Gerry Weber Open, Halle, Germany, ATP 500

[britbox]

DATE: June 18 - 24 2018
SURFACE: Grass
PRIZE MONEY: €1,983,595
FIELD SIZE: 32
DEFENDING CHAMPION: Roger Federer

Seeds:

1 FEDERER, Roger
2 ZVEREV, Alexander
3 THIEM, Dominic
4 BAUTISTA AGUT, Roberto
5 POUILLE, Lucas
6 KOHLSCHREIBER, Philipp
7 NISHIKORI, Kei
8 GASQUET, Richard

The Tournament:

The GERRY WEBER OPEN is one of seven grass-court events on the calendar, re-categorised as an ATP World Tour 500 tournament from 2015. Held since 1993, the event is played on four outdoor grass courts and is a part of the ATP World Tour 500 series on the ATP Tour schedule. The event has been upgraded as of 2015 from a 250 series to a 500 series tournament.

The Centre Court (the Gerry Weber Stadion) has 12,300 seats and a retractable roof which can be closed in 88 seconds so that tennis games can continue with a closed roof when it begins to rain.

About Halle

Halle (Saale)is a city in the southern part of the German state Saxony-Anhalt with a population of 232,000

The city is an economic and educational center. The University of Halle-Wittenberg is the largest university in Saxony-Anhalt and one of the oldest universities in Germany, and a nurturing ground for the local startup ecosystem. Together with Leipzig, Halle is at the heart of the Central German Metropolitan Region.

Halle Tourism Video

 

[britbox]

The Draw:

 

[britbox]

I read somewhere that this was supposedly a bad draw for Fed. Looks fine from my armchair.

 

[monfed]

I hope Fed loses this, the loss will sting but it's better now than Wimbledon. He needs to get a bad loss out of the way so that he's laser focused for Wimbledon. I also don't want him to go with the added pressure of winning his 100th title in Wimbledon besides the pressure of holding on to #1.

Just please tank in the QF/SF to someone like Kohlschreiber and zone for Wimbledon. #21 is the most important thing right now, everything else is secondary and expendable.

 

[britbox]

I hope Fed loses this, the loss will sting but it's better now than Wimbledon. He needs to get a bad loss out of the way so that he's laser focused for Wimbledon. I also don't want him to go with the added pressure of winning his 100th title in Wimbledon besides the pressure of holding on to #1.

Just please tank in the QF/SF to someone like Kohlschreiber and zone for Wimbledon. #21 is the most important thing right now, everything else is secondary and expendable.

Winning Halle is a pretty good omen though. These are just numbers now man, I'm not sure even Federer can keep up with these stats and records. He'll only really care about winning the majors though. Connors record on titles is a red herring. About a quarter of those titles were on the level of church fete events.

 

[monfed]

Winning Halle is a pretty good omen though. These are just numbers now man, I'm not sure even Federer can keep up with these stats and records. He'll only really care about winning the majors though. Connors record on titles is a red herring. About a quarter of those titles were on the level of church fete events.

I think Fed thinks too much of milestones and the thought of winning #100 in the grandest tournament will be at the back of his mind. Fed is awful at toppling milestones in the first attempt. Slam #20 was a real surprise because usually he screws up and would have taken two or three attempts to get there.

The only hope is that he doesn't think too much of the total title count as it is not a prestigious thing like slams and becoming #1 are. In a close match against someone like faker or delmugtro or even dull if he escapes the first week, it may not free him up to play easily.

#1 sure plays a lot on his mind, not sure if #100 has the same importance to him.

 

[MartyB]

Winning Halle is a pretty good omen though. These are just numbers now man, I'm not sure even Federer can keep up with these stats and records. He'll only really care about winning the majors though. Connors record on titles is a red herring. About a quarter of those titles were on the level of church fete events.

I'm with you it's always been a good omen for him. There's no pressure on getting 100 at Wimbledon. He's up for that. Lol

 

[GameSetAndMath]

If Fed win this edition, this will be a "La Decima" on Halle.

 

[DarthFed]

I don't see any #100 pressure if he wins Halle. The only additional pressure would've been if he hadn't gotten back to #1 and was in position to do so at Wimbledon. I'm glad that's out of the way. Big thing at Halle is to not play a lot of 3-setters.

 

[monfed]

When is Fed's match?

 

[El Dude]

Seems like a pretty straightforward run for a Federer-Zverev final.

 

[britbox]

 

[britbox]

 

[britbox]

 

[britbox]

 

[monfed]

Thiem's accent sounds Scottish.

 

[Chris Koziarz]

Winning Halle is a pretty good omen though. These are just numbers now man, I'm not sure even Federer can keep up with these stats and records. He'll only really care about winning the majors though. Connors record on titles is a red herring. About a quarter of those titles were on the level of church fete events.

Correct. Even Fed himself was saying many times that historically he was good at wimby after good halle. That's probably the only omen he believes in here (if any), and not those incidental #1 #10, #100 numbers you fans are drooling at. Fed said on many occasions lately: e.g. #1 was not a priority for him but just a bonus and if it comes it comes by itself, not because he was "fighting" for it.

 

[Chris Koziarz]

Thiem's accent sounds Scottish.

Off topic but I have to disagree, although the issue is subjective.
I have Scottish friends and they sound quite different than Domi on this video.
I also have German & French friends for another point of comparison. The overall melody of Domi's voice sounds between those two languages and I'm unsure at first where to place it. Then certain words like "only", "grass" do not sound "french" and his "r" is not as rolling as classical french mother tongue would produce, so I'm leaning German, although "light/uncertain". Note that Sasha, by comparison in the next video, who speaks classic German, has less of a "German accent" than Domi from Austria. It could be because Sasha simply learned better English, or maybe his Russian & German tongues do mix here; I would need to hear these tongues of his to make my mind.

 

[Moxie]

Off topic but I have to disagree, although the issue is subjective.
I have Scottish friends and they sound quite different than Domi on this video.
I also have German & French friends for another point of comparison. The overall melody of Domi's voice sounds between those two languages and I'm unsure at first where to place it. Then certain words like "only", "grass" do not sound "french" and his "r" is not as rolling as classical french mother tongue would produce, so I'm leaning German, although "light/uncertain". Note that Sasha, by comparison in the next video, who speaks classic German, has less of a "German accent" than Domi from Austria. It could be because Sasha simply learned better English, or maybe his Russian & German tongues do mix here; I would need to hear these tongues of his to make my mind.

I find Thiem's accent very germanic. (And charming.) Sasha does have less of an accent on English. It's slightly German, but also kind of casually relaxed American. I don't hear anything Scots or French in either.

 

[britbox]

Monday Results from Halle

Roberto Bautista Agut (4), Spain, def. Jan-Lennard Struff, Germany, 6-4, 6-1.
Robin Haase, Netherlands, def. Joao Sousa, Portugal, 4-6, 7-5, 6-4.
Kei Nishikori (7), Japan, def. Matthias Bachinger, Germany, 6-3, 7-6 (3).
Denis Kudla, United States, def. Lukas Lacko, Slovakia, 6-4, 6-4.
Yuichi Sugita, Japan, def. Maximilian Marterer, Germany, 6-4, 5-7, 6-3.
Dominic Thiem (3), Austria, def. Mikhail Youzhny, Russia, 7-6 (5), 6-2