tennis gut

  Suddenly men’s tennis is back!   It appears the players may be setting up a new player body to represent themselves, the Professional Tennis Players Association, or PTPA .   There’s been a five month break in tour matches, The French Open has been postponed and Wimbledon has been cancelled, but the US Open is going forward and in its normal time slot.   For the most part, the players have shown up to play.   The only notable contenders missing because of covid are Nadal, Wawrinka, and Monfils (is he a contender?).   Federer is out, rehabbing from knee surgery.   So this tournament deserves no asterisks, but the loss of Nadal, the four-time and defending champion, is significant.   All of this makes Djokovic the heavy favourite.   Or is he?   Top Quarter Novak Djokovic (seeded 1) had moments of vulnerability against both Bautista-Agut and Raonic in the “Cincy” 1000 (the tournament was actually played at the US Open site in New York) this week.   But despite five months

This draw looks truly open.   Even though six of the top ten won’t play, there are ten players in the draw that have won slam titles, totalling 47 slams (almost half by Serena Williams).   Meanwhile those six of the top ten that aren’t playing, hold only four slam titles.   We are certainly going to miss Ashleigh Barty and Simona Halep, the world’s top two, but neither have won at the US Open before, and as for last year’s champ, Bianca Andreescu... much as I would love to see her play again, it appears it is injury keeping her out so she wasn’t going to play anyway, regardless of covid protocols.   Even if everyone were playing, my top two picks would be the same.   All of this makes it pretty tough to say that this US Open will deserve an asterisk of any kind.   Top Quarter World #3 Karolina Pliskova lands as the top seed.   She is obviously good and reasonably consistent to get to where she is. But since her run to the US Open final in 2016, she seems to get tight in the