Around the time of the US Open, Andy Roddick finally admitted that he had been suffering a bout with mono. Keen fans of tennis will recall that Roger Federer was afflicted with mono at the start of 2008. He "only" reached the semifinals of the Australian Open. That year was the duo surprise of Novak
Ivan Lendl had a peculiar career. He reached 4 Slam finals before winning his first one, the 1984 French Open final, and even then, he barely won, courtesy of John McEnroe's serve fizzling in the last few sets. He would lose 2 more Slam finals before winning his second Slam, giving him a paltry record
Rafael Nadal Last year, Rafa had a down year. He lost to Federer on clay for the first time in a while in Madrid. He lost in the French for the first time. He had to skip Wimbledon. He reached the semis of the US Open, but got pummeled by del Potro. He didn't win
It's Christmas night and 2010 is almost over. Let's take a look back at the year in review. Roger Federer wins the Australian Open. The year began with an earthquake in Haiti. Roger Federer and tournament organizers got several pros, including Rafael Nadal, Lleyton Hewitt, and Kim Clijsters to play in a charity event just
Prognosticators always like to make predictions about what the future holds. Who will win the various Slams? They guess months before it happens. It's fun, but hardly realistic. You just don't know. A player can be an injury away from not having any sort of year at all. Two prominent players who had a very
Most of the times, Davis Cup captains don't have much work to do. Most of the work is convincing the top players to play, and then you play them. Rarely does a team have options that it might ponder. For example, if Switzerland could ever convince Roger Federer to play for Davis Cup again, he'd
The obvious choices to play in the Davis Cup Finals were not so obvious after all. The hottest four players for both teams were: Djokovic and Troicki for Serbia and Monfils and Llodra for France. And yet both captains went in obscure directions. The Serbian captain elected to play the older Tipsarevic over Troicki even
When 2009 wrapped up, those with crystal balls were predicting a much different 2010. For one, Juan Martin del Potro had just won the US Open. There was some thought that he could challenge for the Australian Open title and possibly defend his US Open title. And Nikolay Davydenko had just wrapped up an amazing
When Pete Sampras captured his 14th and final Slam at the 2002 US Open, many figured it would be years, if not decades, before someone came along to break this record. After all, Roy Emerson won his 13th Slam in 1967, which was some 30 plus years earlier. It's even hard to compare Emerson to
The last two years, Roger Federer didn't have a spectacular post US Open. One year, he didn't make the semis, and this past year, Davydenko upset him in the semifinals. Roger Federer, however, knows better than anyone, the value of the ATP World Tour Finals. Even if a sizable tennis audience ignores tennis after the
