• Iga Swiatek

    From Scall5@21:1/5 to All on Mon Mar 24 22:15:09 2025
    Iga is one of my favorite female players to watch these days. How she is
    able to change directions on her ground strokes, especially her
    forehand, is amazing to watch. I love how focused she is match-to-match
    and how much work she puts in to improve her game.

    She is like Sampras, great champion and under looked in her greatness.
    --
    ---------------
    Scall5

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  • From Whisper@21:1/5 to All on Sat Mar 29 21:10:52 2025
    On 25/03/2025 2:15 pm, Scall5 wrote:
    Iga is one of my favorite female players to watch these days. How she is
    able to change directions on her ground strokes, especially her
    forehand, is amazing to watch. I love how focused she is match-to-match
    and how much work she puts in to improve her game.

    She is like Sampras, great champion and under looked in her greatness.


    I'm a big Iga fan too, but I never get the feeling she's invincible.
    Every time she wins a slam I wonder if that's the last one. I know she
    puts up a lot of bagels and breadsticks, but it just doesn't look super dominant when you watch her play. I really wouldn't be surprised if she
    never wins another slam.

    Sampras was very different. He produced goat level tennis regularly and
    often looked unbeatable off clay.

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  • From =?UTF-8?Q?Pelle_Svansl=C3=B6s?=@21:1/5 to Whisper on Sat Mar 29 19:20:29 2025
    On 29/03/2025 12.10, Whisper wrote:
    On 25/03/2025 2:15 pm, Scall5 wrote:
    Iga is one of my favorite female players to watch these days. How she
    is able to change directions on her ground strokes, especially her
    forehand, is amazing to watch. I love how focused she is
    match-to-match and how much work she puts in to improve her game.

    She is like Sampras, great champion and under looked in her greatness.


    I'm a big Iga fan too, but I never get the feeling she's invincible.
    Every time she wins a slam I wonder if that's the last one. I know she
    puts up a lot of bagels and breadsticks, but it just doesn't look super dominant when you watch her play. I really wouldn't be surprised if she
    never wins another slam.

    Sampras was very different.  He produced goat level tennis regularly and often looked unbeatable off clay.

    Off clay, Federer looked more often unbeatable. Much more. Even on clay, Federer looked more often unbeatable than some clay greats like Kuerten,
    for example.

    Remarkable.

    --
    “We need to acknowledge he let us down. He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him. We shouldn’t have listened to him, and we can’t let that happen ever again”.
    -- Nikki Haley

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  • From Scall5@21:1/5 to Whisper on Sun Mar 30 02:15:39 2025
    On 3/29/2025 5:10 AM, Whisper wrote:
    On 25/03/2025 2:15 pm, Scall5 wrote:
    Iga is one of my favorite female players to watch these days. How she
    is able to change directions on her ground strokes, especially her
    forehand, is amazing to watch. I love how focused she is match-to-
    match and how much work she puts in to improve her game.

    She is like Sampras, great champion and under looked in her greatness.


    I'm a big Iga fan too, but I never get the feeling she's invincible.
    Every time she wins a slam I wonder if that's the last one. I know she
    puts up a lot of bagels and breadsticks, but it just doesn't look super dominant when you watch her play. I really wouldn't be surprised if she
    never wins another slam.

    Sorry, I disagree. When she is handling out bagels and breadsticks I
    think she looks very dominate. Plus she is the 3x returning at Roland
    Garros.

    Sampras was very different.  He produced goat level tennis regularly and often looked unbeatable off clay.

    Granted. I only was comparing their similar media/social profiles for
    being under looked. Iga does have first strike tennis from the back
    court but nothing like Sampras' nuclear blast serves, running forehands,
    and superb crushing volleys. Not to mention his flying overheads.
    --
    ---------------
    Scall5

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  • From Scall5@21:1/5 to Sawfish on Sun Mar 30 02:22:56 2025
    On 3/29/2025 10:47 AM, Sawfish wrote:
    On 3/29/25 3:10 AM, Whisper wrote:
    On 25/03/2025 2:15 pm, Scall5 wrote:
    Iga is one of my favorite female players to watch these days. How she
    is able to change directions on her ground strokes, especially her
    forehand, is amazing to watch. I love how focused she is match-to-
    match and how much work she puts in to improve her game.

    She is like Sampras, great champion and under looked in her greatness.


    I'm a big Iga fan too, but I never get the feeling she's invincible.
    Every time she wins a slam I wonder if that's the last one. I know she
    puts up a lot of bagels and breadsticks, but it just doesn't look
    super dominant when you watch her play. I really wouldn't be surprised
    if she never wins another slam.

    Sampras was very different.  He produced goat level tennis regularly
    and often looked unbeatable off clay.

