legend

End of day 3 results up. Like Mahut and Isner, I'd be happy to sleep for a week ...

Count Zero · Tennis legend

Steven maybe you should count isner and mahut as both winners for pick em purposes :)

LadyTigress · County player

All that pre-Wimbledon talk of Isner being the dark horse to take the tournament... well that's all out the window now! Shame, because as those pre-tourney commentators were saying, he had an outside chance at it!

McEnroe says that Isner and Mahut's names will now forever be tied together and they'll never hear the end of this in every interview for the rest of their careers.

indiana · Tennis legend

LadyTigress wrote:

All that pre-Wimbledon talk of Isner being the dark horse to take the tournament... well that's all out the window now! Shame, because as those pre-tourney commentators were saying, he had an outside chance at it!

McEnroe says that Isner and Mahut's names will now forever be tied together and they'll never hear the end of this in every interview for the rest of their careers.

Hmm, big John's not that good at breaking serve though smile

Actually although he was just about out on his feet he was actually getting more dangerous on return in the last few games to the extent that he was more just swinging. He should have tried swinging a bit more about 100 games earlier ( all these numbers do seem proposterous by the way ! ) but anyway yes about a long time earlier, especially as Mahut was always the one serving to stay in the match.

I am guessing Mahut ( even though the seemingly much more physically able ) sensed that danger allied to the slightly failing light and it wasn't worse the risk of playing a couple more games.

LadyTigress · County player

That did seem to be Mahut's reasoning, from what I saw of the suspension of the match.