February always seems like dead month, right? I mean, everyone's still trying to recover from the sleep deprivation of the Aussie Open, and the tournaments are in the Middle East, where we're forced to watch the best tennis players in the world play in front of near-empty stadiums.
BUT. There was actually a crazy amount of crazy that happened this past February. I KNOW! I FORGOT TOO!
Hey guys. Told you I didn't shut this sucker down. To be honest, between the travelling and Beyond The Baseline, I just haven't had a whole lot of extra time to sit down and write for FD. #humblebrag
BUT ANYWAY.
Since the year is winding down, now seems as good a time as any to jump back into the comfy confines of the Forty Deuce world and slowly get things going again. I do want to write more over here as the 2012 season kicks off.
And so here we go with the annual Forty Deuce Year In Review segment, where I get all pompous and link to things that I wrote over the past year. I get accused of being a narcissist a lot. Might as well own it.
So January. The month of my birth and the first month of my year-long trek around the globe to attend as many tournaments as I could. For those keeping tabs, I think I finished at 22 tournaments. So basically I tied Caroline. Sucks. I was really hoping to beat her.
For the first time in history, the WTA had ten different countries represented in the Top 10.
A roundup of the Aussie Open Pic This posts. My favorite posts. Here, here, and here.
In other words, GOOD JANUARY. Very happy with how that all played out. Australia treated me and my liver very very well. I'm already itching to get back there in 2012. My tummy is a rumblin' for some dumplings.
And if I made a fool, if I made a fool, if I made a fool On the road, there's always this And if I'm sewn into submission I can still come home to this
Man. The world is weird. And sometimes, it can surprise you.
I've been hired by SI.com as a contributing blogger.
This post has been, oddly, very difficult to write. I've started, stopped, and Ctrl-A + Deleted at least 10 times over the past week. A very big part of me didn't even want to write it. I feel...uncomfortable. But I obviously owe it all to you guys because you've been along on this journey for as long as I have.
You've put up with my narcissistic rants, my incessant tweeting that has effectively spammed your timelines, and my Facebook linking that doesn't even work for most of you. You've let me sleep on your couches, driven me back to my hotels/hostels, bought me meals and drinks, comped me tickets, credentialed me, all out of simple kindness. And of course, you've spent your time reading the things that I wrote, no matter how juvenile and self-indulgent (seriously, how many of you ever thought you'd read *that* many posts about Sam Stosur), and you told other people about things that I wrote, and they told other people, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
All of this has given me the freedom and the drive to do what I've done for the past three years. Most of you were around when I quit my job. That was pretty darn scary and traumatic. But you guys gave me the confidence to take the plunge, knowing (hoping?) that things would work out. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Y'all saved a very weary soul with your extraordinarily kind words.
And so the journey continues. SI.com will be relaunching/rebranding their tennis blog (currently called Open Source), with an eye towards bringing tennis to both mainstream and hardcore fans. I'll be the woman behind the bloggin' wheel with the goal of bringing my own take on this little crazy yellow ball sport to a wider audience, while staying true to my convictions as both a tennis fan, a writer, and, in some ways, an entertainer. I'm not gonna lie, I am very very excited for the opportunity and very thankful to SI.com for taking a chance on me. Lord knows I'll bust my butt to try and justify the risk. I'll let you know when the blog launches. Hopefully you'll still be keen to read my ramblings there.
To put any "sellout" fears to rest, please know that I thought long and hard about this move and I wouldn't have taken the job if I didn't get assurances that I would have the freedom that I need to cover the sport the way I'd like to. Sure, I'll be giving up some things, but they are things that I am willing to let go in exchange for an opportunity to get more people excited about tennis.
So the most common question I hear when I've broken the news to family and friends is "BUT WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO FORTY DEUCE?????" It's a great question. It's a question I ask myself. Here's what I know.
Forty Deuce will remain open for business. I'm not shutting it down.
Past that, I have no clue until everything starts rolling. I could still post here five times a day or I could post here once a week. Balancing both projects will be a work in progress. Who knows, I could drop an F-bomb the first day and get fired (JUST KIDDING BOSSES WHO ARE READING THIS), in which case I'd be back at FD crackin' blue jokes until the cows come home. Or I could find that I can get all my thoughts and opinions out at SI and thus find no reason to post on FD. Bear with me and I'll figure out a way to make this work.
