Monzanator

Svitolina's ultra-defensive game just doesn't win Grand Slams in this day and age. You can reach Top 10 and win some big events but there's an obvious ceiling to it. Svitolina reached the high-water mark with YEC victory. It's gonna be curious to see how Kostyuk does in the upcoming years. She's got tools to become a Top 20 player for sure.

Marta Kostyuk dumps out Garbine Muguruza 6-1 6-4. Teenagers on the rise! Kostyuk can obviously go places in the future.

Seeking twitter mob approval is the LAST thing any pro athlete from the spotlight should do. Unless Osaka lives in some sort of yes men bubble that is. As for "clear & excellent", well, she must be paying a lot of money for people to write such statement so they better be worth it. It's like those politicians who never write their own speeches to begin with

Getting older and irrelevant

The shitshow is complete. Naomi Osaka has withdrawn from Roland Garros I wonder if she tries to play the "ignore journalists" card at Wimbledon? Grass isn't exactly a good surface for her either and AELTC won't tolerate her antics given the press release yesterday. The drama tour keeps rolling! PS. Paula Badosa can easily reach the QF now - that's if she doesn't succumb to pressure. She is easily the best clay court player in Osaka's section of the draw.

USTA or All-England Lawn & Tennis Club would be disappointed to hear you call them nonsense. It all comes down to an old truth - no player is bigger than the game itself - even someone whom WTA hand-picked to be the Face of the Tour for the next decade. Naomi Osaka just got a hard reality check. She created a PR disaster and I don't know if she came up with this idea herself or someone told her to make such a move. Let's see if she pulls the race card in last-ditch effort to salvage any pride? Either way, she's lot a ton of credibility and it can only get worse from here. It's funny, since her "media silence" has created a massive response in the media anyway - way bigger than if she only mumbled five lines during a quick press conference. First week of GS is usually flatline for all top seeds regardless and all of these players usually say the same things over & over anyway.

Yep, Mari Osaka has created shitstorm by night (European time zone). She has deleted her reddit account though already. More high-profile names like Kei Nishikori are distancing herself from Osaka's approach now. The high gamble play with "mental health" has been exposed as total fraud. Everyone and their mother knew Osaka's media silence was all about her below par clay results and avoiding ineviteable questions during RG. I have a feeling this is a controlled distraction from the Osaka camp. Make Mari look like the bad sister and focus the backlash on her.

I guess basketball is so far down the ladder in Belgium and Netherlands they will do anything to gain media attention - even create some stupid ass name for a league nobody will follow to begin with

Don't tell me Robin Haase is still the Dutch #1? At this rate Paul Haarhuis would probably still be Top 10 if he was active

Poland actually qualified for the Olympics in a team sport not called volleyball & handball? I'm shocked!

Two cautions for basically pit-related incidents and only 3 DNFs in a 500 mile race is truly insane stat. Last time there were only two cautions in this race was 1969. I believe the rain-shortened 1976 race had fewest DNF record with six - and that race only lasted 102 laps.

Sadly Kerber is totally past-prime. She could well retire at the end of the season or next year at worst. Meanwhile Hubert Hurkacz lost in five sets to someone called Botic van Zandschulp I bet even @heywoodu doesn't know who that guy is

Can you say FOUR TIME winner again? Wooo Helio Castroneves is THE man!

Could be a fuel strategy race though. People like Sato, Rosenqvist and Dixon are on the better one.

Heavy shunt for Graham Rahal after rear wheel wasn't fitted properly during a pitstop.

This obviously a tragic if not unexpected news. RIP

Chelsea holds on to win 1-0.

Half-time in the final and Chelsea leads Man City 1-0.

Talk about bad luck. Dupasquier is one rider that NEVER crashes in Moto3. He finished all 15 races last season and was 5/5 this season too. And now something like this?

This teqball won't really create much interest in Poland due to football tennis being way more popular already. Then again, there are only few countries in the world where volleyball is as popular as here. Same goes for beach handball due to handball being the third most popular team sport in Poland. So the interest doesn't come curiosity but from volleyball and handball being fairly popular sports in Poland already.

So it's basically a Football table tennis instead of football tennis. Great. Not exactly innovative, just following the same concept on a smaller playing field. One would imagine Brazil would be good at this given their knack for football & volleyball at the same time. But of course Brazil can't take part in European Games so nevermind.

Football tennis has been somewhat popular in Poland (due to volleyball being uber-popular here) but I haven't heard about teqball at all before

Yep, welcome to Next Gen ideas bullshit. This is on par with break dance being an Olympic "sport"

Tennis is one sport where Olympic gold medal is not the highest achievement in sports. Besides, Tokyo tournament will be played on hard courts so Osaka's favorite surface. She can ignore international journalists in Paris but I don't really think she actually cares what the official line is in Japan - especially that she doesn't even live there to begin with.

Right after Bianca Andreescu pulled out of Strasbourg to raise her withdrawal number to God knows how many in the last 12 months - Naomi Osaka said she's gonna ignore all the media press conferences during RG for "mental health reasons" The WTA Tour of Drama Horrors continues! I wonder will those journalists cry foul over freedom of speech? Usually there are heavy fines for pro athletes who decline interviews and Osaka is bold enough to annouce than even before the first match. I can only speculate she was afraid of questions about her below par performances on clay over the years.