Del Potro vs Fed yesterday

[uspta146749877]

please click

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/sports/tennis/15open.html?_r=1&ref=sports

[bottle]

WW II Movies: Block-headed Hessians Coming over the Hill

This article is a great example of Gore Vidal's epochal statement: "The New York Times never met a well it didn't want to poison." So Del Potro was a giant Frankenstein, a robot compared to the more compact and organic Federer. I know what the writer was trying to say. It's just that being a gray-gilled newspaperman, all his natural lyricism drained out of him long ago. Yes the nerve impulses were a bit slow, in the beginning, but by the end? Wow! Not just Delpo's ground strokes but his movement. Fluid, graceful, fast, well-balanced, and as organic as could be. Can one imagine those other giants Ivo Karlovich, Max Mirnyi or John Isner moving like that? Mr. Del Potro ought to be an encouraging model for them.

[uspta146749877]

Hessians

This article is a great example of Gore Vidal's epochal statement: "The New York Times never met a well it didn't want to poison." So Del Potro was a giant Frankenstein, a robot compared to the more compact and organic Federer. I know what the writer was trying to say. It's just that being a gray-gilled newspaperman, all his natural lyricism drained out of him long ago. Yes the nerve impulses were a bit slow, in the beginning, but by the end? Wow! Not just Delpo's ground strokes but his movement. Fluid, graceful, fast, well-balanced, and as organic as could be. Can one imagine those other giants Ivo Karlovich, Max Mirnyi or John Isner moving like that? Mr. Del Potro ought to be an encouraging model for them.

You are 2 sophisticated-nobody knows who Hessians were.I do.
May I send you a free one year subscription of NY Times?

[bottle]

Sophistication

You're probably right. But how about people coming up to it instead of me going down? In any case, Bill Mauldin, one of the great editorial cartoonists of World War II never sweated the erudition of that phrase. You see, he's the guy I lifted it from. When I was a cub reporter in Middletown, Connecticut and he came to that city, he spoke about stereotypes. He was as American a person as you would ever meet, but he resented all the World War II movies in which Germans were always pictured as big as Juan Martin Del Potro and coming over the same point of the same hill by the hundreds as American machine-gunners mowed them down. They just couldn't seem to learn, hence they were "blockheaded." (A reader BTW who doesn't want to go for his PhD-- I sure didn't-- may nevertheless travel to Hesse in Germany for a good time.)

To continue: So all the B-movies had "blockheaded Hessians coming over a hill," and the hill was always the same, and the Germans were always six foot six, Mauldin said, and the machine-gunners always killed one German per pop.
(Sorry, Juan Martin, you're Argentine, not German, and have great movement, and you're courageous, smart, shifty, well-balanced, quick and inventive, in fact are not blockheaded at all and would have escaped and I only wish the best for you from now on.)

So Bill Mauldin, the famous cartoonist and war correspondent, went to Cassino, Italy, where there was a water ditch. As he watched, the water filled up with corpses. The reason was that hundreds of American soldiers, blockheaded, wouldn't stop running over the lip of the ditch as machine guns mowed them down.

P.S. Don't worry. I take the New York Times on-line even though it's slipped a lot.

[uspta146749877]

I have my Ph.D. already

You're probably right. But how about people coming up to it instead of me going down? In any case, Bill Mauldin, one of the great editorial cartoonists of World War II never sweated the erudition of that phrase. You see, he's the guy I lifted it from. When I was a cub reporter in Middletown, Connecticut and he came to that city, he spoke about stereotypes. He was as American a person as you would ever meet, but he resented all the World War II movies in which Germans were always pictured as big as Juan Martin Del Potro and coming over the same point of the same hill by the hundreds as American machine-gunners mowed them down. They just couldn't seem to learn, hence they were "blockheaded." (A reader BTW who doesn't want to go for his PhD-- I sure didn't-- may nevertheless travel to Hesse in Germany for a good time.)

