Today is the first of seven days of competition to decide the best of the best. Group B played today, and it featured Federer against Tsonga in the early match. These two played just last week in the finals of Paris. Federer won that match in straight sets although he was pushed to a tiebreak
The ATP World Tour Finals is a bit unusual. Almost every tournament is a single-elimination draw with possible bye for the top seeds. The WTF (World Tour Finals) is a round-robin. The event's name has changed over the years. It started as the Masters Grand Prix or the Masters. For years, it was held at
Last year, around this time, Andy Murray was looking for a good tournament win. In 2010, Murray reached his second Slam final at the Australian Open and lost once again to Roger Federer. Not only did tears flow for the Scot, but Murray's game went into a mini tailspin. Murray finally righted the ship and
China, the site of the Shanghai Masters, has been on a quest. They want to produce a top 200 male player. Obviously, top 100 would be great too. They've done plenty fine producing good women players, most notably, French Open champion, Li Na. And they've done well enough producing players that can win a few
Ever since Federer became dominant back around 2003, pros have had to wait their turn to try to move up the ranks. The first player that waited and waited was Rafael Nadal. Nadal was part of a group of players that have become the most solid group since maybe the Americans back in the early
Fresh off his win over Rafael Nadal, Andy Murray teamed up with his brother, Jamie Murray, to win the doubles title over the fourth seed, Cermak and Polasek of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, respectively, in a tidy 6-1, 6-4 win, the easiest win en route to the title. The two had teamed up to
Easily, easily, the best Murray has played against Nadal in their meetings. This tops his brilliant performance over Nadal back in 2008 Open when the upstart 6th seed upset the second player in the world. To give you some idea of how good Murray's performance was, Murray has only ever taken a 6-0 set off
The last time Mardy Fish and Rafael Nadal played was in the quarterfinals of Cincinnati. Rafael Nadal, like many other pros, loves Japanese food and his team was at a local Japanese place when Nadal handled a very hot plate and burned his fingers. This caused Nadal to struggle a bit with his backhand. In
The top four seeds have made their way into the Tokyo semifinals with the expected final showdown between Nadal and Murray. In the first match of the day, Mardy Fish took on Bernard Tomic. Although Tomic is fairly talented, he still struggles with errors and this may be because he plays relatively few tournaments, especially
Perhaps one day there will be a player with a huge serve that plays huge off the ground. That's tough because with a huge serve, there's not much need to be a great baseliner. Such was the dilemma of Milos Raonic when he faced Rafael Nadal in the second round in Tokyo. Raonic had a
