General Tennis Discussion Thread

[Prodigy]

Re: US Open Tennis 2012

I hope now after this Murray wins the ATP Tour Finals and ends the year as World Number One, that would cap of a brilliant year, and tbh I think he is the favourite to win the Australian Open now. I think I will edit this thread name into the official Tennis discussion thread considering we have a few guys who like it.

 

[Prodigy]

Re: US Open Tennis 2012

I will be uploading the finals of major's and Olympics on my back up youtube until it gets banned. Here's Murray's victory vs Federer at the Olympics :

[video=youtube;pdkbmV5dBzI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdkbmV5dBzI[/video]

 

[Troy]

Re: US Open Tennis 2012

I hope now after this Murray wins the ATP Tour Finals and ends the year as World Number One, that would cap of a brilliant year, and tbh I think he is the favourite to win the Australian Open now. I think I will edit this thread name into the official Tennis discussion thread considering we have a few guys who like it.

I don't think that he will be able to rack up enough points to get to number one, or even number two, by the end of the year. He has now taken the number three spot from Nadal and can continue trying to close that gap from the top two.

Good idea to make it a general thread.

 

[Prodigy]

Troy I believe he can rack up enough ranking points, and it was mentioned throughout the tournament.

 

[Troy]

He has a few thousand to make up and I didn't think that there were that many on offer without any majors. I guess that Masters series carries quite a few points and if results go his way he can move up.

 

[Prodigy]

Well they said he could so I'm unsure.

I'm not 100% sure how it's done, but I believe you get ranking points if you better your performance last year at a tournament? For example Murray picked up ranking points for the US Open for winning it, but had he gone out at the Semi's like last year, he would've got none?

ATP Rankings (singles), as of September 10, 2012[SUP][11][/SUP]
#	Player	Points	Prev.	Move
1	Roger Federer (SUI)	11,805	1
2	Novak Djokovic (SRB)	10,470	2
3	Andy Murray (GBR)	8,570	4	1

Right now he is 2000 behind Djokovic, and around 3000 behind federer.

 

[Troy]

They have to defend their points, if Murray went out at the semis he would have won 720 points which meant he wouldn't have gained or lost any points since that is the same result as last year. Since he won the tournament he received 2000 points and so increased by 1280 points. If he doesn't have many points to defend for the rest of the year he may be able to move up if he wins more tournaments and if Djokovic and Federer lose some tournaments.

 

[Prodigy]

Just read that it is unlikely he can move up because he said himself he had a poor run early in the year and I read that they can add their top 5 Masters finishes to their ranking points. I could see him edge world number 2 but you're probably correct in saying number 1 is out of his reach.

 

[Troy]

Still it sets him up well to have a real crack at them next year once the Australian Open starts.

Davis Cup is on at the moment and Australia are battling against Germany, whoever wins will get into the World group for 2013. Australia hasn't been in the top group for around five years now so I am hoping that Tomic and Hewitt can take us there. After four games it is 2-2 and it is down to Hewitt vs. Stebe. Hopefully Hewitt's experience will get Australia through.

 

[Prodigy]

Just sent a letter to Andy Murray along with a pic I hope he can sign. Fingers crossed.

 

[Troy]

Nice, hopefully he does sign it. I am sure that he gets sent a lot of things like that so you may be waiting a while.

 

[Troy]

The Australian Open will have a record $30 million prize money pool for the coming January event as organisers respond to player discontent.


There were suggestions last month that players could boycott the tournament if prize money is not increased, particularly for losers in the early rounds.

The prize pool has increased by $4 million from this year, which organisers say is the biggest increase from one year to the next of any tennis tournament and will also make it the richest event in the sport's history.



"We're very proud of the fact that we've gone to record prize money of $30 million,'' tournament director Craig Tiley said.

"We are supporting the lower-ranked players in their quest for compensation.''

Tiley also said Spanish great Rafael Nadal had contacted him on Monday to say he plans on playing in the Australian Open despite injury troubles.

Now that is a lot of money. Massive increase and hopefully most of that does go to those that exit in the early rounds. The champions get more than enough, $2 million+ for winning one tournament is a ton of money and they don't really need to increase that anymore.

Great news that Nadal should be there.

 

[Prodigy]

The prospect of Nadal being back is great, though honestly I don't think he will, and I don't really want him to be there either. I mean after reading his book I gained a lot of respect for Nadal, and these injuries he has seems like they need time to recover. I wouldn't want him to return prematurely and risk getting a career ending injury. The prize money is great and I think most of it is going to early round exits, like it usually does (I learned this this weekend at the Wimbledon Museum.

In other news, Murray begun the defence of his Japan Open title with a straight sets 7-6 6-4 victory, over lucky loser Ivo Karlovic. Karlovic got into the event after Gael (gangster) Monfils pulled out due to injury. A nice victory for Murray against one of the biggest servers in the game. Robson lost in Beijing in straight sets.

As mentioned earlier, I did go to the Wimbledon Museum this past weekend, as well as the tour of the grounds. It was a brilliant experience, and I know it sounds sad but probably one of the best things I've done in life. I'm a Tennis nut, and Wimbledon has always had a place in my heart. The tour was very well conducted, and the museum was also very interesting. I did get one of those audio guide things for the museum, but decided to stop listening to it as I prefered reading the exhibitions at my own pace. Some pictures are below...

 

[Troy]

Some great photos there Prodigy. I didn't go to Wimbledon when I was in England so that is one thing I need to do next time I am there.

With Nadal I wonder how much longer he can play for. Over the last couple of years he has been injured a lot and I wonder how much that will impact on his ability to continue playing at the top level. To me it seems like he only has a couple of years left at most.

 

[Prodigy]

It's well worth the money. Let me know and I will help you out when you return here.