    Swiatek is a real puzzle. She seems to oscillate between playing with
    supreme confidence, as evidenced by her ready willingness to go for a line-hugging kill shot as soon as one presents itself. For many players
    this eagerness to hit a risky potentially point-ending shot would be
    read as impatience, possibly to stay out of longer rallies for various negative reasons. But over the years she has demonstrated that yep, she
    does indeed have the necessary kill shots, and it is an integral part of
    her game to use them.

    But then sometimes she seems to lose this confidence and she starts
    hitting balls that can be attacked...short and more to the center of the court. This of course would get anyone into trouble, and for her it's
    often fatal.

    I think that there's a part of her that *fears* playing extended
    defense--has little confidence in it, like you see with some players who really do not want to be anywhere near the net because they fear
    volleying. She seems to get the same willies over playing baseline defense--which she *can* do fairly well, but if she is pushed to playing
    it over a certain threshold percentage of strokes, it saps her
    confidence, she quits going for winners (but this is the core of her
    game!) and that's why she loses.

    When she first came up she seldom showed this weak spot, and when it did appear, it seemed to appear for an extended period during which time she
    was pretty woeful, but once past it, quite dominant. But lately the oscillations seem shorter; she can get into fits of this sort of self-
    doubt right in the middle of a match.

    She's less effective and invincible than before. Let's see if she can
    get this cured. She *does* have the shots, that's for sure. She's not a
    lot of fun to watch, like Raducanu when she is playing well.

    Lots of good points here. But I wouldn't be short selling on her
    possible demise until after Roland Garros - 3x returning champion
    there...and probably the fav to win #4.
    --
    ---------------
    Scall5

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  • From Whisper@21:1/5 to All on Sun Mar 30 19:20:06 2025
    On 30/03/2025 4:20 am, Pelle Svanslös wrote:
    On 29/03/2025 12.10, Whisper wrote:
    On 25/03/2025 2:15 pm, Scall5 wrote:
    Iga is one of my favorite female players to watch these days. How she
    is able to change directions on her ground strokes, especially her
    forehand, is amazing to watch. I love how focused she is match-to-
    match and how much work she puts in to improve her game.

    She is like Sampras, great champion and under looked in her greatness.


    I'm a big Iga fan too, but I never get the feeling she's invincible.
    Every time she wins a slam I wonder if that's the last one. I know she
    puts up a lot of bagels and breadsticks, but it just doesn't look
    super dominant when you watch her play. I really wouldn't be surprised
    if she never wins another slam.

    Sampras was very different.  He produced goat level tennis regularly
    and often looked unbeatable off clay.

    Off clay, Federer looked more often unbeatable. Much more. Even on clay, Federer looked more often unbeatable than some clay greats like Kuerten,
    for example.

    Remarkable.




    Federer looked unbeatable v anyone except Nadal & Novak. Sampras looked unbeatable v the greats of his era eg Agassi, Becker etc

    Sure if you look at eg 2004 USO final v Hewitt, Federer looks like a
    genuine boat, completely unbeatable. But that was against Hewitt so has
    to factor into deliberations. Which slam finals did Federer look
    unbeatable v great players? Nadal was unbeatable at eg 2008 FO final v
    Federer 61 63 60, Novak also reached that level v a red hot Nadal in
    2019 AO final 63 62 63.

    Your choice of Kuerten is poor given Guga thrashed peak Federer at 2004
    FO 64 64 64, and Federer won the other 3 slams that year and Guga surely
    wasn't peak.

    I may look like I'm being hard on Federer lol, but I will say he was
    probably the best ever at beating lower skilled players. Nobody else
    ever got up to beat those guys every time like Roger did. That counts
    fro something, high level consistency is important. However he always
    seemed to play 2nd fiddle v Novak and Rafa and has a poor record against
    both guys. So I will say Federer isn't the best ever 'at peak' player,
    ie boat. A true boat would dominate all the players of his era, not run
    3rd.

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  • From Whisper@21:1/5 to All on Sun Mar 30 19:23:29 2025
    On 30/03/2025 6:15 pm, Scall5 wrote:
    On 3/29/2025 5:10 AM, Whisper wrote:
    On 25/03/2025 2:15 pm, Scall5 wrote:
    Iga is one of my favorite female players to watch these days. How she
    is able to change directions on her ground strokes, especially her
    forehand, is amazing to watch. I love how focused she is match-to-
    match and how much work she puts in to improve her game.

    She is like Sampras, great champion and under looked in her greatness.


    I'm a big Iga fan too, but I never get the feeling she's invincible.
    Every time she wins a slam I wonder if that's the last one. I know she
    puts up a lot of bagels and breadsticks, but it just doesn't look
    super dominant when you watch her play. I really wouldn't be surprised
    if she never wins another slam.

