posted Mar 25, 2008

Sorry, didn't realise I'd made a mistake. My keyboard's being a bit slow. I'll just correct it.
I doubt Judy counts, as she's not from Miami btw. It depends what you interpret maters to mean.

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posted Mar 25, 2008

Well assuming we're not talking astrolabes then it means "mothers".

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posted Mar 25, 2008

Poor Rafa. This is getting silly. I don't think they bothered actually making the draw. They just took the Indian Wells draw and moved a few names around for good measure.

Hope Rog bucks his ideas up. Otherwise it will bye bye in R2

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posted Mar 25, 2008

Based on this draw if Federer does not reach the final then something is seriously wrong with his form. On paper he should not lose to any of the guys on his side.

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posted Mar 25, 2008

Roger the Dodger strikes again! It's not often a Federer win would spice up the main tennis scene, but it actually would here given his current form.

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posted Mar 25, 2008

nadal and djoko on the same half again!? 9/10.. Wonder what the chances are when you consider that 3 and 4 have equal chances of being on either side!

"volandri as good as a bye"?..it's this arrogance and misconception of other players' abilities and talents that seem to do us in again and again..and again..when murray loses.

when will we ever learn not to overlook players?

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posted Mar 25, 2008

Oh are you for real?

OK assuming you are, let me spell it out for you. Volandri has a 1-4 record this year on hardcourts. All four of his defeats were in straight sets, all of them to players ranked below Murray, and two of them were to veteran players well past their peak (Grosjean and Bjorkman). It may possibly have escaped your notice, but in the same period Murray has won two hardcourt titles and beaten Roger Federer on a hardcourt.

OK still not enough? How about Murray has won their only encounter on a hardcourt and was thrashing Volandri on his favourite surface last year in their last meeting before getting injured?

And I suppose we could also point out that Volandri has a legendarily awful serve (even worse than Murray's) and Murray is one of the best returners in the game.

Plus Murray made the semis of this very event last year, whereas Volandri has won a grand total of two matches in Miami, one a retirement.

So it'll probably be Monaco anyway.

When will we learn not to sit on the fence? When will we learn to spot a joke when we see it? When we learn not to be a pompous ass?

The answer to your other question is fairly unlikely, but much more likely to happen between at least one pair of players amongst the many many pairings there are out there. The fact that they are currently 2 and 3 in the world just makes it stand out more.

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posted Mar 25, 2008

More specifically, the chances of any particular pair of players being drawn in the same half 9 times out of 10 assuming they aren't kept apart by seeding (and Nadal and Djokovic haven't been) are roughly 1 in 100. That's small, but if you take any group of 14 players they will comprise 105 pairing combinations, so it would certainly not be improbable that one of those pairs would show the 9/10 pattern.

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posted Mar 30, 2008

Apart from the loss of Djokovic, the other "shocks" are more or less expected.

Murray and Gasquet still don´t have the consistency to become a true contender of GSs, and andy´s loss to a former top-ten player(Ancic)can hardly be considered as an "upset".

Nalbandian has been notorious for his enigmatic playing for ages -- hardly a surprise!

Djokovic, on the other hand, has all what it needs to become a consistent thus dominant player a la Federer or Nadal(on clay), but his focus and concentration on a constant basis remains his capital weakness at the moment which he must work hard on.

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posted Mar 30, 2008

My prediction of Ancic beating Murray turned out to be correct.

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