Friday 23 September 2016

'HEY JIM, JUST CHECKING'...........

In case you haven't read much on this site of mine I will reiterate a point that I made after the 2016 Australian Open after I took exception to a comment made by 'Mr Egotistical' himself, Jim Courier.
During the Federer/ Goffin match in the Round of 16 Jim came up with a theory as to why David Goffin of Belgium was ranked so high and quite frankly I found it both hilarious and insulting all in one.
Now you are probably aware of my views on certain Commentators of the Tennis World and why I don't like many of them and it's because of their ridiculous way of taking sides or refusing to even acknowledge a player. One at Wimbledon this year came out with "I don't know anything about this player" which I found to be rather confusing because if you take 5 minutes out of your busy schedule it's easy to look up.
You see on the ATP World Tour site there is that much information about players that it's easy to find out in probably less than 5 minutes what certain players like, dislike, their rankings history, prize money and where they reside. If I was a commentator and about to call a match then I would use my initiative, look up the site, do some homework before the match and perhaps even bluff my way through a few things.
'I see David Goffin has made over one and a half million dollars already this year, his Father is in fact a Tennis Coach in his home town in Belgium and he was voted by his fellow peers 'the comeback player of 2014'.
Now if a commentator doesn't already know this sort of stuff about a player such as Goffin well they really have no excuses because it's all there in writing, all you have to do is both use your initiative and press a few buttons, simple really. Back to Courier, Mr Egotistical.
At this year's Aussie Open Mr Ego felt that it was his duty to explain to the public why David Goffin was ranked World number 16 and he was far from complimentary about it saying among other things that he received ranking points from Davis Cup matches that held no significance. Well Jim it's like this buddy, Mr Goffin is now ranked World number 14, he did even get as high as number 11, so how did that happen then ey ? Did he bluff his way to that number ??!
You cannot fake a World Tennis ranking unless maybe it's in the Futures events where guys are ranked down in the seven and eight hundreds for example but on the World Tour it is basically an impossibility to hold a 'fake' ranking. Try telling that to Mr Ego himself.
I touched on the Jim Courier book reading saga in an old post where I relayed some facts about this particular person bringing the sport of tennis into disrepute. This all came about when Jim thought it would be a good thing to read a book at the change of ends, a book that had nothing to do with tennis and which had arrogance written all over it.
I believe that Mr Courier was told by certain people in tennis that this antic was not to be done again due to the look that it gave the sport. If every tennis player sat down and read a book at the change of ends it would look like a children's nursery rhyme session with the only thing missing being the ball kids huddled around the offending player with big cheesy grins waiting for the moment when 'Itsy bitsy spider crawled up the water spout'.
Jim Courier is far from perfect yet he makes out that he is a man of great integrity and who never put a foot wrong, I tend to dispute that and I take exception to him bagging current players and their rankings. Sure I may have had a dig here and there regarding certain players however it has never been over their World rankings, probably just their antics. A player is a number for a reason, not because he wears fancy clothes.
Personally I think Jim Courier should apologise to the little guy from Belgium because it was uncalled for and lacked substance yet that's Jim Courier for you, full of his own self importance. Silly sport tennis, full of silly egotistical people......