{"id":1221,"date":"2010-06-30T00:39:45","date_gmt":"2010-06-30T04:39:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/?p=1221"},"modified":"2010-06-30T00:39:45","modified_gmt":"2010-06-30T04:39:45","slug":"worries-about-wimbledon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/worries-about-wimbledon\/","title":{"rendered":"Worries About Wimbledon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/view.picapp.com\/pictures.photo\/entertainment\/sports-news-june-2010\/image\/9206073?term=isner+mahut\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/view3.picapp.com\/pictures.photo\/image\/9206073\/sports-news-june-2010\/sports-news-june-2010.jpg?size=380&#038;imageId=9206073\" border=\"0\" width=\"380\" title=\"Sports News - June 24, 2010\" height=\"280\" oncontextmenu=\"return false;\" ondrag=\"return false;\" onmousedown=\"return false;\" alt=\"June 24, 2010 - 06083543 date 24 06 2010 Copyright imago GEPA Pictures Tennis ATP Wimbledon 2010 London England 24 Jun 10 Tennis ATP World Tour Wimbledon 2010 Grand Slam Picture shows Nicolas Mahut FRA and John Isner USA with the Referees and the Scoreboard PUBLICATIONxNOTxINxAUTxITA Tennis men All England Championships ATP Tour London Wimbledon Action shot Single Vdig xkg 2010 horizontal Highlight premiumd.\" \/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/view.picapp.com\/\/JavaScripts\/OTIjs.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>I dropped into my local Japanese restaurant for lunch today and ordered my favorite dish \u2013 a salmon salad. Just because I go to a Japanese restaurant doesn\u2019t mean I eat Japanese food. Anyway, the woman who works lunch grew up on Long Island and used to go to the U.S. Open with her father. Even so, when I ran into the restaurant last Thursday and implored her to turn on the television so I could watch the mind boggling marathon between <b>John Isner<\/b> and <b>Nicolas Mahut<\/b> in the first round at Wimbledon, she didn\u2019t believe me.<\/p>\n<p>She could see my desperation to watch the match but the score hadn\u2019t made any sense to her. I told her the score was 39-39 in the fifth set but it hadn\u2019t registered. World Cup soccer had taken over the tennis broadcast so the score still wasn\u2019t real to her and it didn\u2019t sink in till she went home and saw the rest of the match.<\/p>\n<p>Kind of. It was the never ending first round match that died at 59-59 in that evening\u2019s darkness only to end with a 70-68 Isner victory the next day.<\/p>\n<p>By the way, I know Isner and Mahut were eating something or other but don\u2019t they have labor laws that cover lunch breaks and dinner breaks in that situation? And I can guarantee you, I\u2019d have needed a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.biorelief.com\/stadium-gal.html\">Stadium Gal<\/a> setup for bladder relief and a rubber donut after sitting for more than six hours if I\u2019d been the chair umpire<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s virtually impossible to overhype a 163 game match with 215 aces that went longer than 11 hours, but that didn\u2019t stop a bit of overanalyzing in the aftermath. <b>John F. Murray<\/b>, sports psychologist and author of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Smart-Tennis-Play-Mental-Sport\/dp\/0787943800\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&#038;s=books&#038;qid=1277863433&#038;sr=8-1\">Smart Tennis: How to Play and Win the Mental Game<\/a>, was concerned about Mahut\u2019s mental health after ending up with a loss after such a heroic effort:<\/p>\n<p><i>I don\u2019t think it\u2019s an exaggeration to suggest this loss could manifest itself in him calling an end to his career.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>I would say it\u2019s an exaggeration. Mahut went through a cathartic crying jag at the end of the match then picked himself up and played his scheduled doubles match the same day. I\u2019m much more worried about <b>Andy Roddick<\/b>\u2019s Wimbledon hangover. After losing last year\u2019s Wimbledon final to <b>Roger Federer<\/b> by the measly low score of 16-14 in the fifth set, Roddick went out to 82nd ranked Yen-Hsun Lu in the fourth round this year. And that\u2019s really tough because Roddick won\u2019t have that many more chances to fulfill his dream of a Wimbledon title.<\/p>\n<p>And speaking of 82nd ranked players, <b>Venus Williams<\/b> lost to 82nd ranked <b>Tsvetana Pironkova<\/b> in the quarterfinals today by the eye popping score of 6-2, 6-3. Pironkova is making sure we don\u2019t entirely forget the quirky game of <b>Fabrice Santoro<\/b> with that funky forehand slice of hers. She moved Venus around and changed speeds enough to put Venus off her game and that\u2019s not a fluke, Pironkova also took Venus out in the first round at the 2006 Australian Open.<\/p>\n<p>The person I\u2019m most worried about at the moment is <b>Jennifer Capriati<\/b>. It\u2019s not just the prescription drug overdose that landed her in the hospital on Monday morning but the friends she keeps. The media called it an \u201caccidental\u201d overdose in what is probably an attempt by her family to ease the perception of the situation, but <b>Justin Gimelstob<\/b> wasn\u2019t going along with the spin.<\/p>\n<p>Gimelstob went on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/stories\/2010\/06\/29\/earlyshow\/leisure\/celebspot\/main6629515.shtml\">The Early Show<\/a> on CBS today and described Capriati as being in \u201cin tremendous pain physically and mentally. She struggled with depression, and it&#8217;s a tough story.\u201d Some of this is common knowledge but Gimelstob is a friend of Capriati\u2019s while, at the same time, a member of the media, so how much should he be saying while Capriati is in the hospital? <\/p>\n<p>Celebrity websites outhustle more traditional news organizations these days and the line between members of the media and their subjects has shrunk. People with video cameras line up outside clubs and restaurants and sell their footage of sports and entertainment figures to TMZ.com. But friends should clear personal comments with their subjects before going public.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s another friend too. A former boyfriend of Capriati\u2019s has used her woes to advertise his own career. Dale DaBone \u2013 who must have been named by one of his employers \u2013 is a retired porn star who told TMZ that his decision to return to porn had left Capriati \u201chysterical.\u201d Capriati\u2019s story just gets sadder and sadder.<\/p>\n<p>I often find pro tennis players conservative in their reluctance to talk about other players but in this case I appreciate it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I dropped into my local Japanese restaurant for lunch today and ordered my favorite dish \u2013 a salmon salad. Just because I go to a Japanese restaurant doesn\u2019t mean I eat Japanese food. Anyway, the woman who works lunch grew up on Long Island and used to go to the U.S. Open with her father. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}