It’s hard to be irritated with Andy Roddick now, especially after his effort in the final at Wimbledon where he nearly beat Roger Federer. But depending on who you ask, Roddick should have beaten the 15-time major tournament winner. At the very least, it would have made for a better ad.
One of Roddick’s sponsors (you can see it on the ad; I won’t mention them in the text because of my endorsement deal with adidas) curiously bought a full-page ad on the back of the New York Times sport section to congratulate Crocodile Andy and thank him “for his performance at Wimbledon.” No, they really called him Crocodile Andy. And they thanked him. Thanked him for losing! Oooh, burn!
I thought it was almost sad that Roddick apologized to Pete Sampras after allowing Federer to break Sampras’ career majors record through him. I’m inclined to think that not his job to defend the nation’s tennis legacy. But when ESPN and his sponsors try to sell him as an ambassador of the game, maybe it should be. And this is a rather poor effort in accomplishing that end.
|via Darren Rovell|
I really don’t have a big problem with famous people mouthing off in public once in a while. I’ve said this before, there are certain social plateaus that people can hit where they’re allowed to treat people in a way that some of us might find inappropriate. But people that possess a level of passion and arrogance need to be treasured, even if one of those people happens to be Russell Crowe. From the Daily Mail, who still likes driving on the left side of the street:
Crowe could be seen pointing to where he wanted to move for a better view of the thrilling five-setter which saw Federer triumph over Roddick in the final set, but it seems the officer was clearly having none of it.
The Australian could be seen debating the matter, but soon after meekly returned to his original seat having conceded defeat.
I’m torn on this. Tennis is one of those sports where you know going in that you can’t so much as pee on a mound of cotton while the ball’s in play. Everybody has to be quiet so they can concentrate or whatever. And I guess you can’t change seats during play. That said, everybody that goes to watch tennis in person knows this going in, and so you’re stuck living under that repressive tennis regime. But I don’t understand what would have been so bad about sitting behind Ralph Lauren. Sitting in front of him, on the other hand…that I could understand.
It took the longest fifth set in Wimbledon history for Roger Federer to get past Andy Roddick in the men’s final at the All England Club. Roddick held serve all but one time, as Federer and that stupid white jacket of his marched toward an unprecedented 15th major tennis championship. I have to give love to Roddick showing such naddage in the final, especially playing with a hip flexor injury that will force him to miss the Davis Cup, whatever that is. I’m sure it involves large helpings of lasagna and obese cats. Ufford would love it.
ASYLUM POLL: Who is the greatest major champion? Tiger Woods or Roger Federer?
Tiger Woods was in The District this past weekend, holding off stiff competition in his own tournament, the AT&T National, which is a crappy tournament name for such a good golfer. Hunter Mahan and Anthony Kim also came up short of catching the King of Cablinasia, as Tiger won his 3rd tournament of the year by one shot over Mahan. And then Tiger probably just went home and ate some grapes or something, because winning is all he does, and if some day he plays in a tournament and doesn’t win, he can set out on his other mission–killing Sarah Connor.
Yeah, it’s funny until you realize that Garrison spent most of her life battling an eating disorder to deal with the death of her mother, who died when she was 19. Great, now I feel like a dick. Again. From the Telegraph, which is based in Atlanta, I think:
Garrison traces her problems back to her inability to cope with the death of her mother when she was 19. She continued to be affected by the disorder after her retirement from the women’s tour in 1996 and became so depressed that she took an overdose in 1999.
In a recent interview she said: “I am still a lot heavier than I want to be and I still get down sometimes, but I’ve decided that I am what I am.”
Seriously, I could do the before-and-after shots like this one using images of me and half of you would swear that you were looking at two different people. I guess what I’m saying is that railing on overweight people is fine if you do it on a website using a pseudonym when most people already know who you are anyway. It’s like my grandpa always said, “People in glass houses don’t have any attic space.” But since he’s dead now, I don’t think that applies anymore.
Oh, and Andy Roddick got to the semis in Wimbledon. Way to not screw it up this time, jerky.
Aussie tennis player Lleyton Hewitt (not pictured) made some kind of comment at Wimbledon the other day that kinda sounds sexist but really isn’t, saying that women tennis players couldn’t play in a best-of-five-sets format. But I guess he’s totally cool with them getting jobs on their own and voting in national elections? Pig. From Reuters, via FanNation:
“I don’t think a lot of them would last five sets,” said the Australian after setting up a second-round date with fifth-seeded Argentine Juan Martin del Potro.
“The training you have to do to last five sets, especially seven best of five-set matches, it’s a lot more than three-set matches. There would obviously be question marks (over whether) a lot of them could last that much.”
Wimbledon evened the prize pools for men and women in 2007, but the women still only play best-of-three sets. So yeah, a notable portion of the current group probably would not survive in that environment. Although longer matches is would probably be little of an improvement when the sport’s stars are all either getting injured or retiring. But, let’s be honest, there are a few bigger girls on the ladies’ tour. I’d post pictures of them here for you to see for yourself, but we’re a family website. A family of masturbators.
Asylum has a great rundown on the women competing at the All England Club for the Wimbledon championship this weekend. It’s airing on ESPN2, satisfying the weekday afternoon fan jones for televised sports. Seriously, I’m launching the National Hide-And-Seek League and all of our games are gonna be on weekday afternoons. And no, we’re not having a salary cap, either. What do you think this is? Russia?
Speaking of Russians, here’s a quick gallery we put together of Maria Kirilenko, who won her first round match against Petra Kvitova. But unfortunately, she’s going to have a much tougher opponent in the second round. My boner.
|thanks to Keith for the panda img; keep ‘em coming|
