Joe Smith

Wow. Payback for AO 2019! I haven’t been able to see the match yet, but Nadal must have been incredible. I didn’t think he could play better than he did here in 2017, but maybe he did?
Congrats to Rafa! and very […]

I used to do that sort of thing, but I found it very hard to enjoy the match!

Well, I honestly didn’t think this tournament would be played this year, but given that it was going to be, it was hard to bet against this being the final. This is as close to a toss-up as a match can be, imo. On […]

Definitely should be without fans if they do play. Still potentially dangerous for the players in the locker room, though. And don’t forget about all the ball kids.

Nadal did not win RG nine consecutive times between 2005 and 2014; Ricky is forgetting someone.
If they do play RG this year, Rafa is still the favorite -as he will remain until someone beats him again here.
I […]

It seems a lot of countries have decided that trying to live with the virus is better than shutting things down. Both France and Spain are in the middle of virus spikes that are by some measures worse than they […]

Considering this was a slam played during a pandemic without fans or the big 3, it wasn’t bad. Both finals produced some drama, at the very least. And congrats to Dominic Thiem for toughing out his first slam […]

Interesting comparison. It’s often harder to control your emotions when you’re highly confident you should win than when you think it’s pretty much 50-50. But I think it was a fair application of the rule, which […]

With Covid cases surging in Spain, the whole fall clay court season is looking unlikely. France has already told its citizens not to travel to border regions and may close the border. But what we’ve seen is by the […]

A big if, imo. Also, how are the US players going to get to Europe for the delayed clay court swing? I don’t see Americans being welcome in most of the world until Trump gets booted out and someone actually starts […]

This virus is going to affect our lives for a long time, imo. One bad sign, not much discussed, is that mild infections (those with mild to no symptoms) do not seem to produce much immunity. There are plenty of […]

My opinion: If Trump had listened to Fauci and the science, ramped up testing early, promoted mask-wearing, etc., you’d have much more compliance in the US, because all of his followers would do the same thing. […]

There is no need to stay in lock-down forever. If everyone on the planet were to practice ultra-strict social distancing for 2-3 weeks, the virus would basically die out. This is the simple truth about the novel […]

Dimitrov testing positive will not be the only one. Sorry to be so pessimistic, but I think there is a very good chance that neither USO or RG will go ahead this year. The situation is deteriorating globally and […]

Btw, even though they’re playing football in Germany, according to a German tennis-playing friend of mine they’re not letting club players play doubles -only singles! Some of the rules make no sense…

There’s no reason in principle that they couldn’t play tennis without fans. I assume you’d need an umpire and lines callers, and they’d have to find a way around various travel restrictions (and reduced […]

Ramara is right: we won’t see mass audiences until there is an effective and widely available vaccine. However, it’s easy to overestimate the likelihood of that happening. First of all, of course, it could easily […]

A sobering article on the medium term prospects for tennis. Rafa and Thiem don’t expect it again this year. McEnroe gets it right that tennis will be one of the very last things to come back due to its […]

A nice read by a tennis enthusiast at the NYT:

If someone chooses not to vaccinate, ok, fine. They’re still free-riding on the rest of us, but it’s not a huge deal if they keep it to themselves. But to publicly announce that you choose not to vaccinate, […]