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Andre, Pete and Big Mac beg to differ
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With Spain on the brink of its third Davis Cup final in four years, it's time to consider the proper place of these four swarthy Spaniards in the context of the tournament's long history.
Rafael Nadal, David Ferrer, Fernando Verdasco and Feliciano Lopez are all ranked in the Top 25 to end the season and combined for a won-loss record of 197-84 (.701) on the season.
Those are some lofty numbers to consider, but there are a few other years to consider when picking an all-time greatest collection of Davis Cup talent.
 For starters, there's the US squad from 2007 comprised of Andy Roddick, James Blake and Bob and MIke Bryan. The doubles-playing brothers had their greatest season in 2007, winning 11 titles in 15 finals and going 77-9. Add in Roddick's 54-16 mark (finishing No. 6 in the world) and Blake's 49-21 tally (#13 at year's end), and you have a remarkable won-loss record of 180-46 (.796).
 In 1995, the US needed just three players to take the title - Pete Sampras, Jim Courier and Todd Martin. Sampras was 24 at the time and had taken the crowns at both Wimbledon and the US Open earlier in the season and finished 72-16. Courier was 59-19 and Martin 46-21, a combined 177-56 (.760) winning percentage.
 But there's no comparison to the 1992 US winning squad of Andre Agassi, Jim Courier, Pete Sampras and John McEnroe. Agassi and Sampras were both 21 years old at the time. Agassi went 42-15 on the year and won Wimbledon, while Sampras finished the season 72-19. Courier was the No. 1 player in the world, going 68-11 and taking the crowns at the Australian and French Opens, while the 33-year-old McEnroe went 31-8 in doubles and won the Wimbledon crown.
Including McEnroe's doubles marks, the four men combined to win four Grand Slam titles and a 213-53 record, a staggering .801 winning percentage.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/3/2011 10:54:17 AM | with 2 comments
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I really don't get the dinosaurs and the pig
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It's kind of amazing what ends up being popular on your old friend YouTube, from Chocolate Rain to Charlie Bit My Finger.
YouTube gives us the power to watch just about any major match of the last 40 years, albeit in nine-minute segments, not to mention interviews, press conferences and photo shoots.
But what are the Top 8 most-watched tennis videos of all time? Take a look below, the results may surprise you. 1) Tennis (Remi Gaillard) - 13,348,872 views and counting - Gaillard is a 36-year-old French humorist who once hopped on a tennis court during a Yannick Noah match dressed as an 80s era player and won a point in an uneven doubles match.
2) Dinosaurs play tennis with a fat pig - 6,937,154 views and counting - Why this is popular, other than being some slick animation, the world may never know.
3) The Sexy Serbian Tennis Player Ana Ivanovic - 4,791,484 views and counting - It's not a video, but if you're a dude, you won't mind.
4) Hot Sania Mirza - 4,652,040 views - She's not too well-known in the Western world, her wedding to cricketer Shoaib Malik made her the most-searched woman tennis player in 2010 according to Google Trends. Being the pride of a country with 1.21 billion doesn't help that view count either.
5) Unlock a car door with a tennis ball - 4,431,194 views and counting - A very weird video with 6,888 dislikes.
6) Funny Novak Djokovic impressions at the USOpen 07 Exclusive - 4,152,141 views and counting - The best player in the world shows that he's one heck of a chamelon as well.
7) Federer and Nadal: Fit of Laughter During Shooting - 3,643,995 views and counting - At the time they were ranked 1 and 2 in the world, and showed that not only are they human, but quite chummy as well. 8) Wee Wii Mii - 22-month old video gamer - 3,625,393 views and counting - Just short of his second birthday, this little fella dominates opponents on Wii tennis.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/3/2011 11:38:24 AM | with 2 comments
The Opening Serve: Top 5 Things NOT Overheard at the Davis Cup Finals
1) "Nadal's terrible on clay. I'm putting all my money on Argentina!"
2) "This Spanish Armada is more fun that the original, ya know, where 5,000 people died and 67 of our 151 ships sank."
3) "U-S-A! U-S-A!"
4) "That's not a ball boy, that's David Ferrer."
5) "Good news? We won the Davis Cup? Bad news? Our debt is $2.4 trillion."
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/5/2011 9:26:01 PM | with 0 comments
South Africa's Kevin Anderson enjoyed the best season of his career in 2011 and the off-season has started off even better.
Anderson wed college sweetheart Kelsey O'Neal a few weeks ago in Illinois where the two met at the University of Illinois five years ago.
At 6-feet, 8-inches tall, Anderson is the third-tallest player on the ATP tour, trailing only 6-10 Ivo Karlovic and 6-9 John Isner.
New wife Kelsey is no slouch as an athlete either, having competed for Illinois on the school's golf team. Poetically, the wedding reception took place at the North Shore Country Club in Glenview, Illinois.
