Latest news with #Roddick
South Wales Argus
a day ago
- Sport
- South Wales Argus
Hat's off to Draper who looks the real deal at Wimbledon
There's been a Wimbledon singles champion in a cloche hat, a French beret and even a straw boater, while Serena Williams likes to claim she's the only winner to wear a tiara. Jack Draper is looking to become the first to win in a back-to-front baseball cap, perhaps not realising that Andy Roddick tried and failed in three finals. These early rounds of Wimbledon can feel like going through the motions for the top players and headwear stats aside, the British number one dominated the figures that mattered to progress with ease against Argentina's Sebastian Baez. Baez wore a bandana by the way, a box stylishly ticked long ago by Pat Cash and Roger Federer, but retired hurt when trailing 6-2 6-2 2-1, the match already way out of reach. There's actually quite a lot of Roddick in Draper, a powerful serve and strong forehand and an ability to grind out wins from the baseline. Roddick is a big fan too, predicting the British world number four will be the next new Grand Slam champion, perhaps as early as next week. Next up for Draper is Croatia's Marin Cilic, a finalist here seven years ago now ranked 79 places below the home hope, though the two have never played. But, in truth, the quarter-finals - where Novak Djokovic could await - should be the minimum return for this fortnight in Costa Del Merton. "I wanted to play a bit longer, I was really getting my tennis together and it's no way to win like that," said Draper. "I'm trying to focus on the things that I can control, just keep doing the right things to play the best tennis I can and I'm really looking forward to the next week or so. "I'm not thinking matches ahead, everyone in this draw can play incredible tennis and we've seen already this week that everyone has the chance to cause an upset."
The Herald Scotland
a day ago
- Sport
- The Herald Scotland
Hat's off to Draper who looks the real deal at Wimbledon
There's been a Wimbledon singles champion in a cloche hat, a French beret and even a straw boater, while Serena Williams likes to claim she's the only winner to wear a tiara. Jack Draper is looking to become the first to win in a back-to-front baseball cap, perhaps not realising that Andy Roddick tried and failed in three finals. These early rounds of Wimbledon can feel like going through the motions for the top players and headwear stats aside, the British number one dominated the figures that mattered to progress with ease against Argentina's Sebastian Baez. Baez wore a bandana by the way, a box stylishly ticked long ago by Pat Cash and Roger Federer, but retired hurt when trailing 6-2 6-2 2-1, the match already way out of reach. There's actually quite a lot of Roddick in Draper, a powerful serve and strong forehand and an ability to grind out wins from the baseline. Roddick is a big fan too, predicting the British world number four will be the next new Grand Slam champion, perhaps as early as next week. Next up for Draper is Croatia's Marin Cilic, a finalist here seven years ago now ranked 79 places below the home hope, though the two have never played. But, in truth, the quarter-finals - where Novak Djokovic could await - should be the minimum return for this fortnight in Costa Del Merton. "I wanted to play a bit longer, I was really getting my tennis together and it's no way to win like that," said Draper. "I'm trying to focus on the things that I can control, just keep doing the right things to play the best tennis I can and I'm really looking forward to the next week or so. "I'm not thinking matches ahead, everyone in this draw can play incredible tennis and we've seen already this week that everyone has the chance to cause an upset."
New York Times
2 days ago
- Sport
- New York Times
How Taylor Fritz returned a 153 mph serve at Wimbledon: ‘They slow things down in their minds'
The speed is the thing you notice. When you attend any sort of sporting event in person — as opposed to watching it on TV — it's the speed that's most astonishing. From how quickly a top-class footballer might control the ball and pass it, to the velocity of a baseball being hurled at 90mph-plus. With tennis though, it's a little different. The speed of the ball is one thing. And yes, it is astonishingly quick. But it's more the speed of the players that is striking: how quickly they react to their opponents' shots. On day one of Wimbledon 2025, Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard produced the fastest serve in Wimbledon history. He sent down a ball at 153 miles per hour (246 kilometers per hour) — and Taylor Fritz sent it straight back. How to return the fastest ever serve at The Championships, by @Taylor_Fritz97 😳👏#Wimbledon — Wimbledon (@Wimbledon) July 1, 2025 Because Mpetshi Perricard's serve was so fast, all Fritz had to do was move his body out of its way and stick a racket out to send the ball rocketing back. This is what the best returners of big serves do (even if Fritz is not always one of them.) They defuse the grenade. They absorb the pace and give it right back to the server. Advertisement But first they have to get to the ball, and that has nothing to do with their racket. That is all about anticipation. 