Federer beats Connors record. Impressive, or is it?

I will never get tired of beating this drum. Never. So here it is again:

Federer is not as good as everything thinks he is.

In his ‘golden era’ he has basically had to contend with 2 good opponent.  I think if I only had 1 other player on the entire tour capable of beating me (golden era remember) then I would win a few slams too.

Lets look over Federer’s ‘wins’ in Grand Slam finals, and everyone pay attention, because we are going to review these in-depth:

Wimbledon 2003 – Beats Mark Philippoussis
Verdict = He beat a serial loser to win a slam

Australian Open 2004 – Beats Safin
Verdict = I’m not saying anything, but maybe Safin had a big night on the town before the final?

Wimbledon 2004 – Beats Roddick
Verdict = A big serve and nothing else.  A few weeks of practice and I could give Roddick a good game

US Open 2004 – Beats Hewitt
Verdict = Hewitt’s best year was behind him.  Writing was on the wall for him by this point

Wimbledon 2005 – Beats Roddick (again)
Verdict = Same old Roddick, but with a slightly slower serve

US Open 2005 – Beats Agassi
Verdict = beat an ageing great in his last ever slam final. Again, not that impressive

Aussie 2006 – Beats Baghdatis
Verdict = Baghdatis is ok. Need I say more?

Wimbledon 2006 – Beats Nadal
Verdict = a good win. No denying Nadal is great.

US 2006 – Beats Roddick (again and again)
Verdict = Roddick with an even slower serve

Aussie 2007 0 Beats Gonzalez
Verdict = His only ever final. Gonzalez froze, let’s be honest

Wimbledon 2007 – Beats Nadal
Verdict = A good win again.

US Open 2007 – Beats Djokovic
Verdict = I have  absolutely zero respect for Djokovic.

US 2008 – Beats Murray
Verdict = What a win.  Federer had to produce the best tennis of his career by far to beat Murray.  But lets not forget Murray had a 2 day epic on his hands to beat Nadal before getting to Federer.  Had that not been the case the outcome of the final might have been very different.

French 2009 – Beat Soderling
Veridct = Nadal was injured

Wimbledon 2009 – Beat Roddick
Verdict = Roddick by now had no serve

Aussie 2010 – Beat Murray
Verdict = He got lucky, but still a great win

Summary:

Roger Federer has had four wins in his entire career that I consider ‘worthy’. Now…

Jimmy Connors:

8 Grand Sam wins.  Let’s have a look at who he had to beat:

Ken Rosewall (8 Slams)
Phil Dent (A great player)
Bjorn Borg (11 Slams)
John McEnroe (7 Slams)
Ivan Lendl (8 Slams)

Now, look at that list and compare it to who Federer has had to play.  Is there really any comparison? I didn’t think so.

 

Roland Garros Round 1 Round-Up

The Brits:

Laura Robson – Out
Anne Keothavong – Out
Elena Baltacha – Out

Andy Murray – WIN
Heather Watson – WIN

Verdict – Andy and Heather did well, the rest need to go home, go to the nearest mirror in their house and take a long hard look at themself. Not good enough.

The male ’contenders’:

Federer – win
Djokovic – win
Nadal - win
Murray – WIN

So, no surprises there I guess.  But out of the four wins you’d have to say Murray’s was the most impressive.  My money is on Murray, he’s a natural on clay.

The female ‘contenders’:

Wozniacki – WIN
Sharapova – win
Williams – Loss

I suppose Kvitova is a contender too, but I don’t really rate her.  Anyway, the big shock is Williams obviously.  My money at this stage is on Sharapova, she looks fairly unstoppable, but we’ll see.

My assessments of the Brits at Roland Garros…

So Bally is out first of all – with a whimper I might add - so we can forget about her.

So who is left?

Andy Murray – Anne Keothavong – Heather Watson – Laura Robson

Ok, so we can forget Keothavong, she’s got first round exit written all over her.  Of the other contenders, let’s assess their chances:

Heather Watson:

Gradiuate of the Bolliteri academy. Last year in Paris she made the 2nd round.  So this time I’m hoping for better.  I realistically think she can get to the 3rd round but no further.  Bottom line, she just isn’t good enough… yet.

