Once, the Australians dominated amateur tennis, in the days before Open tennis, and even in the early years of Open tennis. Then, 3 of the 4 Slams were played on grass, the lone exception being the French, always played on the terre battue. If you were an exceptional grass court player, you could dominate most
I was at the Essential Tennis Clinic, Day 2, in Baltimore (it's really closer to Towson, but good enough), so most of what I'm going to cover is just reaction from hearing the scores. The only matches (or parts of) was the Sharapova-Henin third set. Since there weren't that many matches, let's go over each
With all the rain that affected play on Wednesday and Thursday, matches were backlogged. Matches that were supposed to be played Thursday were pushed into today. In an effort to catch up, matches that were originally planned for today, i.e. 3rd round matches, were played today. All top 5 seeds play Friday which include Federer,
Perhaps the most peculiar match of Day 4 was the one between Gael Monfils and Fabio Fognini. That the match needed to go to an extra day to get finished was a "shame on Gael" situation. Gael Monfils was winning comfortably, up 2 sets to none. His athleticism should have been enough to win. Fognini
With two days of play complete, let's look at how the top seeds are faring. Roger Federer Roger Federer had a bit of a tight first set, but then relaxed, and had a very easy first round match. He's playing like he did in Madrid, and that was just too much for Luczak. I think
It's been a long road back. On May 9, 2009, it was reported that Richard Gasquet had used cocaine and was provisionally suspended. The amounts were considered rather small. Gasquet claimed this was due to kissing a dancer in Miami. Gasquet was eventually cleared to play just before the US Open and has spent the
I'll do one preview now and maybe a modified preview once the draw is out. This preview is primarily based on how players are playing now. Let's start with the top contenders for the French Open. Favorites Rafael Nadal You have to give Rafa the nod heading into the French. Although there were some issues
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
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
On paper, Andy Murray's loss to David Ferrer looks like an upset. In practice, perhaps not so much. Ferrer is ranked 17th in the world, but has been ranked as high as number 4 in the world, as recently as 2 years ago. Ferrer is, what's known in the tennis parlance, as a clay court
