Diary

It has been an interesting week. I turned 52 on Tuesday. I spent a big chunk of the day researching tennis matches, visiting our daughter and grand kids and taking calls from relatives. That is a few too many distractions and I traded just 1 match.

The opening week of the US Open has not been the easiest. Fewer 3 setters in the women’s draw than we normally expect to see. That has been offset by more long matches in the Men’s tournament. You can expect upsets in the slams and we have had a few although not as many as normal. Muguruza had played fairly well in the first round but then lost to Pironkova in straight sets. Pironkova is playing her first tournament sine July 2017! Murray looked like he was going out in straight sets to Nishioka on Tuesday before he found some inspiration and fought back to win in 5.

Garcia seems to be over her confidence issues and beat top seed Pliskova in straight sets. Raonic went out to Pospisil on Thursday. I had Raonic down to reach the semis. Dimitrov lost again to Fucsovics. This time in 5 sets. Brengle disposed of a disappointing Yastremska and Cirstea beat Konta who I also expected to have a good tournament.

We had a nice price on Goffin to beat Krajinovic and he won in straight sets. Dan Evans went out in 4 sets in his delayed match with Moutet. Osaka had a tough match last night against Kostyuk and in the end was helped out by Kostyuk’s injury.

Last night saw what must be the biggest choke of the tournament and is possibly the biggest choke of the year. Tsitsipas was 2 sets to 1 up on Coric. In the fourth set Tsitsipas was 5-1, 40-0 up. He blew 6 match points and lost the set 5-7. Coric took the match in the 5th set tie break.

I have been trading since 2008 and wrote the first version of the Trading Guide in 2009. I have been asked pretty much every question that you can think of. I have seen almost everything that you would expect to see as a trading product vendor. Every year I get a handful of people who buy the Guide only for me to discover when setting up their access that they already bought it. Some bought it 10 years ago. Occasionally they bought it the same year! That’s not a massive shock. Anyone who has read the blog for a while knows that I am always messing about with or tweaking the sites so people visiting the sales site for the first time in a year or more will be seeing a very different looking page.

So not much surprises me. However something that happened late last night was a first. Someone signed up for the Trading Guide at the start of the week. Two or 3 days later they contacted Paypal and requested a refund. That’s not the surprise. I get very few refund requests apart from the people who sign up twice. This person clicked on the reason for the refund request as “Item not as described”.

As the vendor I get an email saying that someone has requested a refund. I then have 3 options. I can send them a message. I can send them a refund. I can hand it over to Paypal to decide. I sent a message. I pointed out that the “item” is EXACTLY as described and that I have been selling it for over a decade with very few complaints that it isn’t as described. I asked for more details on why they claimed that it was not as I had described it.

The Trading Guide and the service mean a hell of a lot to me. Blood, sweat AND tears have gone into it. It takes up a lot of my time and mental energy on top of trading the matches. Don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoy almost every minute of it but if you criticise my service my reaction is a bit like a parent whose 11 year old kid is being poked with a stick and is being told how ugly he is.

Anyway the reply that came back was a bit thin especially when it was made 3 days after purchasing it. However I felt that if they wanted to bail after 2 or 3 days then they probably weren’t going to put the effort in that’s required. I sent the refund.

Then last night, just before I took the dogs out, they signed up again! If this was you don’t worry. I won’t be naming you and I’m sure you will understand why I was surprised. I thought at first that it wasn’t the same person. Just a similar name. Except that it is quite an unusual name. Then I thought maybe my phone was playing up. Occasionally it shows me notifications of emails that I received many days go. I logged into Paypal to confirm it was a new payment and it was. I haven’t heard anything from them so far today but if it was you I’d love to know what brought about such a rapid change of heart.

I’m going to have a chill for a few hours until the matches start. I have the house to myself.

Have a good weekend.

 

It has been an interesting first month since the main tours resumed. The tennis on the whole has been good for trading. It has been fairly easy to get back into the swing of things. Not just with the trading but in getting the trading email written and sent out. I had kept myself busy during the lockdown so it wasn’t as if I was going from 0 to 60 from the 3rd of August.

yesterday afternoon I did a live webinar with Tony Hargraves to look at the US Open draws. I haven’t had much feedback so far but it seemed to go OK. I’ll put a link to the recording at the end of this post.

On the WTA tournaments page there is a tournament in Prague that starts today. You don’t usually get another main tour event running alongside the slams. That would be a pain as I guarantee to cover all main tour matches for the trading email. The tournament starts this morning. I was looking through the long list of matches and it looked more like an ITF or Challenger standard of players. Tennis 24 and Tennis Insight both listed it as a Challenger. It seems the tournament is being funded by the USTA to give lower ranked players the chance to earn some prize money as they have not had the qualifying rounds at the US Open. Excellent! I won’t be covering those then.

On one of the dog walk routes I pass an area of trees that have recently been cut down by the council. I aw them doing it one day this week as I drove past. it was one of the days with horrendous winds and the smaller branches were blowing all over the road. Anyway when I drove past the next day I noticed tat they had cut a lot of the trees into logs. They would look great as edgings at the bottom of the front garden where the gravel area meets the hedge.

On the walk last night I had a detour to have a look at the logs. A lot of them have been taken but there is a pile left. A couple of the bigger logs would look great in the garden. Sue’s working so I’ll be dropping her off around 6:30am. I’ll stop off on the way home and stick a couple of the logs in the car.

I have a busy few weeks from tomorrow. I’ll be making a start on the US open first round matches for the trading email. I’ll try to have a bit of a chill out day today.

I didn’t have much luck with the dent in my car. The hot water and dent puller tool (basically a mini sink plunger) have improved it a little. I haven’t given up yet. I saw another tool on youtube! You glue plastic tabs onto the dent and use something called a slide hammer to pull the dent. Then use alcohol to remove the glue from your paint. it looks ideal for the small dent i have. It arrives tomorrow. I love gadgets and can’t wait to try it.

Just a reminded that i won’t be doing my usual Youtube videos during the slams. if you want trading advice on the US Open visit https://blog.tradesharktennis.com/trading-advice-email

Here is the link to the Tony Hargraves webinar. https://youtu.be/J48MfpyQDIw