Ah, the rankings. How did Rafael Nadal go from number 4 to number 3 without playing? Last we say, Nadal was retiring from his quarterfinal encounter with Andy Murray at the Australian Open. As the defending champion, Nadal lost a ton of points when his results from last year fell off. For those who don't
In American football, it's said that a good defense beats a good offense. American football, it seems, is a game of errors. The defense attempts to make the offense produce errors that cause the ball to go from the opposition's defense to a favorable position for their own offense. For a long time, tennis was
With the Australian Open already half a day old, Roger Federer has hoisted yet another trophy adding to his bevy of Slam titles. He has long since passed Pete Sampras and now eyes the women champs who were, unlike the men, always head and shoulders above their competition. With each passing Slam, the winds of
With Nadal's loss to Andy Murray, Nadal will move from #2 to #3 and may drop to #4. Novak Djokovic has already reached the quarterfinals which matches his results last year. At the very least, he'll keep the 8310 points he has now. Rafael Nadal is 1000 points ahead of Djokovic, but because he is
Ever since the draw came out, a draw that was partly determined by Murray's slip in the rankings from 4 to 5, and Murray found himself in the same quarter as Nadal, this quarterfinal matchup was the most hotly anticipated. On the one hand, there was Andy Murray. Long touted as the most talented of
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
They say the second week of any Slam is where the big boys come to play. Nowhere is this more literal than Day 7 of the Australian Open. Today, the tallest men left in the draw were all on tap. First up, John Isner. John Isner stands 6'9" with some claiming he's taller than that.
John Isner. Gael Monfils. The average tennis fan has probably heard of one, but not the other, and possibly neither. Monfils, the talented and athletic Frenchman, would seem like the shoo-in favorite to beat John Isner. Yet, if you looked at their head-to-head, it's Isner who leads 2-1, and all 3 meetings have been closer.
Day 3 saw most of the seeds progressing fairly easily. Rafael Nadal took on Lukas Lacko and found himself a 6-2, 6-2, 6-2 winner. Given his struggles in the first round, Nadal found himself striking the ball better. Darren Cahill commented that Nadal had played around with a different forehand and serve motion in London
With so many matches, I can only see a handful of them, especially with the time-zone differences. The first match I watched was Andy Roddick playing Thiemo de Bakker. After a while, it seemed clear that de Bakker played a nervous first set. He didn't hit the ball cleanly, nor that smart. Hitting ill-advised drop