'It seems like he knows minutes before where you are going to serve,' the Italian Lorenzo Musetti about the mind-frazzling experience of facing 24-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic, one of the best returners of all time. There's a famous clip of Andy Roddick from the 2007 US Open when he's facing Roger Federer. He sends down a serve at 140mph — not his fastest, but quick enough to put a hole straight through the head of any normal person who chooses to get in the way. Federer not only returned it but returned it so well that Roddick put his next shot wide and lost the point. Roddick puffs out his cheeks as if to say: 'What am I supposed to do?'. And that's the reaction of a Grand Slam winner. Those sorts of returns look superhuman, like the players have become Neo from The Matrix and have slowed down the world, able to make things move at their own pace and create time to play the shot. Which is because that's sort of what they're doing. 'What players are constantly trying to do is slow things down in their minds,' says Craig O'Shannessy, a strategy coach for the ATP Tour who has also worked with Djokovic. 'On grass, it may seem to be going fast, but they're just slowing it down.' This isn't — you'll be amazed to learn — some sort of magical power that all tennis players are granted once they join the tour. But more the endgame of a process, careful planning and preparation. The amount of time a tennis player will have to react to an opponent's shot varies, but let's use the example of a serve that a male player could expect to face in most top-level matches, which will be anything between 115 mph to 140 mph. Split the difference and the speed gun lands at 127 mph. Advertisement Travelling the 23.77 metres of a tennis court, this would mean a serve reaches the opponent in roughly 0.4 seconds. But there is a wide range of variables: for a start, a serve is travelling diagonally and from a reasonable height, so it will be travelling further than those 23.77 metres, and that's assuming the receiving player is standing on the baseline — which many don't. Then there's the fact the ball won't actually be travelling at 127 mph for its whole journey: air resistance will slow it down, as will bouncing and the effect the bounce has depends on the surface and a few other factors. So we basically have to estimate how quickly it will reach a player, but we can probably put it at something in the region of 0.7-0.8 seconds. For reference, a blink lasts about 0.4 seconds, so it's not quite blink and you'll miss it… but maybe blink twice and you'll miss it. Either way, it's fast. So players, one way or another, have to anticipate what's coming. 'Tennis looks like a game of pinball — but in fact, it's a game of patterns,' says O'Shannessy, who as part of his coaching and research uses HawkEye to break down a court into sections and is thus able to plan out where the ball goes for most of the time. 'They're picking up on positioning of the feet, positioning of the body, balance, the angle of the racquet — they see all of these things and they use that to anticipate what's coming back. 'A lot of what the speed of what they're doing out there — if you or I were to slow a video down to 25 or 50 per cent of what it is, you would be able to predict what was coming. These players can do that in real time. Through repetition and seeing the same patterns again and again and again, you start to try to get ahead of this.' Essentially players create databases in their heads, which they then draw upon as they anticipate what will come over the net. Advertisement That isn't possible all the time. At the 2023 tournament, former world No. 1 Victoria Azarenka said that not knowing about her opponent, China's Yuan Yue, made things more difficult. 'Sometimes you have no time to anticipate and you just have to react. For example, (playing against) an opponent like today, I didn't know much about her, I've never faced her, so it's a bit more difficult to anticipate because I need to understand or learn her patterns, her technique, her ball toss for the serve etc. When you play someone you know, the anticipation comes a bit more,' she said. 'With some players, you know how they'll toss the ball a certain way, or if they do a certain thing with their racket — so if you're able to pick up those cues, you're able to read them a little bit. But with opponents you don't know, you have to do it on the go. And sometimes it's just not enough time. Sometimes you do have to guess and just have to react.' Conditions can also throw off the best-laid plans/anticipations. Fritz faced Mpetshi Perricard under the roof on No. 1 Court, which took away the variable of wind. The Frenchman thrives in those conditions, because they give his serve less variables to resist and also take away some of the deficiencies in his groundstrokes which the wind can expose. Fritz went two sets down despite winning more points, but came back to level the match at 2-2 before the Wimbledon curfew took away his momentum. 'Some players will track the ball all the way onto the strings,' says O'Shannessy. 'Others will watch 95 per cent of the way, but the last five per cent, they know what it's going to do so their eyes are already forwards. There's no right or wrong way to do this.' O'Shannessy cites Federer as an example of a player who, if you watched him very closely at his peak, would already be looking ahead as he struck the ball rather than at the ball as it hit the strings. In effect, the absolute elite players are already preparing for the next shot before they've technically completed this one (which is mind-boggling), so when we talk about the greatest players we've seen being freaks, it's not meant as an insult. The speed is the thing you notice. But to the world's best tennis players, as it turns out, it's not actually that fast.
