Sunshine and Roses

Yo kids! Two posts with actual paragraphs in a row, though this is going to be a short one, on account of I have no access to televised sport at the mo and cannot tell you what actual tennis actually looks like right now.

Though taking this proviso in mind and noting that I have no idea what is actually going on on court, I am super impressed with Ahndee Mooray right now.

For serious. I have never been a fan of Toothface, but it would take someone with a heart of stone not to look at a non claycourter dude who's made the semis at Wimbledon on one good foot and also gone on to make the Queen's final and not to admit a modicum of respect. There's also a modicum of 'dude, be real, Wimbledon is coming up and playing on your bum ankle is a moronic idea' but there's something about the idea of almost ridiculous chutzpah which is very appealing. Well done, Andy. Kudos.

And then there's James 'I'm so obscure I haven't even heard of myself' Ward and his semis run, only halted by a Rafa-beating Jo-W. The Brits are doing so well at Queen's that their national hopes are so high that they are destined to all lose first round at the main event. Even Ahndee. But for now, everything is sunshine and roses.

So yeah. Well done. I'm easing myself back into the blog world and cannot make many more insightful comments. Except Jo. Wow. That dude is playing RAD. That means he must be due for an injury...?

The Playing Field

Well, my boy James Ward didn't get too much further - his run stopped in the quarters - but it was still a champion effort for him. Well done Jimbo.

What runs like Ward's are making me aware of is the level of upsettage that is going on in men's tennis at the moment. Sure, at the Slams it's basically the Hispano-Suisse domination machine rolling onwards like a mighty boulder, but in these 250 tournaments we are seeing a very high level of crazy shenanigans going on.

Look at the tournaments this week. The final in Eastbourne is between the #5 seed and the #8 seed. Not a bad result, but not exactly what you'd expect. In s'Hertogenbosch, we have the #7 seed and an unseeded player - and no player seeded higher than #7 made it to the semis. The same thing happened at Queen's, and, to a degree, at Halle. And even at Roland Garros - Nadal and Soderling were pretty decent semi finalists, but Melzer and Berdych? I don't think anyone had any money on that.

What does this prove? I'm not quite sure. Maybe the playing field is evening out a bit. Maybe there isn't quite such a divide between the top ten/twenty and the dudes below. Or maybe I'm just making this up. Who knows. But it's going to be an interesting phenomenon to watch - particularly, I think, in the smaller tournaments - for a little while...

The Woes of Ward

So James Ward, huh. The British kid who has put out Feliciano Lopez and Rainer Schuettler in a row. This would be an all right result for any top hundred guy - Deliciano and Rainer both have serious cojones on grass - but Ward is ranked #342. Good on you, kid.

And yet - for all their 'British tennis is going down the drain we have no one except Andy Murray we lost that one time to Lithuania' malarkey, the British tennis folks haven't wildcarded him into Wimbledon.

Hell, you'd think that with the current state of British tennis, they'd be throwing a tickertape parade for him as he rode into SW19 on the back of an elephant while being serenaded by Elton John. But no, total snub. I just don't get their reasoning here - have they run out of wildcards? What's the deal? What'sa going on? Because it doesn't make any sense at all.

The real loser here (apart from British tennis) is Ward, who will have his hot streak stopped cold in its tracks. It'll be back to satellite tournaments for him, while the entire British public bemoans the state of tennis today (Murray aside). You really have to feel for him. He deserves this wildcard, probably more than any other guy who has been carded into the main draw (from the British populace, at any case.) Is this going to be all he's reduced to? A big run at Eastbourne?

It'd be a sad thing indeed, if Eastbourne was the high point of his career.

That said, I hope he goes on and breaks some more heads at this tournament before his run is over. If he's not going to get a wildcard, then he needs to rub his success in the LTA's face, in my book.