#tennis rambles

[gusujay]

you never played tennis in your life son or i make a break and you’re fucking sitting daughter

[tienacity]

I don’t mean this in a hipster, contrarian way, but some Sinner/Alcaraz fans could benefit from closely following a lower ranked player, like a journeyman or even a top 30 peak kinda guy (which isn’t even low!!)

diversifying the level of the players you watch might ease some of the doom expressed when the literal best players in the world lose (once every couple months) to other, very good players lol 😵‍💫

will watching your fave lose to other lower ranked players on the regular add pain to your watching experience? hell yeah. but it will also make the already-rare Sincaraz loss hurt a lot less 🤷🏻‍♀️

[janniksbakery]

jannik saying he will always choose carlos while his gf is in the crowd

[flamballboyant]

alright, one last yap before i go to bed and sleep out the massive headache i got from every emotion known to man i've felt today

i truly meant it when i said i don't care who wins the trophy. basically throughout the match i was switching and rooting for the one who was currently losing and catching up. i had reasons to be happy if either won, i had reasons to be sad if either lost.

for carlos, this title is a beautiful cherry on top of the whole insane clay run that he had. he deserves it so bad, after olympics, the difficult beginning of the season, he's proven himself like never before. the insane comeback he pulled here is so strangely metaphorical it takes my breath away.

for jannik, although it was so close and i know it must hurt like hell, this was still such a stunning run from him. everything he did, in every round, proving himself that he can dominate on his "weakest" surface, after being robbed of half of the clay season. i know he will come back stronger from this, and i know that when he finally - inevitably - figures out how to beat that spanish bozo, it will be pure euphoria, it will mean so much.

for the both of them, as my two favourite players, i'm just so glad they have one slam each this year, because it means that neither will end the year slamless. now i can unapologetically root for jannik in wimbledon with my whole heart, because i need him to win that one biblically. and i totally think he can.

they fought, they left their hearts on court, delivered an instant classic for the history books, and you know it's just the beginning. tennis has been my comfort sport for almost a year now, and i'm just so beyond elated to be witnessing such beautiful athletes proving time and time again what it is all about.

i've said it before and i'll say it again. god i love this sport.

[firstservepercentage]

ranking all the atp players' chinese characters/kanji tattoos

rankings will be based on the meaning of the word they chose, placement and font. in other words its just me judging people based on my bias

(might not be a complete list if you know anyone else with chinese characters/ kanji tattoos please tell me in the comments!)

matteo berrettini

愛(traditional chinese character/ japanese kanji) - Love

tbh that is a bit of a cliche word but the font has a nice traditional calligraphy done (correctly!) with a brush vibe, and the placement is a bit weird for me but hot (imean its on matteo berrettini) so id say its a good tattoo

2. flavio cobolli

勇氣(traditional chinese) - courage

i actually quite like this choice of word, but the font is like the chinese equivalent font of calibri. or impact at max. imagine tattooing something in those font on yourself 😭 but because this word gives a bit of a ACGN+ vibe and the font also gives some manga text vibes (although! it is not japanese kanji, japanese kanji of this word would be 勇気) so it actually kind of worked for me, and id say its still a nice tattoo. but i dont think he thought this much he probably just chose the first available font lol

3. arthur cazux

战士 (simplified Chinese) - warrior

cool choice of word, but (1) it is quite obvious that this is done by someone who is trying to 'draw' a traditional calligraphy style chinese characters and (2) i think that is a samurai knife behind the characters so it would probably go better with the japanese kanji version 戦士. and also why simplified chinese that is literally the most swagless form of chinese characters????

but still i am very impressed they managed to cover all forms of chinese characters with just 3 of them 😭😭😭 very inclusive

???. Marat Safin (i have so many things to say about this one)

猴 (same character used in all three forms) - monkey

yea his tattoo means monkey. which is supposedly because he was born in 1980, and 1980 is the year of the monkey in the chinese zodiac calendar. at this point you might think oh okay thats cool, but no, because for calculating zodiacs we use the lunar calendar which is typically 1.5 months later than the solar calendar we are all using now and he was bon on the 27th of January of 1980, so his zodiac animal was actually a goat instead of a monkey. big missed opportunity for him, he could have tattooed 'goat' on himself, that would be incredibly narcissist but at least cool

[ogbaby3]

Talking to the lovely @fritzes I just realised basically all of my favs (ATP and WTA) can be qualified as one of the following type of players:

- Generational talents with their ups and downs who have eventually realised their full potential by winning slams and topping the rankings (Iga, Carlos, Jannik, Aryna, Coco, etc.)

*This doesn't mean they have reached their ceiling btw but they're already one of the best by current standards

- Generational talents that have underachieved because of many reasons (Lena, Stef, Holger, Domi, even Grigor maybe?, etc.)

**Once again this might still change for some of them and I sure hope it does

- Those quite not good enough players that will put on a master class every one and then, that are sometimes experts in one surface, that have gone deep in slams maybe even reached a final, that have one or two masters or none, that are continuously on the top10 or top15 and that even if we want them to go further with all of our hearts they probably never will (Jpeg, Casper, Taylor, Maria Sakkari, etc.)

There are for sure more categories because what about the one time slam winners in the WTA (and the few ATP ones there are as well like Daniil) are those examples of a lifetime of hard work and eventual success (like Maddie) or of a glory run that has eventually not led to anything else of substance (like Emma R)? The young kids (Mirra, especially, but also Joao, Jakub, Jovic, etc.) are they all in between the first and the second tier?

It's not even 8am I really need to stop doing think pieces just because 60% of my favs are outright flops

[gusujay]

okay they are definitely weird about each other but imagine if this friendship is all a pr stunt for the rivalry…how far would they go? that concept is scrumptious to me. telling themselves “its good for our legacy if we are close friends but still fighting on court” sort of a fake dating slowly but surely turning into real dating situation where they find themselves genuinely struggling to be apart from each other 🚬 and its like uh oh when did this pr friendship turn into late night calls and secret handjobs?

[gusujay]

obsessed with jannik but not in a celebrity crush way. its more that i find it really moving that his hair is always giving the absolute most, and then you look on and his eyes carry a deep sorrow you only see in eastern european gay porn, and he has the bearing of a polite but reticent english professor, yet he stands like an anime girl. he’s the little ballerina that spins when you open a music box to me. i feel no sexual urges i just feel a deep fondness as if we were each others’ beards in a past life. we used to pick apples together in papa’s orchard. jannik do you remember how we used to run