But all that is beside the point. I guess all I really wanted to say in this post, and I've admittedly done a really clumsy job of doing it, is thank you. Really and truly. You have all been so good to me (am I tearing up right now? NO.) and no media outlet, let alone SI.com, would have given me a shot if it wasn't for all of you reading what I wrote. It's truly humbling.
Oh, and also? If you love the sport and you want to somehow get involved in it, do it. Start a blog, start a tumblr, dust off that camera and learn how to use Flickr, open a Twitter account, go get degrees that can serve as an entry point into getting into sports. Follow your passion, be good at what you do, and you just never know. Success is never guaranteed, but you work hard, show your commitment, and have the skills to back it up, who knows.
All I know is that I started this rinky dink blog three years ago and have since become really great friends with one of the first ever commentors on this site. Three years later, I've somehow landed a writing gig and she's a Director of Important Things (unofficial title) at a premier WTA tournament. Heck, Uncle Jamie won a writing contest to get his Tennis Channel gig and now he's writing books with Monica Seles. And our good boy Brodie was a loyal FD commenter and now he's on Getty Images getting papped taking notes next to Maria Sharapova. All I'm saying is, things can happen. The world is weird.
Alright. Group hug time. I love you guys. I hope you'll still be my friends.
I'm sure you have lots of questions. Feel free to let them rip in the comments and to the extent I can, I'll answer them.
So yeah. Basically, if you've ever won a Grand Slam and your name doesn't rhyme with "Movak" or "Terena", Canada wants absolutely nothing to do with you. They're all about equality and parity and shit, and basically they would like to treat their prize money like welfare. Um, that's fine? I guess? Not really.
It's almost (I'm being nice by using "almost" here) comical how ridiculous Toronto and Montreal have been this week. Andy Murray, being the amazing trendsetter that he is, kicked it off by losing rather pathetically on Monday, and he's been holding the door for everyone else since. Caroline, Kim, Vera, Petra, Frank, Masha, Rafa, Roger, Ana, JJ, Delpo, blah blah blah. All gone before you could say "poutine" (you should never say "poutine" because (a) it sounds dirty and (b) it is gross sorry).
Meanwhile, there have been lightbulbs falling from the sky, power outages that oddly, don't stop play but require Lynn Welch to scream and go horse (not cool!), Windows 95 failures (at least upgrade to XP, you guys), rain delays, crazy wind, and basically everything described in the book of Revelation except locusts. It's only a matter of time though. Locusts fucking love poutine. Look it up. It's science.
And so, tennis fans took to Twitter to vent their frustrations. We did it the only way we knew how: Laughing through the tears.
After the jump, my favorite #newrogerscupslogans. All credit to @linzsports, who kicked off the fun.
I was kinda kidding about the whole "NO ONE WANTS TO GO TO YOUR STUPID MOOSE TOURNAMENT, CANADA" thing, but now I'm starting to wonder.
Numero Uno crashed out in straight sets to Robert Vinci, somehow blowing a 5-1 lead in the second set to lose 64 75 in some, to be fair, pretty horrible conditions. The wind was swirling and Caro was clearly showing some rust, shanking the ball left and right and generally getting perturbed with the whole shebang. And so she blew a lead and lost to a player who was, prior to today, 0-17 against top five players. Said Roberta after the match: "This is the happiest day of my life." So, you know, it was kind of a big deal.
While Caro may have just failed to show up, Rafa's problem was that Ivan Dodig TOTALLY SHOWED UP and then some. Rafa, hampered by a cold, also showed signs of rust. But to completely tag Rafa with the loss would be horribly unfair to Dodig. The man played 110% red-line tennis for two sets. He took it to Rafa, serving big and getting to the net as much as possible, slicing and dicing volley winners left and right. That he was able to keep up that level over two sets was shocking, even more so because Rafa would get up a break twice in the third set, only to have the fearless Ivan storm back and seemingly break back out of nowhere. Every journeyman dreams of having one of these matches in him. Ivan Dodig chose today to find it. All credit to him.
Hmmm. I think I'm officially a little bit in love with Jelena Ristic.
