Tennis Today: Maria Sharapova rocks the GOAT boat, Kyle Edmund training like ‘an animal’

Shahida Jacobs
May 16, 2018

In Tennis Today, Maria Sharapova has upset Roger Federer’s fans with her GOAT comment while Kyle Edmund is training ‘like an animal’, but we can’t confirm if it’s a goat.

What’s on the site
Andy Murray celebrated his birthday on Tuesday and of course we had to do something in his honour. We decided to look back at his incredible 2016 season.

Serena Williams hasn’t played on clay in two years, but her coach Patrick Mouratoglou is confident she will be fit for the French Open.

The Italian Open is in full swing, but how much do you know about the ATP Masters 100 event? Take our quiz to find out.

Results round-up:
ATP Rome
WTA Rome report one
WTA Rome report two

What’s in the news
This was always going to happen, wasn’t it? As Tennis Today reported yesterday, Maria Sharapova practiced with Rafael Nadal and she referred to him as the GOAT. Well, Roger Federer’s fans are not happy.

As GiveMeSport.com reports, there might be more to Sharapova’s message as Federer was critical when she failed her dope test while Nadal sent her a “lovely message”.

Who needs Maria Sharapova when Ivan Rakitic names you “by far my favorite athlete”? Express Sport reports that Croatia and Barcelona midfielder has revealed “it’s a dream of mine to invite him [Federer] to come here to Barcelona”.

French player Alize Cornet has been cleared by an independent tribunal after she failed to show for three doping tests in one year. The tribunal found the doping control officer did not take “reasonable steps” to locate her.

International Tennis Federation confirmed the ruling via a press released.

Kyle Edmund is determined to improve further and Telegraph Sport reveals he is “using former training partner of Usain Bolt in mission to improve court speed”.

In case you were wondering Edmund “has trained like an animal to improve his first step”.

The NextGen finals will once again be used to test innovations and one thing that is catching the eye is the introduction of a towel rail.

The Daily Mail says “tennis is to take its first steps towards stopping ballkids acting as butlers for the players by introducing a towel rail at the back of the court at an event later this year”.

Tennis Today has previously mentioned the Daily Mail’s weird obsession with the property market and today they report that a Sydney tennis court “sold for an astonishing $2.4million in six hours flat”.

Everyone is having their say about the royal wedding so why not Eugenie Bouchard as well? The Daily Star, Genie’s biggest fans, decided to do a story about her three-word sentence on the issue.

What’s on social media
As you can expect, Andy Murray was excited about his birthday. No, really.

I love birthdays.

A post shared by Andy Murray (@andymurray) on May 15, 2018 at 9:13am PDT

Staying with birthday, not the gift Grigor Dimitrov was expecting.

Not the birthday surprise @GrigorDimitrov was expecting… ????

Happy birthday, Grigor ?? pic.twitter.com/zQtLgaRCx1

— Tennis TV (@TennisTV) May 16, 2018