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Above: Alexander Zverev and Dominic Thiem. Just two of today's current Tennis hopefuls for this year's Wimbledon Championships. The above image was part of a photo spread in last September's Vogue Magazine. |
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| Below: Austrian Dominic Thiem practicing shirtless for the delighted crowds at the Cincinnati Masters Tournament last year. We were hoping that Dominic might have made it to the Final of the Halle Germany tournament last weekend but he was unfortunately knocked out in the early rounds. And the surprising winner turned out to be Croatian Borna Coric who beat Roger Federer. Dominic Thiem is a player I've been watching these past few years. And along with Coric, Alexander Zverev and new pin up boy Denis Shapovalov, they're all part of the New Generation of tennis stars. Fans of Dominic Thiem have not failed to notice that he has amazing buttocks, the kind you can only get from sport activity on ice as in Ice Hockey or Figure Skating. Perhaps he was involved in Ice Hockey in the past. Apparently U.K tv tennis fans will be in for a bit of a shock next year when they discover that the bulk of tv tennis will be switching over to Amazon just as Top Gear recently did. Naturally that infuriated my Tennis loving partner as he tends to record a lot of tv tennis and prefers to have a hard copy on a disc, not a USB stick. |
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| Of course with the start of Wimbledon on Monday it can only mean the return of the big mouth Big Mac, John McEnroe, a man that simply cannot stop talking, especially in between tennis points. In our house he drives us all up the wall constantly bombarding us with facts we didn't need to know about. I really don't know why sport has to be dissected and analized. And when they all talk over one another it's as though they're all individually competing against each other as to who knows the most. Jim Courier can be very annoying as well, constantly bombarding us with trivial details. Imagine if he ever worked alongside McEnroe. That would be a complete nightmare. Poor ol' Dan Maskell. He'd probably turn in his grave just knowing that Tennis all time bad boy John McEnroe ended up as a legitimate tv tennis commentator. Still, McEnroe will be happy with his £150,000 that Wimbledon is paying him this year, something that former Wimbledon Champion Martina Navratilova is not too happy about. |
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I'm not sure what to think about tennis bad boy Nick Kyrgios. But I'll say one thing and that is you get your moneys worth watching him. It seems that controversy follows him everywhere he goes. In one of his early round matches at Queens Club last week he was apparently swearing like a trouper, although as I had the tv volume on low I wasn't sure what he was grumbling about. And if it wasn't for the commentator I wouldn't have known until he repeatedly, and rather stupidly, apologized for Kyrgios's bad language. Even in his semi-final match with Marin Cilic the naughty child in him emerged once more as he jerked off his water bottle in a sexual gesture. And that cost him a £13,000 fine by the Queens Club. Oddly enough Kyrgios turned out with Lleyton Hewitt in the main draw of the Doubles competition, even beating the top seeds in the 1st Round. And there was I thinking Lleyton Hewitt had retired. Has Hewitt found something to replace tennis or does retirement not suit him? |
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Below: Canada's new hope Denis Shapovalov |
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| WIMBLEDON 2018 SEEDINGS. 1. Roger Federer - 2. Rafael Nadal - 3. Marin Cilic - 4. Alexander Zverev 5. Juan Martin Del Potro - 6. Grigor Dimitrov - 7. Dominic Thiem 8. Kevin Anderson - 9. John Isner - 10. David Goffin. Others... 12. Novak Djokovic - 16. Nick Kyrgios - 28. Denis Shapovalov |
A very nice pair of players. Stupid BBC apologising for what Kyrgios did with the water bottle drew attention to what he had done. Once I heard about the apology, of course I had find out what it was apologising for. Naughty but I was mildly amused by it. Why do Australian tennis players set out to be so disliked? Or do they think, all publicity is good publicity, or even, every one secretly likes a bad boy?
ReplyDeleteAndrew, I wonder what the legends Laver, Rosewall and Newcombe think of your bad boy. He does seem to be accumulating a record number of fines. And some days he looks like he'd rather be somewhere else.
ReplyDeleteBut yes it was annoying when that BBC commentator kept apologizing for the swearing... like we don't want to offend all the posh people up in the Club Stand sipping on their Pimm drinks and cucumber sandwiches.
The coverage of major sporting events on commercial TV in Australia is filled with loud mouths who think its all about them and chatter non stop. As for the cricket, there is one way to beat this menace and that is turn down the volume on the TV and listen to the measured commentary on ABC Radio which has had the radio broadcasting rights for decades. - Ian
ReplyDeleteIan, What with The World Cup going on at the moment (Football) our TV coverage gives us the option to listen instead to the live radio coverage which can be more raucous and over animated.
ReplyDeleteYou can't imagine that going on in the much gentler game of Cricket.
Still there must be a bit of a party going on in Korea after they knocked out Germany in The World Cup the other day.
But for me McEnroe kind of ruins Wimbledon with his constant yapping, even more annoying when it's during play.
But that's the way they do it over there across the pond as I found out during my two visits to the U.S. Open Tennis.