Anderson went 42-27 in 2011, securing his first ATP title, fittingly won in Johannesburg.
He also reached the quarterfinals at Miami, the third round at the US Open and the semifinals at Vienna.
Anderson's new father-in-law Timothy O'Neal is a PGA Master Professional at North Shore.
The pair took a honeymoon to Miami and St. Lucia.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/6/2011 9:28:43 PM | with 1 comments
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#1 on the court, #1 at the box office?
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In about the weirdest tennis and movie news of the year, ATP No. 1 tennis player Novak Djokovic has joined the cast of the upcoming action movie "The Expendables II".
The movie is the sequel to 2010's "The Expendables" starring American action star legends Sylvester Stallone, Dolph Lundrgren, Jason Statham and Jet Li.
Its sequel, due out next summer, ups the ante, by adding Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Jean-Claude Van Dammne and Chuck Norris to the mix.
Djokovic, a noted personality on the tour famous for his impersonations of both male and female players, will be playing himself.
According to the movie's producers, the reason for casting Djokovic in the movie is "He was invited to be in the film by producer Avi Lerner and is already in Bulgaria, where the movie is currently shooting."
And in case you didn't know, Chuck Norris once beat a wall at tennis.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/9/2011 6:43:21 AM | with 0 comments
In an announcement that surprised no one, Milos Raonic was named Tennis Canada's most outstanding male player of 2011 on Thursday.
Despite a hip injury that saw him exit Wimbledon early, Raonic became the highest-ranked Canadian player ever. A mere 20 years old, Raonic lives in Thornhill, Ontario.
He won his first ATP title in San Jose in February and peaked at No. 25 in the rankings, ending the year at No. 31.
“Milos had the greatest year on record for a Canadian male singles player,” Michael S. Downey, Tennis Canada's president and chief executive officer, said. “He captured the attention of both Canadian and international fans with his dominant play, competitive spirit and humble demeanour. There is no limit to what he can achieve and we look forward to seeing what he has in store for us in 2012. We could not have picked a more deserving recipient of this year's top award.”
Raonic was also named male singles player of the year and most improved male player.
All three female awards went to Vancouver's Rebecca Marino.
Marino, who will turn 21 in a week, rocketed up the charts from 101st at the end of 2010 to 38th in July of 2011 before falling back to 64th by year's end.
She compiled a 25-25 record on the season, reaching the third round at Roland Garros and the second round at the Australian Open and Wimbledon.
Her best effort came at Memphis, where she reached the finals before retiring against Magdalena Rybarikova.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/9/2011 11:03:17 PM | with 0 comments
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Has Toni Toni Toni Done It Again?
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Even though he helped Spain win the Davis Cup last week, Rafael Nadal had admitted in an interview that he doesn't have the same flair for the game he did in the past.
“I have lost a little passion for the game. I have been a bit more tired than usual… I wasn’t in the right frame of mind. We can find excuses, we can find problems, but I have not been happy about a few things this season," Nadal said in a recent interview.
After looking close to perfect in his 71-10, three-major 2010 campaign that saw him end the year ranked No. 1 for the second time in three seasons, Nadal slid back to No. 2 in 2011.
Nadal actually reached more finals (10) in 2011 than he had in 2010 (9), but lost seven of them, six to Novak Djokovic, the man who took over his No. 1 ranking.
At least part of Nadal's frustration appears to be stemming from uncle/coach Toni Nadal, who has been known for his outbursts during matches.
“I don’t necessarily have to listen or take notice any more of what Toni says to me. I can make my own mind up now," Nadal said. "Am I frustrated? That’s not the right word. In a career you come back or you go down. This is not my best moment and I need a lot of things to change. Small things, but these can change a lot of things at the end of the day.”
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/9/2011 11:25:01 PM | with 1 comments
Every year, ESPN The Magazine trumpets its own name by offering its "Next" issue, where it hails a few young athletes as the future of that sport.
The issue is quite obviously hit and miss, nobody can predict the future, no matter how many networks they might try to cram down our throats.
At the same time, getting prime real estate in one of the most read sports magazine in the country is a lightning rod of exposure for any young player, and this year's lucky quintet are the USA's Sloane Stephens and Christina McHale, Bulgaria's Grigor Dimitrov, Lithuania's Richard Berankis and Russia's Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.
McHale and Stephens are fairly well-known names in American tennis circles. McHale took a big step forward toward real prominence in 2011, asserting herself as a young woman who can consistently make an impact at a tournament instead of a hopeful who occasionally makes good use of a wild card.
McHale's fan following reared its mighty head this year at the US Open, when she reached the third round with an upset of France's Marion Bartoli. McHale grew up in nearby New Jersey, went to the Open as a kid and trains now at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.
Stephens' young life to date, has had all the elements of a soap opera - great joy, great tragedy and a great mom.
