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Aug 3, 2021Liked by Matthew Willis

Hello Matthew. Truly moving to read about tennis players throughout these Tokyo Olympic games, for a wide range of exceptional reasons - thanks a lot for both your comments on Twitter & your articles, greatly appreciated. Your analysis on Carreño Busta's serving vs Djokovic was both very interesting and well documented, and also right on target imo. Perso unfortunately watched almost none of the Tokyo Games because of technical equipement breakdowns, but read loads about the Games. Unforgettable memories for tennis lovers/players at Tokyo, from Osaka's lighting the Olympic cauldron at the opening ceremony to Carreño Busta so deeply, and rightly so, happy with his bronze medal in single and Bencic's holding both her gold medal in single and silver medal in double in sheer disbelief. As for the tons of "if, if, if..." that are being and will keep being thrown all over the place for weeks if not years to come, not only is Nadal absolutely right that all those "if, if, if... don't exist" in reality, but as ESPN's Bodo reminded everyone a few months ago (in discussing Nadal's situation at RG this year, if memory serves), "if" is not only the longest 2-letter in English, but also its most useless word. PS: Loved your article on Biles and Osaka: Biles' determination & courage at the Tokyo Games were truly something for us all to witness.

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Aug 2, 2021Liked by Matthew Willis

This is a bit of a tangent, but I'm quite fond of using the "career statistics" pages around the end of big tournaments to understand the potential outcomes in the context of the players' careers, with particular reference to tennis' "big titles" (i.e. Slams + YEC + Olympic Gold + Tier 1s/Masters). One thing doing this highlights is how important taking these opportunities is - for most, they don't come along too often. I suppose I try to mentally figure out where the match or tournament might ultimately be put in the player's career story.

So for the Women's Singles final a quick look at Bencic's page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belinda_Bencic_career_statistics) tells me she's won two Tier 1 titles and has made one GS Semi-Final (USO 2019). So Olympic Gold is the greatest achievement of her career to date, aged 24. It could very well presage greater victories to come - but given her history of injuries and the relative infrequency of deep runs at big tournaments (except 2019), there's (sadly!) a chance it doesn't. Hats off to her for handling the pressure and closing out. For Vondrousova, a younger player, there was perhaps a bit less pressure, but an Olympic medal is a huge achievement and sees her back at the sharp end of a big event for the first time since FO 2019.

And then looking at the men, obviously this is a disappointing week for Djokovic, but it'd probably get a paragraph at most in 5000 words on his career when he retires. For Zverev it's a big event, one of his biggest achievements to date (especially coming from set and a break down to beat ND), but you'd expect him to go on to greater things, given he's now won 6 big titles (4 Masters + Gold + YEC). For Khachanov it's clearly a significant event - his first big final since he won Paris in 2018. For Carreno-Busta, given his age and achievements to date, Bronze at Tokyo 2020 is likely to be a major career highlight. Thanks for taking the time to write up in detail how he did it!

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Aug 2, 2021Liked by Matthew Willis

Yes to all of this imo, and demonstrated well. The flip of PCB's serving strategy is, I think, "the" forehand return from Nole's USOpen final vs Federer in 2011. Federer's serve to the outside (sic) of the deuce box was not assertive, short in the box and *not* wide. Djokovic needed only one step to get to it, far less than what PCB made him do. Full marks to Novak for swinging away in 2011 – an underrated quality of the best players when under pressure – but per Pete Bodo, you can only play as well as the other guy lets you, and in that USOpen final the door was left open a crack and Novak exploited it. Not so at the Olympics.

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Aug 2, 2021Liked by Matthew Willis

Great strategy and win by PCB altho NDs body cld not respond by this stage. Winning bronze always feels like it trumps silver in the moment, in sports with this play off format. In a winner takes all race ( swimming,running etc, not the same). Not sure enough attention was quite given to Zverev’s SF win over ND. Too much has been written of ND’s “failure” which in its way negates the huge effort made by him. Given the huge criticism of both lost gen, and next gen, the lack of attention given to Zverev’s career achievements to date, compared to both those gens, given his “cancellation” by many, has not gone unnoticed.

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Yeah I had to choose between either doing both matches half arsed or doing one match justice and decided on the latter. I found out a few months ago through trial and error that doing two matches per analysis just ends up being bad quality thanks to lack of focus.

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Aug 2, 2021Liked by Matthew Willis

Yeah, I get that. I was, however impressed by both Bencic and Vondrousova who played some fab tennis to make that final, and who both gave their all in what was probably a less than star studded final. I really enjoyed it

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