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
Even as Federer passes 30, he still has more records to achieve and more to preserve. First, with a victory, he exceeded the number of wins Lendl had at year-end championships. Second, he's had never lost to Ferrer, and had not been broken by Ferrer since 2010. This is impressive given that Ferrer is one
Janko Tipsarevic was thrilled to be back in London. Sure, he needed Rafa to not appear at London, which Rafa guaranteed would not happen a few weeks ago. But this time, he is eligible to play all his matches. Alas, his first match was against Roger Federer, who is the top seed in Group B.
The year-end championship has gone through a lot of changes over the years. Initially, it was a round-robin event, but back in 1981, there was some gamesmanship by Ivan Lendl. Bjorn Borg had won enough in his group to qualify for the semifinals, so he took some strategic losses. This left the unheralded Gene Mayer
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.
The Asian swing of ATP tour starts up with two exotic locales: Bangkok, Thailand and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Let's start with Bangkok. Last year, Andy Murray decided to play Bangkok. None of the other top 4 players elected to play. He won the tournament. However, with the Olympic schedule, Murray has chosen not to defend
Everyone figured that del Potro might be the end of the road for Roddick. At this point in their careers, del Potro just has too many ways to beat a player like Roddick. It's a fascinating loss for two reasons. First, del Potro was the player that beat Safin before he retired. Second, del Potro's
Let's look at the top 8 seeds and see how they're doing Roger Federer Federer had easy opponents the first two rounds. Donald Young has been struggling to beat anyone this year, so he wasn't ready to beat Federer. Bjorn Phau is quick, but doesn't have enough weapons to bother Federer. Verdasco was his first
Andy Roddick might love nothing more than to have a Jimmy Connors-like run through the US Open. One might never see a 39 year old make a deep run in a Slam again, though as recently as 2005, Andre Agassi, in his mid 30s, made a run to the finals. Roddick just turned 30 years
