Er, a professional athlete is 436th fastest woman in NYC Marathon. Running at about the same pace as I - a sedentary non-runner over twice her age - do.
Forgive me for being underwhelmed.
Bah Humbug
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"Where Ratty leads - the rest soon follow" (Professor Henry Brubaker - The Institute of Studies)
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.
Krajan really has done nothing in his last few coaching jobs. I thought he was still coaching Baghdatis. I suspect the fact that he is the Croatian DC captain played into this appointment. Interestingly both Croatian tennis prodigies Coric and Vekic are now being coached by their DC/FedCup captains Krajan/Majoli.
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!
Yes, it certainly does. When Serena's in the mood she just batters the cr*p out of every other player on the WTA Tour, and she's been doing it for 15 years.
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"Where Ratty leads - the rest soon follow" (Professor Henry Brubaker - The Institute of Studies)
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.
Following on from which, how about what Ben Rothenberger says is the first all-Qualifier final in ATP history? Troicki v Kukushkin in Sydney. Well done to both - though one can see why the Auckland/Sydney tournament directors might not be the happiest of bunnies.
On another note, with Sydney, I was thinking how remarkable Daniel Nestor is ... back in the finals at 42. Then I looked back and realised that last year he and Zimonjic won Brisbane, won Sydney and made the SFs of the AO to start their year. So thus far he's actually having quite a poor year by his standards! But he is amazing - have never seen him play live and would love to do so.
-- Edited by Spectator on Friday 16th of January 2015 05:17:35 PM