The Hindu
2 days ago
- Sport
- The Hindu
American men still searching for a way to emulate Keys and Gauff success
With Madison Keys and Coco Gauff raising hopes that they could complete an "American slam" of the majors this year, their male counterparts at Wimbledon can only look on enviously. Keys ended her long wait to get her hands on a Grand Slam trophy at the Australian Open in January and when Gauff triumphed at the French Open earlier this month it seemed like there was no stopping the Americans - in the women's draw at least. Unfortunately for the men, Andy Roddick's U.S. Open victory in 2003 remains a painful reminder — year after year — of how long it has been since an American man picked up a singles trophy at one of the four majors. The singles draw at Wimbledon is populated with 35 Americans — 19 in the women's and 16 in the men's — more than any other country. Some of the players in action this year at Wimbledon, such as Learner Tien and Alex Michelsen, were not even born when Roddick was the toast of Flushing Meadows. This year, the leader of the men's pack was supposed to be fifth seed Taylor Fritz, who came into the tournament riding high on confidence after winning his fourth Eastbourne title two days ago. In fact, in the Wimbledon men's field, he owns the second highest number of grasscourt titles — his haul of five only behind seven-times Wimbledon champion Novak Djokovic. 'American women have won 25 Grand Slam titles since Roddick lifted the U.S. Open trophy 22 years ago.' But on Monday he came within two points of going out in the first round before hanging tough to win the fourth set tiebreak and leave the match deadlocked at two sets all when play was suspended for the night, 45 minutes before the 11pm curfew. Fritz's day summed up the plight faced by American men. He seemed to be on the verge of becoming the highest-seeded casualty even though he never got broken and had set points in the first two sets which Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard won 7-6(6) 7-6(8) before the American won the next two 6-4 7-6(8). Should he survive Tuesday's final set shootout, he will join 12th seed Frances Tiafoe, Tien, Jenson Brooksby and Ethan Quinn in the second round. Americans Brandon Holt, Mackenzie McDonald, and Nishesh Basavareddy all lost on the hottest opening day recorded at Wimbledon, with temperatures soaring above 32 degrees Celsius, while eight others will be in action on Tuesday. American quartet While Fritz was lucky to play in a cool temperature-controlled environment thanks to the Court One roof being closed before his match started, Keys was among many players who had to toil under the blazing sun. Britain's heatwave, however, failed to throw her off stride as she led a quartet of American women into round two with a 6-7(4) 7-5 7-5 win over Elena-Gabriela Ruse. Amanda Anisimova was even more impressive as she delivered the dreaded 6-0 6-0 double bagel to Yulia Putintseva. Ann Li and Ashlyn Krueger also won, while Gauff is in action on Tuesday. With American women having won 25 Grand Slam titles since Roddick lifted the U.S. Open trophy 22 years ago — with Venus and Serena Williams accounting for 19 of them — Keys had one message for her male counterparts: "Keep up". "I feel like the American women have been probably inspiring the men for a while. I can't really think of a time the past 20 years where U.S. women weren't doing incredibly well," she said. "Granted, we had the Williams sisters for a long time leading that charge. There were also a lot of great American women constantly in the top 20, 10, 30. I think the men are inspired and they want to try to keep up." Could end barren run soon: Tiafoe Tiafoe was confident that the American men are close to finally ending that barren run. "We've been peaking. It's just a matter of doing it," he said. (I) played in the semis of a slam last year. Ben (Shelton) made semis of slams. Tommy (Paul) has made semis of slams. Fritz made a final (at last year's U.S. Open). "I really feel like we continue to put ourselves in those positions, we're going to get it done."
The Herald Scotland
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
'I've been told SNP will ban conversion practices in new parliament'
But the plans were shelved after John Swinney succeeded Mr Yousaf as First Minister. The Scottish Government confirmed in the Programme for Government that its proposals were being put on hold during the current parliamentary term, which ends in May next year, and that the administration will instead work with UK ministers on agreeing Westminster-led legislation that would include Scottish measures. A specific ban in Scotland was agreed between former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Greens as part of the Bute House Agreement which saw the smaller pro independence party brought into government for the first time in 2021. But when the deal collapsed, it was among the policies to be subsequently dropped. READ MORE: In an interview with The Herald Ms Roddick was asked if she was disappointed the Scottish Government won't bring in a ban on conversion practices in this parliament. "When the Programme for Government came forward, I was very clear in the chamber that this was a disappointment," she said. "I acted very much on the evidence that was presented when I was minister, as I sat down with people who have historically or recently been subjected to the kind of torment that the SNP is committed to banning. I know it [will] continue to happen until we bring this ban in." She added: "I have had reassurances that work continues and that the Scottish Government, failing an agreement with the UK Government, will bring a bill forward next session. So to me that is reassuring." The decision signalled another significant shift by the Scottish Government under Mr Swinney's leadership away from Ms Sturgeon's rights-focused policy agenda. But campaigners against conversion practices reacted furiously. 'This is the latest in a growing list of betrayals for LGBTQ+ Scots from this Scottish Government. Scotland could have banned conversion therapy years ago,' a spokesperson for End Conversion Therapy Scotland said at the time. 'LGBTQ+ rights are under attack right now, in a way we haven't seen since Thatcher's section 28 ban on 'promoting homosexuality'. Queer people are crying out for some solidarity from politicians. Instead, this news is a stab in the back.' During Ms Sturgeon's and Mr Yousaf's governments the SNP became embroiled in major internal rows over equalities policies. The SNP suffered its biggest backbench rebellion over Gender Recognition Reform Bill (GRRB), designed to make the process easier for trans people to change their legal gender. Later former rural affairs secretary Fergus Ewing - who was among the SNP GRRB rebels - called for Mr Swinney to drop plans for a ban on conversion practices. Mr Ewing is now standing as an independent candidate against Ms Roddick in Inverness and Nairn at next year's Holyrood election. Polls suggest the SNP will remain the largest party at Holyrood after the election in May next year, with a reduced number of MSPs. Such the polling trend continues, it may mean the SNP will continue as a minority government. The Scottish Government was approached for comment.
