Australian Open - Day Ten

First topic message reminder :

As no-one has reacted to CC's suggestion to open new AO threads, here's one for Day Ten:

Pliskova vs. Lucic-Baroni - as this seems to be the tournament of the career comebacks, I'll go for LUCIC-BARONI in three

Konta vs. Serena W. - SERENA in two: she won't want to miss out on Sister Act #28

Goffin vs. Dimitrov - GOFFIN in four

Nadal vs. Raonic - RAONIC in four

So predicting a Raonic-Goffin semi and this time Goffin won't let Milos escape like he did at Wimbledon last year!

Haddie-nuff wrote:WOW CC only a World NO 1 fan would dare to stick his neck out that far lol

Well it is a very real possibility.

JuliusHMarx wrote:Where have you been H-N? I know you've been a tennis fan for many a year. I thought you'd have still been following & posting, even without Rafa being around much.

Aww JHM did not realised anyone missed me... there are numerous reasons how long have you got.. not least Ive moved home yet again... they keep finding me
Seriously its not that I have not been interested.. unable to watch it where I lived before.. but Ive been keeping tabs on you all if not for the reasons I can tell who is playing well or not.. but now I receive world wide sport so I have been watching tennis over breakfast. But I promise I will try to keep out of trouble

CaledonianCraig wrote:Rafa, in this form, goes favourite for the French Open and so from nowhere in around four months time he could be one short of Fed's slam total.

Premature speculation...

Henman Bill wrote:

CaledonianCraig wrote:Rafa, in this form, goes favourite for the French Open and so from nowhere in around four months time he could be one short of Fed's slam total.

Premature speculation...

Well I think whatever happens now Rafa has shown enough form definitely to be favourite for the French Open. I would be very surprised if Rafa does not beat Dimitrov and IF Roger makes the final would you fancy Roger to win given the huge problems he has had in the past beating Rafa?

Sure, Rafa will beat Dimitrov
And probably beat Federer (if the finalist)
And is a leading contender for the French Open

But ALL of that coming together is fairly unlikely at this point.

the bookies have him as 3rd favourite for the FO by the way (behind Murray???)

The other issue is we know with Rafa injuries and fitness issues can strike out of nowhere at any time, it's already happened at least twice at the AO alone in the past

Sure you have the injuries to think about but that is looking on the very dark side isn't it? At present that doesn't seem to be an issue as he has come through some very long arduous matches without a problem.

If Rafa is not favourite for RG then who is? Novak? I doubt it in his current vein of form? Andy? Well not ahead of Rafa.

If Rafa wins this tournament then my money is on him for the French..make it No 10 would then be his goal I feel sure. But one step at a time

CaledonianCraig wrote:If Rafa is not favourite for RG then who is? Novak? I doubt it in his current vein of form? Andy? Well not ahead of Rafa.

Are you not forgetting Stan the Man?

Haddie-nuff wrote:If Rafa wins this tournament then my money is on him for the French..make it No 10 would then  be his goal I feel sure.  But one step at a time

There should be some credit for Moya in all this.

(Good to see you back, like Nadal, H-n).

laverfan wrote:

CaledonianCraig wrote:If Rafa is not favourite for RG then who is? Novak? I doubt it in his current vein of form? Andy? Well not ahead of Rafa.

Are you not forgetting Stan the Man?

Favourite above Rafa on clay?? No not for me.

If memory serves Rafa was still favourite last year even when his form was wretched.

I have only seen bits and pieces of Rafa's play (The first two sets against Zverev and the second set from 3:3 onwards against Rao).

To me, Rafa's game looks roughly the same level it has been the last couple of years, not that much better.  He is still a solid top 10 player and no big shock if he beats the likes of Monfils and Rao.  At the same time, I did not think his actual game was all that convincing.  He is still making plenty of easy unforced errors and Rao - in spite of playing rather poorly himself - was pretty close in the set I saw.

