Two months ago, you'd be hard-pressed to say Novak Djokovic was going to defend his title in Dubai. Players like Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Andy Murray, Nikolay Davydenko were expected to play. Indeed, if you were to preview Djokovic's form playing Dubai, you might wonder if he could defend. But luck has a way of
If you're in the United States, you're used to team sports. It's so common in the US so important to Americans, that many in the US view sports with a team sports lens. There are other sports which lack a regular season/postseason structure. For those Americans that don't like sports--and there are plenty, or for
If this were a political thing, perhaps there would be more antagonism between Novak Djokovic, a Serb, and Ivan Ljubicic, a Croatian. But each player has their own drama, independent of which country they play for. In particular, Novak Djokovic, who came from nowhere in 2007 to be a solid number 3, and entered Dubai
After Andy Murray was dismissed in straight sets by Roger Federer, some may have thought Murray would have gone back to the drawing board, figuring how to retool his game to beat the number 1 player in the world. However, the tears that came during the post-match ceremony was only the tip of the iceberg,
Hardcourt tournaments are so prevalent that there are three distinct hardcourt "seasons". The first starts at the beginning of the year and lasts until just before the start of the clay season. It culminates in Indian Wells and Miami. The second starts two weeks after Wimbledon and is the US Open series. The third pretty
It was bound to happen at some point. Sam Querrey finally met John Isner, his doubles partner, in a tournament. Querrey won a tournament in 2008, but it was early in 2009 when he reached the finals of Auckland, losing to Juan Martin del Potro, that Querrey began to make his move up. He decided
Rafael Nadal and Juan Martin del Potro aren't the only two players taking time off to recover. Roger Federer, who was last seen winning the Australian Open, has withdrawn from Dubai next week, leaving Novak Djokovic, world number 2, as the top seed. Andy Murray had been in the same half of the draw as
I don't think Andy Roddick saw this coming. When Sampras retired after the 2002 US Open and when Agassi retired after the 2006 US Open, we were left with the very serious questions: who's the next great American? Andy sometimes gets a bad rap. There are those dedicated to Andy because Andy is our best
Ah, the rankings. How did Rafael Nadal go from number 4 to number 3 without playing? Last we say, Nadal was retiring from his quarterfinal encounter with Andy Murray at the Australian Open. As the defending champion, Nadal lost a ton of points when his results from last year fell off. For those who don't
Robin Soderling had requested a wildcard from tournament director and former player, Richard Krajicek. Krajicek said he was having a difficult time deciding which low-ranked Dutch player should get one of the wildcards left for Rotterdam, so he was relieved when Soderling called him up. It was a no-brainer to give Soderling a wildcard, especially
