About this time of year, or sometimes just after the US Open, you get tennis pundits, in particular, American tennis pundits who have solutions to what ails tennis. Davis Cup, invariably, gets a makeover. The key criticism of Davis Cup is that it's played over four distinct times, often the week after a Slam. The
Djokovic still looks like the odds-on favorite to win the year-end championship. With Roger Federer still struggling with serve and Murray have dropped a match to the Serb, Djokovic was looking to finish his group undefeated. Djokovic took the first set rather comfortably at 62. He attributed this to some poor serving by Berdych which
There are some who believe that Andy Murray shouldn't have gotten credit for the US Open because it was played in windy conditions and Djokovic performed worse in the wind than Murray. But Murray's made a good point about why he's lost so many times in Slams. Consider Nadal, Djokovic, and Federer. Nadal's first title
People had been wondering whether Murray was choking with an advantage. In the last three matches, Murray held match points, but was unable to seal the deal. In Tokyo, match points were held against Raonic. In Shanghai, it was against Djokovic. In Paris, against Janowicz. Of course, when match points are lost, it's often a
The year-end championship has gone through a lot of changes over the years. Initially, it was a round-robin event, but back in 1981, there was some gamesmanship by Ivan Lendl. Bjorn Borg had won enough in his group to qualify for the semifinals, so he took some strategic losses. This left the unheralded Gene Mayer
Male players had been clamoring for a longer off-season. The women just had their championship conclude the past week, so they are, for the most part, done (oddly enough, they run additional tournaments after the year-end championship). The ATP has to placate many tournament organizers who like hosting a world-class event. While tennis pundits (looking
When they decided to remove the week between Paris and London, you knew that odds were that the top 8 players would not be completely motivated to win Paris, especially, the top 4. Of course, Nadal has already decided to take the rest of the year off to recover, so he was a no-show regardless.
Last week, three ATP 250 events were being played. Given the proximity to the year-end finals in London, some top-ranked players opted to play. Let's start in Moscow. Andreas Seppi faced Thomaz Bellucci in the finals. Bellucci twice had chances to serve out the match in the second set, but ultimately lost in a tiebreak,
In many ways, this final has similarities to the US Open final minus the wind. Novak Djokovic strolled to the finals without struggling too badly. Given his form heading into the finals, he was favored over Murray who had yet to win his first Slam and had struggled in several of his matches--matches that went
Shanghai is one of Murray's favorite tournaments. He won the event in 2010 and again last year in 2011. He's rarely dropped sets in this tournament (one prior to this against Stan Wawrinka last year, but this year, Radek Stepanek took a set off Murray, and had him on the ropes. Stepanek is a clever
