Post any noteworthy pieces of commentary that you wish to share.
That's just sad. A five year old would have pwned his ass.Change of ends, and the camera pans to a shot of the flags of the four grand slam nations.
Enter Fred Stolle.
"On the left..Australia, France [2 second pause] the..uh..wimbledon.....and the US". Dude! Poor guy. Probably got a million things running through his mind...England, no er, Great Britain? United Kingdom? Union Jack? the wimbledon.
I doubt he was making a political statement about imagined problems between Serbia and Russia, he probably meant it would be a big deal because Russia was the 2006 champion and 2007 finalist and a big country with a lot of great tennis players, along the lines of saying it would mean a lot for Ernests Gulbis to beat James Blake or for Horna & Cuevas to take out the Bryans.During the Djokovic-Gulbis match on ESPN2 Cahill and the guy with him, I think Chris something, talked about how Djokovic retired during the Serbia-Russia Davis Cup tie. Chris was like "think of what it would have meant to Serbia to beat Russia" and I was thinking they aren't any problems between Serbia and Russia that this would be that big a deal. It's not like when the US beats Russia or when Argentia beat Great Britain.
I heard that too.Whoever is commentating with John Newcombe called Gonzo "Francisco Gonzalez" today.
It would seem that Masur still has deep wounds from the first-round drubbing he received on home soil in Brisbane at the hands of Francisco Gonzalez in 1984, although he did get revenge at the US Open two years later.Wally Masur has been calling Gonzalez, Francisco for a number of years, it seems. :retard: Shouldn't he know better considering that he does been doing commentary for many years and Gonzalez has been around for a long time?
What a lack of imagination. Why not make it "Here we have the Hulk and the Green Hornet?"Romanian commentators for Eurosport, world champs at stating the obvious :retard:
(when changing to the Nadal/Almagro match) "Here we have Rafael Nadal and Nicolas Almagro, 2 guys in green"
Wow... DEEP, this analysis.(during the Dementieva/Safina match, just before the 2nd set TB) "If Dementieva wins the TB, she wins the match; if Safina wins the TB, the match will go into the third and decisive set"
:haha: oh dear dear dear.I'm surprised the stupid gimp didn't add rapper, blues guitarist and cotton picker.
haha obviously he's concerned about it himself. :lol:About Borg:
Leif Shiras: "He still looks pretty good, hasn't even lost any hair!"
JMac: "Why are you looking at me when you say that?" :lol:
10 minutes ago the Eurosport portuguese commentator said something like this:
"Andy Murray has a new hairstyle. He used to wear a shrub in his head." :lol::haha:
PS: I'm sorry for the translation but I didn't know how to translate what he said, exactly.
Great opinion piece from James Martin about the ESPN/NBC commentators.
http://www.tennis.com/features/general/features.aspx?id=134744
Something dawned on me when I was watching ESPN and NBC’s coverage of the French Open this year. Television needs to come up with a new mute button. Not one that blocks out the sounds of the game. Listening to the ball come off the strings, the sliding (or squeaking, depending on surface) of the shoes, the grunts of the players, and the "shhhs" of a crowd before a big point—this is the soundtrack to my life, my passion.
No, this new mute button will keep all of those sounds but simply, mercifully, block out the commentators’ blather. And it is, for the most part, blather, dumbed down to the lowest common denominator and more grating than Dick Vitale on Red Bull.
Here are the two main problems with the way ESPN and NBC, among other networks, approach their coverage.
1. Too many talking heads
For Serena Williams’ first round match at Roland Garros, for example, ESPN had four, count ’em four, commentators: Dick Enberg, Mary Carillo, Mary Joe Fernandez, and Pam Shriver courtside. What, they couldn’t squeeze John McEnroe, Pat McEnroe, and Bud Collins in there, too? Even the Superbowl usually uses fewer people in the booth.
At a minimum, tennis broadcasters feel compelled to have three folks in the booth (a play-by-play guy, plus two "color" commentators) and one courtside for all matches. Clearly, someone has circulated an email suggesting there is strength in numbers, but it’s just not the case. This overkill approach turns telecasts into bad dinner parties, where everyone feels the need to get their two-cents into the discussion. Net result is a cacophony of incessant back-and-forth banter, much of which is off-topic. I sometimes feel John McEnroe spends more time talking about how lightweight racquets and string technology allow the players to hit the ball harder than he could in his day than he does actually calling the matches.
