The penultimate Masters 1000 event starts next week in Shanghai. Roger Federer already announced a week ago that he was going to skip Shanghai and not return until Basel. Djokovic was expected to withdraw too, especially after he withdrew from Beijing where he is defending champ. However, he waited until today to make that announcement.
The last time Mardy Fish and Rafael Nadal played was in the quarterfinals of Cincinnati. Rafael Nadal, like many other pros, loves Japanese food and his team was at a local Japanese place when Nadal handled a very hot plate and burned his fingers. This caused Nadal to struggle a bit with his backhand. In
The top four seeds have made their way into the Tokyo semifinals with the expected final showdown between Nadal and Murray. In the first match of the day, Mardy Fish took on Bernard Tomic. Although Tomic is fairly talented, he still struggles with errors and this may be because he plays relatively few tournaments, especially
Perhaps one day there will be a player with a huge serve that plays huge off the ground. That's tough because with a huge serve, there's not much need to be a great baseliner. Such was the dilemma of Milos Raonic when he faced Rafael Nadal in the second round in Tokyo. Raonic had a
Today, in Tokyo, there were quite a few three setters. Murray had a pretty tough opening round playing Marcos Baghdatis who reached the finals of Kuala Lumpur last week. He needed three sets to beat the Cypriot. Tipsarevic, who won Kuala Lumpur, had chances to beat Tursunov but despite being breaks up on him, Tursunov
Some early round results in Tokyo. Nadal d Soeda 63 62 Raonic d Sugita 67 63 76 Giraldo d Haase 63 76 Gulbis d Kubot 63 36 75 Ito d Sela 64 36 63 Tomic d Troicki 76 76 Ferrer d Nishikori 64 63 Bogomolov d Nieminen 64 64 A little surprise with Ito, a
Four matches were completed in Tokyo, an ATP 500 event. Mardy Fish played Ryan Harrison for the third time this year and for the third time, he beat him. Harrison did push Fish to a third set, but Fish still claimed the victory 6-4, 3-6, 7-5. Generally, Americans have not fared that well in events
Even a tournament as small as Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur can have a significant impact on rankings, especially if you're not ranked in the top ten. Most players ranked around 30 or 40 in the world usually have one very good tournament, possibly a win or a finals, and then a few solid results, a
Andy Murray is on a chase to do something he's never done before. Become #3 at the end of the year. OK, when you're in a culture that only values number 1, this may not seem like much, but when #1 is a guy having the season that hasn't happened in 25 years and when
Kalamazoo is maybe best known, in tennis circles, for hosting the USTA tournament for juniors. In particular, the winner of the USTA 18 and unders is often given a wildcard into the US Open. This year, that winner was Jack Sock. But back in 2005, it was Donald Young. He beat Sam Querrey in 3
