The Neverending Tsitstory
There has been a Tsitsipost. Yesterday the Diary noted the lack of social media content from tennis’s number one portmanteau couple the Tsitsidosa. Overnight that situation changed with the arrival of a series of pics on their collective Instagram story. Yesterday afternoon Stefanos Tsitsipas exited the men’s singles round. Coincidence? We’ll leave that to the Tsitsispeculators to work out, but suffice to say the story in question contained a picture of Tsitsipas and Paula Badosa dining at the London restaurant of cursed World Cup toucher Salt Bae.
Simply the best punditry
The Tsitislayer, Chris Eubanks, has been wowing the Wimbledon crowds with his “good touch for a big man” play and generally charming demeanour. Before his sharp rise up the rankings this year, however, Eubanks had been pairing play with punditry for the Tennis Channel. YouTube has a number of choice clips should you be so inclined, but the Diary recommends “Chris Eubanks reveals new goals” which contains new goals, a gentle diss on Holger Rune, and a Clark Kent spectacle reveal for good measure.
Medvedev bashes BBC stats
Daniil Medvedev will face Eubanks in the quarters and had an on-court confession to make following his victory over Jiri Lehecka. “I’m not full statistic guy,” the No 3 seed revealed. “[There are] some cool stats – but actually the BBC shows a lot and I’m like, some of them are interesting, some of them, yeah, that’s not an amazing one.”
Whether Medvedev has the crucial “challenges won percentage” figure in mind or rather “volley and smash unforced errors” the Diary is unable to say (the Russian scores 0% in this latter category, having missed just two of an incredible 747 such strokes in his four matches so far), but we do note that official data provider IBM provides its weight-based statistics in both metric and imperial measures.
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Andreeva excused by A-Rod
Some disquiet over the point penalty handed out to the teenage sensation Mirra Andreeva. The new favourite of SW19 had people flocking to her defence after she was punished by the umpire for smashing her racket on the ground, only two points away from defeat (make that one point). But some commentary carries more weight than others. While many social media users were happy to claim that Andreeva hurled the racket by accident, only one was a US Open champion. Andy Roddick’s reply to the Tennis Channel account (yes, them again) on whether the referee was right to punish Andreeva? “I don’t think she does the racket thing if she doesn’t slip. Seems like a reaction to that … This seems like an overreach.” And that’s the verdict.