AndrewHill

What I mean by Blake's game getting the better of him is that he is a fairly consistent player until he loses a service game or worse. I've seen him crack under pressure on all surfaces by now when he's down in a match: he serves faster and doesn't take his time in between points, resulting in a lot of second serves; he doesn't rally and tries for a fast winner instead, resulting in a lot of unforced errors. I don't think you necessarily need to serve and volly on grass to be successful; of course, the serve and volly strategy on grass is certainly an advantage. Agree that Blake fairs best on hardcourts.

Interesting first week so far. Probably the more interesting developments are in the men's draw with the surprising results of Safin defeating Djokovic Wednesday and Tipsarevic defeating Roddick yesterday. Davydanko has had a poor result at Wimbledon for the last five years, so it was no big shock that he lost in straights. Blake has always been an interesting case for me, because it seems that he should always fair better than he does, but I think he turns out to be his own worst enemy, crumbling under pressure when down a set or even a break, e.g not taking his time and serving too fast or looking for a fast winner instead of a rally. On paper, he should've won against Schuettler yesterday so to see him in a fifth set and lose was surprising. Lastly, with David Nalbandian's early exit that leaves 5 top 10 seeds in the draw; and arguably with most of the top 10 players that pose a real threat, sans Ferrer, out of the way, my prediction is that we will see yet another Rafa-Federer final. There has been a lot of criticism about Nadal's game on other surfaces besides clay. There is no doubt that Nadal is destined to be one of the best if not the best clay court player of all time, but I think that Nadal's grass court game has dramatically improved, with meeting Federer in the Wimbledon finals last year and winning the Queen's Club Championship against Djokovic prior to this event. I think that Nadal is starting to become a very good competitor on this surface. A word about Tipsarevic. I think this guy is a wild and dangerous player, clearly showing that he can play top 10 players, especially when he took two sets off of Federer at the Australian. He doesn't have a big game but this guy is a smart player, coming up with amazing shots at the right time. I think he's ranked 39 right now, but if he keeps on playing like this it seems that he's destined to crack the top 30 or maybe even higher by year's end. On the ladies side, Sharapova played surprisingly poor, but the new rising star for me seems to be Dinara Safina, Marat's little sister, who was in the finals with Ivanovic at the French. She has been playing impressively so far, so it will be interesting to see if Ivanovich's closing remarks at the French about seeing Safina in many more finals will come true. So I predict that it will be a Safina-Ivanovich final. What say you?

Trying to avoid running the air conditioning but when my thermometer read 82 degrees yesterday in the house, I couldn't take it anymore. Even with the air conditioning set at 72, its still feels kinda muggy and the temp outside already reads 75 and its only 7:35 in the morning! Can't wait for fall.

Now back to our regularly scheduled complaining: $4.02

Bought used Milford Graves/Sunny Morgan-Percussion Ensemble-ESP Disk/Calibre Should be coming in the mail any day now.

:rsmile:

Muggy

more ra:

really big hats:

real big hats:

more hats:

really big:

Real big:

Those covers are sweet! Any reason why subsequent issues never used them?

Nice hats, keep'em coming!

RRK2

RRK

Parlan's On the Spur of the Moment should not be missed-anything with the Turrentine brothers in the front line is usually quite excellent stuff. Also, if it hasn't been mentioned, Stan's That's Where its At is another excellent date, and in new RVG sound.

EJ:

Another:

This seems like fun! I'll start:

Nice list. The Monterose and Clark will be welcome upgrades. May upgrade the Rivers if the sound vastly improves. The Moncur sounds good in its current configuration (I have the collector's choice). And finally some Curtis Fuller!