Both U.S. Teams Win Again in Italy; Portland Will Host Davis Cup; Coupe Named Stanford Assistant
I'm not sure why the ITF junior website doesn't have the results posted from today's Junior Fed Cup and Junior Davis Cup matches, but I did receive an email with pdfs attached, so I am posting links to the two that relate to the U.S. teams. The girls defeated Paraguay 3-0, the boys shut out China 3-0 and neither team dropped a set. On Thursday, the round robin concludes, and both U.S. teams, seeded fourth, will need to beat the fifth seeds that are in their groups to advance to the semifinals. The girls face Poland, the 2005 Junior Fed Cup champions, and the boys take on Brazil.
Junior Fed Cup USA Results are here.
Junior Davis Cup USA Results are here.
Speaking of Davis Cup, the USTA announced today that Portland, Oregon will host the first Davis Cup final held in the U.S. since 1992. I've never attended a final, but the first round, quarterfinal and semifinal ties I've been lucky enough to attend in the past three years have been some of my most memorable moments in tennis. So if you are anywhere near Portland November 30-December 2, make plans to go. I'll be at the Eddie Herr tournament, so I won't make this one, but I'll be following closely. Tickets will go on sale in a few weeks.
Stanford announced today that Brandon Coupe has been named assistant men's tennis coach, filling the position recently vacated by Dave Hodge. See the Stanford website for more.
And Peter Bodo posted today on the British juniors scandal on his Tennisworld blog. As usual, he raises many interesting questions and as always, makes some very provocative points. For example:
The increasing emphasis on early development, and especially on state-supported development, as if winning the tennis race was as important as winning the race for a cure to cancer, is one of the more unsavory elements in this (or any other) sport. This isn't a "let kids be kids" plea, although that's never a bad idea. It's a warning that allowing and even insisting that kids be more than kids, or allowing a situation to develop where even the most innocent among them feel obliged to conform to the hermetically developed social order, is a dangerous and slippery slope - especially when it is being navigated by people with an ulterior motive - in this case, producing champions for the greater good and glory of the UK.
For the full post, and the usual array of thoughtful comments, click here.
5 comments:
collette- as a junior tennis player in the pnw i am giddy that the Davis Cup finals will be here. If only we could get some real professional tournaments up here though
Collette,
I genuinely think that you do your blog a disservice by linking to Peter Bodo's. I realise his stories are tennis related but they barely (or rarely) qualify as journalism and are, too often, deliberately misleading in order to placate or incite his readership. In the case of his last effort it would have to rate as one of the most poorly written articles I've read in the last five years ( a big call as I have read Steve Tignor). Not only did he misrepresent the situation, it was blatantly obvious he knew nothing about the state of affairs in the UK and was basing his entire argument on conditions in the USA even though the two cultures are poles apart.
The greatest irony is that Bodo can't see that it is because of 'journalists' like himself - the ones whose writing is driven by the appearance of things, rather than their basis in fact - that the authorities came down so hard on the junior players.
Do you know where in Portland Davis Cup will be played?
Andrewd
I think some of the posters on Peter Bodo's blog have caught up with him based on these 2 quotes from his site- not good for Peter.
"Posted by Alison 09/28/2007 @ 2:05 AM
This is a question to Peter Bodo.
Peter, before you wrote your article, did you get the chance to see the offending web pages? If you did, I'm very surprised that you would feel anyone, in particular Naomi Broady, was harshly treated. My daughter, a junior who looks up to Naomi, showed me the web page and I was shocked by the content : her photo page, in particular, wasn't the kind of thing anyone could dismiss as, "idiotic innocence". On the contrary, it was disturbing to see a 17 year old girl (any 17 year old girl - tennis player or not) acting in that fashion and some of the things she had written on her page were particularly tastless and tacky. I would say she should consider herself particularly lucky that only the very mildest of the material was referenced in news stories.
If you didn't get the chance to view the pages, I'm sure it would have helped the quality and clarity of your article if you'd actually seen what you were commenting on."
"Posted by TonyB 09/28/2007 @ 6:04 AM
Something that people are neglecting to mention (is that on purpose Peter?) is that Naomi Broady said, on her Bebo page, that she
1) Has broken the law and
2) Likes smoking (assume cigarettes but who knows)
She also posted a picture of herself, very scantily clad, in which she is 'humping' a condom vending machine.
Given all that, why would anyone with even half a brain, journo or punter, say the LTA has over-reacted?
Seems to me like Pete didn't have a clue what he was talking about and just churned out a blog based on the impression that the LTA couldn't possibly be in the right. It sure looks like he sleep-walked the whole way through the article and just threw together a bunch of comments without ever addressing the issue.
Way to go Pete - sloppy journalism/blogging is so very Fleet Street."
Whats the deal with them usin a pic of Shaheer Peer and a bunch of American kids for a story about an english tennis scandal?
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