Wimbledon 2024
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nah, not for tennis. no amount of coaching is going to make an average player that good, there are just too many players in the world.
Having a billionaire daddy behind you has never been a bad thing, but i don't think there is any amount of money that gets you to a grand slam QF (well, outside of outright bribery).A super quick google tells me 87 million tennis players globally, with 3,800 professionals. 128 women get in to the Wimbledon draw. you have to win 4 matches to make the quarters. No one is getting there because dad is loaded.
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@Chris-B said in Wimbledon 2024:
@canefan said in Wimbledon 2024:
@KiwiPie said in Wimbledon 2024:
@Billy-Tell said in Wimbledon 2024:
Despite her being kiwi Swiss I have never heard of lulu sun before. Sounds like an exotic bar dancer rather than a tennis player. But fair play to her.
Born in NZ, Croatian father and Chinese mother. Switzerland from age 5 for school then USA for college.
Was playing for Switzerland but changed to NZ to have a better chance of making the Olympics. Her timing appears to be impeccable....
She will have a very accurate watch.
There will be hordes of Swiss in their leather shorts descending from the Berner Oberland to dump sacks of Nazi gold and Toblerones at the gates of Roger Federer's mansion and demand she is bought back.
Literally thousands arriving between each chime of the cuckoo clock.
How are we doing, Billy?
Good thanks mate. Swiss don’t really do marches, protests or strikes so that’s where your tale falls down…Oh, and toblerone is no longer made in Switzerland (Czech Republic from memory) hence why the Matterhorn mountain had to be replaced by a generic peak.
And yes cuckoo clock comes from Bavaria I think.
Trust you are well too.
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Absolutely loved Novak’s paranoid little tantrum on centre court last night after his match with Rune, irritated that the crowd were shouting Rune’s name which sounds a bit like booing. What a ridiculous dick that man appears to be. He said he’s seen more hostile crowds, and I’m sure he has, not least because they weren’t particularly hostile beyond wanting his opponent, who was getting crushed, to play up a bit. Really hope he’s irritated the Wimbledon crowd enough that we turn on the ultimate passive aggressive British nature and simply stay silent and tut every time he wins a point throughout his next match.
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@mariner4life I reckon what it gives them is the insurance to grind it on the lower tours which must get really expensive without the backing. Can take most players a long time for their ranking to get high enough to get into the big tournaments.
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That was a bit unfortunate for Lulu - she was looking good through to 3-3 in the second and then she ran out of gas pretty much at the same time that Vekic started choking (she served 4 or 5 double faults at 5-3 to let Lulu back into the set). Lulu's level dropped a few percent and suddenly it was pretty easy for Vekic and she stormed away without a noose in the third set.
In hindsight, the fourth game of set 1 was pretty costly - more than 10 deuces on Lulu's serve before she held - that was like four service games. A quicker hold there and she would have had gas at the end of the second.
Not all is lost. Venus and Skupski and Routliffe and Dabrowski are both through to respective doubles QFs - and Venus and Routliffe through to the third round in Mixed.
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@KiwiPie said in Wimbledon 2024:
@mariner4life I reckon what it gives them is the insurance to grind it on the lower tours which must get really expensive without the backing. Can take most players a long time for their ranking to get high enough to get into the big tournaments.
Yeah listened to an interesting podcast on this recently. Something you don't have to do if you have money.
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@Chris-B said in Wimbledon 2024:
That was a bit unfortunate for Lulu - she was looking good through to 3-3 in the second and then she ran out of gas pretty much at the same time that Vekic started choking (she served 4 or 5 double faults at 5-3 to let Lulu back into the set). Lulu's level dropped a few percent and suddenly it was pretty easy for Vekic and she stormed away without a noose in the third set.
In hindsight, the fourth game of set 1 was pretty costly - more than 10 deuces on Lulu's serve before she held - that was like four service games. A quicker hold there and she would have had gas at the end of the second.
Not all is lost. Venus and Skupski and Routliffe and Dabrowski are both through to respective doubles QFs - and Venus and Routliffe through to the third round in Mixed.
Lulu had run out of gas. A huge 2 weeks for her since she had to go through qualifying so she has played seven games on the trot, something that Vekic hasn't had to do since her ranking is alot higher than Lulu's. You have to win 7 games just to win a Grand Slam even if you don't go through qualifying so if Lulu had of made it to the final that would have been 10 games on the bounce. With her making the quarters at Wimbledon her ranking will move herup to 55 in the WTA rankings meaning she automatically qualifies for the next four Grand Slams main draw plus other WTA tournaments so doesn't have to worry about going through qualifying. She'll now be a regular on the WTA level.
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@Bones said in Wimbledon 2024:
@KiwiPie said in Wimbledon 2024:
@mariner4life I reckon what it gives them is the insurance to grind it on the lower tours which must get really expensive without the backing. Can take most players a long time for their ranking to get high enough to get into the big tournaments.
Yeah listened to an interesting podcast on this recently. Something you don't have to do if you have money.
This was an interesting read too, an excerpt from an former lower ranked player's book:
‘I’m good, I promise’: the loneliness of the low-ranking tennis player
The long read: I was once Ireland’s No 1 player, and tried for years to climb the global ranks. But life at the bottom of the top can be brutal
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Venus and Routcliffe through to the semifinals of the Mixed. They're the highest remaining seeds - but that doesn't mean that much in doubles. They'll play the 7th seeds - a combo that includes Su-wei Hsieh who is part of the top seeded Ladies doubles combo.Very dangerous. The two remaining pairings in the top half of the draw are unseeded.
Venus and Skupski's run was ended by an unseeded pairing who will face the 15th seeds in the final.
Things more orderly in the Ladies doubles 1 plays 4 and 7 plays 2 (Routliffe and Dabrowski).
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Haven’t watched much of this year’s tournament, but I’m glad I watched this
Superb
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@KiwiPie said in Wimbledon 2024:
@mariner4life I reckon what it gives them is the insurance to grind it on the lower tours which must get really expensive without the backing. Can take most players a long time for their ranking to get high enough to get into the big tournaments.
and support staff, medical, take away the admin, travel and business workload etc..
Match fixing in tennis - Wikipedia
