Much like the World Cup that just concluded (Rafael Nadal made an appearance in South Africa to support Spain in its first win), the Davis Cup is actually tiered. Most of the media focuses on the top tier, the World Group, which starts with 16 teams, and goes four rounds over four different times of
Since we're only on the second day of Davis Cup (each round taking 3 days to complete), not every tie has been complete, but a few, like the Spain-France tie are complete. Russia is playing Argentina in Moscow. They are playing indoors at the Olympic Stadium. With Nikolay Davydenko barely back from his injury (he
Roger Federer is rarely pushed to 5 sets in a first round match in a major. Indeed, he's rarely pushed to a fourth set in a first round match. You can thank seeding for that. The top 32 seeds usually consist of the top 40 players in the world minus a few who don't make
Wimbledon is such a different surface that it can be difficult to predict upsets. The top seeds tend to move on, but the lower seeds, who knows? Let's look at some results that concluded. Nikolay Davydenko had to withdraw from Indian Wells after the first round due to a fractured wrist. What was originally predicted
Martina Navratilova, who won a ton of Slams, used to say the women had it tougher to win Slams. In a best of 3 situation, you can't have a mental lapse. To be fair, the top women often have greater power or speed, especially during the Evert-Navratilova era. The women past 5 were so much
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
The big news of the day was someone who didn't play today. Nikolay Davydenko, who had been playing great tennis up through the Australian Open, withdrew from Indian Wells. It turns out he had broken his left wrist and is expected to take a few months off to recover. Last year, Davydenko had to take
Today was the first day that the seeds played. There were few upsets on the day, but the most notable one was Marin Cilic losing tamely to Garcia-Lopez, 7-6(1), 6-0. Yes, he was bageled in the second set. Gilles Simon was the other seed that feel, losing to qualifier Brian Dabul of Argentina. Simon had
Hardcourt tournaments are so prevalent that there are three distinct hardcourt "seasons". The first starts at the beginning of the year and lasts until just before the start of the clay season. It culminates in Indian Wells and Miami. The second starts two weeks after Wimbledon and is the US Open series. The third pretty
With Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray, last year's finalists, not playing, there were hopes that the top two seeds might meet each other once again, namely, Nikolay Davydenko and Novak Djokovic. So tournament organizers probably cringed a bit when neither made the final. If there's a player that Davydenko doesn't like playing, it must be
