BASTAD:
Other Spaniards did not fare as well as these two. Tommy Robredo was upset early, but managed to play some impressive tennis against this guy:
I think we should all support Nicolas Almagro because I do, only for this reason: once on television, the commentators were discussing Almagro and the dominance of the Spaniards, and they happened to mention that he comes from a small town and doesn't train in the big city of Barcelona like the others do, so he's kinda left out. So being runner-up at a tournament to one of the cool Spaniards must be a good feeling.
PS-Of course, that story could be total bullshit. I just report what ESPN commentators (home of Shriver, Carillo, Fernandez, McEnroe, Drysdale, Fowler, Jensen, Enberg) say, and you can make up your mind whether to believe it or not.
GSTAAD:
(5)Paul-Henri Mathieu (FRA) d Andreas Seppi (ITA) 67(1) 64 75.
I like Mathieu, although it is tough to consistently support him, because he has a terrible tendency to take big leads and then suddenly choke them away. I'm not sure why he does that (although choking once can lead to choking twice and so on), but I do think that if the ATP changed the rules and gave victories for everyone that almost won and didn't, Mathieu would be number one. Same with Seppi too actually, who is rather weak in the mental sense. From his match scores, he seems to trip his way to victories. No questioning the talent of either, but I do think that a therapist would help. Or yoga at the very least.
BUT: Take heart, men! Seppi managed to beat Igor Andreev in the semifinals, which was a nice impressive win to get him to his first final. He can take a lot of good things from the match, except that he was up 5-3 in the final and then choked it away to Mathieu. It must have felt good to PHM. For once to be on the receiving end of a choke! allez!
oh yeah: it's pronounced 'shtahd'
NEWPORT:
(4)F Santoro (FRA) d (5)N Mahut (FRA) 64 64. There's a reason they call Santoro 'the magician.' if you've never seen him play, it's lots of fun to watch. He slices and dices and is probably the most entertaining player on the tour; this has led him to good results, including a 7-2 career w/l record against former no.1 Marat Safin and two victories over Roger Federer. He's thirty-four, and he's just won his first title in years, so huge felicitations!
Another funny thing about Fabrice: he has an excel document full of data on the players of the ATP tour and he's friends with the President of France. Does anyone else think that he's an undercover agent?
Nice for Mahut, reaching two finals in the last few weeks. Even though he lost both. Even though he hit 10 double faults in this match. I predict he'll keep doing good things.
other cool things:
Pete Sampras and Aranxta Sanchez-Vicario were inducted into the Tennis Hall of Fame:
I tried hard to find a picture of Aranxta from the ceremony, but I ended up picking this one because of the startling resemblance to Rafael Nadal:
some small asides:
someone wrote in asking why I hadn't mentioned/poked fun at Richard Gasquet for the articles in a French tabloid reporting about a gay affair that he might have had. I have a good reason for that: don't participate in the process of disclosing other people's sexuality, especially if the person involved wants it to be private. Putting my ethics and morals aside (it's easier than it sounds), the affair in question happened months ago. Also: he denies it, the other guy denies it. IF Richard is gay, I hope he comes out with respect and dignity, not through a glare of paparazzi coverage.
Besides, this investigative report here has already uncovered the inner torment of Richard's personal life: http://youtube.com/watch?v=-ppssLz9xzU
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