Is it just me, or does Martina Hingis seem LOUD when she's commenting. Granted, they really don't have to talk softly when they're in the booth commenting, but it seems to me that Martina could lower her voice a bit.

I found it ironic when she was complimenting Venus's play yesterday, considering how many times she criticized the Williams sisters when she played.

Bwah! Are they lovers or just fuckbuddies?

I caught some commentary by Luke Jensen last night and he wasn't too bad. A little manic, though. Y'know, a properly turned phrase can convey as much excitement and tension as a loud voice. Still waiting for that perfect tennis commentator, and don't even suggest it might've been Bud Collins.

...don't even.

I must say that ESPNs Day One coverage was very nice. Nice mixture of americans and foreigners. Alas, Day Two has been subpar. Serena's boring match is aired twice, Henman's match, again boring, aired twice while other exciting matches are not aired.

And Martina Hingis as a commentator? No, thank you. Her accent is annoying and really she does not add anything to the telecast.

I recommend everyone visit this link:

http://www.sportsmediainc.com/tennisweek/i...0&bannerregion=

They interviewed one of the producers of ESPN and let me just say that the interviewer held absolutely nothing back and grilled him.

espn sucks at tennis coverage...TNT was so much better. I guess they had tape delay in the west coast but with satellite there was none, plus Jim COurier was a good color commentator...marv albert stunk but oh well...patrick mcenroe's got to go.

ITA with your entire post. ESPN just has no sense. Does anyone remember when HBO was doing the Wimbledon coverage. No commericials, no stupid scoreboard, and most importantly no Patrick McEnroe. I miss there coverage so much.



No kidding, the interviewer really laid into him and would not let him off the hook. They even noted when the ESPN guy raised his voice, and that was often. It was funny to hear him try to explain why they would hold matches and show them on tape. He made it seem like 5 people had the internet and the taped matches were like new to everyone else. Total BS, the internet is not the only way people see the scores. I bet he thinks that only a select few have cable with the scores scrolling on the bottom of the screen.

You know I never noticed the crappy coverage of tennis until about a year of two ago. Now we know it is mainly to blame on this ESPN guy. This type of coverage doesn't really happen on the other networks. Unfortunately, ESPN has the rights to 3 of the 4 Grand Slams.

For those fed up with ESPN's coverage (they showed Henman's match for the third time today), please feel free to sign this petition:

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/tennis11/petition.html

Nevermind.

Heh, I enjoyed this comment from the online petition link that sears44 posted





I had HBO for a couple of years in the '90's and I just loved their coverage. No commercials was the best. I liked seeing the players tool around on the changeovers.



That's true. Although when the started showing last years Williams sisters final, I tuned out. What was shown after that?

The best alternative is something I think they want to keep on ESPN Classic. When the US Open was completely washed out a couple of years ago USA or NBC (I don't remember who had coverage those days) showed *old* matches. Stuff from the 70s and 80s. It was fascinating stuff.

I actually hated the HBO coverage--but that was all because of Lampley. Man I can't stand that guy.

I remember back in the pre-cable, Connors/Evert days that Wimbledon was on PBS.

I forgot about this guy, I think I blocked him from my memory. He was horrible, so smug, so arrogant and so annoying. He acted like he knew more about tennis than the commentators. So happy not to see him ruin my tennis coverage anymore.

Nevermind.

That sounds very familiar.

As for the PBS coverage, I only remember that vaguely. I know we watched that in my house growing up but I didn't really understand networks and stuff back then.

Did ESPN show the Goran match? I listened to Radio Wimbledon and watched the scoreboard until the beginning of the fifth and I just read about the ending. I would have liked to have seen that match.

Venus definitely got hosed. And it's not just the chair umpire's fault. There are some 20 odd people whose job it is to notice the score. They were all out to lunch. Despite her and her father's grace in conceding the game, one point in a tie-break seems quite huge. Even if she takes the cup, that poor Sprem is going to have a "what if" hanging over head until the next time she meets Venus on grass.

Wimbledon was definitely on HBO.

I remember because I finally broke down and got HBO only to hear Mary Carillo say that it was the last time HBO would be hosting Wimbledon. I'm not sure how many years ago that was.

I remember Martina doing coverage but I don't remember what network it was on. I have always had HBO (even as a kid when HBO was the only pay channel out there, remember ON TV?) so it could just be merging into other memories.

I will definitely tune in tonite to see what is said about Venus' match. I listened on RadioWimbledon all day and watched the Live Scoreboard. Radio Wimbledon broadcast her post-match press conference.

Also will say I agree with the others that the washout yesterday precluded the network from doing just about anything original. In defense of ESPN, the Wimbledon coverage has been much better than the French Open. Hell, I'm just happy that they're showing live tennis. Go figure.

