British Tennis Forum - Celebrating 20 Years!

indiana wrote:

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JonH comes home wrote:

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Anyone seen this photo of Paolini?

www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/aug/28/best-tennis-photo-jasmine-paolini-us-open-ray-giubilo

Fabulous !

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 Thanks for that. It's wonderful 

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 The timing to get that! 

Clearly a big step up for Emma today against an in form in recent weeks (9) Rybakina.

I do see though that 7 of the top 8 seeds are through to R3. So, all other things being equal, if Emma had sneaked a 25 to 32 seeding spot and won her first 2 rounds, she would now be due to play one of these 7 or Diane Parry ( R3 victim of Sonay at Wimbledon who here has beaten Zarazua who had beaten Keys ).

I don't know if anyone has picked up on it, but Ostapenko made some very nasty comments, when going out to Taylor Townsend accusing her of lacking education and class - Osaka did a press conference about it and said the comments had racial undertones - Osaka was visibly upset in the press conference. I'm not sure Townsend had made any comments yet.

Ostapenko has quite a history of being a bad loser - I particularly remember watching one of her live games when one opponent (Australian but can't remember who) called her a cheat when she called an injury time off when something like 5-1 down in a set (ie one game from defeat) when she had no obvious problem, and the opponent refused to shake hands with her afterwards. It was at one of the Slams - the French I think.

Ostapenko is a notorious bad loser and for constant delaying tactics to wind up opponents, and it does appear that there probably was an unsaid racist element to this outburst, which I think if she looks in the mirror shows her lack of education and class, not the other way round. Anyway quite a storm brewing on this one.

Sad to see Emma playing Rybakina at 4 pm - I'll be just starting work then - it will be very interesting to see how Emma does. While we have seen lots of the lesser seeds go out, eight of the top 9 remain, and arguably Madison Keys is the weakest of those nine (she is in my head anyway), so there could be some amazing matches in the latter part of this tournament.

I've now read Townsend's comments in the Times and she was very measured in her criticism and did not mention the perceived racial element.

It is Naomi Osaka who has said the insults contained a racial element - her interview is on the BBC sport's website, which is where I saw it.

It is an insult that is clumsy at best and racist at worst - I guess that is something that everyone will make their own mind up on. Ostapenko denies and justifies, which is what she has done on previous occasions when she has been accused of poor sportsmanship. I think she is a fine player, but her spiky temperament and deliberate attempts to upset opponents, often appear to overstep the line that lies between acceptable competitiveness, and unacceptable bad behaviour.

I say by the way, clumsy at best, because she should have been aware that it could be taken as a racial insult, even if it was not intended as one.

 

-- Edited by Andy Parker on Friday 29th of August 2025 01:15:22 PM

Emma just being bombarded, knocked backwards

And then getting rattled

But Elena does go a bit AWOL sometimes....

Emma looks shell shocked.