Opening Day of French Juniors, Part II
Late this afternoon, I received a surprise email from Guy McCrea, who you may remember from the outstanding Wimbledon Junior coverage he provided for ZooTennis last year. He is in Paris working on the TV World feed at Roland Garros, and his interest in junior tennis is still keen. He looked in on several U.S. juniors and provided photographs of Evan King, Christina McHale and Alex Domijan. He said that the quality of the King - Gaio match was very high, and that he likes King's game for Wimbledon. He said McHale was playing well in all aspects of her game and also had positive words on Domijan's performance, singling out his serve in particular.
Greg Garber of espn.com somehow found time to check in on the juniors as well, and even with the crisis of the Nadal loss surfacing later in the day, he managed a fine notebook piece on several of the U.S. players, including Tennys Sandgren, who twice hit with Rafael Nadal last week. Please click here for that piece, which is located in the lower right sidebar.
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8 comments:
Hey, we're at the French as well but I think we must have been watching different matches to Mr McCrea.
Domijan lost to Tomic and it wasn't near as close as the score looks. Tomic had lots of break points he didn't take and I think Domijan only had one. A real big difference is that Tomic slaughtered Domijan's second serve but Domijan couldn't do much with Tomic's.
Denis Kudla lost pretty easily and got bageled in the second set. Nothing worked for him and he was outclassed.
Harry Fowler won and did it without any stress.
Saw some of the girls matches but it wasn't a lot of fun. Our girls were winning but playing like pushers. I know it gets rewarded in juniors but it didnt make you think they could go on to be top 100 players. Not a weapon among them.
Sounds like someone is a huge Harry Fowler fan.
That is great Harry had a comfortable win today and hope he takes the title but Harry is not in the same ballclub as Domijian, Kudla, King, Frank, Sandgren and the rest of the American guys there.
to notsofast
Wooo...This is why I rarely read this blog. But would not be so critical of Fowler. Sounds like sour grapes to me. Sure Fowler sometimes struggles with the mental but look at his record. He did get to the semis of a grada A in January, a Grade 1 in November and both Kudla and Frank played both those tournaments and lost early. He's got great racket speed and good athlete. And the kid he played today was a french WC who just came off a G2 win on clay with wins over many top ITF juniors. Your remarks are completely out-of-line.
to notsofast
agree w/ just the facts that your remarks smacked of personal opinion.
an american in paris
covered the us boys last year on this blog and did a great job, very objective, so i don't know where you are coming from.
all i can say is that the usa has such a small group of upcoming boys
for such a big country they all need off the support they can get. and no-one one knows who wil pop through , i mean on the pro level. fowler is right in the mix and the rest is an unknown.
I'm sorry but have you watched Sloane Stephens play? You have to just about blind to say that she does not have any weapon.
Also, if anything, this could be a minor indication that the U.S. girls are starting to make a nice transition into the red clay. You may call it "pushing", but at least they're keeping the points longer than they would on a hard court.
These are just thoughts as I am an American not in Paris, so I don't know how the girls are playing.
I don't think my comments indicate that I'm a big fan, or not, of Harry Fowler or any other player. He won without any fuss so that's what I wrote. Other guys went down in flames so that's what I wrote. No point in trying to sugar coat it.
Just to make people happy, Tennys Sandgren won without any stress.
Not in Paris,
Why bother commenting when you're not here to see the matches and dont know that 'pushing' refers to not hitting the ball aggressively , not whether the points are long or short?
I stand by what I said about the girls not having no weapons. Im not saying they can't win matches and it wouldnt be a shock if one of them won the whole thing but that doesn't change the facts that they don't have anything special (apart from attitude).
Stephens is the best of the bunch but she isn't what you'd call exceptional in a Cljisters, Williams, Sharapova, Dementieva, Safina, etc kind of way. I've just watched her beat Babos and she did that by getting the ball back and letting Babos implode.
Consistency is an incredible asset but without power it isn't a weapon.
what tennis player are you watching?? sloane stephens hits the ball harder than every other tennis player in the tournament
to an american in paris
seems like not so fast had an ax to grind and one weakness of this blog is that obviously personal remarks that have nothing to do with tennis can get printed annonmously. Not so fast should have the guts to say who you are
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