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Being a great athlete, or talent at a sport, doesn't make you a great competitor, and that is what we saw. All that crap about "if you try and do your best and give it your all, you will feel good and leave with your head held high!" isn't true. Giving it all, everything you possibly have, and then losing tears your guts out. You hurt, in tennis you cry, it takes a lot of mental strength to fight back through it and keep pushing yourself that hard into the next challenge.
It is MUCH easier to give about 85-90% and hold the rest back. When you lose that way, you look like Kyrgios did......feeling no worse and maybe even a little better when the match is over. He cracked a smile afterwards, you know. That trophy is sour grapes anyway. Maybe I will be back, maybe I won't, don't really care, just want to go do something else for awhile after playing tennis for 2 straight weeks (my paraphrase of his answer when asked what his first grand slam final meant to him.)
In teams sports guys like this can hide in the big moments and just do their jobs while the A-dogs go out and take the risks and either get the rewards or the blame. Nowhere to hide in tennis, it's you against that other player one on one. You rise to the occasion and give it your all each shot, or you pull the Kyrgios and take points off, don't chase after every ball, find outside excuses for being distracted and blowing big moments. Get defeated mentally first, so you are already checked out by the time you lose the final game and it doesn't hurt as bad.
Last edited by westsideboy; 07-12-2022 at 09:26 AM..
It looked like Kyrgios gave 100% in the Wimbledon Final, but he just lacks the skills to dominate long rallies.
Djokovic kept the ball deep, so it was difficult for Kyrgios to move forward or attack, since he's never had the racquet skills to turn defense into offense.
He's really only effective if you give him short balls.
And Kyrgios has given 100% effort in almost all his matches vs. Nadal/Djokovic, but you need more than effort to beat these guys in a slam final especially.
It looked like Kyrgios gave 100% in the Wimbledon Final, but he just lacks the skills to dominate long rallies.
Djokovic kept the ball deep, so it was difficult for Kyrgios to move forward or attack, since he's never had the racquet skills to turn defense into offense.
He's really only effective if you give him short balls.
And Kyrgios has given 100% effort in almost all his matches vs. Nadal/Djokovic, but you need more than effort to beat these guys in a slam final especially.
I saw a guy melt down at 0-40, needing the break to get to the tiebreak, rather than lose the set. Then get broke when leading 40-0 to lose another set. Sure, you can absolutely lose 6 straight points twice in a match to a guy as good as Novak......but what I saw was a mental breakdown that lead to sloppy tennis at the exact moment his opponent was focusing in and playing his best. Those games were lost once Novak hit 30 and Kyrgios started blaming the drunk women for heckling, screaming and scowling at his box, shaking his head at himself over and over and over.
The strokes themselves? He barfed away at least two points in each of those games, by my memory. I do accept that one reason lesser players are lesser players is the consistency needed to hit good shots each time, but I don't think that is what happened in these moments. I saw this:
Does anyone know if ESPN+ will show all the matches of the US Open, particularly the semi-finals and finals? I read some sources that said no, but they did show all matches of AO and Wimbledon! So I’m a little confused.
Us Open shod ha e an asterisk this year if Djokovic
Is not allowed to play. that would be like the US open not allowing Tiger Woods in his prime not to play, it's a lesser event in my view without the best player in the world in it.
If he is the best player in the world, he would've won the US Open last year and got the calendar year gram slam!
should Tiger have won the US open every year? He only won it three or four times afterall. it's crazy talk to expect the best player to win every event, always. Still, Djokovic has like 6 more majors than Tiger.
Yeah, but how did he lose to Medvedev after he beat him in the AO? And he lost in three straight sets too!!
As you are one of the few people here that identify as Australian, given Nick's recent successes, is he more accepted in his home country?
Quote:
Originally Posted by MarisaMay
So glad that Novak won. Husband has been watching the replay with the grandkids, who all play tennis. One kept saying that his dad thinks Kyrgios is an idiot! Might be a good player but terrible example of behaviour. Quite unpopular here, whereas we were gutted when Ash Barty retired.
Does anyone know if ESPN+ will show all the matches of the US Open, particularly the semi-finals and finals? I read some sources that said no, but they did show all matches of AO and Wimbledon! So I’m a little confused.
I think if ESPN televises matches on ESPN/ESPN2, they don't stream them on ESPN+.
Matches that are NOT shown on ESPN/ESPN2 (or in certain TV windows the Tennis Channel) will be televised on ESPN+.
Quick note - I attended the Cincinnati Open for the first time ever last week (was there on Wednesday and Thursday), and I had a very enjoyable time. In many ways it truly is in-between the other two tournaments I've attended, the Washington Open (10 different years) and the U.S. Open (6 different years), not only in terms of prestige, points, and total purse, but also in terms of the tournament site itself. The Lindner Family Tennis Center in Mason is large, much larger (and generally nicer) than the Fitzgerald Tennis Center in DC, but not huge like the USTA BJK NTC in New York. The court seating is comparable to the U.S. Open, though obviously the stadiums are smaller (the main, Center Court stadium in Cincinnati reminded me of the old Armstrong Stadium in New York, Grandstand/#2 court in Cincinnati had a feel IMO a little like old Grandstand in NYC, and Court 10/Porsche Court (4th biggest court in Cincinnati), probably the best court to watch matches at the Lindner Center, reminded me a lot of Courts 10 & 13 at the U.S. Open, though I think the Porsche Court is actually nicer. By contrast, the grounds themselves were more reminiscent of Washington, though generally nicer than DC.
Going to the Western & Southern Open near Cincinnati has gotten me more fired up about tennis than I have been in a while. I'm already looking into logistics for going to Indian Wells or Miami next year, in addition to signing up for the public ballot for Wimbledon.
Does anyone know if ESPN+ will show all the matches of the US Open, particularly the semi-finals and finals? I read some sources that said no, but they did show all matches of AO and Wimbledon! So I’m a little confused.
I watch a lot of tennis, but always "tape-delayed" from cable TV, so I can skip commercials and replay great points.
Tennis TV coverage is complicated. Who owns the rights to an event and what will they do with it. ESPN bought all the rights to the US Open.
From https://thestreamable.com/channels/espn3 it appears that a combination of ESPN+ and ESPN3 will give you live coverage of all the US open matches. ESPN+ may have delayed coverage of all the matches it doesn't cover live.
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