That said, I would make Rafa the favorite to win it all - not a huge favorite but favorite still.  Even a well playing Dimi is likely to lose against even a mediocre Rafa.

There is no way I can see Federer beating Rafa here (Fed has been playing well, but not as spectacularly well as some reports would have it, and he would lose to Rafa even if he did play really well).

Stan might have a better chance if he makes it to the final (which is not a given, in fact I would probably make Fed a mild favorite in their semi), but even that would require a mighty effort of him.

Nevertheless, good luck Roger, hopefully he can win his 18th!

BS, you really missed the master class from Rafa in the first set; how Rafa 'handcuffed' Raonic's big serves with Rafa's unbelievable returns esp from the BH corner. He varied his return positions to keep Raonic guessing; Raonic got nervous and couldn't serve his aces out wide too often from both wings.

His level dipped a little bit in the second set so when you watched him then you thought he was the same Rafa of 2015/2016 but he did have BPs on Raonic's service game at 4-4 I think which he failed to convert but he was really clutch in the TB to save many SPs, unlike his 2015/2016.

It's not vintage Rafa yet, but he's getting close to playing at a high level, perhaps good enough to handle those left in the draw.

I'm not too convince about Fed's level. He was still mishitting some shots. Kei let him back easily in the first set (expected from Kei who often choked when facing the big four) when he could have won the first set by serving a bit better to win at 6-2; instead he got tight while serving for the set and it ended up getting to a TB. Kei had wasted precious energy in the first set, could be a 30 mins set but it ended up at 55mins, as good as playing another set. Kei had nothing left in the fifth set and so Fed won the fifth easily.

Stan will be tougher to beat, more so than Kei, as Stan's has the heavy artillery, the mental belief and as long as he can hammer down his huge groundstrokes consistently and not missing much, he will have his chances against Fed (whom to me won't be physically as fit as Stan at this stage of the tournament).

Fed found the test against Stan.. certainly his match against Zverev wasn't a yardstick by any means.. the German was a walkover.

Laverfan... me and Rafa thank you

"
To me, Rafa's game looks roughly the same level it has been the last couple of years, not that much better."

Love that quote.. me and 5million others would disagree.. the pundits yesterday when Rafa was playing Raonic also disagreed the best Ive seen him play for two years at least... but hey ho we will see eh??

Haddie-nuff wrote:but hey ho we will see eh??

Yes, we will, that is why they play the matches

Born Slippy wrote:I'm yet to see anything to convince me this version of Rafa can live with this version of Fed. Fed's serve and backhand look so much stronger now than when Rafa beat him here in 09. Even if Rafa wins, I'd make Roger heavy favourite for the title from here onwards.

I totally understand your arguments. Also, let's not forget he's now not playing with that same old-fashioned racquet he lost to Nadal many times. Just happened to notice your predictions are more often right than wrong. Do you still feel the same for Sunday's final?

Matchpoint wrote:

Born Slippy wrote:I'm yet to see anything to convince me this version of Rafa can live with this version of Fed. Fed's serve and backhand look so much stronger now than when Rafa beat him here in 09. Even if Rafa wins, I'd make Roger heavy favourite for the title from here onwards.

I totally understand your arguments. Also, let's not forget he's now not playing with that same old-fashioned racquet he lost to Nadal many times. Just happened to notice your predictions are more often right than wrong. Do you still feel the same for Sunday's final?

I'm less convinced to be honest. I can see Fed coming out really flat in such a big match - see Wim 09 or Olympics 12 as examples of where the magnitude slightly got to him. It seems he was even a little nervous against Stan as I thought he'd win that easily.

That said, Rafa must be feeling 5 hours in his legs and I'm still not convinced he's at his very best. With the points I mentioned above, I'm still favouring Fed to come through. Fed in 4.

Right now Federe definitely looks a lot sharper than Nadal, playing with so much more variety and control. But still early I am still not convinced he'll win it.