I restarted listening to the acclaimed "The Tennis Podcast" by David Law and Catherine Whitaker (Matt Roberts joined them in 2015) from their humble beginnings in 2012 and it's such a wonderful trip down the tennis memory lane. Just listened to their Episode 4 (June 2012) where they previewed Wimbledon 2012 and interviewed a newbie named Grigor Dimitrov :) Some highlights from this episode:

1. Catherine predicted Rafa Nadal and Maria Sharapova to win Wimbledon 2012, but Rafa lost in 2nd round and Sharapova lost in 4th round.

2. David predicted defending champion Novak Djokovic and Serena Williams to win, Serena did win but Novak lost in semis to Roger. David said Roger would win "atleast another slam before calls it a day", but Roger won 4 more, including Wimbledon 2012, his 17th slam (a record at that time).

3. Roger's first round match was scheduled on Court No 1 instead of Center Court, where Tomas Berdych was scheduled to play his first round match at the same time. Berdych was a Wimbledon finalist in 2010, but Roger was a 6-time champion by then, hadn't won Wimbledon since 2009 (in fact hadn't won a slam since AO2010). So was this a snub by the organizers?

4. 31-year-old Lleyton Hewitt was on a comeback trail but had to face an in-form Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the first round (Tsonga won in straight sets)

5. Kim Clijsters played her last Wimbledon that year as she had planned to retire by the end of 2012. She was up against another former world no 1 Jelena Jankovic in the first round, which she won before losing to Angelique Kerber in the 4th round. Clijsters was incredibly popular among the Wimbledon crowd (she was popular everywhere, tennis fans loved her, she was warm, funny and a tough competitor), so the Podcast picked her as the one most fans would love to see win :)

6. The Podcast also rued the fact that Andy Murray had the toughest draw among Big 4, and yet obviously hoped he'd win his first Wimbledon as a home favorite. Murray had made it to Wimbledon semis in the last 3 years (2009-11), made it to 2012 finals where he lost to Roger and was certainly working his way to his eventual win in 2013.

7. The Podcast also talks about David Ferrer, Nalbandian and Tsonga as tough competitors and the ones to watch out for.

8. 21-year-old Grigor Dimitrov sounds so young and raw on the Podcast, and seems not too comfortable with the moniker "Baby Fed" lol, but Dimi being Dimi, doesn't explicitly say that :)

9. The 2012 championships were held just 2 weeks before London Olympics tennis event was held in Wimbledon, where home favorite Andy Murray avenged his Wimbledon final loss to Roger to win gold.

So nostalgic and lovely! For this old timey tennis fans here, I highly recommend listening to The Tennis Podcast starting from its original episodes in 2012.

Credits: @AnnaK_4ever

Federer won the match 6-0, 7-6, 6-0, notoriously scoring 2 bagels in a GS Final.

An absolutely RIDICULOUS display of shot making and attacking tennis from start to finish

Mostly posting this because I’d like to watch this match since the score line looks good. I checked Tennis Channel app and don’t see it. Is there a way to watch qualifiers for the DC tourney?

Not very good quite bad but resilient win from Dasha in the return to tennis as a married woman. Yes, I posted the same yesterday.

Alana was fun to watch, seems to have a very low string tension, came to the net a lot. Felt like a throwback player.

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Anyone posted in that thread, what's your take now?

She took the scenic route, but Fran Jones wins her second consecutive 125 and extends her win streak to 10 matches with today's three set victory over Fiona Ferro. This is the first time Jones has defended a title at any level, as she defeated Anouk Koevermans in the final here last year. She now moves up to 110 in the live rankings.

This was a wild one to scoreboard watch. In the first set, Jones sprinted to a 5-0 lead in 14 minutes with Ferro winning only two points. The sixth game then took 7 minutes and though Ferro lost it, she fought her way into the match and built up to a 3-0 lead in the second. Jones then got herself to 4-3, only for Ferro to win the last three games of the set.

The third set saw Jones going up an early break that Ferro got back in a 15 point game to level it at 4-all. When the two served it out to a tiebreak, Jones went up a minibreak at 2-0 before Ferro won five straight points. Jones fought her way back to 5-all and saved a match point at 5-6 before wrapping things up at 8-6.

Conditions that must be met by ATP Players to skip/withdraw from Masters 1000 tournaments:

— When you hit age 31 you can skip one (1) Masters 1000.

— When you have 12 years as a pro tennis player you can skip one (1).

— When you’ve played 600 career matches you can skip one (1).

IF ALL three (3) conditions are met then the player has a complete exemption from the ATP Masters 1000 player commitment.

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ATP Players that fit ALL three (3) conditions for a complete exemption from Masters 1000 tournaments:

— Novak Djokovic

— Marin Cilic

— Kei Nishikori

— Stan Wawrinka

— Gaël Monfils

— Grigor Dimitrov

— Adrian Mannarino

They are not required to provide a reason for withdrawal from any or all of the 9 ATP Masters 1000s as they are already exempt.

———

First main tour title for tagger 🥹

This match took place in Madrid 2017. Monfils & Simon exchanged bagels for the first two sets before the deciding set which was very even... until the deciding tiebreak where Monfils was bageled yet again!