Since I missed Day 4, let's recap. The top seeds, Roger Federer and Andy Murray, had few problems. Despite Davydenko recently reaching the Doha finals, this Davydenko was not the same as 2010 who was fresh off a win at London in 2009 and was in the top ten. Federer had too many answers for
Brian Baker, who spent 6 years, in and out of surgery, then had the Cinderella story of 2012 where he made the finals of Nice and did reasonably well at Wimbledon and the French Open, was winning his 2nd round match against Sam Querrey when he was recovering for a shot, and his knee buckled,
Technically, it wasn't an upset. After all, Julien Benneteau, the wily French veteran that pushed Federer to 5 sets last year at Wimbledon, was the 32nd seed, not the young Bulgarian, Grigor Dimitrov. Never mind that Benneteau reached the semis of Sydney, so he had a good tournament, but Dimitrov reached the finals of Brisbane,
Last year, at this time, Bernard Tomic was playing an exhibition in Kooyong which he won. He had a strong lead heading into the Australian Open. Despite being pushed to five sets by Fernando Verdasco and being down two sets to none, Tomic won and then made it to the fourth round. People thought Tomic
The big question, heading into the Australian Open, with Nadal out due to a stomach virus, is which half Andy Murray, the number 3 seed, would fall. He's in Federer's half. This puts David Ferrer, the fourth seed, in Djokovic's half. Things aren't all rosy for the top seeds. The high seed for Djokovic in
Often the opening tournaments of the new year tell you more about the players ranked outside the top 5 than they do the top 5. After all, it's not only the best of the best that use the off-season (which lasts maybe two months for lower-ranked players) to ramp up their game. So here are
I'm not the kind of person that likes to predict Slams. These tend to be "wish for" exercises. You never know when, say, Rafael Nadal will get injured, and then all your Slam predictions go bye-bye. Instead, I'll try to look at the form of the top few players. Novak Djokovic 2011 was a great
And this is why tennis pundits, especially American tennis pundits, should consider writing for some other sport, like curling. For years, American tennis commentators--a rather obscure lot--had been more than happy to bully the Davis Cup. Let's make it more like the World Cup, they said. We can't see top pros like Federer and Nadal
About this time of year, or sometimes just after the US Open, you get tennis pundits, in particular, American tennis pundits who have solutions to what ails tennis. Davis Cup, invariably, gets a makeover. The key criticism of Davis Cup is that it's played over four distinct times, often the week after a Slam. The
Federer had been hoping to get back on the winning track beating del Potro. Ever since del Potro returned to tour after nearly a year off from playing, he has slowly, but surely been ascending up the ranks. Federer has, in the meantime, been able to beat del Potro on a regular basis, biding his
