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Wednesday, 18 November 2009
Created by Oatmeal
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Friday, 13 November 2009
Earlier I mentioned the ATP Draw Challenge, and after a fairly decent start I'm afraid it's all gone to shit. Monday and Tuesday I was doing quite well, 7 points off the leaders fairly consistently, then Wednesday came... Wednesday was a big day, top 5 seeds in contention, their first matches, naturally you'd expect World #1 Roger Federer to manage to win through, right? Well he didn't and I had him in up to the semis, therefore I lost a lot of points on the great Swiss (coincidentally my faith in his countryman Stanislas Wawrinka to reach the 3rd round was ill placed.
Worse was to come on Thursday, Andy Murray, who I pipped to win (damn my foolish nationalistic tendancies!) was beaten by Radek Stepanek in a match he looked sure to win after raping the czech 6-1 in the first set, but it wasn't to be. BGy losing in the third round Andy will have cost me fully 60 points by the end of the tournament - D'oh!
With Murray and Federer gone my top half of the draw was fucked, I had only one match left in that half to gain any points - Gonzalez vs Del Potro. Although Del Potro won the US Open this year he under-performed greatly in Asia, thus I decided to give Gonzalez a shot. The first set went to tie-break which Del Potro looked sure to win taking a vast early lead, but Gonzalez battled back and took the set - my hopes stayed alive! It became apparent in the second set that both men were suffering - Gonzalez with a knee and Del Potro with his Abdomen. It seemed that Del Potro was suffering most and Gonzalez managed a break of serve and generated some Match Points, but Del Potro broke back and it went to tie-break. Gonzalez took the lead and again generated match points, but alas Del Potro rallied and took it. The prospect of another full set was obviously too much for Gonzalez knee and he retired from the match - DAMN!
So I have two men left in the entire tournament, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, I predicted them to both make the Semis and for Djokovic to make the final. As I type Djokovic is playing his QF with Robin Soderling, 1 set all on-serve in the 3rd, Nadal will play later.
But why does it matter now? Without a perfect draw there's no prize to be won, but there is still a competition on, between me and Helen!
Helen predicted Nadal to win the tournament, right now I have 46 points and she has 40, if Nadal reaches the final then she wins, if Djokovic reaches the final, I win. If neither of them reach the Semis, or if Nadal reaches the semis and loses, then I win.
It all hinges on Nadal! I need that Spaniard to lose!
freedoms_stain, Fault!, out.
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Tuesday, 10 November 2009
There were two big tournaments over the past week, ATP 500 events in Basel, Switzerland and Valencia, Spain.
Valencia marked the first piece of ATP action World #4 and British #1 Andy Murray has seen since his 4th round exit at the US Open in August (excluding his participation in Britain's loss to Poland in the Davis Cup – which is a non-ATP event 
) after injury forced him to miss two scheduled Asian Tournaments (including the Shanghai Masters). After a 6 week lay-off from competition Murrays victory at Valencia was never a particular surety to me, despite his status as top seed at the event. Nevertheless Murray prevailed, and although his form wasn’t quite 100% throughout the tournament he battled through a tough SF against home crowd favourite Fernando Verdasco en route to a relatively easy looking final against unexpected (and unseeded) finalist Mikhail Youzhny (who himself battled past compatriot and Shanghai Masters champ Nikolay Davydenko in his SF). In the end Murray took the title 6-3, 6-2 in the final, his 6th of the season and 13th ATP level career title.
Over in Basel the field was slightly stiffer with both World #1 Roger Federer (a Basel native) and #3 Novak Djokovic competing. Seeded first and second respectively both made it to the finals in a rematch of their recent clash at the Cincinnati Masters prior to the US Open which Federer won in a comfortable two sets. I had personally thought this would be Federers for the taking – I was to be surprised. The Basel final began 45 mins prior to Valencia, I fully expected it to be over by the end of the first set in Valencia, this was not to be the case as Djokovic took the first set 6-4 before Federer bit back taking the second 6-4, but it proved to be a mere delaying action as Djokovic managed a double break in the decider taking the set and the championship 6-2. A shame for Federer who was looking for his 4th successive title in front of his home crowd.