Too bad Karolina S' good play today is going to get overshadowed by the umpire screw-up. Still Venus did have 3 set points in that tiebreak

I wish John McEnroe were in the booth. That would have been hilarious. He probably would have lost it, whipped out his headband and his favorite wooden racket and charged the umpire's chair.

By the way, I am truly fed up with ESPN's damn scoreboard. It's not only unattractive, its confusing. I always have to reorient myself to see if I should be reading from left to right or from top to bottom. And then when there's a tiebreak, it gets really bad.

RE: Umpire calling the score wrong: Didn't the exact same thing just happen in the Men's Final at the French? I really do wish they would call "let" more for that sort of stuff. Mistakes are human, just have a do-over. If the Chair Ump at the US Open had called "let" during last year's Nalbandian/Roddick semi final when the fan cried "out" right behind the line judge Nalbandian would have won that match.

Yeah for Venus for this:



Yeah, I'm finding myself studying the box to make sure I'm getting it right and then I'm not seeing the match.

It was a long time ago so I can't be positive but I think the PBS coverage was actually a feed of the BBC's coverage.


It wasn't more than a few years ago. I know that HBO still had Wimbledon in 1999 because I have on tape the Graf/Venus Williams semi-final match from that year. It was Graf's last Wimbledon win (she lost to Davenport in the final) so I've kept it. Both Martina Navratilova and Billie Jean King were in the booth for that match and both were blatantly rooting for Venus. So was Jim Lampley who, during a rain delay, went on and on about the things Venus had to do to win the match. So don't think that ESPN is alone in the pro-American flavor of their broadcast. The best thing about HBO was the lack of commercials but their overall broadcast quality wasn't much better.


I agree. Maybe she has heard some of the criticism about how she and Serena never credit their opponents for playing well. Good sportsmanship on her part in a situation where it would have been understandable if she were upset after the match.

Martina Navratilova did color commentary with Mary Carillo for TNT a couple a years ago on some womens matches.

I really think any TV tennis announcer should do 3 years of radio coverage first. Then they'd only have time for substantive comments about the actual points, rather than those tired, tired, She just needs to believe she can win or His body language is just tired bromides. Oh, shut the F up!

Actually, ESPN could've showed any number of other matches besides Henman's match on Wednesday. During Monday's coverage, Chris Fowler mentioned that it was expected to rain on Wednesday. That being said, you would think that ESPN would prepare for this by recording other first round matches (Rubin, Shaughnessy, Martin, etc.) and having those as stand-bys. Unfortunately, they didn't do that.

Most of the courts don't have access for cameras, but they can certainly make sure all the courts that do have access have the cameras--and since there won't be enough ESPN cameras, they should borrow the feed from the other tv sources. I know that has been done in other tournaments and after getting used to camera angle shots we don't normally see, it's fine.

I agree with Bungalow Joy on the radio commentating first. That is a hard job and could really get the announcer prepared for moving on to tv.

The hardest part for me with reading the ESPN scoreboard (HATE!) is that a tennis score is read (left to right) based on the server. So if Capriati is serving 30-Love to Baltacha, the scoreboard would read 30-Love. But this asinine alphabetical scoreboard would read Love-30 (left to right) with Capriati's name/score in Yellow. How the hell does that make sense?

You know the graphics department at ESPN, so proud of themselves for their new scoreboard, don't actually watch tennis with regularity.

When they first debuted the scoreboard I kept thinking (for DAYS!) that they were scoring the matches wrong. And folks, I watch a lot of tennis. I am crazy enough to take weeklong vacations during the Slams to watch the matches and then stay up until midnite or later when they are at Flushing Meadow with the night matches.

Please ESPN, put us out of our misery!

Ooooh, good point. I hadn't really pinpointed the wrongness of the scoreboard, just that I didn't like it. What you've got is a valid tennis reason for it to disappear.

As for the US Open JuanitaSmi, you should try coming out here. You can get some pretty good deals on hotels through websites (well, not this year--thanks to the dang Republican Convention I don't think good deals will be easy to come by) and tickets are suprisingly easy to get, especially the first week when grounds passes are all you really need anyway.

This is the headline on ESPN.com's front page this morning:


Couldn't they at least pretend that they care about somebody other than the Americans?

Heh, that's funny cause those idiots ended up showing the Henman Vs. Arazi match. The Blahddick-Dent match is on NBC as we speak.

So I know that there are a lot of people who don't have cable but I still wish that NBC could have gone to a match that hadn't been shown 3 hours earlier on ESPN2. When the Roddick-Dent match ended why oh why did NBC show the Henman-Arazi match that had already been shown earlier that day? I'm grateful to have seen any tennis today and I'm sure ESPN2 will have angry fishermen calling in, but still.