Stephens' mother, Sybil Smith, made a pact with her daughter when Sloane was only 11, telling World Tennis Magazine, "We agreed she would try to have the best attitude she could, and I agreed to supor her no matter what. One of these days, we're going to have it framed."
The tragedy struck in 2010 when her father, former New England Patriot John Stephens, was killed in a car wreck during first week of the U.S. Open. Stephens flew to Louisiana for the funeral, then returned to New York the next day, having made the decision that her father would not have wanted her to miss out on the major.
Not only did she win that match, she ended up winning the junior doubles title at Flushing Meadows, something she had also done at Wimbledon and Roland Garros in 2010.
Not surprisingly, Stephens' idols are the Williams sisters. More surprisingly, she not only likes playing on clay, she does it quite well.
Like American Donald Young's connection with John McEnroe, Lithunia's Richard Berankis has the envy of every young male player in Europe after being invtited by Roger Federer to train before the 2011 season began.
Does the greatest player of all time see something of himself in the younger man? Certainly his impressive fitness is a good place to start.
Berankis won the US Open junior title when he was 17 without dropping a single set, and in 2010, he was the youngest player in the Top 100.
Unlike a majority of current stars, Berankis is no golden child with the gift of years of academies and camps behind him. His mother works at the post office, his dad is a taxi driver.
Bulgarian 20-year-old Grigor Dimitrov has his own connection to Federer, he is coached by Peter Lundgren, who guided the Swiss legend to his first Wimbledon crown close to a decade ago.
Lundgren scarily diagnoses that Dimitrov has more talent than Federer at the same age, and Dimitrov brings the swagger to back it up, telling a London newspaper, "I definitely believe I can be the world No. 1. I can do anything on any surface."
He backed up that talk in 2008, winning the junior titles at the US Open and Wimbledon.
If "Words with Friends" allowed you to use your own name as a word, no one would ever want to play with Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, who is worth 35 points on the board and has already notched three WTA titles.
Like a lot of phenoms who destroy the competition early on, Pavlyuchenkova was in for a rude awakening when she turned pro at age 16 after having won the junior titles at the US and Australian Opens in 2006, and Australia again in 2007.
"I don't mean to sound arrogant, but I won everything in the juniors," she said before last year's French Open. "When I turned pro at 16, I had to learn how to lose. I started racking up disappointment after disappointment and I wasn't used to it."
Instead of getting down on herself, Pavlyuchenkova got better, and quick, winning two titles as a teenager in 2010 and going 40-22 on the year to wind out just outside the Top 20.
She took another title in 2011, made the quarterfinals at Roland Garros and Flushing Meadows, and has one of the finest athletic pedigrees on tour - her grandmother was an Olympic basketball player for the former Soviet Union, her mom was a competitive swimmer and her father a world-class canoeist (whatever that level is).
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/10/2011 6:01:57 PM | with 0 comments
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Ramey Osborne to the rescue!
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Facing the prospect of dropping out of the league for good, the Sacramento Capitals were given new life earlier this week when they were bought by a new ownership group.
The Capitals are the longest-running franchise in World Team Tennis history, having competed in 26 seasons and won a league-best six titles.
 On Thursday, Capital Sports Management purchased the team. The group is led by Ramey Osborne, who also owned the Capitals from 1987-1999.
Former owner Bob Cook looked like he might let the team fall completely apart when he filed for personal bankruptcy in August of 2011. Cooks is a local developer in Sacramento.
Osborne will keep general manager Matt McEvoy in place.
"I love tennis, and I've enjoyed it from the day they came, and so I want to keep it going," Osborne told a local newspaper. "When I realized or saw that there some problems with the past owernship, I thought that somebody needed to step up, and so I did."
Sacramento used a late-season push to qualify for last summer's playoffs and reached the Western Conference finals led by Mark Knowles and Vania King.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/10/2011 6:25:46 PM | with 0 comments
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You win some, you lose some
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It was a remarkable thing to have four tennis players honored by ESPN in its annual "NEXT" issue recently.
The Magazine began predicting the athletes of tomorrow way back in 1998, but in the 12 years leading up to this issue, only seven netters had been given the honor of gracing those pages.
After lauding the 2012 editions of ESPN's "NEXT" phenomenon, I decided to take a look back at the players who have come before.
Here's how yesterday's versions of tennis' "NEXT" are living up to the hype.
 Melanie Oudin (2009) - Oudin was the first tennis player named to the "NEXT" list in five years when she graced the pages alongside a remarkable display of young sports talent - the NBA's Kevin Durant and John Wall, baseball phenom Steven Strasburg and football record-breaking running back Chris Johnson.
When she graced the issue in December of 2008, Oudin was the No. 2 ranked junior in the world.
She did the magazine proud the next season with a Oudin stunning 39-17 campaign that saw her rise from 173rd to 49th in the rankings, topped by a remarkable run to the quarterfinals of the US Open.