Laura Robson:

A player with a lot of ability.  She’s only 18, but lets be honest in tennis terms that means that she should have won a slam by now.  Anyway, her best performance at a slam is 2nd round.  I think if she just channels that unbelievable agression bubbling away inside her and focuses it, as hard as possible, at her opponents that she’s got a chance of going far.  If she pulls up her socks she could easy make the quarters.  It’s about belief, as well as ability.  I did a diagram, look at it below:

So, quarter Finals Laura, nothing less.

Andy Murray:

The man. The talent. The enigma.  The player that Roger Federer* called ”The greatest player there has ever been”.  Well, Semi-Final last year.  I’m realistic I expect him to win this tournament this time round, but probably not in straight sets.

* May not be Roger Federer the tennis player

So, to re-cap, that’s Andy Murray, for the win.

Tennis is easy. Just don’t let your opponent win any points and you will, eventually, win the match.

My favourite Eurovision songs…

Most of them are fairly gash, let’s be honest.

But one or two over the years have been ok in my opinion, here they are:

Magdi Ruzsa – Unsubstantial Blues

Getter Jaani – Rockefeller Street

Those two aren’t even that great.  But they’re the only two I’ve ever heard that I thought were half decent.  Ever other song I’ve heard on that show is not officially what you would term ‘music’.  Anyway I don’t watch it for the music, I watch it for Terry Wogan’s amusing commentary… He’s not on it anymore?  Oh well, I’ll just watch Twin peaks or something then.

Promethues Plot Revealed (Major Spoilers)…

I got this from a reliable source and if you don’t want to know the in depth story and plot points of the movie I highly suggest you stop reading now.

Opening:

There was this race called the Engineers, they came from a planet orbiting Sirius, called “Flamajam”.  They evolved for hundreds of thousands of years and eventually developed space travel.  A hundred years after developing this they discovered the secret of interstellar travel.  This allowed them to visit other worlds and meet other Alien races.

It was then that they realised that they had something special to offer the universe, something truly wonderful.  You see the ‘Engineers’ as a race are all mad boozers and love nothing better then brewing and developing world class beers.

Main plot:

So this one engineer, Davy, comes to Reticuli and plans to open up a string of high class bars and nightclubs. Trouble is that on his way down to the planet, his engine malfunctions and he crash lands and a couple of containers in the hold are left on ‘on’ mode.  Knowing that the planet is abandoned, he goes into semi-stasis (only awake for 3 hours a day) and waits for 4 years in the belly of the ship doing nothing but sleeping, eating, playing Nintendo games and brewing his beer.

The Prometheus:

Back on earth the Prometheus is sent on a mission to Reticuli, however it’s a fool’s mission.   An ancient engineer put symbols all over Earth, directions tp Reticuli basically.  But the symbols were only to say that ‘when you’re ready, come along and sample our beer.  First 10,000 humans get 1 years supply of Engineer home brew.’

So the prometheus lands and goes to the ship they find.  Trouble is that the stuff in the hold is flat pack ikea style material for the night clubs.  A dna technology that interacts with anything it touches, it begins turning some of the crew into buildings.

Aliens:

The engineers knew that their beer was quite strong and that customers may on occasions get a little rowdy.  So, what did they need?  They needed bouncers.  What better bouncer than a Xenomorph?

You see, the Xenomorphs are actually nice guys, a little testy.  You’d be pissed off too if your blood was acid.  But the Xeno’s always liked the engineers and were more than willing to take up the role of Bouncer.

The Problem:

Once the ship crashed, the parent Xenomorphs sadly passed away, and the children with no one to tell them what to do were left with nothing but their rage and agression.  So when the human’s punted up giving it ‘come on then’  the Aliens were like ‘yeah, fuck you right back.  This is last orders bitch’

The resolution and finale of the movie:

The engineer gets beaten in Punch-Out on the NES and heads back up to the ship.  Once there he finds there is a bit of argey-bargey going on between his bouncers and the humans.

