Tennis Thread: the grass court season is here! Who will rule Birmingham? Be the King of Queen's? All your Wimbledon build-up chat this way!...

[PrivateIsles]

Best few weeks of the year starts here!

kazza

This is making me think of that scene in Legally Blonde with the UPS guy
Bend and snap!

You can always rely on me to lower the tone

I love Legally Blonde.

It's one of those easy watching films.

kazza

Back at you Raahh

And all this without a drop of alcohol being consumed today

So do I Raahh - I've seen it about 20(0) times.

"What's that?"
"Her résumé"
"Smells good"

I recently watched Legally Blonde 2- which I realised, I'd never seen. It wasn't as good, but still passed an hour and a half nicely. .

I'm so tired this morning. Really not sleeping well- and when I did, I dreamt about Noel Edmonds. . Can't even remember what it was about.

Why can't I have tennis player dreams

I'm bored of waiting for Wimbledon to start.

Haven't watched much of Eastbourne though - might give it a go today (if it's not raining). I see Murray/Melo lost in the first round of the doubles. Bring back Feli eh?!

Ah well at least they can go back to musing on his prospective mixed doubles partner, hurray!

"To be fair to the BBC they need a lot of filler to kill time as they can't actually show anything other than the women's "

Very true, randoms.

Yesterday Centre Court (Eastbourne) had 5 matches on it & only 2 of them were women.

The other three all featured British men (Norrie, Evans & Murray) & I guess that's why they were put on Centre. The British mewn really do attract a large audience & the tournament has never sold as many tickets as this year. Which is great for the tournament but a shame for those who like the womens' game.

Really mist & muggy here today but the forecast is for it to clear so there should be play here.

Raahh I posted before seeing your Noel Edmonds post That's just not on, is it? Unacceptable!!

Oh Raahh what a nightmare!

Are the seedings announced today? I think I read somewhere that Rafa was grumbling about Wimbledon being the only tournament which doesn't follow rankings, meaning he may well be seeded 3, below UPS man.

but UPS delivery guy has an odd looking package

Well, the caption says "BACK" and I think he's really happy about that. Look at his...smile.

Rafa v unhappy about seedings because it means he'll have to face one of the top two in the semi finals. He is ignoring the fact that he hasn't made the final since 2011, and last year was the first time he got to the semis since 2011 as well. Don't get me wrong, he's far and away my favourite player, but don't count your chickens, Rafa!

(Nearly typed groin instead of grin there, damn you, UPS guy)

The seedings have already been announced, I think *kazza. Following Fed winning in Halle, it was always going to happen that he would be seeded ahead of Rafa. (He would have been 3rd if he'd lost). It's that weird formula they use. It's why Anderson is 4th, despite being 8th (?) in the live rankings.

It does seem unfair, and seems to let Wimbledon do their own thing. The women, however, do still follow the rankings, I think- which is why it was wrong last year (imo)when they bowed to pressure to seed Serena. Either do one or the other.

Private they might actually focus on the matches they are watching at Eastbourne now- . I saw the result last night, but am frankly too bored by the whole Murray thing to care.

That's what annoys me about the so-called formula as well, that they don't use it for the women's draw. I mean, if they're going to use it at all they should apply it across both.

Rafa's point was the rankings are earned across the year on all surfaces, and he doesn't think they should be disregarded. I agree with that. Plus the "formula" throws up some weird results, like Anderson's seeding this year - if he makes the semis in line with his seeding, I'll go to the foot of our stairs!

The Wimbledon website says that seeds will be announced today - but I bet it's not hard for players to work it out.

Private I have been musing on this on the school run (as you do).
If RG employed a similar formula- Federer would either have been seeded in the 20s or not at all. Since he had played a handful of matches on clay (all this year). And none for years before that. That would have gone down well, wouldn't it?

Exactly - isn't that why they brought this system in to start with, to differentiate between grass and clay when grass used to be really fast and some clay courts didn't even bother turning up for Wimbledon?! So I can understand it being used back then but now it seems pointless.

Yep, imagine downgrading Roger at RG!! The horror!

I'm not actually sure they could affect his ranking so drastically, but it would have been interesting!

And, yes, that was my understanding of it. It was to stop the whole split between clay and grass -players like Evert and Borg had managed both, but lots of others didn't like it- Agassi famously boycotted Wimbledon for a bit before deciding he like grass after all.

I've only just seen it now, so maybe you've seen it already, but a few days ago Judy Murray retweeted a Fever Tree video which included a boy interviewing Stefanos and asking him when he was going to get a haircut Also included various players, including Delpo, clapping, for some obscure reason

Re Wimbledon seedings, it made a lot more sense "in the old days" to tweak the seedings because there were a lot of high ranking clay courters who, if they even bothered to turn up, really didn't seem to care much, couldn't play well on grass and ended up being beaten in the first couple of rounds. That tends not to happen now because they've changed the grass (and the balls generally) and it doesn't play as fast. I think one of the comments about the Simon vs Medvedev match was the amount of extremely long rallies, as though they were playing on hard courts. There used to be a much greater difference between surfaces and now there isn't.

That's Vuk kazza! He interviewed a few of the players at Queen's. He kept asking them if they were friends with Djokovic (I think Vuk is from Serbia himself) and getting vague answers but he didn't ask Delpo - who probably would have given him a positive answer

Totally agree re the grass/clay thing kazza - those days are gone really.