Nothing I can say will do justice to the distilled quanta of awesome that is this video.
Can we all, instead, simply agree that it “does what it says on the tin”?
(word, big-up, hat-tip and many, many thanks to @andy_murray)
My fondness for the tennis on offer in July lies only marginally above my fondness for Steven Segal movies and considerably lower than Andy Roddick’s fondness for clay. Which probably means I should be making more of an effort.
Point taken.
» France d. Spain 5-0
Love it or loath it, Davis Cup has an indisputable knack for bringing the best from talent that should, but doesn’t always quite, cut it at tour level - preferably at home, preferably coming back from a set down and preferably in front of hundreds of face-painted hopefuls wielding breadstick-balloons.
Conspire to arrange all of that, and you’ll find them transformed into something altogether more formidable.
reuters
Whenever I talk about La Monf, I end up lamenting how his remarkable shotmaking ability is only outdone by his very French insistence on squandering his talent and life away behind the baseline playing, what amounts to, clay-court tennis.
He was joined by Llodra, Bennetau and a Gilles Simon on the comeback from injury. No shortage of talent, but hardly a bastion of dependability.
And yet Spain somehow came away without a single rubber to their name - not even a dead one – and quite possibly scarred for life.
LaMonf’s shotmaking sticks out. Dasco going down in four to Llodra sticks out. As does Simons straight sets win over Almagro.
As, indeed, does Bandian’s electrifying performance against Russia over in Moscow.
Very romantic.
But it’s a familiar old Davis Cup “picture of imperfection”, is it not?
You need talent to succeed at DC, which is after all a tennis tournament like any other. But you feel it’s precisely this grizzled, vulnerable, intensely patriotic and, dare I say it, French sort of talent that’s so perfectly attuned to doing well here.
Nadal and Federer may leave us in awe, but they ain’t got nothing on that.
Argentina d. Russia 3-2
Serbia d. Croatia 4-1
Czech Rep. d. Chile 4-1
» World Cup: Spain d. Netherlands 1-0
After winning the Channel Slam and securing the #1 ranking until, quite probably, the end of the year, do we really want to see Rafa playing DC?
Or do we want to see the dork dressed like this:
I wasn’t the only one to predict he’d do this:
getty
My Precioussss……
Alright. I’ll admit it wasn’t the most cleanly contested final Holland have ever played. It certainly wasn’t “Total Football”, unless that is you’re thinking of “totalling” the opposition.
What’s a little axe-kick amongst overpaid footballing superstars anyway?
Point is, they had to come through Denmark, Cameroon and favourites Brazil to reach this point. And it’s not their fault they only had to play competent football to get there.
Which brings me to my other point.
Now that it’s all over, can we agree that, with the exception of Germany and Spain, how uniformly shite the top teams and, in particular, their top players were?
Ronaldo, Rooney, Messi and a raft of other top talent all underwhelmed.
Germany began the event by missing a penalty, which happens to be about as frequent an occurrence as Federer going out in the first week of a Slam.
None of the favourites seemed willing or able to produce anything more daring than draw after draw.
Argentina went down Germany 4-0. No shame in going down to the Germans, but that score-line, really?
France? Let’s not even go there. Oh ok then.
And the defending champions went out to Slovakia. A competent enough side but still, no comment.
If I wanted to argue asterisks, I’d say Germany had the tougher route through and were a better team, qualitatively, than Holland. There’s that word again.
In the end, however, the #2 ranked team hoisted the trophy having had to go through powerhouses Portugal, Germany and a Dutch side where “everybody was kung-fu fighting”.
The best team won.
"Todd is a fantastic person," said Djokovic. "He has so much experience and was willing to share everything with me. There are no hard feelings but we just decided it was not working. It was probably a question of understanding what kind of person I am."
…
"At the ATP Finals in London my shoulder was tired and the body automatically started to make adjustments because of that," Djokovic explained. "Then we tried a slightly different action and it all got very complicated. So now I am just going back to my original action."
-- Fox News
I’m sure Todd is a very nice person too. But that’s a very telling comment on understanding the kind of person Djoko is.
So what was it? Tactical disputes? Personality issues? A culture clash? Too many cooks? Creative Differences even?
The culture clash theory is the one that’s been most widely pored over, with suggestions of Todd’s somewhat milder temperament being at odds with Djoko’s “outwardly cocky and self-confident” personality.
That’s hardly news, is it? Even less impressed with the reductive image of the “emotional European” – especially as Marion Vajda (who I’m rather a fan of) strikes me as one of the most composed coaches on tour.
It is, however, of some relief to know that that horrendous javelin-throwing service action wasn’t simply a figment of my imagination – can’t say I’m sorry to see it go.
