It's well-known that the seedings prevent number 1 and number 2 from meeting each other until the final. What's not as well known, because people often neglect non-favorites, is that number 3 and number 4 can also not meet each other in the final. With Federer and Nadal being so dominant, usually one or the
If you looked at the form of the players the last 2-3 months, Federer was the man. He won Stockholm. He won Basel. He won the year-end championship without dropping a match. This included a defeat of his main rival, Rafael Nadal. He started the year playing well, winning Doha over Davydenko. Nadal ended last
Everyone loves to do it, but it really doesn't make sense. Back in December, people were asked "make predictions who will win the Slams in 2011". You never know which player will come out of nowhere to make an impression. If you were to ask, at the end of 2008, who would win the Slams
Andy Murray had only played Alexandr Dolgopolov once, nearly 4 years ago, in a clay court in a Davis Cup match. Murray won this against a very young Dolgopolov. He expected a far different match from the one he had played so many years ago. Dolgopolov has a reputation for being a tricky player to
Although there are two quarterfinals left, and either lower-ranked win would constitute an upset, I'm going ahead and listing the upsets of the tournament so far. Bernard Tomic d. Feliciano Lopez, 2R. It's really his defeat of Lopez and Chardy in the first round that make this a relatively huge upset. Tomic is ranked 199
Sometimes those big victories resonate in the mind more. Tomas Berdych beat Novak Djokovic in the semifinals of Wimbledon to reach his first final. People forget that Berdych and Djokovic met twice more that year with Djokovic winning both encounters (Davis Cup and the round robin at the ATP World Tour Finals). Much like Wawrinka
Stan Wawrinka had made some big changes. He had hired Peter Lundren, an early Federer coach. This had lead to a title at Chennai. He had thumped Andy Roddick. Although the thinking was Wawrinka could beat Federer, the ESPN announcers knew that Roger wasn't Andy. Even Andy knew he wasn't Roger. For one, Roger is
The road through up-and-comer success goes through David Ferrer and he's not letting anyone pass. In the third round, he beat Richard Berankis in a thumping. Then, he needed 4 sets to beat Milos Raonic of Canada. Raonic was able to use his power serve and groundies and good approaches to the net to take
Up until now, Murray hadn't faced a really tough opponent. He played 32nd seed, Guillermo Garcia-Lopez and pummeled him. Garcia-Lopez seemed confused and unable to pressure Murray. However, Melzer was seen as a crafty lefty with more power than Garcia-Lopez. Melzer had had an indifferent career for nearly a decade, his rankings mired in the
It's half way through the Australian Open with the top half of the draw needing to complete their fourth round matches. Let's see how the top seeds are doing. Rafael Nadal. Nadal beat an injured Marcos Daniel, then a qualifier in Ryan Sweeting. Bernard Tomic nearly took a set off Nadal. It's hard to say
