CAMELOT FANTASIES

not a good day at the office for Rafa today.

he was flat and really off his game.



he also pushed the ball too much off his backhand wing and it cost him.

he failed to make any adjustments on the return of serve. nick hit all his aces pretty much at the same spot in both boxes.


something is wrong. he had 2 days off and yet did not bother to put in enough time with practice.

he had almost no timing off the ground and his stable and consistent forehand was horribly off.

nick is not that good. he was ranked 800 a year ago. he was just a wildcard here.


milos is going to demolish him tomorrow.


at any rate I think there has to be something to today's performance and the lack of willingness to practice more.


even espn analysts said the same thing I say: he practices with the same people and doesn't really bother with practice sets. he also doesn't care to practice returns.

most top players get big servers to hit them serves in their practice sessions. Rafa prefers to find the solutions on the court.


the reason why he has struggled the last 3 years at Wimbledon is because the return and the backhand. he wont give either a chance to get in the groove.


beating klizan, kuku, or rosol was not that big a deal. they are not very good and never will be. rafa struggled against them anyway initially.

and that was a sign that his poor play was going to catch up with him.

this is why I did not pick him to win the tournament. I said its a close call if Rafa can get into a final.


I think his back is bothering him. I really cant think of anything else. it is not that nick is a world beater. its just that Rafa was just extremely flat today.

you cant win if you push the ball. no wonder just about anybody can bully you when you play that way.


isner hit 52 aces the other day and still lost. so it is not really about the aces either. it is about winning a few crucial points.

Rafa was not able to snatch a few crucial/vital points in those 2 tiebreakers.



anyway I am glad it is over. now he can go rest and start working on his fitness and his game. at least he is leaving relatively healthy. I don't trust the slick grass given his knee issue anyway. thank goodness the knee is not worse.

he has 4 thousand points to defend in Canada, cincy, and flushing meadows.

It was just a bad day at the office. It happens. I saw in the first set that Rafa was flat. He was missing a lot of balls that he ordinarily wouldn't miss, and he didn't have his game face on, for whatever reason. I agree Nick wasn't playing lights out, ordinarily Rafa would've eaten that game up, but it wasn't meant to be. I didn't think he would win Wimbledon either, so I'm not really bothered by it.

It's hard to do the French-Wimbledon double, so there you go.

All I want is for Rafa to be OK health-wise. I'm not worried about points, ranking, and all that stuff either. When it comes to who I support, it's because of their character and their fight. I don't really care about stats, they're interesting, but nothing more than that.

unless Andy can knock out nole, Rafa will lose his #1 rank in a few days.


I am heart broken obviously but what the hell can we do.

he says he did not play badly. I don't know what Rafa is smoking but it must be good. a wildcard ranked 800 a year ago and 144 now blasts 70 winners on him while he just stands around flat as a pancake and yet he says he did not play poorly. even the espn announcers were wondering about how his timing was so off on the forehand wing.

wake up Rafa. you never got a ball back even once in his first 4 service games.

and you pushed your backhands. that is what allowed him to blast all those winners.


you lost in 4 sets. you lost both tiebreakers.


your forehand was horrible and you never bothered to give your backhand a chance to get into rhythm. so your backhand was even worse.


he blasted 37 aces on you.

what you could not get back deep, you let it sail right by you on returns.


he could not even do anything with nick's second serve. if he got it back at all, it would land too short.


dr ivo blasted 37 aces on Rafa at queens in 2008 and still lost the match. its not about the aces even though he could have started a little sooner to try to make some adjustments on the return.


its about the return on grass. you have to be able to get the ball back in play and get into a rally in order to try to get control of the point.

I don't care about the ranking. It's such a slippery slope. They're so close that it will probably continue to flip flop back and forth for a minute anyway. Oh, except Rafa has so many points to defend. Oh well, it is what it is. That kind of stuff doesn't bother me.

I will choose my GOAT based not on stats and numbers, but on what I've experienced. I remember when I used to watch Pete and Agassi and they tried to put all of this emphasis on the career slam and tried to intimate that Agassi was "better" I didn't buy it then, and I don't buy it now. The quality of competition works better for me, and that in my estimation is Rafa, who has won twelve of his fourteen majors from two all-time greats. That's the barometer for me. I don't care how other people measure things, only myself.

