By Chris Oddo | Tuesday, June 3, 2014
Put your party hats on, people. It's time for the Day 10 Media Mash.
Photo Source: RolandGarros.com
Couldn’t make the trek to clay-court mecca this year? No worries, we’ve got you covered. Take a tour around the Roland Garros grounds without ever leaving your computer monitor with the Media Mash.
More Media Mash: Day 1 | Day 3 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9
OMG, that is what it takes to return the Raonic serve. It’s like trying to play baseball without a strike zone. Beautiful capture of an amazing athlete. Djokovic needed this type of “elevated” play to squeeze by Milos Raonic in straight sets to reach his sixth career Roland Garros final.
You know ESPN is going to try to make us all sick of this picture in the next few days, but we WILL NEVER GET SICK OF IT!! Seriously, it’s pretty adorable, no?
Well, it’s possible, but I don’t think we’ll every be ready for Ernests Gulbis winning a Grand Slam title.
Oh no! Tomas Berdych’s Hawaiian H&M shirt is contagious. Run for your lives!
Have to love what Ernests Gulbis has to say here. Especially the last paragraph. And on another subject. Why is it a guys fault if his father is rich? Even if Gulbis never did what he did this week in Roland Garros, he obviously put in quite a few hard yards to get to where he could become a successful professional athlete. In short: Gulbis is not the freeloading rich kid that many make him out to be. He didn’t get to be that serve and that backhand without being very serious about his craft and the sport of tennis.
We love grass-court tennis. But we are philosophically opposed to talking about it until we've were through on the terre battue. It's just no proper. Pretend you never saw this picture and move on down the page...
Nothing quite like the fans at Roland Garros. It has taken us a while to warm up to them, and they are by no means perfect, but of all the four Slams they are the most adept at supercharging the atmosphere with hair-raising electricity. Thank you Paris, you rock!
In one of the more curious decisions of the day, ESPN Tennis decided it would be a good idea to produce tape-delayed tweets to go with their tape-coverage of the women’s quarterfinals. Was it a joke? A publicity ploy to get people talking about them? Well, it worked on both counts. We’re laughing, and we’re talking about how stupid the idea was… IN SHORT: Please stop, you’re confusing us.
STAT OF THE DAY: The mind-blowing clay-court numbers just keep rolling in for Maria Sharapova… Make it 18 straight three-setters on clay for the gritty Russian. She really looked down and out and vulnerable against Garbine Muguruza for about a set and a half, but as usual her fierce determination and will to win kicked in to help her gut out the massive win.
The king of clay turns 28! Happy b-day Rafa. Rumor has it that he asked for only one thing for his birthday, and it starts with the number 9…
Rafa celebrates for the camera…
The more Ernests wins, the more we get to hear his poignant philosophical and comedic ramblings in press. It’s been fun so far…
Pretty much everybody makes funny faces when they hit a tennis ball—every tennis fan knows that from searching through volumes of pictures—but Milos Raonic takes it to a whole new level with his tongue sticking out. Very lizard-like, don’t you think?
Two words: Rising star!
Sveta’s message (pulled directly from her Instagram feed) : #notoracism #blackisbeautiful #whiteisbeautiful.
LAST BUT NOT LEAST: It’s always a good day at Roland Garros when Guga’s in the house.