Sunday, September 07, 2003
So, A-Rod did overcome D. Nalbandian last night in 5 sets, and although the Argentine bitched about how several (very close) calls had gone against him, you have to give Roddick credit for playing balls-out when the chips were down.
At 6-7 in the third set tiebreak, down match point on his serve, he smoked an unreturnable missle out wide that clocked in at 136 MPH. No joke: this was probably the best serve I've ever seen. I believe Roddick holds the record for the fastest serve, at 149MPH, but to hit it that hard, he usually has to blast it straight down the T, where the net is shortest. From the ad. court, hitting the ball wide over the high part of the net presents the most difficult angle for a righty, so a 130+ laser is probably the last thing you'd expect to hit. Especially down match point, but that's how huge Andy Roddick is.
I guess I really got into tennis my Jr. and Sr. years of college, when I kept some strange hours and thus was able to catch a lot of tennis on TV, which is generally televised after 11:00pm or in the middle of the day when the working stiffs (now, myself) can't watch. We also had a Nintendo 64 with Mario Tennis at my apartment, which I was totally hooked on. On of my favorite things about that game was its realistic portrayal of different surfaces, including grass, concrete, clay, and more exotic rubberized courts with Mario's grinning face imprinted on them. Here's my list of my Top 2 favorite Mario Tennis court surfaces:
1. Grass. Mostly because I played with Waluigi, the evil character whose eyes glowed purple with Evil after each successful point. Waluigi was a serve-and-volley player and I usually played him lefthanded (another of the game's nice touches), and grass benefits s-&-v players most of all. Why, you ask? Gentle reader, that's because in Mario Tennis, as in life, hard-hit balls skid on grass and are extremely difficult to return. Waluigi, who with his freakish height hit a great serve at bizarre angles inaccessible to shorter (and right-handed) players, used this effect to gain an insurmountable advantage on his serve. Think about it: this 6-6 freak with glowing eyes is going to fire a little pea at you and it's going to skid low under your racket and actually pick up speed when it bounces? I got to the point where I was pretty hard to beat on grass with Waluigi.
2. Rubber. There was this blue rubber surface in the game that bounced high but was reallyfast, as in strong servers really had an unfair advantage on this court. I liked fast points, but the high bounce gave things an element of unpredictability that I quite enjoyed. Also, if you were using Mario, the high bounce sometimes allowed you to hit overheads from the baseline, which was like getting to serve in the middle of a point. Good times. I miss Mario Tennis.
At 6-7 in the third set tiebreak, down match point on his serve, he smoked an unreturnable missle out wide that clocked in at 136 MPH. No joke: this was probably the best serve I've ever seen. I believe Roddick holds the record for the fastest serve, at 149MPH, but to hit it that hard, he usually has to blast it straight down the T, where the net is shortest. From the ad. court, hitting the ball wide over the high part of the net presents the most difficult angle for a righty, so a 130+ laser is probably the last thing you'd expect to hit. Especially down match point, but that's how huge Andy Roddick is.
I guess I really got into tennis my Jr. and Sr. years of college, when I kept some strange hours and thus was able to catch a lot of tennis on TV, which is generally televised after 11:00pm or in the middle of the day when the working stiffs (now, myself) can't watch. We also had a Nintendo 64 with Mario Tennis at my apartment, which I was totally hooked on. On of my favorite things about that game was its realistic portrayal of different surfaces, including grass, concrete, clay, and more exotic rubberized courts with Mario's grinning face imprinted on them. Here's my list of my Top 2 favorite Mario Tennis court surfaces:
1. Grass. Mostly because I played with Waluigi, the evil character whose eyes glowed purple with Evil after each successful point. Waluigi was a serve-and-volley player and I usually played him lefthanded (another of the game's nice touches), and grass benefits s-&-v players most of all. Why, you ask? Gentle reader, that's because in Mario Tennis, as in life, hard-hit balls skid on grass and are extremely difficult to return. Waluigi, who with his freakish height hit a great serve at bizarre angles inaccessible to shorter (and right-handed) players, used this effect to gain an insurmountable advantage on his serve. Think about it: this 6-6 freak with glowing eyes is going to fire a little pea at you and it's going to skid low under your racket and actually pick up speed when it bounces? I got to the point where I was pretty hard to beat on grass with Waluigi.
2. Rubber. There was this blue rubber surface in the game that bounced high but was reallyfast, as in strong servers really had an unfair advantage on this court. I liked fast points, but the high bounce gave things an element of unpredictability that I quite enjoyed. Also, if you were using Mario, the high bounce sometimes allowed you to hit overheads from the baseline, which was like getting to serve in the middle of a point. Good times. I miss Mario Tennis.
