It's been a while since Italians had a top male player. Back in the golden age of pro tennis, in the mid 1970s, the Foro Italico, site of the Internazionali BNL d'Italia, once called the Italian Open, was a raucous arena filled with rowdy Italians. Whistles could sometimes lead to throwing of coins. Such was
Fernando Gonzalez had chosen not to go to Indian Wells so he could head to Chile to assist with relief efforts. He returns to Miami, but had to face hard hitting Soderling. Soderling took the first set, 6-0, but Gonzalez worked hard to take the second set in a tiebreak. Gonzalez was testy, complaining that
The seeds, they keep a falling. It was already something of a miracle that Djokovic got this far. After watching his game spiral out of control in the second set in the previous around against Philipp Kohlschreiber, Djokovic had to scrap to fight off match points, get a break of serve back and eventually win
Perhaps the one stat that mattered most in the semifinals is, at one point in the game, Federer had lost only 12 points in 12 service games, losing only 1 point a game. What's important to note is Federer lost 4 of these points at a 3-1 hold in the first set when the score
We're now down to four players. One semifinals will be played on Day 11 (Murray vs. Cilic) and one on Day 12 (Federer vs. Tsonga). Let's quickly see how everyone is doing. Andy Murray has yet to drop a set and had his most convincing win yet over Rafael Nadal. Tactically, he played smart and
Given a choice between watching Federer-Davydenko or watching Djokovic-Tsonga, I opted to watch the first, which got a particularly late start because both Williams sisters played tight three setters. Venus Williams was cruising over Li Na and seemed assured of a straight set win. However, with a 5-3 lead, Venus lost serve then subsequently lost
With less than a week before the finals, the tournament heads into the second week. This is a good time to look at the contenders and see how the field is doing. Let's go from top to bottom. Roger Federer had a tough opening round, nearly pushed to five sets against Igor Andreev. Although Andreev
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga had never played Nicolas Almagro. It almost didn't seem like a fair fight. Almagro, after all, had a broken wrist. But fortunately, it was his left wrist that was broken, and he's a righty with a one-handed backhand. Almagro's known for his big serve and power hitting, but Tsonga is the flash Frenchman.