I'm pretty sure Capriati-Williams quarterfinal will be hyped up like no tomorrow

two interesting 4th rounds in the men will be Hewitt-Moya and Phillipoussis-Henman

Capriati should be worried about Petrova. Besides Henman/Phillipoussis, I'm really looking forward to Grosjean/Ginepri. Should be a good match.

All the more reason I want either of them to lose in the round of 16. Isn't that awful, that TV coverage can bug me so much I don't want certain players even advancing? Is anyone else guilty of that?

Shoot, I am.

Well, NBC just showed the first 15 minutes of the Henman/Philippoussiss match and at the 1 pm switch to ESPN, they promptly kicked back to Roddick/Popp. Bastards! I'm pulling for Popp just to spite American broadcasters.

Here in California, ESPN is blacked out and NBC is showing Roddick/Popp

Why are ESPN and NBC televising at the same time?

Nevermind.

Damn, the final moments of this Henman/Phillipoussis match are phenomenal! I wish we had gotten to see the whole thing.

I am with you. Listening to BBC Radio now and it's excruciating.

Oh my god, Martina Hingis is painful as a commentator. Not as bad as Anna K but dam close. Is she on ESPN? I caught her somewhere saying "she will need to be on her toes" about 5 times in a row. Someone give her another english expression STAT.

Well, to be fair, I can only imagine the uproar if they pre-empted Katie & Matt to show Mark & Tim. But I sympathize. I knew something was up when they kept saying "You're seeing this live - on the East Coast!"

I believe the NBC and ESPN deals are supposed to complement each other, that is, they're supposed to show different matches or the same match at different times. And here in NY that's exactly how it's worked. Alas, that hasn't helped you....


At first I watched her on mute, thinking it was just her accent that was driving me out of my head, but then I realized it was also her less-than-Websteresque grasp of the English language as well as her fondness for the obvious and trite. "That last set was....great! There were so many....winners." Oh, Martina, get back on court where you belong!

Speaking of obvious and trite, if one more person mentions that there hasn't been a British male Wimbledon winner since 1936, I'm going to lose it. You know, lots of people do watch more than one match, folks.

All that said, this coverage blows away Roland Garros. A good amount of foreigners, long hours of coverage, less repetition of matches (except for the rain delays, natch), and most importantly, more live matches.

On a side note, if God asked me what woman I'd like to be reborn as, it would be Lucy Henman.

Thats not fair. People on the east coast get 5 hours of additional coverage.

At the lsat the west coaast should get ESPN during the hours the east coast gets NBC

when tnt and nbc had wimbledon simulatenouesly tnt was never blacked out

ITA, ESPN has done a much better job during Wimbledon. I gotta say I was not looking forward to the coverage after seeing the French but I have been pleasantly surprised.



Unfortunately, I have to agree. I was looking forward to hearing her commentary, but she is just awful. She used to have the most entertaining press conferences, but she just doesn't have enough grasp on the English language to be doing hours of commentary. With a little more time, maybe she will get better. I mean, English is like her third or fourth language so maybe she will learn. I just hope she will learn when she is doing commentary for the BBC or Eurosport, and then come back.

ETA: my computer sucks all kinds of ass

I'm not much of a tennis fan, but is JenniCap always so "excited" when she plays, or is it really that cold in London during the summer?

It's always a bit "nipply" outside during a women's tennis match.

Can't Jennifer C find a more flattering dress ? I know I'm superficial and catty, but come on, she gets the shit for free, at least get something nice.

As long as she's not wearing the "catsuit" a la Serena a couple years back I'm not complaining. Plus, I'm not sure they make tennis-wear that flatters a football player physique. It's all pretty much designed for the Justine Henin-Hardenne type.

Ouch!

Is Justine H-H really that, um, "ripped" ? It doesn't really appear that way on television.

As for Jennifer, the gut is (unfortunately) not necessarily in the racket.

I think a Sharapova/Davenport semi-final could be interesting.

I didn't mean JH-H was ripped. Actually, exactly the opposite. Traditional tennis clothes, as far as I've seen, are designed for svelte, fat-free women such as Daniela Hantuchova or Maria Sharapova. If you have a muscle or a gut it's all over, fashion-wise.

Re: Jen's physique. She's got broad shoulders, muscles, and yes, a bit of a belly, thus football player. But that's no insult to J-Cap herself. It's good to see someone who looks more like an athlete than a model.

For my poor brethren on the West Coast I'll put spoilers on this. How excited must NBC be by the upcoming Serena-Capriati match? They'll probably show it 2 or 3 times.

They mentioned during the Sharapova-Hantuchova match that Hantuchova had put on 20 lbs of muscle. Who'd have thunk?