AliBlahBlah wrote:

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Wozniacki 3h 26m

She was at the Ice Hockey scarfing down junk food with Serena at 22:00 last night!

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You've got to admire her confidence to run in such a high profile event when she hadn't ever run more than a half marathon before, even in training.

That is an amazing performance if it is really true that she has only ever run a half marathon before.

From someone who has run one marathon (and thats enough!) the last 6-7 miles are though enough even if you have run 20 miles in training

I see that Borna Coric's new coach is going to be Zeljko Krajan. It will be interesting to see how that partnership works out but I suspect young Borna will be better suited to working with a notoriously tough taskmaster than a certain other player who worked with Krajan.

As another year draws to a close with Serena sitting pretty, I came across a passage, excerpted below, on the WSJ by Tom Perrota, that puts her career in to startling context.
I found the stats in the final paragraph pretty flabbergasting, especially that last one.

[Serena] is 16-2 against Sharapova. Against her sister, Venus, she is 14-11. Victoria Azarenka, whose year was ruined by injuries, trails Williams 14-3. Williams holds leads over the tour's three best young stars: Kvitova (5-0), Halep (4-1) and Bouchard (2-0). Her best friend in tennis, Wozniacki - whom she greeted at the finish line of Sunday's New York City Marathon after Wozniacki ran it - has received no favors. Williams leads her, 10-1.

Williams outdueled virtually all of her retired peers, too. She won more than she lost against Justine Henin (8-6), Lindsay Davenport (10-4), Martina Hingis (7-6), Li Na (11-1), Kim Clijsters (7-2) and Amelie Mauresmo (10-2). There is only one player who won a Grand Slam singles title and has a winning record against Williams: Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, who beat Williams four times before Williams turned 18. Williams won their last three meetings.

Williams plays her best when the stakes are highest. She is 18-4 in Grand Slam finals, with two losses to her sister and one each to Sharapova and Samantha Stosur. For her career, Williams has a 158-64 record against top-10 opponents (71.2%). Most remarkably, in the last three years, she is 51-5 (91.1%) against top-10 opposition.

Perhaps this one will meet with Ratty's approval! 
Doubt it! 

Although I suspect that her marathon time would be a fair bit slower than Wozzer's ...

A little mark of respect for Jaime Pulgar-Garcia and Laurent Rochette who played a match in Togo today that lasted 4 hours and 30 mins, at 40 degrees C and 70% humidity . . .

MPs for both players but Jaime got the win 5-7 7-6(5) 7-6(7)

Not sure where to put this and didn't want to start a new thread. It's not really a "remarkable" performance either other than for the luck of the draw.

I am talking about Lucas Pouille who has been playing in Auckland this week. He lost in the FQR at the weekend and then sneaked in as a LL when the Top seed David Ferrer pulled out. As a result, he then got a Bye through to round 2, to play the winner of a Qualifier v WC. It turned out to be doubles player Michael Venus (who teamed up with Neal Skupski in RG last year) and who's singles ranking is 426. And so on the back of a LL spot, followed by a BYE followed by a match against the WR 426, he found himself in the QF of an ATP 250. Nice work if you can get it.

To be fair to him, he then beat Albert Ramos before (just) losing in the semi. So he ended up with 96 ranking points and a cheque for $24.100 despite having lost in qualies.