Quote from: thetruth on July 02, 2014, 10:56:53 am

Quote from: Clay Death on July 01, 2014, 03:28:29 pm

not a good day at the office for Rafa today.

he was flat and really off his game.



he also pushed the ball too much off his backhand wing and it cost him.

he failed to make any adjustments on the return of serve. nick hit all his aces pretty much at the same spot in both boxes.


something is wrong. he had 2 days off and yet did not bother to put in enough time with practice.

he had almost no timing off the ground and his stable and consistent forehand was horribly off.

nick is not that good. he was ranked 800 a year ago. he was just a wildcard here.


milos is going to demolish him tomorrow.


at any rate I think there has to be something to today's performance and the lack of willingness to practice more.


even espn analysts said the same thing I say: he practices with the same people and doesn't really bother with practice sets. he also doesn't care to practice returns.

most top players get big servers to hit them serves in their practice sessions. Rafa prefers to find the solutions on the court.


the reason why he has struggled the last 3 years at Wimbledon is because the return and the backhand. he wont give either a chance to get in the groove.


beating klizan, kuku, or rosol was not that big a deal. they are not very good and never will be. rafa struggled against them anyway initially.

and that was a sign that his poor play was going to catch up with him.

this is why I did not pick him to win the tournament. I said its a close call if Rafa can get into a final.


I think his back is bothering him. I really cant think of anything else. it is not that nick is a world beater. its just that Rafa was just extremely flat today.

you cant win if you push the ball. no wonder just about anybody can bully you when you play that way.


isner hit 52 aces the other day and still lost. so it is not really about the aces either. it is about winning a few crucial points.

Rafa was not able to snatch a few crucial/vital points in those 2 tiebreakers.



anyway I am glad it is over. now he can go rest and start working on his fitness and his game. at least he is leaving relatively healthy. I don't trust the slick grass given his knee issue anyway. thank goodness the knee is not worse.

he has 4 thousand points to defend in Canada, cincy, and flushing meadows.

It was just a bad day at the office. It happens. I saw in the first set that Rafa was flat. He was missing a lot of balls that he ordinarily wouldn't miss, and he didn't have his game face on, for whatever reason. I agree Nick wasn't playing lights out, ordinarily Rafa would've eaten that game up, but it wasn't meant to be. I didn't think he would win Wimbledon either, so I'm not really bothered by it.

It's hard to do the French-Wimbledon double, so there you go.

All I want is for Rafa to be OK health-wise. I'm not worried about points, ranking, and all that stuff either. When it comes to who I support, it's because of their character and their fight. I don't really care about stats, they're interesting, but nothing more than that.

what a wonderful post. I could not agree more.


you might remember that I never cared for that #1 rank when Rafa decided to chase it after the U.S. Open.

I knew it would leave him depleted by the time the Australian Open rolled around. sure enough his body hit the wall there at the worst possible time.


there is great wisdom and intuitive appeal to just peaking for the slams now. and to hell with the rankings.

he has to take the back and the knee into account. next back injury or the next injury could end his career.


so I am with you. lets just hope for the best possible health for Rafa. rest will take care of itself.

Rafa will find a way to win more slams.

I know, neither one of us have ever cared about the number one ranking. It's the overall body of work that's most important. There is no point in winning the battle to lose the war.

Rafa losing the number one rank will invigorate him. It always does. So this is a win-win. Rafa can't win everything. Right now he needs to get back to full health, then everything will fall into place.

here is the order of play:

huge day at Wimbledon tomorrow:


http://www.wimbledon.com/en_GB/scores/schedule/index.html

Can't wait for today's matches, especially Djokovic/Dimitrov. That could be quite a thriller. I'm pulling for the talented young Bulgarian, but have a feeling Novak will prevail. I also hope Roger beats Raonic, and think he will.

I don't particularly care for Dmitrov's style. He's too much of a hot dogger for me. There are times in the match when he should play conservatively and work the point instead of going for a "pretty" shot. He reminds me of an overzealous puppy at times. He's a great player, but he needs to get out of his own way and also to get the commentators voices out of his head.

They are heaping so many expectations on him, it's going to be hard for him to get his breakthrough. Let him play him game, and get there in his own time.

we have so many rising stars in the game now. it will be interesting to see how it all plays out in a few years.

For as long as it took, it appears that they're growing by leaps and bounds. The next year or two should be very interesting if the trend continues.

I am just now making it home.

it has been a long day. I am looking at some stocks right now and sipping a tall glass of red wine.



I had dinner at Imperial Palace with mom and dad tonight. this place rocks.

food was off the charts.

We don't have that one here .