With the ATP World Tour Finals concluded, it's a good time to look back at the year in tennis. Yes, yes, there's still a Davis Cup final to be played, but we know enough to start looking back. Where we thought we were heading in 2012 At the end of every year, fans prognosticate about
Whenever Djokovic and Nadal meet, there's a chance that the match will be a grind-fest. Nowhere was this more evident than the 2012 Australian Open final which went 6 hours. These are the two best defensive players in the world. Nadal was looking to win his first year-end championship. Many years, due to injury, he
These days, when Federer plays Djokovic, there's a period of time where Djokovic's game seems to go off the boil and Federer is able to play his game and win a set, but it always feels like the reason Federer wins the set is that Djokovic's game is slightly off, not because Federer is really
Most players find the time after the US Open difficult. They've given their best up to the US Open, but lag afterwards. There are some exceptions. Roger Federer generally plays decently well after the US Open, though he does schedule a fair bit of rest before Shanghai. The other big exception is Novak Djokovic. Nearly
If there's anyone who understands what Nadal went through when he took 7 months off the tour, it has to be Juan Martin del Potro. At the end of 2009, del Potro looked like he might be the man to crack the triumvirate of Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic. He had won the US Open by
Tennis is a peculiar sport. For the most part, players' rankings are determined by how many tournaments they play and how well they do in each tournament. Some, who follow tennis rather sporadically, tend to place the emphasis of who is playing and who is winning. To give an example, let's look at the women's
At this moment, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic have met each other more times than any Open-era male rivalry (no one can compare to the Evert-Navratilova rivalry which had around 80 matches). Rafa leads the rivalry 22-15 meaning they've played 37 times. Indeed, they met 6 times in 2011 and 7 times in 2009. Over
This time, the Monday final was deliberate. Since 2008, every US Open final has been pushed to Monday due to rain. This year, the weather held up enough that it could have been held on Sunday. However, the players had complained that the game had become so physical that the players needed a day of
What? Not a provocative enough title? Most people were surprised when Nadal came back on tour in South America. Of course, Nadal is king of clay, but they thought, even with a weakened field, that he would struggle some. After all, Juan Martin del Potro took off a comparable amount of time (roughly February of
Before the semifinals started, some were asked who had the better chance for the upset: Richard Gasquet or Stan Wawrinka. Almost unanimously, it was Stan Wawrinka. Of the two, Wawrinka actually had tour wins over Djokovic, admittedly, only two, and admittedly, only early in their career. Gasquet, by contrast, was 0-10 against Nadal dating back