Oudin got off to a rough start to 2010, failing to record a win until she found her game in Paris, reaching the semifinals there and the quarterfinals at Memphis. A trip to the Charleston quarterfinals saw her rise to No. 31 in the world.
She was unable to repeat her success at the US Open, and it cost her 30 spots in the rankings, finishing the season 25-24 and ranked 65th.
Oudin's slippery slope hit a very rough stretch in 2011 as she plummeted to a 10-33 record and fell drastically out of the Top 100.
She lost her first match in 18 tournaments and made only one quarterfinal on the entire season.
 Before Oudin, the last tennis player honored in a "NEXT" issue was Maria Sharapova, who in 2004, was trying her best to not be compared to Anna Kournikova.
Her class was quite hit and miss - with the slam dunks - Michael Phelps, Larry Fitzgerald, Dwight Howard and the airballs - Kaz Matsui and whoever the hell Randolph Morris is.
Unlike Kournikova, Sharapova had already won two WTA titles by the time she finished her 2003 season, one in which she went 38-13.
She erupted into the big time in 2004, reaching the quarterfinals at Roland Garros, winning Birmingham and then taking Wimbledon by storm, crushing Serena Williams in the final 6-1, 6-4, adding the Tour Championship title at year's end to finish fourth, one of six Top 10 finishes in her career.
Since that appearance in 2003, Sharapova has won three Grand Slam titles, reached at least the semifinals of nine others and racked up 24 titles and more than $16.6 million in earnings.
 With a name like Paradorn Srichaphan, it's easy to be memorable, and the pride of Thailand was among the honorees in 2003, along with cover boy LeBron James, baseball hurler Josh Beckett, and NFL bruiser Brandon Jacobs.
Paradorn was a relative unknown until 2002, when he stunned Andre Agassi at Wimbledon and fought his way into the Top 30.
By the end of 2003, he had rode the success wave to just outside the Top 10, with a fourth-round appearance at the US Open. His fame spread across Asia, where he was Thailand's final flag bearer at the 2004 Summer Olympics.
As popular as he was, Paradorn's body couldn't keep up. He missed nearly all of 2007 due to injuries, dropping like a stone to near the bottom of the rankings.
He fought his way back, but 2010 would mark the end of his career when a motorcycle accident saw him break both his hands and one wrist.
 A year before Paradorn made the ESPN pages, it was Juan Carlos Ferrero's turn. He appeared in the magazine in 2002 and had made good on that promise within a year, winning the French Open title the following spring and taking over the No. 1 ranking in the world that September.
It would be the pinnacle of his playing days, although he won a further 15 titles and reached the final of the 2003 US Open and the semifinals of the Australian Open in 2004.
Ferrero's year was a good one for the "NEXT" class - he was joined by legendary linebackers Brian Urlacher and Julius Peppers, speed skater and "Dancing with the Stars" legend Apolo Ohno.
 Ferrero was the second straight "NEXT" performer to reach No. 1, following Marat Safin in 2001. With 7-foot, 6-inch Yao MIng on the cover, it might have been easy for Safin to get lost in the shadows, but he overcame it quickly by ending the 2000 season with a victory at the US Open that propelled him to the No. 1 ranking mere days after the issue debuted.
Safin was erratic on and off the court, but entertaining in both venues as well, racking up 15 titles, winning the 2005 Australian Open, smashing rackets and launching into emotional outbursts.
 But the gold standard of tennis success was set in 1999 when Venus and Serena Williams were featured alongside cover boys Randy Moss (success!) and Keith Van Horn (well, at least he retired rich), not to mention Vladimir Guerrero, Jaromir Jagr, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Tim Duncan.
Serena, the younger, has established herself as a modern-day contender for the greatest woman to ever take the court. Serena has 13 singles Grand Slams, two mixed doubles crowns and has combined with her sister to take 12 Grand Slam doubles crowns, along with two Olympic gold medals.
While Venus has never finished a single season ranked No. 1, she has earned the top ranking and has compiled seven Grand Slam singles titles and two in mixed doubles.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/13/2011 8:49:08 PM | with 0 comments
A new study has been released revealing that lesser players are more likely to pull the upset, if both competitors realize that a top player is waiting in the next round.
Using game theory, researchers have examined 28,000 matches from 2001-2010 spanning 600 men's pro tennis tournaments including all four Grand Slams.
The found phenomenon is called "the shadow effect" and centers on what researchers call a conservation of effort.
If the match favorite is aware that he is likely to face a top-flight opponent, say Novak Djokovic, in the next round, he is more likely to conserve energy against his current opponent, theorizing that he will need the extra burst to win in the next round.
Thus, the next opponent is casting a "shadow" over the match being played in the present.
In turning effort into energy, and tennis into math, says that energy conservation in the present hurts the higher-ranked player more than his lower-ranked opponent, because the better a player is, the more he gains from additional effort.
