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Thursday, June 19, 2008

Grass Court Roundup; Wimbledon Qualifying Complete; Do Tennis Players See Better?


My weekly article for The Tennis Recruiting Network looks back on last week's Grass Courts, and, I hope for those of you who didn't follow my daily reports from the Philadelphia Cricket Club, it will provide a written synopsis of the tournament to go with the slideshow I posted on Tuesday.

Wimbledon qualifying was completed today, and unlike the French qualifying, which I was too busy to follow during the NCAAs, I kept close watch on the proceedings. Two U.S. men, Kevin Kim and Jesse Levine, made the main draw in singles, while Tripp Phillips and KJ Hippensteel and Amer Delic and Brendan Evans qualified in doubles. There were no U.S. women making it through singles qualifying, but Raquel Kops-Jones and Abigail Spears will play in the ladies doubles. The only junior to qualify was three-time Junior Grand Slam winner Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova of Russia. In its inimitable fashion, the Wimbledon website has provided in-depth coverage of all four days of qualifying, with a live blogger from the Roehampton site every day. Guy McCrea, with whom I did a brief Radio Wimbledon podcast last year, is back on the job and provides this podcast on the final day of qualifying. I'll be listening to Guy much more this year, as I'm not going to make the trip. For the complete list of qualifiers, click here. The draw will be revealed on Friday morning.

And finally, while I was catching up on the news I'd missed while in Philadelphia, I found this story from Science Daily about the visual skills of tennis players. Although there is something of a chicken-or-egg dilemma about the results-- "It could either be the case that tennis improves temporal processing or that better temporal processing allows people to become better tennis players," according to the report-- it is still interesting to discover where tennis players excel visually, and where they don't.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dont forget Robert Kendrick is the #1 alternate right now to get into the main draw for singles. He is also the #1 alternate to get into the doubles with his partner Alex Kuznetsov. Im not really sure why Kendrick didnt play with Delic and Evans with Kuznetsov, but whatever.

We are finally going to see the 2006 Zoo Nats final be played. Young vs. Levine 1st Round at Wimby, albeit this will be on grass, but at least its best three of five. I think Levine is the better player on grass, but Young has the mental advantage over him I think.

Anonymous said...

I think it's a great story that the 2006 Zoo final will finally be played at the first round at Wimbledon!

Levine in 5.