Today, most of the top 16 seeds played, and 12 of the top 13 seeds advanced. The toughest match for a seed that won was probably Andy Murray's win over David Nalbandian. The two last met at Toronto when Nalbandian was particularly hot. Since then, Nalbandian has not played as well. Even so, Murray dropped
The big news is that Andy Murray, defending champ of Valencia, lost in 3 sets to Juan Monaco. Murray has lost to Monaco before, but on clay. He did mention that, due to his brother's wedding (last week), he wasn't as prepared as he had hoped to be. He is now pinning his hopes on
With the Paris Masters and the ATP World Tour Finals and the Davis Cup finals up ahead, the end of the men's tennis season is wrapping up very soon. This week, a pair of ATP 500 events are being played: Valencia (in Spain) and Basel (in Switzerland). Last year, Djokovic went on Federer's home tournament
Andy Murray is a chameleon. Most of the times, he plays a steady form of tennis, getting crosscourt angles. Early in his career, he fell in love with the drop shot and his slices and his change of pace and incredible speed and anticipation made for a deadly combination. Players would find themselves making errors
Last year, tennis was starting to get interesting at the end of the year. Juan Martin del Potro had become the second player in recent memory that had won a Slam who wasn't named Nadal or Federer (the other was Novak Djokovic in the 2008 Australian Open). Nikolay Davydenko was having a resurgence late in
Both men's semifinals were played today and both were somewhat easier than expected. Well, OK, most folks probably gave Monaco little chance to beat Andy Murray. Murray got an early break against Monaco and was threatening a second break. However, it never came and indeed, Monaco broke Murray to tie the match up, but Murray
Robin Soderling has a peculiar kind of game. The rangy Swede doesn't have a lot of variety in his game. He hits some of the hardest shots in the game. He doesn't play the ball to conventional spots on the court. He's got a huge serve. He's not fast, but he's not exactly slow. If
It's almost unheard of. Nadal is almost always good to the quarterfinals of every event he plays. Hot off the heels of his win in Tokyo, Nadal faced veteran Jurgen Melzer, a lefty that Nadal last beat at Roland Garros. One could argue that Nadal's toughest match came against Melzer who pushed him to a
What a difference a few months make. Nikolay Davydenko, the defending champ at Shanghai, has been out of sorts ever since his return to tour. Last year, in 2009, Davydenko had injury issues. He returned just before the French Open, and lost to Robin Soderling. Davydenko hit his stride just after the US Open winning
What a peculiar match, with the hobbled facing the hobbled. Wawrinka earned a break in the first set to get a lead, but Murray reclaimed the break and then won in the tiebreak. In the second set, Murray twice got up a break but was broken back each time. Wawrinka would take the second set