The lower-ranked player is likely to play all out in all circumstances, and having his opponent play at less than 100% gives him more opportunities to make up for the disparity in talent.
The study showed that the converse is also true. If a higher-ranked player knows that his next opponent is a weaker player, he has a decided advantage in the current match because he feels free to expend more effort and energy on the thought process that the next round will be less stressful.
The paper is called "Selecting the Best? Spillover and Shadows in Elimination Tournaments" and is presented by Jennifer Brown and Dylan B. Minor to the NBER.
The paper also touches on the effect fatigue has on players, which rings true to frustrations many pros have talked about it in regards to the US Open, where the semifinals and finals are held on consecutive days, on the rare occasions where weather delays are not an issue.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/13/2011 9:03:30 PM | with 4 comments
With Samantha Stosur struggling, Bernard Tomic battling the law and Lleyton Hewitt just downright terrible lately, Australia has been searching for a fresh face to lend its support to for next month's Australian Open.
Aussie fanatics got their wish last weekend when 15-year-old Ashleigh Barty shocked the field at the Australian Open wildcard play-off tournament, beating Olivia Rogowska 7-6(8), 6-2.
Barty was glib when asked about her chances on the big stage.
"I don't really want to think about it yet," she said. "I'll probably go out there and play some horrendous tennis and be really nervous, but I'll just go out there and have some fun."
Born in 1996, Barty will easily be the youngest player in the field, and won't be 16 until April.
She went 3-3 in ITF play in her 2010 debut, then made back-to-back ITF quarterfinals to start
2011. She finished the season 8-4.
Although it's about as much of a long shot as Australia sinking into the ocean overnight, if Barty were to win the Australian Open title, she would be the youngest woman to ever do so, breaking the record of 16 years, 4 months set by Martina Hingis in 1997.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/13/2011 10:13:45 PM | with 3 comments
Australian teenager Bernard Tomic is known on court for his lightning fast serves, but driving at the same rate of speed is getting him in trouble in his native land.
Tomic claims Sydney police are targeting his rather loud (both in color and noise level) orange BMW M3, a $150,000 sports car which he has been granted a special exemption from his provisional licence to drive to and from his tennis training.
 A provisional licence is given when an Australian turns 17 and is valid for three years, but has strict conditions including a no alcohol tolerance.
Tomic said he was pulled over Sunday night for "hooning" - the Australian term for illegal street racing.
Tomic added fuel to the fire by claiming that the officer who did the stopping has a vendetta against him.
"He doesn't like me for some reason, he's always on my tail," Tomic said, adding that the officer is "jealous".
Way to downplay it, kid.
The police of the Gold Coast have dismissed Tomic's claims and informed him that he only has the right to drive the car to tennis practice, although the star said he was informed he could also take it to "training, gym, massages and meetings."
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/14/2011 5:54:41 AM | with 1 comments
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Holding Serve on a Brand-New Court
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Marat Safin scored a number of huge wins on the court during his career.
Earlier this week, he garnered a big win off of it.
The 31-year-old Safin was elected to a set in Russia's lower house of Parliament.
"This is a completely new life, a new way of thinking, new way of doing things that's nothing to do with tennis or sports at all," Safin said.
Safin will officially take office on Dec. 21, at which time he will meet Russia's prime minister, Vladimir Putin.
Safin isn't the only former athlete entering Russia's parliament. He'll be joined by former boxer Nikolai Valuev and Olympic wrestler Alexander Karelin.
Safin's news reached halfway around the world to former rival Pete Sampras, who Safin defeated for the 2000 US Open crown.
"In 20 years, Marat will be the President of Russia. Trust me, this guy is going to go a long way," Sampras said.
"Marat is very intelligent, articulate and well-spoken, so I think it's great that he's getting involved in government in his homeland."
It wasn't all wine and roses for Safin and his fellow new electees, however. Protests featuring tens of thousands Russian citizens have filled the country over the past two weeks, calling for an investigation into potential voter fraud.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/15/2011 8:52:51 PM | with 0 comments
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Aussie Kim just wants to win
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It's a decent trivia question to ask tennis fans who won the 2011 Australian Open women's singles title, because by year's end, the player in question had vanished from the Top 10.
Belgium's Kim Clijsters was as hot as a player can be when she won Sydney last year, her second consecutive major, fourth overall, and combined with her year-end win at the WTA Championships, it allowed her to briefly take over the No. 1 ranking in the world.
Injuries - specificially an ankle, wrist, shoulder and foot - plagued the rest of her campaign, and she didn't play a lick after pulling out of Wimbledon in late June.
"The start of 2011 was really good. But after that I made some decisions I no longer would make now," Clijsters said on her own website last week.
"After a physically and psychologically very strenuous Australian Open, the indoor tournament in Paris was the one event too much. Now, I'll be listening to my body much better."
