Although most people know what a great singles player Rafa Nadal is, few realize that he occasionally plays doubles, and has won doubles titles before, typically with Marc Lopez, who looks like a young Tim Allen. At Indian Wells, 4 of the top 5 players are playing doubles. Federer is teaming up with Stan Wawrinka,
For some reason, Andreev gives Federer trouble. Apparently, Andreev trains a fair bit with David Ferrer, and his team has said that Andreev's game is huge in practice. He almost never misses, and he has a huge forehand. But there's practice and there's real matches. Federer didn't look bad, by any means. He's playing his
Novak Djokovic would point to the Davis Cup final against France as the source of his new-found confidence. Admittedly, Serbia really depended on Victor Troicki to pull in last-minute heroics to take the fifth match. Even so, Djokovic felt great about bringing Serbia its first Davis Cup. With this victory, Djokovic also found his serve.
Who knows if these meetings will become a regular event? Is Djokovic making a push to be in the top 2? As the defending champ, Djokovic actually has to win in Dubai to keep his points while Federer skipped Dubai last year due to an illness and only stands to gain points. Nonetheless, it says
If you looked at the form of the players the last 2-3 months, Federer was the man. He won Stockholm. He won Basel. He won the year-end championship without dropping a match. This included a defeat of his main rival, Rafael Nadal. He started the year playing well, winning Doha over Davydenko. Nadal ended last
Everyone loves to do it, but it really doesn't make sense. Back in December, people were asked "make predictions who will win the Slams in 2011". You never know which player will come out of nowhere to make an impression. If you were to ask, at the end of 2008, who would win the Slams
Stan Wawrinka had made some big changes. He had hired Peter Lundren, an early Federer coach. This had lead to a title at Chennai. He had thumped Andy Roddick. Although the thinking was Wawrinka could beat Federer, the ESPN announcers knew that Roger wasn't Andy. Even Andy knew he wasn't Roger. For one, Roger is
As we head into the second week of play, the top seeds continue to win. There's a decent chance that the top 8 seeds may reach the quarterfinals. The first player to finish his match at the bottom half of the draw was Novak Djokovic. He continues to have one of his easier runs to
After being pushed to 5 sets, Roger Federer got to play Xavier Malisse, someone Roger has known since he was a teenager. Roger has generally fared very well against his generation of players, whether it be Andy Roddick or Jurgen Melzer or Lleyton Hewitt or, indeed, Xavier Malisse. Although Malisse was able to break Federer
In 2008, two players rose to prominence in the summer: Juan Martin del Potro and Gilles Simon. del Potro went on to win the 2009 US Open and even beat Simon in the 2008 US Open. In 2008, Simon would meet Roger Federer twice, once in Toronto at the Rogers Cup and once again at