    Sorry, I disagree. When she is handling out bagels and breadsticks I
    think she looks very dominate. Plus she is the 3x returning at Roland
    Garros.

    Sampras was very different.  He produced goat level tennis regularly
    and often looked unbeatable off clay.

    Granted. I only was comparing their similar media/social profiles for
    being under looked. Iga does have first strike tennis from the back
    court but nothing like Sampras' nuclear blast serves, running forehands,
    and superb crushing volleys. Not to mention his flying overheads.


    You're more confident about Iga than I am, but I really would like to
    see her win 8 FO and beat Evert as clay goat. Ostapenko is 5-0 v Iga,
    just beat her 63 61 recently. I'd love to see them battle at FO,
    Ostapenko won there too and confidence is sky high v Iga. Don't forget
    Osaka is weak on clay but had match points v Iga at the last FO in 2nd
    round.

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  • From =?UTF-8?Q?Pelle_Svansl=C3=B6s?=@21:1/5 to Whisper on Sun Mar 30 16:44:10 2025
    On 30/03/2025 11.20, Whisper wrote:
    On 30/03/2025 4:20 am, Pelle Svanslös wrote:
    On 29/03/2025 12.10, Whisper wrote:
    On 25/03/2025 2:15 pm, Scall5 wrote:
    Iga is one of my favorite female players to watch these days. How
    she is able to change directions on her ground strokes, especially
    her forehand, is amazing to watch. I love how focused she is
    match-to- match and how much work she puts in to improve her game.

    She is like Sampras, great champion and under looked in her greatness.


    I'm a big Iga fan too, but I never get the feeling she's invincible.
    Every time she wins a slam I wonder if that's the last one. I know
    she puts up a lot of bagels and breadsticks, but it just doesn't look
    super dominant when you watch her play. I really wouldn't be
    surprised if she never wins another slam.

    Sampras was very different.  He produced goat level tennis regularly
    and often looked unbeatable off clay.

    Off clay, Federer looked more often unbeatable. Much more. Even on
    clay, Federer looked more often unbeatable than some clay greats like
    Kuerten, for example.

    Remarkable.




    Federer looked unbeatable v anyone except Nadal & Novak.

    The "rest" is a somewhat solid yardstick. Picking and choosing opponents
    to your liking is really not.

    Comparing records against the absolute pinnacle of the game to records
    against Becker and Agassi is a bit tenuous, IMO. The difference in
    quality is about 50 slams. Becker types were pretty decent players, and interesting in their own right as evolutionary stepping stones, but not
    really in the same ballpark as Fed or Djok.

    Had Sampras had to play against Joe Sampras and Moe Sampras, at least
    equals of brother Pete, Pete's record would have looked different.

    ½ Sampras looked
    unbeatable v the greats of his era eg Agassi, Becker etc

    Sure if you look at eg 2004 USO final v Hewitt, Federer looks like a
    genuine boat, completely unbeatable.  But that was against Hewitt so has
    to factor into deliberations.  Which slam finals did Federer look
    unbeatable v great players?  Nadal was unbeatable at eg 2008 FO final v Federer 61 63 60, Novak also reached that level v a red hot Nadal in
    2019 AO final 63 62 63.

    Cherry picking isn't the game now. Most of the time nobody beat Fed off
    clay. Sure, he lost a match in a thousand.

    Your choice of Kuerten is poor given Guga thrashed peak Federer at 2004
    FO 64 64 64, and Federer won the other 3 slams that year and Guga surely wasn't peak.

    Pretty close to peak though. But couldn't sustain it. Oh, well. Fed,
    OTOH, was not even near his clay peak at that time. It really is
    remarkable that Fed put in a better win% on clay than a three time RG
    champ. That he couldn't win more RGs, tells us what kind of competition
    he was facing.

    I may look like I'm being hard on Federer lol, but I will say he was
    probably the best ever at beating lower skilled players.  Nobody else
    ever got up to beat those guys every time like Roger did.  That counts
    fro something, high level consistency is important.

    I agree. But you have to acknowledge consistency against a +20 slam
    champ is a different ballgame from consistency against a red-headed 5
    slam winner.

    However he always
    seemed to play 2nd fiddle v Novak and Rafa and has a poor record against
    both guys.

    A very iffy comparison. Djok always played lucky and Nadal had that
    surface thing going for him. The absolute margins between the three are
    razor thin. Flip the outcomes of a couple of "15-40" situations, and we
    would have three co-goats.

    --
    “We need to acknowledge he let us down. He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him. We shouldn’t have listened to him, and we can’t let that happen ever again”.
    -- Nikki Haley

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