Clijsters had planned to make 2011 her final full season before making a run at the 2012 Summer Olympics being held at Wimbledon to wind down her career in hopes of having a second child.
Now she isn't sure what her schedule will be like in 2012, although the Olympics appears to still be her No. 1 objective, even to the point of not playing in the Fed Cup to focus on the pursuit of gold.
"I'll see how things are after the Australian Open," Clijsters said. "Should I do as well as last year, it might all be a bit much, but should things go not too well Down Under, the Fed Cup might be an appropriate challenge."
Unable to defend her crowns at Flushing Meadows or the year-end championships this fall, Clijsters slid to No. 13 in the world at year's end.
If she falters early at the Australian Open, she'll really take a dive in the rankings.
She will return to official tour action on January 1 at the season-opening tournament at Brisbane.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/17/2011 8:15:27 AM | with 3 comments
John Newcombe knows a thing or two about winning, and he thinks that not only Novak Djokovic struggle to do so at the same hectic pace in 2012 that he did in 2011, but also that 16-time Grand Slam champion Roger Federer will be the one re-taking the No. 1 ranking.
"Djokovic is really going to struggle the first six months of next year—he's really knocked himself out,'' Newcombe said in a recent magazine article.
"Since the U.S. Open, there's injuries, a sore shoulder, a sore back, and when you watch him playing, he's running on three cylinders, so I'd say that his body, it's given in. I think it will be a superhuman effort for him to repeat the six months that he had. It was an amazing run, and that is very hard to defend. It's not going to surprise me if, by the end of July next year, Roger is very close to being No. 1 again."
Federer won the year-end Barclays ATP Championships for the second consecutive year in November, with Djokovic eliminated in round-robin play and No. 2 Rafael Nadal thrashed by Federer in the semifinals.
Nadal seems to be even more of a question mark for Newcombe than Djokovic, particularly given that he lost to the Serbian six times in 2011, including at the finals of the US Open and Wimbledon.
"With Rafa, it's like the heavyweight champion of the world that's never been knocked out, and suddenly, gets knocked out six times within the space of six months by Djokovic," said Newcombe.
"He doesn't have the same self-belief any more. All of a sudden he's having to face things, questions, that he's never doubted. So it's a question of can he get his head around this whole thing, and come back to where he was?"
Newcombe won seven Grand Slam titles in singles, two in mixed doubles and 17 in doubles between 1965 and 1976. He is one of the very few players to have been ranked No. 1 in singles and doubles at some point his career.
Along with Rod Laver, Newcombe is one of only two men to ever win the US Open and Wimbledon men's titles as both an amateur and a porfessional. He was elected to the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1976, and is also famous for being future President George W. Bush's drinking companion when the latter was charged with DUI that same year.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/17/2011 8:31:08 AM | with 1 comments
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Ana just wants to have fun
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Ana Ivanovic has been a lot of things in her young career on the WTA Tour - the first player to be ranked No. 1 without a Grand Slam title, the most searched female athlete on the Internet, 2008 French Open Champion and UNICEF National Ambassador.
Now, she's telling her fellow women players to mellow out just a bit.
"The game of us women would be better if we could perhaps be more relaxed and we let ourselves go a little more on the court," Ivanovic said in a recent interview.
"The difference with the men's tennis is that they appear more relaxed and it seems they do not think the little things."
Although a bit of a broad statement, there is plenty of merit in Ivanovic's words. Plenty of female players feel pressured to be more than players - many are pushed into modelling, working as spokespeople and find themselves hounded by paparazzi like Hollywood stars rather than athletic competitors.
It's particularly true in comparison to their male equivalents - seldom do we find the mainstream international media cueing up to snap photos of anyone outside of Roger Federer, Andy Murray, Andy Roddick, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, but the women, given their blend of fashion/beauty symbols and athletic competitors, means having to be "on" quite a bit.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/17/2011 8:54:56 AM | with 1 comments
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Who makes the Top 10 for total ATP losses?
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Tom Petty once sang that even the losers get lucky some time, but when it comes to the players with the most losses in ATP history, you'd be suprised to find so much success.
Here's a quick run down of the 10 players with the most losses in the Open Era.
10. Jakob Hlasek, Switzlerand, 331 - Hard to call a guy a loser when he finishes more than 100 matches over .500 for his career and climbs as high as No. 7 in the world, but that's why Hlasek is only 10th on this list. He played 14 years on the pro tour, his last match a loss to then-No. 6 Boris Becker in the Grand Slam Cup in Germany in 1996. His only Grand Slam success was reaching the quarterfinals at Roland Garros in 1991. He also reached No. 4 in the world in singles in 1989.