The most obvious questions on the appointment of the relatively unknown Leon Smith as Davis Cup Captain revolve on the extraordinary lengths the LTA seem to have gone in order to placate Andy Murray.
Andy and Greg, you’ll remember, are not the best of friends.
"When Roger Draper came into the LTA it was all about a world-class leadership team, world-class people and this is it; four years down the track we are putting someone in charge of the men's game and the Davis Cup who has none of these qualities," he [Mark Petchey] told Sky Sports.
"So are we saying the strategy before was wrong and now we're on the right one, or are we actually saying we don't have a clue and are sticking somebody in the job who we think might persuade Andy Murray to play Davis Cup?
"Andy will make his own decision and I know Andy, he was happy to go with the majority view of what the players wanted in terms of a Davis Cup captain - and the majority of those players wanted Greg Rusedski."
-- Sky Sports
Were the presence of Andy Murray not absolutely essential to Team GB’s future success, you could almost argue that this reeks of a mild strain of nepotism.
Why should national strategy be predicated on the say-so of any one player (however celebrated)?
Why should he be able naysay the appointment of someone the rest of the players have approved and seem to respect?
Not that that’s remotely close to what I think is happening here.
Call me naive, but haven’t people always had to knuckle down alongside those they wouldn’t normally share a drink with, not just in tennis but in almost all professional walks of life?
However much he may dislike Rusedksi, Murray’s objections to Davis Cup seem to me to have rather more to do with with wanting to focus on winning Slams.
What if despite these attempts at appeasement (if that’s what they are), he still doesn’t turn up to play?
"Leon's my friend, but I need to still do what's right for me," said Murray.
"If I want to play, I'm playing for the team, it's not that I'm playing because Leon's the captain.
"I hope that was not the reason why he became captain. I don't think that's the way to make a decision on something as big as this.”
-- BBC Tennis
Oops.
***
There’s an elephant in the room.
The media have been astonishingly muted about it, but let that not deceive us.
With what we know of Rafa’s form (and knee), the usual tally of clay court titles remains an uncertainty. And that spells trouble.
It’s not that an early loss at any of the upcoming events would be entirely catastrophic – for all we know it might be exactly what he needs – more that it would alter the landscape in a way that might not be reversible.
Still not completely sure what I mean by that, so I’ll say no more.
Never has the clay season been more or less about Rafa.
5-0?
Could you not find it within yourselves to concede even a single rubber to the hapless Czechs?
Not even a dead one?
I guess not, if you’re in the business of celebrating with this much fire.
(Getty)
Daveed Ferrer is not normally a player I get terribly excited about.
I admire his work ethic. Am officially in awe of his fitness which is probably only a peg or two under Rafa’s (if that). Loved the story about his coach Javier Piles locking him in a closet in order to light his fire, as well as that fabulous run he had in 07. And I find his resemblance to the Jack of Diamonds both jarring and entertaining.
But that is all.
(Getty)
Lest anyone still be in doubt though, Daveed owns this win, and was far more the ‘man of the moment’ this weekend than Rafaelites might have thunk possible.
1-6 2-6 6-4 6-4 8-6 is an intimidating scoreline.
The like of which you need not know the particulars of to infer that great things happened out there.
That said, it’s also exactly the kind of result Daveed seems uniquely placed to pull off. As is Davydenko.
For Rafa, this marks a long awaited return to winning a match or two again, this time with that familiar, rust coloured grain under his feet.
Not going to venture much more than that. Spiffing as it is, it’s probably safer to wait until January -- when both climate and surface will change -- to speculate on whether or not he’s “back”.
Would someone mind telling me exactly what that is? I've been struggling with it for little over a year.
Not sure Nole is “back” either. And from where precisely?
Did shanky Fed ever actually leave us? Or was he just kept at bay for a couple of months with a cattle prod and the threat of an Ivo-Djoko-Rap, while he bagged himself numbers 14 and 15?
No, pontificating on the inscrutable nature of being “back” is hereby suspended until the immediate aftermath of Oz.
For what it’s worth though, I’ll really stick my neck out and postulate that Rafa won’t have as successful a first few months as he did in 09. How daring is that?
For that, he might need to get back on that slidey, rust-coloured stuff again.
(Photo: Reuters)"I truly enjoy playing for my country but I'll also have to see where I have my priorities for next season," Federer said after victory over Italy.
(Photo: AFP)
Players are kindly requested to return their overalls back to the flagpole they found them fluttering on...
Ah, the "Shotokan Horse Stance"... 
The "Driving Instructors' Victory Pose"
And...something else...
Dude can volley well, by the looks of things...