This dinner-party dynamic is part and parcel of a second problem. . . .
2. Too much talk
Tennis announcers dread silence, or dead air, as if they were working for radio. This all-the-time chatter ranges from the insignificant to the significant, the obscure to the obvious. One dreadful example: During an Ana Ivanovic match at the French, Ivanovic approached the net to take a floater out of the air. Enberg, who, I’m sorry, needs to start his retirement today, announced that Ivanovic is, well, coming to the net. It was quite helpful . . . . for all viewers of ESPN who happen to be blind, that is. In another match, the commentators described in detail how the chair umpire is checking a ball mark, as if viewers would mistake his pointing to the clay for something else.
Sadly, there are countless examples. And Enberg isn’t the only guilty one. Mary Carillo and John McEnroe need to dial their talk (and egos) back. Ted Robinson could throw a few dozen fewer softball questions to McEnroe and, while he’s at it, stop offering up almost by-the-minute affirmations to Mac’s commentary. It’s all enough to drive tennis fans nuts. Really, how many times during a match do we have to be reminded that this is a "big match"? How many times do we have to hear those tired background stories? (I might lose it if I listen to the Ivanovic-pool chestnut one more time.)
With Wimbledon approaching, much of which will be carried on ESPN and NBC, we can expect more of the same. I’m dreading it.
So, at the risk of being presumptuous or rude, I’m confident I speak for most tennis fans when I implore these Chatty Kathys to show some restraint. We’ve got eyes. We can see what’s happening.
More than that, there needs to be an understanding that less is much, much more. Tennis is a beautiful sport. Watching a point play out with only the sounds of the players, ball, and crowd is enough. No, really. And having quiet between points, as the players ready themselves for another slugfest, actually builds tension and adds to the drama. But the match’s momentum and excitement is disrupted when Carillo and company constantly interject their random thoughts, likes, and dislikes about the players. (Do I really need to know, or care, if Carillo admires a player for being "a jock"?)
And if you think the state of commentary in the U.S. is in good shape then you didn’t have the privilege of catching the Tennis Channel’s coverage of the Masters Series events in Monte Carlo, Rome, and Hamburg. This is tennis on TV the way it’s supposed to be. And while the Tennis Channel doesn’t deserve full credit for the broadcasts, which come from a world feed, using European commentators who do all the Masters events, the network has, indirectly, shown us a better way.
These announcers, two gents whose names escape me, are all about economy of words. Instead of describing everything the viewers can see, they let the action speak for itself. Instead of throwing out countless statistics, they offer sparse insight. Instead of being caught up in their own images, they rightfully take second fiddle to the players on the court. Instead of telling the back stories of every single player, they keep the attention squarely focused on where it belongs, the tennis.
After a long point, they often just add the punctuation—"Brilliant," or, "Absolutely fantastic," or "a perfect clay-court slide"—rather than recapping everything you just saw. Sure, they can get carried away, talk too much, and traffic in clichés, and not everything they say is, in fact, brilliant. But it’s better than what’s offered in the U.S. Much better.
Part of this difference is cultural. Televised sports in the U.S. are obsessed with pre-game, in-game, and post-game commentary and analysis and fixated on the notion of turning the broadcasters into stars themselves. Apparently, it’s not enough to have celebrities on the field, you need them in the booth, too.
To see this contrast in full view, watch Sports Center on ESPN and the nightly Sky Sports recap of European (and primarily British) sports on Fox Soccer Channel. One set of anchors acts like a bunch of clowns, the others do something far more radical—they read the news and let you draw your own conclusions.
I’d love to think that NBC and ESPN, among others, will sit their commentators down and ask them (nicely, of course) to take a page out of their European counterparts. It’s probably wishful thinking.
In the meantime, I’ll wait for someone to devise that new mute button.
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"To see this contrast in full view, watch Sports Center on ESPN and the nightly Sky Sports recap of European (and primarily British) sports on Fox Soccer Channel. One set of anchors acts like a bunch of clowns, the others do something far more radical—they read the news and let you draw your own conclusions."
:haha: That is so true. The blowhards on ESPN are way obnoxious.
"Enberg, who, I’m sorry, needs to start his retirement today..."
Thank God somebody in the press finally said it out loud. x234567899
He knows how to serve aces in the deuce court as well as in the ad court.Commentators of BBC during the Nadal – Karlovic match:
"Karlovic is versatile player"