Male players had been clamoring for a longer off-season. The women just had their championship conclude the past week, so they are, for the most part, done (oddly enough, they run additional tournaments after the year-end championship). The ATP has to placate many tournament organizers who like hosting a world-class event. While tennis pundits (looking
When they decided to remove the week between Paris and London, you knew that odds were that the top 8 players would not be completely motivated to win Paris, especially, the top 4. Of course, Nadal has already decided to take the rest of the year off to recover, so he was a no-show regardless.
After this match, you have to say Djokovic and Murray are the two best returners in the sport. In the first set alone, of 5 games Djokovic won, 3 were breaks of serve and two were holds. Murray won 4 breaks of serve and held 3 times. Both served under 60% first serve and were
In many ways, this final has similarities to the US Open final minus the wind. Novak Djokovic strolled to the finals without struggling too badly. Given his form heading into the finals, he was favored over Murray who had yet to win his first Slam and had struggled in several of his matches--matches that went
Shanghai is one of Murray's favorite tournaments. He won the event in 2010 and again last year in 2011. He's rarely dropped sets in this tournament (one prior to this against Stan Wawrinka last year, but this year, Radek Stepanek took a set off Murray, and had him on the ropes. Stepanek is a clever
One motivation for Federer to play Shanghai, regardless of whether he ends up at number 1 at the end of the year, was to extend his streak of weeks at number 1. Currently, Federer leads Djokovic by 835 points. If Djokovic wins Shanghai, an event he skipped last year, he would pick up 1000 points.
Lots of play today at the Shanghai Masters. It's the second round and the top seeds were mostly in action today. It's not unusual for players that do well in a previous tournament to fade in the next one. Raonic and Nishikori were finalists in the Japan Open last week. Nishikori lost to Querrey in
Everyone's said that Milos Raonic is perhaps the best of the new bunch, and in this match, he began to show some of the reason people believe this. Raonic has a huge serve, but much like most men his size, he's opted to play big man tennis. Tall players like Querrey, Isner, and Anderson have
Some early round news before we head to today's quarterfinals. Many of last week's players that did well in Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok faded this week showing how hard it is for players outside the top few to maintain levels of excellence from week to week. Often, a player ranked in the teens who wins
Ivan Lendl had it rough. When he started, he was the new kid on the block. There was Connors. There was Borg. And although he and McEnroe were quite close in age, McEnroe matured earlier, so there was McEnroe. Lendl played well starting about 1981 when he reached the French Open final. He would make
