I was surprised that Halep lost. Jack Sock beat young American Fritz who made it through qualies (?). I watched a little and he has a great game. I think he is 18 and made it to a couple of juniors Grand Slam Finals last year.
Happy to see that Stevie Johnson made it through the first round.
The Adidas outfits (both male and female) have a kind of Tequila sunrise thing going, but I like them. I also like the Nike outfits (just not Maria’s or Serenas).
Jim Courier was saying that they needed to hand out sunnies in Wawrinka’s match - he said he was still blinded by the little clip they showed of him while JC was calling the Hewitt/Ducks match.
We are seeing all the Aussies, haven’t seen any of the young Americans yet. Hopefully they’ll make it through and local TV will have to show them at some point!
@Tiredofsnow @tx5athome The young american sock beat is Taylor Fritz, senior class of 16 only 18 years old since october
in the fall he won 3 challengers and brought his ranking from 800+ to inside the top 200 with significant wins
He won a challenger last week and is ranked 154 right now. Will be ranked inside top 130 after aussie open.
He beat John isner in a World Team Tennis match and was ranked 1 in juniors having won the junior us open
Wow! I’ll have to keep an eye on him through the year. Thanks.
Not surprised at all Halep lost. She’s choked quite a few GS matches since she became #2.
I like Maria’s dress and the Nike minions (Petra and lower ranked Nike ladies) but not the tunic top version which Genie is wearing. It looks like a dish rag. Dimitrov is in the male sleeveless equivalent and he actually shaved his armpits. Just yeuch.
Didn’t like Haleps at all but like Ana’s dress. Haven’t seen what they have Kerber in.
Kuznetsova’s kit was the usual mess.
I was shocked when I saw Stan’s. Looked like a giant pink and yellow highlighter.
I like the nike guys stuff the most besides the sleeveless
Lots of good outfits on the womens side though
I think Bouchard’s dress is TOO SHORT. Ha! I hate to praise Sharapova for anything, but her dress looks nice.
Don’t like the singlets on Kyrgios and Dimitrov. And I’m sorry, LL’s shirt looks more like the American flag than the Aussie one to me, although if you look closely, it is the Southern Cross.
The mint-ish green is a nice color but clashes with the Woolie’s ball kid green.
Thanks Aga!! Bye Genie.
Dimi wore shirt with a sleeve last night. Much better…
I coykd tell it was the southern cross on Ll’s shirt. IIRC, Duck had same shirt on.
Not a fan of Maria either but Nike puts her in some stunning dresses.
Maria will look good in pretty much anything. 
Then again, I am a fan of hers, so maybe I am biased.
Boring matches so far. I wish we could fast forward to week 2. Barring a major upset, it should be Djokovic vs Federer in one semifinal and Murray vs Wawrinka in the other semifinal.
Rafa-FerV was anything but boring and the upsets on women’s side have been fun to watch.
Agreed. The Rafa/Verdasco game was worth watching. I was disappointed in Halep’s loss, but I have not been thrilled by any of the women’s matches so far.
Azarenka has a new racket, it’s a head underneath the paint. She is crushing the ball with it.
Does anyone think there’s anything to the match-fixing speculation? Nothing substantive has been produced. No witnesses, no documents, no specific names. I don’t think any of the big names will be caught up in it. They have too much to lose and so much money that money couldn’t tempt them.
It is crazy how you could bet in the middle of matches.
I do think there is something to it. The Swedish article from 2011 has two lists - one is “the black list” which name names and one with suspected players. Both Djoker and kokkinakis (sp) have said they have been approached and Kokkinakis had to be fairly recent since he’s so young.
The “big” names weren’t always big. The investigation goes back 10+ years.
Once in Montreal several years ago I sat next to a bettor at a match. He was placing bets every minute and not at the match we were watching but for matches all over the world. Then he would turn to me every once in awhile and tell me how many thousands he just made.
I forgot all about this until the story broke.
Verdasco played a brilliant match. 90+ winners - bravo. I was still bummed of course, still am 
Not a fan of Serena’s belly ring look. Don’t mind the bright yellow. Interesting that Nole was in bright yellow the first day, back to red today. All of the women’s Asics outfits are boring.
The betting list of players might hold truth. My coach was a pro and knows about some of the match fixing that goes on and then the patterns hold some truth to them.
High bets placed minutes before a match and throughout. Verdasco is a big name in these, 4 matches in question.
I work in tennis and this is the scariest thing the sport has ever faced. There have always been rumors, but it nows seems like it could be a bigger factor, and at higher levels of the game than we all believed. Given that it has generally been viewed as a “gentleperson’s sport”, where our worst offenders behavior-wise seem like choir boys when compared to other sports it will be both a legal and p.r. nightmare. I really hope the Tennis Integrity Unit will be given the money and access needed to investigate and act in a way that allows us to move forward with any hint of match-fixing removed. It is amazing how smart phones may have taken something that likely happened on a small scale and allowed it to grow into something that could be so disastrous for the sport…and other sports as well.
I think it would be naive to imagine tennis is exempt - every other sport is affected. I just doubt there is much cheating at the top level. There’s so much prize money at stake, and so few years to cash in; the top players make more advancing on tour events, and, crucially, tens of millions more in endorsements because of their rankings in the top 10 or 20, than they would ever be able to get from betting schemes. C-list players – I’m sure it happens.
But most of the top players weren’t top players when they started out so it would not be surprising to me if some were involved when before they became very successful. They weren’t all Rafa and Roger who were tapped for greatness at very young age and had sponsors before they turned pro.