And while we're on the subject (we're not really on the subject), what is up with the Serbs and their ability to rock the English language? It's so impressive.
They have good music. The people (generally) are pretty nice. The food is...frightening but surprisingly tasty (lookin at you, poutine). And they have a huge-ass tower with my initials. Sure, they speak French or whatever, but hey, no country is perfect.
So how to explain all the players dropping like a mountie confronted with true actual crime?
Kim retired while up a set in her match against Zheng Jie, suffering from an ab tear. Domi retired in the third set against Benesova, still suffering from the ab injury she sustained in Stanford. Snot Rocket called it a day after two games against Bojangles with a right shoulder injury.
Meanwhile, some of the players who actually were fit to play just weren't...fit to play. Mono crashed out to Voskoboeva, Sveta rusted it up in losing to Halep, Pavs went on a snack break against MGMT, Wicky goes down to Vinci, and then there's a JJ thing that's not a surprise at all unless you are the type of person for whom a sunrise is a surprise.
The boys haven't been quite as ridiculous. Then again most of their OOP got rained out today so it's just a matter of time. In addition to Andy booking an early flight to Cincy, we can pile, Gilles, Nalby, and Misha to the set. That's a whole lot of inconsistency on one plane.
Oh, and what's up with Team Berdych/Mayer? They bounced Rafa/Marc yesterday and Bhupati/Paes today. Weirds.
But before we get all crazy, Serena is still doing her best to bring order to chaos. She dropped a 60 63 on A-Bond in 46 minutes.
Can we dispatch her to London? Pretty sure she could chill them muthafuckas out.
My man played horribly and lost to an inspired Kevin Anderson (who I am told played really really well), like, 6 negative 4, 6 negative 4 (or 6-3, 6-1 if you use conventional scoring). Please allow me to recap the reaction around the interwebs:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHALOSER.
Andy Murray is no longer a part of the Big 4 because he sucks at tennis.
ZOMGSCOTTISH.
Here we go, another post-Slam slump of embarassing proportions.
BWAHAHAHAHABALDING.
Ok. Sure. Bad loss. He has bad losses. They are more frequent than one would expect from the World #4. But let me just recap Andy's Slam results in 2011:
AO Final, l. Djokovic
RG Semifinal, l. Nadal
Wimbledon Semifinal, l. Nadal.
So I'm not exactly going to buy into this "sucks at the tennis" thing, thankyouverymuch. I mean, his 2011 Slam results are actually better than Roger's. At least this year, when he will clearly shock everyone by either losing early or going deep in New York (seriously, that's actually an impressive feat -- to basically shock everyone regardless of what you do), no one will be able to say that he peaked too early.
So take that arrow out of your quivers, haters! If Andy crashes out it will be because he sucks, not because he peaked too early! HA HA!
I think it's pretty impossible to be from Canada and have bad taste in music. The indie stuff that's been brewing north of the border has been consistently top-notch for years now. It is the land that has given us Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, Metric, Feist, Stars, The Stills, New Pornographers, and of course, one Ms. Celine Dion (SHUT UP I LOVE HER WITH ZERO IRONY).
Since the boys and girls are in Canada for the week, I figured I'd hand over the wheel to Vancouver's own, and Canadian #1, Rebecca Marino. She's going to start doing her own 2ne Tuesday on Twitter so be sure to follow her at @rebecca_marino. Thanks for taking the time, dude!
Every time I see people act like complete and utter assholes to each other when it comes to tennis, my knee-jerk reaction is always "Dudes. Chill. It's just tennis. It's supposed to be fun. For all of us." It's always good to keep perspective when crap happens. Oh, someone said something mean about your favorite player? Calm the fuck down. It's fucking tennis, not a missile crisis.
And then you read depressing stories like this that serve as a reminder that there are people out there who are legitimately horrible people. My mind is boggling.
Elise Tamaela is a 27 year-old Dutch player on the ITF circuit. She was playing a challenger in Versmold when she was verbally and physically attacked by another player's (Karen Barbat (DEN)) father. She's now in the hospital and the dude has fled with his daughter, presumably trying to avoid the authorities.
