Old Rant, New Thoughts

It's that time again - time for that rant I've dragged out at least a hundred times but am still not sick of...

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What is the point of playing clay court tennis after Roland Garros is over? What is the point?
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Maybe I just subscribe to a viewpoint which is too Grand Slam centric, but once Roland Garros is over, there is nothing to work towards by playing clay court tennis. Nothing. Nada. Niente. Except Roland Garros next year, and that's a long way away. I mean, I suppose by this reasoning the calendar year should end with the US Open and people should skip the entire indoor synthetic surface because there isn't a Slam on it... but come on, August to January is hard court season, dudes! What's up with the clay?

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What, in effect, this is doing is contributing to the creation of 'claycourters' as opposed to all round tennis players. In some respects, it's almost a different tour. The way it's set up now, you can go from February to about September playing claycourt tennis if you want, even though the big clay court events are in April and May. So only the claycourters play these random post-RG events, getting rankings points and, in theory, propelling them much higher up the rankings than they ought to be. And they're only playing a select group of opponents - the claycourters.

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I'm not saying that people should be banned from playing claycourt events if they want to... it just seems a bit strange, setting up a sort of alternate tour within the tour. Hardcourts aren't everyone's cup of tea, I respect that... but shouldn't people at least try to diversify their surfaces?

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Today's Results

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Catella Swedish Open (Bastad)

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Fernando Verdasco def. Daniel Koellerer, 6-7 (1-7) 6-2 7-5

Jurgen Melzer def. Daniel Gimeno-Traver, 6-2 6-2

Nicolas Almagro def. Potito Starace, 2-6 6-1 6-1

Andreas Vinciguerra def. Guillermo Canas, 6-7 (5-7) 6-3 6-4

Juan Monaco def. Victor Crivoi, 6-0 7-6 (7-1)

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Mercedes Cup (Stuttgart)

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Mischa Zverev def. Gilles Simon, 6-4 6-2

Nikolay Davydenko def. Michael Berrer, 6-3 6-3

Lukasz Kubot def. Philipp Kohlschreiber, 6-2 6-4

Fabio Fognini def. Paul-Henri Mathieu, 6-4 4-1 retired

Jeremy Chardy def. Martin Vassallo Arguello, 2-6 6-3 6-1

Nicolas Kiefer def. Simon Greul, 6-3 6-4

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ECM Prague Open (Prague)

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Iveta Benesova def. Monica Niculescu, 7-5 6-4

Zarina Diyas def. Petra Kvitova, 6-4 6-2

Kateryna Bondarenko def. Kristina Barrois, 7-5 7-5

Timea Bacsinszky def. Stefanie Voegele, 6-4 6-1

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Internazionali Femminili di Tennis di Palermo (Palermo)

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Patty Schnyder def. Nuria Llagostera Vives, 6-2 6-2

Sara Errani def. Patricia Mayr, 7-6 (8-6) 6-1

Yaroslava Shvedova def. Alberta Brianti, 6-3 6-2

Anna-Lena Groenefeld def. Arantxa Rus, 7-6 (7-5) 6-3