One sport that I have developed a keen interest in the past few years is lawn tennis. I don't know what made me like this particular sport, maybe the ladies in their splendid outfits or maybe the different fancy surfaces on which it is played or maybe the pure fun of seeing my favorite players almost always making it to the title matches. Tennis is bloody tough, looking at the players sweating their way into the fifth set, it seems they've got nothing to live for, the match is their life. Losers feel hard done by I suppose, seeing them deflated after hours of effort is just so cruel. And the fact that it is all on yourself, you are your destiny, you are your prize, and there's no teammate to assist you. That perhaps explains why it is a knockout sport, you move forward only if you win, nothing else helps.
And now to the line I mentioned above, why do I always see the favorites making it to the final rounds. Aren't there any scope for giant-killings? Of course there is and there have been umpteen instances of them. But unlike football or cricket or any other team sport, here you don't need the entire 11 to function properly to win. Its this thing that explains and answers my question. Obviously, no one player is invincible and everyone is fallible, so upsets do happen but they are rarely the order of the day.
The Grand Slams, all 4 of them, bring me closer to tennis. Every year, I try to follow a bit of tennis on TV, but the higher preferences and demands of other sports overshadows my desire of watching the Nadals and Djokovics and Sharapovas in Tour matches. So, the Grand Slams quell my thirst for tennis year after year. These are really a class above all the aforementioned ATP or WTA tournaments with TV and media coverage much better and bigger. Grand Slams have a real feel to it, the atmosphere, the hype, the big matches, the build up, its all there.
The French Open is the real deal these days for me with little to no work to do apart from wheeling away time in the scorching heat. Intriguing match ups, great coverage and some truly epic encounters have made the tournament even more watchable. Having exhausted all my movie and TV series reserves, I was wondering how to spend the next few days and the French Open has given me a great fillip. Its the 4th of June and we still have 5 more days of claycourt action and with Wimbledon just around the corner, I bet the entertainment and excitement will get even bigger in the coming days.
And now to the line I mentioned above, why do I always see the favorites making it to the final rounds. Aren't there any scope for giant-killings? Of course there is and there have been umpteen instances of them. But unlike football or cricket or any other team sport, here you don't need the entire 11 to function properly to win. Its this thing that explains and answers my question. Obviously, no one player is invincible and everyone is fallible, so upsets do happen but they are rarely the order of the day.
The Grand Slams, all 4 of them, bring me closer to tennis. Every year, I try to follow a bit of tennis on TV, but the higher preferences and demands of other sports overshadows my desire of watching the Nadals and Djokovics and Sharapovas in Tour matches. So, the Grand Slams quell my thirst for tennis year after year. These are really a class above all the aforementioned ATP or WTA tournaments with TV and media coverage much better and bigger. Grand Slams have a real feel to it, the atmosphere, the hype, the big matches, the build up, its all there.
The French Open is the real deal these days for me with little to no work to do apart from wheeling away time in the scorching heat. Intriguing match ups, great coverage and some truly epic encounters have made the tournament even more watchable. Having exhausted all my movie and TV series reserves, I was wondering how to spend the next few days and the French Open has given me a great fillip. Its the 4th of June and we still have 5 more days of claycourt action and with Wimbledon just around the corner, I bet the entertainment and excitement will get even bigger in the coming days.
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