Sports fans have short memories. They believe the results of the last week should matter more than the results of a year ago. Alas, the men's tennis rankings say otherwise. The ranking is a culmination of a year's work. If you played fantastic a year ago, your rankings will reflect this. Part of Soderling's lofty
Last year, shortly after his loss to Roger Federer, Andy Murray was in full-mope mode. He had not played much in the weeks afterwards. He felt he was ready to take that next step, finally get the monkey off his back. He was in his second Slam final, playing good tennis to get to this
Although most people know what a great singles player Rafa Nadal is, few realize that he occasionally plays doubles, and has won doubles titles before, typically with Marc Lopez, who looks like a young Tim Allen. At Indian Wells, 4 of the top 5 players are playing doubles. Federer is teaming up with Stan Wawrinka,
It's not clear where Andy Murray's head is. Murray lost in the first round at Rotterdam to Marcos Baghdatis. Now he's lost to a guy that was once number 1 in the world--as a junior. Donald Young once thought he would be knocking on the door of the top ten. The US gave him wildcard
It's hard to recall the last time a player ranked as high as del Potro (a top 5 player) that was sideline for most of a year. del Potro played 3 tournaments in all of 2010. He reached the quarterfinals at the Australian Open, then lost in two first round tournaments in the Asian swing
It was last year after a semifinal win over Jo-Wilfried Tsonga during a post-match interview with Jim Courier that Roger Federer said "I know he'd like to win a first for British tennis in, what is it? 150,000 years?". It was a light-hearted moment that was, nonetheless, a dig at his opponent, one that he
Roger and Rafa have made many players' lives miserable. That is, if you feel the best of the best should win Slam titles. The 2008 Australian Open was the last Slam that didn't have either Roger or Rafa in the final. Roger lost to Novak Djokovic in the semifinals. Roger had had mono and was
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
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