To continue: So all the B-movies had "blockheaded Hessians coming over a hill," and the hill was always the same, and the Germans were always six foot six, Mauldin said, and the machine-gunners always killed one German per pop.
(Sorry, Juan Martin, you're Argentine, not German, and have great movement, and you're courageous, smart, shifty, well-balanced, quick and inventive, in fact are not blockheaded at all and would have escaped and I only wish the best for you from now on.)

So Bill Mauldin, the famous cartoonist and war correspondent, went to Cassino, Italy, where there was a water ditch. As he watched, the water filled up with corpses. The reason was that hundreds of American soldiers, blockheaded, wouldn't stop running over the lip of the ditch as machine guns mowed them down.

P.S. Don't worry. I take the New York Times on-line even though it's slipped a lot.

Just to make it more funny-I have Ph.D. already.
Probably my posts did NOT show that.
P.S. There is no notion of fun in Hesse IMHO.

[airforce1]

A War out there

I watched the first 2 sets, then skipped ahead to the 5th to see the deciding set live. This led me to the false conclusion that Fed had just blown this US Open. He took that first set and should have gotten the second. I watched the 5th and thought he looked flat, but did not understand what he had been thru!
How important could 3&4 be since each got one of them, right?
Wrong.

Tonite I watched sets 3 & 4 on ESPN2. WOW!
What a war. How fast were those Del Potro Fhs??
No, not Fhs; They were kill shots ( or hockey slap shots)
Has there been another FH to compare???
I saw why Fed was low in the start of the 5th.
The Bh was not a much better option either, so where to go?
He was lucky to win #3 and not lucky enough to get #4.
Those 2 sets were just brutal IMO.
Yes, Instant Classic IMO.

[bottle]

No Ph.D for Me

I've never gotten Ph.D right. That's what happens when you only have an M.A. in English. But no, good fun in Hesse-- you just have to know Werner and Inga. They might take you to Sachsenhausen.

AF1's description is, I think, pretty shrewd.

[uspta990770809]

Federer's weaker than normal serve: chicken or egg

Roger was so good in the first set, it didn't look like there would be a match. But I wondered where those weapons delPotro had demonstrated earlier had gone. He started to use them in the second set and when Fed should have finished him off, he got just a little bit careful. I think his shots got a foot and a half closer to the middle and farther from the sidelines and that was a critical distance for Del Potro. Once Juan Martin got his feet under himself a little bit, Roger couldn't control the points and JMdP realized he didn't have to take chances with his first serve, just start the point and control it with his pace. And boy, did he have pace. And he seemed to be playing completely within himself, although you wonder how those forehands can be within anyones comfortable shot.

Once he got settled, JMdP definitely played the better tennis and deserved to win, but it's important to recognize that Roger only got 50% of his 1st serves in and made 11 double faults. Not many for Sharapova, but a huge number for Roger. And he was just 2 points from the match in the 4th set. It seemed like Roger came apart a little bit under the weight of the pressure JMdP was putting on him. Or was it that the pressure was so bad because that it caused Roger to lose his rhythm on his serve?! I think that is the chicken/egg question.

[uspta990770809]

What if he serves like Karlovic

This article is a great example of Gore Vidal's epochal statement: ... Can one imagine those other giants Ivo Karlovich, Max Mirnyi or John Isner moving like that? Mr. Del Potro ought to be an encouraging model for them.

I agree with Bottle. JMdP did so much more than any big man has ever done before. But what happens if he starts to serve consistently over 135 with the angle that his height allows him?! He didn't need that speed. He found out he could do fine with 110 to 120. But he's added about 20 mph to his fastest serve over the last couple of years. As he adds 20 lbs of muscle to that frame over the next 2 years, he's going to be able to serve with consistency and accuracy close to 140. Ouch! And he is only 20. He can get a lot better the next couple of years. His attitude seems to indicate he will. Those semis and finals could be great fun to watch, but the early rounds will be blowouts!

don