“Haw, quit that, ya bunch a wollopers.  This is ma bar, and you’re all gettin barred if you don’t calm yer beans. Right?”

After that everyone calms down some.  The engineer cures the humans and tells the Xenomorphs what their job is.  The humans and the aliens shake hands and the Engineer declares the bar open.

Closing credits:

The humans, the Engineer and the Xenomorphs then begin dancing to ‘Club Tropicana’ by Wham and all have a great time.

My thoughts…

Shocking I know, certainly not the plot I was expecting, but it sure does sound like a fun movie.  I for one can’t wait to see it.

Interview with Katrie O’Brieny (British Tennis Sensation)…

In the build up to the French Open, I thought it might a nice idea to interview someone who could play tennis.  I actually play at ‘Challenger’ level, but I thought interviewing myself might be considered bad form, so I called up Tennis agent Svetlana Costoltrilbi, and told her to get me a ‘name’ that I could feature on my blog.

Svetlana’s a bit of party animal and has been barred from over 37 Moscow bars due to her fighting, bad temper and general drunken antics.  I know how to handle her however, a couple of bottles of Siberian’s finest and she was putty in my hands.

‘Da baby, I get you Katrie, she owes me favour for gambling debt, this gets her clear until her next indescrition’

That was the voicemail I got.  Well, good, Katrie wasn’t my first choice.   A journeyman (or woman) you might say, but she’s got good ground strokes, so that gets her a ‘sit-down’ with the chief (me).

I caught up with Katrie at the ‘Four Goats Get Slaughtered’ Meat emporium in Glasgow’s cosmopolitan Shawlands district.  Shawlands has a tough rep, but for my money a night of karaoke and hijinx at the ‘Corona bar’ is a fine way to live your life.

So Katrie, let’s talk Tennis, who’s gonna win at Roland Garros?

Not sure. I quite fancy Djokovic

Who? I thought for a second you said cockovic?

Well… yeah, he’s good.

He sucks.

Well, it’s all about opinions

mmm

Well, fine.

Any regrets in your career?

Not really. I feel truly blessed to have been able to get paid to play the sport I love.

Never getting past the quarter final of a grand slam. Is that really not a regret?

Well, I won many tournaments, played for over 13 years professional, beat steffi graf, hingis…

Yeah, I’ve beating a few local pro’s at pitch and putt at the local park, that doesn’t mean I’ve made the ‘cut’ at augusta.

That’s mean

You’re mean.  Anyway. But when you’re as rich and successful as me, one of the perks is that you can be as rude as you want. Cool, no?

Are we still on for doubles tomorrow?  I got sanchez and saffin lined up.

Nah.  I’m gonna sit at home playing my nes, all day.  Grab a couple of beers at 6pm, then play my nes some more. Cause I’m cool.

At this point I terminated the interview.  Katrie was an ok player, here’s her grandslam timeline:

********92   93   94  95   96   97   98  99 00 01  02  03  04
Aussie    1st  1st  1st  1st   1st  1st  1st  Q   1st  Q   1st  1st  1st
French   Q    Q   Q     Q     Q    Q    Q    Q   Q    Q    Q   Q    Q
Wimb     n     n    n    n       n     n     n    n    n     n   n     n    n
US           1st  2    3    4       Q    Q    Q    Q    Q    Q   Q    Q   Q

As you can see, a lot of Quarters, but quite frankly if you buckle under the pressure everytime, then you just suck.

Wario Ware Smooth Moves…

I played the most mental game ever last night, it was ‘Smooth Moves’ this crazy Wario Ware game on the Nintendo Wii.

Nintendo, pound for pound, make the best games, that’s just a fact.

Anyway, back to the game:

The Story:

Non existent.  It starts off with these weird ancient stone drawings of a Nintendo controller and then you’re in this wee town and playing these weird little mini games.  But it’s fucking awesome.

So, to learn how to play these little funny games you get these tutorials from this… well, he’s a stoner:

How funny is that!

Here’s an example of the gameplay.  It’s just this crazy from start to finish.  Every game is so simple.  But you can easy lose 2-3 hours of your life playing this game.  A couple of beers, easy.

Play this game, you will love it!