 9. Goran Ivanisevic, Croatia, 333 - Impossible to call a Wimbledon champion a loser, but Ivanisevic's longecity puts him on this list as well. On the otherside of those 333 wins are a whopping 599 wins all time, 22 career titles, eight trips to at least the quarterfinals of Grand Slam tournaments and a high ranking of No. 2 in the world in July of 1994.
8. Tomas Smid, Czechoslovakia, 333 - Smid won nine career titles and 516 matches, reaching the quarterfinals of the Australian Open in 1983 and Wimbledon in 1994. He was most reknown for his participation in a stunning 31 Davis Cup ties for Czechoslovakia between 1977-1989, winning 22 singles matches and 20 doubles matches. Smid won more than twice as many doubles matches as he lost, taking two Grand Slam titles - the US Open in 1984 and the French Open in 1986. He was ranked No. 1 in the world in doubles in 1984.
7. Javier Sanchez, Spain, 335 - He played 14 years, but he could never quite break .500 for his career, finishing 327-335 with four career titles and two quarterfinal appearances at the US Open (1996, 1996). The Sanchez family is much more famous for Javier's younger sister, Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, who was the youngest-ever winner of the French Open at age 17 in 1989 and wound up with 13 Grand Slam titles in all. In addition, Sanchez's older brother Emilio won three Grand Slam doubles titles. Emilio defeated Javier in 1987 in Madrid, the first time that two brothers had ever met in a top-level tour tournament.
6. Rainer Schuttler, Germany, 337 - That's 337 losses and counting for Schuttler, who turned pro in 1995 and is still plowing along, despite being ranked No. 128 at the end of 2011. He peaked at No. 5 in 2004 and reached the finals of the 2003 Australian Open and the semifinals of Wimbledon in 2008.
5. Francisco Clavet, Spain, 340 - Unlike the prior two men, Clavet finished above .500 for his career at 388-340 with eight titles, but only cracked the Top 20 once, doing so in 1992. He's become more famous of late for coaching countryman Feliciano Lopez.
4. Marc Rosset, Switzerland, 351 - A giant of a man at 6 feet, 7 inches, Rosset played in three different decades, debuting in 1988 and shutting things down in 1995. Again, it's hard to call him a loser, since he took the gold medal in the 1992 Olympic Games and was ranked in the Top 10 in 1995. The gold medal came largely due to an upset of Ivanisevic in the semifinals following a stunning win over top seed Jim Courier in the third round. He reached the Roland Garros semifinals in 1999 and the Australian Open quarterfinals in 1996.
3. Vincent Spadea, USA, 359 - The 37-year-old American proved that as long as you're having fun and doing what you like, the wins and losses aren't all that important. He finally called it a career in 2010 after 17 years, 309 wins and one career title, peaking at No. 18 in 2005. He reached the quarterfinals of the Australian Open in 1999, is one of only four players to ever beat Roger Federer 6-0, 6-0. In 2000, he notched quite a few of his losses in a ATP record 21-match losing streak.
 2. Jonas Bjorkman, Sweden, 362 - Bjorkman's losses stacked up late because his passion for the game didn't wane until well into his 30s - he retired in 2008 after 17 seasons and more than $14 million in prize money. He made two Grand Slam semifinals in his career and peaked at No. 4 in 1997. He was vastly more formidable as a doubles player, going 708-304 all-time with nine Grand Slam titles.
1. Fabrice Santoro, France, 444 - Another three-decade warrior, Santoro managed to win more than he lost, with 470 career wins, a fervent fan following and some of the best trick shots in the world. In addition, he defeated 18 players who were No. 1 in the world at some time in their careers, won two men's doubles titles at the Australian Open and reached No. 17 in the world in 2001.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/17/2011 8:57:58 PM | with 0 comments
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Giving back to the next generation
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 Sports Illustrated once famously called Ivan Lendl "The Champion No One Cares About", but far be it Lendl to return the favor.
Lendl is four months into running the show at the Ivan Lendl International Junior Tennis Academy in Hilton Head, South Carolina and apparently having a blast according to a recent magazine interview.
"I just love it when kids do sports," Lendl said. "It keeps them out of trouble. It teaches them values. It teaches them fairness. It teaches them hard work."
It's not just tennis that Lendl preaches to kids, as evidenced by the activities of his own children. Two of his daughters are members of the University of Florida's golf team, another plays golf for the University of Alabama and a fourth is on the Crimson Tide's rowing squad. His fifth daughter, Nikola, is involved in equestrian competition.
There's more to Lendl's school than smashing a ball as hard as one can.
The academy includes academics, health and fitness classes and devloping a firm mental game.
Lendl used power and precision to become arguably the greatest player of his generation, staying at the No. 1 spot int he world for 270 weeks, a streak surpassed only by Pete Sampras and Roger Federer.
He played in 19 Grand Slam finals in his career and won eight of them, missing a career Grand Slam by failing in two Wimbledon finals in 1986-1987.