Djokovic actually had to save 3 match points in his SF against Radek Stepanek on Saturday, so for him to have come back and taken the title in the end is rather impressive.
This coming week sees the final open-entry tournament on the ATP calendar for 2009, the ATP 100 Masters in Paris. With 1000 juicy points on offer this is the last chance the guys in the top 12 have to advance their rankings into the 7 and 8 slots (currently occupied by Nikolay Davydenko and Fernando Verdasco) and qualify for the Tour Finals in London in two weeks time. The field is tough however as Paris is one of the 8 (of 9) Masters tournaments the top 30 players in the world are required to play (except in case of injury), and those players aiming to qualify for London not currently in a position to do so will need to reach at least the final in Paris to stand a chance – this means potentially that they would have to defeat two top 4 players in the process – no easy task.
Incidentally, if you’re as nuts about Tennis as me then this might interest you for the 2010 season: http://challenge.atpworldtour.com/
It’s an interesting competition, you attempt to guess the entire draw for a variety of ATP tour and Grand Slam events, each correct pick nets you points that contribute to a leader board. After a year of events the player at the top of the leader board wins a VIP trip to the tour finals. There are also prizes for a couple of runners-up and additional prizes in the unlikely event that someone makes a 100% perfect draw for any of the events during the year.
Unfortunately as I only found out about this on Saturday my chances of winning anything this year are pretty much nil, but I gave Paris a go. So far I’ve made 6 correct picks out of 11 matches, that ranks me 6984th out of 10065 btw 
.
Hopefully they’ll run it again next year and I’ll have a chance at winning some tickets for the 2010 finals. As for this year, Helen already won us tickets to London 
freedoms_stain, still going to LONDON BABY!, out.
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Saturday, 7 November 2009
If you haven’t seen it already (and why the fuck haven’t you?) you should check out the latest episode of South Park. It’s a hilariously awesome attempt to reclassify the word “fag” from a derogatory word for homosexuals to a general insult for people who are loud, obnoxious and inconsiderate, because, to paraphrase the episode “it’s just so much fun to say”. The episode has the same sort of vibe as the short “Porch Monkey” section from Kevin Smith’s Clerks II.
Unfortunately despite the fact that the episode is completely gay-positive some gay folks still managed to take offense.
Well, I reckon we should take it back, because dammit fag is fun to say! Why else would the British use to same word to describe such a commonplace item as cigarettes?
Fag is just a word, it’s meaning is simply what we choose it to mean.
I mean, it’s pretty funny if changing the meaning of Fag means that everyone who tends to use the word already then becomes a Fag.
On that basis alone I think it should be done, although for maximum comic effect nobody in the Southern US states should be told until the rest of us have had a good laugh at them.
Sorry if you’re from the South and not a bigot, but those of you in that situation usually understand the generalisation, much to your general dismay.
freedoms_stain, hates fags 
, out.
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A few weeks ago I heard of a competition to win tickets to the ATP Tour Finals in London through the ATP RSS feed from the event sponsors Barclays. I was unsuccessful 
My girlfriend Helen on the other hand, was
So we’re going to London baby!
We’ve got our travel plans organised already, so we will definitely be at the evening session on Wednesday the 25th. Can’t wait.
Don’t know who’ll be playing that day/session yet as there are still a couple of places left up for grabs that won’t be decided until the outcome of the Paris Masters (which begins next week) has been played. Whoever it is we’re guaranteed two top eight male singles players and two top eight male doubles teams, so it should be good, although obviously I’d prefer it if it was two of the top 4 or 5 than say the 6 to 8 guys.
freedoms_stain, excited and out.
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