TENNIS TUESDAY: Thiem Beats Nadal, Wins Barcelona; Kvitova Wins Stuttgart, Reaches World #2; Gimelstob Sentenced

THIEM BEATS NADAL ON CLAY (AGAIN)
Dominic Thiem faced the 11-time champion Rafael Nadal at the Barcelona Open, a reprise of the final here two years before as well as the 2018 French Open final but this time the result was different, with a 6-4 6-4 victory for the Austrian. The last time Nadal reached this far into the tennis year without a title was 2004, and for the second week in a row the King of Clay failed to win a set in a semifinal on his favorite surface, having lost to Fabio Fognini last week in Monte Carlo.

THIEM WINS BARCELONA OVER MEDVEDEV
Dominic Thiem, the Prince of Clay, and heir apparent to Nadal won the Barcelona title without dropping a set, despite facing Nadal in the semifinals and Daniil Medvedev (who beat Novak Djokovic in Monte Carlo) in the finals. Thiem lost the first three games of the final and then ran off a string of 12 of 13 games (5 in a row and then 7 in a row) to claim his 13th career title with a 6-4 6-0 victory. and join Federer as the only player on tour to have won two titles in 2019 (Indian Wells and Barcelona).

KVITOVA WINS STUTTGART, REACHES CAREER HIGH WORLD #2 (AGAIN)
Petra Kvitova has led the WTA tour in match wins (24) and tour finals (4) and now becomes the first player to win a second title in 2019 by defeating Anna Kontaveit 6-3 7-6(2) in Stuttgart. The streak of one-time winners this year was as high at 18 on the women's side and 15 on the men's. The 2019 Australian Open finalist lost to Kontaveit in the 3rd round of the 2018 French Open despite coming in as one of the players to watch after winning in Prague and Madrid last year. With the win, Kvitova is solidly atop the Race to has matched her career high ranking of World #2 and is less than 200 points away from World #1 Naomi Osaka.

GIMELSTOB PLEADS NO CONTEST, GETS THREE YEARS PROBATION FOR VIOLENT ASSAULT
Justin Ginelstob has pled "no contest" this week to the charges that he violently assaulted Randall Kaplan, a close friend of Gimelstob's ex-wife Cary Gimelstob on October 31, 2018. Gimelstob is a powerful figure in men's tennis, as a prominent commentator on Tennis Channel and controlling multiple seats on the ATP Players Council and a former coach of American men's #1 John Isner. Very few prominent people in tennis have spoken out against Gimelstob retaining his high profile in tennis but Andy Murray ("I don't see how he can maintain his position at the ATP") and The Tennis Podcast.

ATP WORLD TOUR FINALS MOVES TO TURIN, ITALY FOR 2021-2025
The ATP announced today that the year-end championships, now called the Nitto ATP World Tour Finals, which have been in London for the last several years, will be held in Turin, Italy for five years starting in 2021. So, the annual "Race to London" for the Top 8 players of the year will be rebranded as the "Race to Turin" I presume!

Italy Day 7-9: Torino At Night

These are the Luci di Artisti, a festival of lights which is in Turin every winter. From top to bottom, these are the lights along Via Roma, Via Garibaldi, Via Lagrange and Via Barbaroux.

Three Reasons Why Clinton Won New Hampshire

Even in Turin, Italy the news of "Frontrunner" Hillary Clinton's astonishing win of the New Hampshire primary election on Tuesday has been jaw-dropping. On MyDD alumni Chris Bowers and Matt Stoller's new project OpenLeft, I posited these three reasons for her victory:

I think Clinton's win was due to (in order of relative importance on her making up the deficit)

3) Absentee ballots (some fraction of voters had voted for Clinton when he NH lead was huge prior to the Obama bounce from Iowa).

2) Lying white voters telling pollsters they would vote for Obama and then not being able to do it when they got to the polling booth. Heck, they even lied when they came out of the booth! (exit polls put the vote split at 39-39--Obama got 2 percentage points less--that's your lying deficit.)

1) Too Much (Polling) Info: all the polls saying that Clinton was going to lose big made NH voters (especially women and white voters) who would have voted for Obama decide that they could risk voting for Hillary. I think if we lived in a country (i.e. France) where publication of polling data within 72 hours of the election is illegal, Obama would have won.

Last time I checked the upcoming primary schedule Clinton was expected to do well in the Nevada caucuses (Jan 19), Obama should win South Carolina (Jan 26). Clinton should win the two states who have had their delgates stripped (Michigan Jan 15 and Florida Jan 26) and who knows what the heck will happen on "Tsunami Tuesday" February 5th. It is doubtful that Edwards will win everywhere, but he should have enough delegates to deny a majority to eith Clinton or Obama! One thing is clear, the race will very much still be alive by the time I get back to the United States on Friday January 18th.