Because of the Sunday start, the French Open's first round lasts 3 days. Wimbledon typically moves at a faster clip so they can give the middle Sunday as a break. Let's take a look at the seeds that have fallen. The top seed to lose was last year's semifinalist, Tomas Berdych. Although this is surprising,
Link to Chris Chase's article on Novak Djokovic In this link, Chris Chase talks about the Novak Djokovic streak. He mentions two issues in this streak. Should it include Davis Cup, yes or no. I'm not sure what to think about this either. Here's the problem with Davis Cup. It has history. Players like John
Here's the problem with predicting French Open favorites. It's hard to make accurate predictions, at least based on recent performance. Let's look at last year. Last year, three players had a pretty good clay court season. Rafa won Monte Carlo, skipped Barcelona, won Rome, and won Madrid. He was the clear favorite to win the
While we can admire Novak Djokovic streak, the man who holds the record, and that record should have been nearly twice as long, is Guillermo Vilas. Vilas won 46 matches in a row. He only lost the streak because Nastase used a spaghetti racquet, which wasn't banned then, and beat Vilas, who retired, considering it
Right now, Nadal is number 1 with 12470 points. Djokovic is number 2 at 10665 points. 1805 points separate the two. There is a slim chance Djokovic could become number 1 at the end of Rome. A Masters 1000 event awards 1000 points to the winner. Normally, a player doesn't get the full 1000 points
I managed to watch about a set of the finals of Barcelona between Nadal and Ferrer. For some reason, Tennis Channel opted to show it tape delayed even though it showed earlier rounds live. I knew Nadal had won the first set comfortably, and I knew Ferrer was up a break in the second based
Rafa is among the toughest players to beat. This is one big reason he's number 1. Let's first go through his strengths to see why he's so tough. Everyone starts with Rafa's tenacity, his never-say-die attitude. This is clearly important, but if he couldn't hit shots, it wouldn't matter. Rafa doesn't play badly very often,
When racquets were tiny, and the ability to hit a good shot merely meant to keep the ball in play, the ultimate in strategy was pure steadiness. Before Nadal was king of clay, there was Bjorn Borg. Thin, wiry, iconically Swedish, Borg was the stoic player. When the world was playing slice and Continental grips,
The spectacle that was the Battle of the Sexes between past-his-prime Bobby Riggs against top player, Billie Jean King, put tennis through the stratosphere in the US. It was like the Harding-thugs attacking Nancy Kerrigan just before the Winter Olympics leading to huge ratings in figure skating. Ironically, this coincided with the time that tennis
George Orwell wrote a book called 1984 where he looked at the future, envisioned big brother. It was a parable about what had happened during WW2. He picked 1984 by transposing the digits, 1948. But 1984 came and went, and one significance of that year was what a fabulous year it was for John McEnroe.
