It's fair to say that the Federer playing in Madrid is not the same Federer playing the last few months. But it's fair to say that this Ernests Gulbis was not the same that played Roger Federer a mere two weeks ago. Ah, the journey of Ernests Gulbis. Two years ago, many touted this man
Oh Roger, how could we doubt you? Just because you've been mishitting balls since Indian Wells, and then Miami, and then Rome, and then Estoril. You kept telling us "everything is fine--I'm having good practices", telling us not to panic. But how were we to know? If you could play like today, then what was
It's a useful lesson to look at tennis history, at least, the last 40-50 years, to see how tennis has changed, because it's easy to fall into the trap of describing today's tennis by remembering tennis from 10 years ago. Many men, for example, can't stand women's tennis (just like many men can't stand women's
Andy Murray's game has never been well suited to clay. The closest the game has to a finesse player, Murray generally doesn't like going on the offensive. Those who watched clay matches from the 1980s will naturally assume the game is still slow play from the baseline, but it is really about finding good opportunities
In my last review I mentioned the new BLX technology Wilson is putting in their racquets. BLX uses fibers from the volcanic rock basalt to interweave with Karophite Black fibers to create great vibration reduction. Wilson claims this creates a racquet with perfect feel. Wilson improved one of their classics with BLX and created the
Ernests Gulbis. Loves. Drop shots. I mean, the man really loves them. In the 1980s, when clay court tennis meant interminably long rallies, the drop shot seemed a rarity. Few people could hit it well and some chose to almost never hit it. For every horribly awkward Lendl drop shot, there was a Mats Wilander
Today I want to discuss one of the most important and often overlooked aspects of getting and staying in shape: motivation. It seems to me that this is one of the hardest things that we need to overcome in order to maintain this wonderful organic machine that we know as the human body. By now,
That's more like it. Federer had been struggling with his game, including a loss to Albert Montanes in Estoril last week. Although there was a tiebreak in the 2nd set, Federer will look to several positives. First, his serve percentage was way up, almost near 70%. More importantly, Benjamin Becker never had a break point
John Isner may be feeling down. He was close to winning his first title on clay. He had match points (well, one). He lost to his good buddy, Sam Querrey, in three sets, instead. And yet, when the rankings were updated on Monday, it was Querrey whose ranking had jumped up. Isner is ranked 19th,
I want to begin by saying that the Madrid Open has, by far, the worst tennis website in the world. From the annoying Flash intro which loads slowly and plays music, to its practically unusable webpage (www.madrid-open.com) where you can't find anything of any value. The menu choices light up, but don't have submenus. This