Here's the account from Elise's brother:
As the brother of Elise I can confirm the story... Elise has been attacked by the father of Karen Barbat whule watching her game. He was calling her names from the start of the game (all kind of racist things I'm not willing to repeat). After a while Elise said something about it, he then knocked her out with a punch and elbows to here temple. She immediately lost consciousness for about five minutes... After a while she was taken to the police station to press charges, the father and daughter flee, police still looking for them. At the police station Elise started the vomit continiously, an ambulance was called to take here to the nearest hospital. She's still on a intravenous drip with painkillers and needs to stay in the hospital till at least tomorrow morning (having a concussion and a bruised face)...
My father and I drove to Halle (where Elise is in the hospital) and are now in a hotel, we hope we can take Elise back to The Netherlands tomorrow...
The father/trainer of Karen Barbat will probably never see a (professional) tennis court again, that man is a true risk to all people around him!
A lifetime ban is obviously the least of his worries (oh and way to fuck over your daughter's career, too). Hope the cops find him so Elise can properly press charges. More importantly, here's hoping Elise gets better.
So like, you're dating a girl, right? It's groovy. You're on Cloud 9. She's sweet and cute and you grew up loving The Muppet Show so her voice is, like, the Siren Song to your soul. She's really good at her sport, you're really good at your sport, and united you can rule the Kids Who Are Good At Their Sports world. You may or may not have broken up with your ex-girlfriend to be with her. So yeah, you're totally in it to win it. This ain't a fling. THIS IS FOREVER.
And then you meet her crazy family and the tires screech in your head. GOOD LORD WHAT HAVE I GOTTEN MYSELF INTO. On one hand, they're reaaaaaally nice and welcoming. They actually totally adore you and they're just so excited that you're in their lives now. It's like that dinner scene in Notting Hill, but without an ignorant Bernie.
So basically, you're getting bombarded with questions, her cousins are winking and nudging, her brothers are basically threatening to stuff a tennis ball down your fucking throat if you fuck this up, and meanwhile, everybody's asking you for...golf lessons? I don't know. I'm just saying shit got more complicated pretty damn quick.
So good luck if you're planning to accompany Caro to any tournaments in the U.S. this summer. I have no helpful advice for you. The reality is, yeah, our family is FUCKING NUTS and we are SHAMELESS.
See the entire conversation between Mardy, Caro, Rory, Vika, Dani, and Feli after the jump.
We've all been there. What started out as a perfectly pleasant afternoon of day-drinking and fun in the sun has suddenly taken a dodgy turn. Next thing you know, you've doing eight car bombs in the span of an hour and a half* and the bar that seemed to be kinda cool and retro at the start of the night, now feels claustrophobic, creepy, and it may or may not reek of piss and puke and be full of stripe-shirted I-banking douchebags that you want to punch in the face.
How did I get here? When did my life come to this? What is my best exit strategy?
So there's that 30-45 minute window where, you're kinda convinced you can buckle down and wait out the storm. For some that means finding a quiet corner and dozing off for a bit. For others, it means standing in front of a firepit, staring deeply into the flames for a good hour. Still some might just put on a happy face and just try and pretend they're not as fucked up as they are, chattering and dancing about as if they're fooling anyone but really just slurring, spilling, and falling down a lot.
But dudes. PSA time. It all ends the same. No matter how you try and ride that wave to safety, it will always crash ashore. If you don't catch it in time, you're going to be the laughing stock of your friends forever. You're going to be known as the guy who passed out on the red leather couch like a beached whale, unconsciously puking up over the sides as if an invisible ghost was pumping your stomach. Or maybe you realized it all just in time to have made your way to the bathroom, lock yourself into it, and proceed to projectile vomit for a good 45 minutes as the bouncer threatens your friends that he's going to call 911 because at this point, your non-responsiveness is threatening upon "medical emergency".* Either way, these moments of crisis are best experienced alone and not in front of an audience.
So way to get yourself off the court ASAP and not puke in front of thousands of people, let alone millions watching at home, Petko. Do you know how quickly that puke would have gone viral?
"I felt so embarrassed. The last two points I was like, Okay, what are you going to do? Is it more embarrassing running off the court like a maniac or throwing up on the court and being on SportsCenter for the next 25 years? I was like, Yeah, running off the court is better, so that's what I did."
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