Posts filed under 'Tennis'
I’m watching the current 2009 US Tennis Open in New York. I have been a tennis fan for well over 30 years. I am old enough to remember McEnroe, Conners, Martina, and some of the ‘older’ players. And what I have noticed is that tennis seems to have gotten alot slower as of late.
Back in the old days, the players didn’t have to go to the towel after each point. They would just go on to serve and towel off after each game of the set. The match had a much better flow to the game. It seemed much less time consuming and much less boring back then.
In addition to the players going for the towel each point now, they also go into their neurotic, uh I mean, ritualistic tendencies. This is taught to them to create a sense of structure, predictability and focus. It’s a purposeful thing to get their head into a winning habit. I think it’s probably BS. You never saw that crap with the older players, at least I don’t remember it.
For me, tennis as of late has become too repetitive to be of much interest. Occasionally, there are great matches, but most of the time it’s like watching a rerun over and over again. How many times can you watch Rafa pull his underwear out of butt, or Maria putting her hair behind her ears before each serve.
Apparently, the tennis players have 30 seconds after each point, and many take much longer. 30 seconds between points is a LONG time. Perhaps they should cut that down to 15 seconds to make the game play a bit quicker and perhaps provide a bit more interest.
I mean who has time to watch a 5 hour match these days? I don’t. I have NEVER sat and watched the entire 5 hour match. And I just can’t believe they have to towel off after two or three ground strokes. That adds so much time and to me, makes it extremely boring to watch. I mean come on, it’s almost as bad as watching baseball.
Anyway, I think that it’s become quite a boring game, with more neurotic behavior than ever. And I juat don’t care to spend my time watching such repetitiveness any longer.
September 5th, 2009
I don’t have a TV in my office, just my desktop PC. So watching TV is something of a luxury. I had an old TV tuner on my old desktop, but haven’t risked plugging it into my new one and VISTA. Everything is working just fine now and I am not interested in spending hours to fix it. Plus you have to split the cable (one side for the internet, the other for the TV).
So instead, I go without. And if you’ll see my last post I hooked up my laptop to my HDTV in my living room, so I have some of the angles covered.
However, NBCOlympics.com makes it dead simple to watch TV online. I went to the site, plugged in the Microsoft Silverlight Plugin and I did have problems with the intro video pausing. But then I switched to a channel, for example, now I am watching tennis, Raphael Nadal even, and here’s a screen shot of how it looks.
So far it’s been running smoothly and this way I can work on my main monitor and watch/listen to the video on the other monitor. Obviously, I have dual monitors setup. Which I highly recommend. The video also is opens up in a new window, so you can move it around put it wherever you want.
There is also a commentary text button which allows you keep up to date with the announcers. It’s kinda interesting watching a match and not hearing Dick Enberg or Johnny Mac rattle on about various things. Just the players and the stadium noise.
So if you get a chance and want to keep up with the olympics, maybe you’re at work or something, you can just tune in and run it in a different window and it shouldn’t affect your work too much 
August 11th, 2008
Ok, I’ve been a fan of tennis for decades. And I’ve been patiently watching and putting up with the players obsessive compulsive behavior. It’s almost funny at this point. Djokovic’s obsessive ball bouncing (the announcers even have me counting the number of times he bounces the ball), Maria Sharapova’s loud screaming (not to mention the placing of hair behind her ears before each serve), but I have to draw the line with Nadals picking the underwear out of his crack on nearly every point. Now he picks the underwear out of his crack, then bends over and checks his shoes, sometimes wipes his hand and is ready to play.
I know there’s a difference between obsessive compulsive behavior and habit, but for the life of me can’t figure it out. And for some reason watching Nadal pulling his underwear out really gets me to NOT want to watch Rafa play. I mean I respect the guy and all, I think he’s the real deal, but I just can’t handle his social demeanor, uh I mean sports ritual. And I, of all people, am not one usually for social demeanor.
So my suggestion to Rafael Nadal and his shorts problem is to try a different brand of underwear. Maybe he’s wearing a jock strap, perhaps he should switch to boxers. Maybe briefs might help prevent the underwear from riding up into his butt crack on every point. How about powdering that area so that it doesn’t stick. I mean something, anything.
I just don’t ever recall seeing any other player in the history having so much problems with his underwear as Rafael Nadal does. So there has to be a solution, somehow, somewhere.
September 4th, 2007