Lendl's seemingly cold exterior might have come largely because of the men he often competed against - Americans Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe and Germany's Boris Becker.
"It hurt. It wasn't fair," Lendl said of the attitude about him during his playing days. "But that was a long time ago."
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/18/2011 8:14:05 PM | with 1 comments
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Keys to Victory Down Under?
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Precocioius American Madison Keys has battled her way to a wild card for the upcoming US Open by winning the USTA playoff on Sunday, defeating Gail Brodsky 6-3, 6-4.
The 16-year-old native of Boca Raton, Florida, turned pro in 2009 and became the seventh-youngest woman to ever win a WTA match that same year, defeating Nadia Petrova at Ponte Vedra Beach at age 14 years, 48 days.
After that auspicious debut, Keys went 18-5, starting the year by winning the ITF tournament in Cleveland, defeating the No. 8, 4 and 3 seeds in the process.
She followed it up with semifinal trips to Atlanta, Amelia Island and Evansville and reached the final at Bayamon.
Things didn't go as swimmingly in 2011, as Keys went 10-10.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/18/2011 9:09:17 PM | with 0 comments
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So close, yet so far away
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For better or worse, you're no one in tennis until you've won a major tournament. And while players are ranked No. 1, win year-end chapionships and make the Hall of Fame, without a shiny trophy from Roland Garros, the Australian Open, the Centre Court or Flushing Meadows, most fans believe a career is a bit incomplete.
Here's a look at six former players and two present ones who are still lacking that last piece of the resume.
 Pam Shriver - One of the first successful six foot women on tour, Shriver played 18 years and won 21 WTA tournaments, but not a single one was a major. Despite that lack, she finished in the top six at the end of three different seasons.
She reached eight Grand Slam semifinals, and one final, but could never break that threshold in her long career. At the Australian Open, she reached three straight semifinals in the early 1980s, but the way was barred shut by Martina Navratilova each and every time, unable to win even a single set off the legend.
Shriver never had a better opportunity to win a Grand Slam title than when she was 18 years old and the 13th seed at the 1978 US Open. She stormed her way to the semifinals without losing a set, then knocked off top-seeded Martina Navratilova 7-6, 7-6 to reach the final.
But fellow wunderkind Chris Evert proved too much to handle, taking a 7-5, 6-4 victory over Shriver. Shriver would make the US Open semifinals twice more in her career, losing in three sets to Hana Mandlikova in 1982 and to Navratilova in 1983.
Wimbledon was the site of three Shriver near misses. In 1981, she upset Tracy Austin in the quarterfinals before falling to Evert in the semis; in 1987 she was crushed by young riser Steffi Graf 6-0, 6-2 in the final four; and in 1988, it was Graf again, in dominating 6-2, 6-1 fashion.
 Marcelo Rios - Rios is the rarest of male players - ranked No. 1 in the world without the benefit of a Grand Slam title. Granted, he held that rank for only six weeks - all of them coming in 1998 - the season in which he lost the Australian Open final and fell in the Roland Garros quarterfinals. They were his two best chances, he would reach the quarterfinals at the French Open again in 1999 and the same round at the Australian Open in 2002.
 Elena Dementieva - The consumate professional, Dementieva retired a year short of her 30th birthday in order to enjoy married life after spending 11 straight years in the Top 20, seven of the final eight in the Top 10.
Her best shot Down Under came in 2009, when she entered as the fourth seed and advanced to the semifinals before being cut down in straight sets by No. 2 Serena Williams.
A strong clay court player, Dementieva reached the Roland Garros final in 2004, a wild tournament that saw her taken to three sets in the opening round and lose her third-round opening set 0-6 before wining by retirement. She eventually reached the final, and was blasted by Anastasia Myskina, 6-1, 6-2. Dementieva made the French Open semifinals in her final year on tour, when an injury felled her against eventual champion Francesa Schiavone.
A favorite at the US Open, Dementieva was painfully close to achieving immortality on American soil. She reached the semifinals in 2000 as an 18 year old, ranked 25th in the world, losing to No. 2 Lindsay Davenport.
She made the final for the first time in 2004, taking out three Top 10 seeds before tumbling against Svetlana Kuznetsova in straight sets. It was the semifinals again in 2005, including an upset of No. 1 Davenport in the quarters, before a disappointing loss to Mary Pierce.
She made one last push in New York in 2008, reaching the semifinals before falling to No. 2 Jelena Jankovic.
Wimbledon was not Dementieva's favorite tournament early on, but she found her stride later in her career, reaching the semifinals in 2008 and 2009, but falling to Venus Williams one year and Serena Williams the next.
 Todd Martin - The powerful-serving, giant of an American reached No. 4 in the world in 1999, won eight ATP titles and won 177 more matches than he lost, but never could grab that elusive Grand Slam title. He made his Grand Slam debut in 1990, but didn't reach a quarterfinal until 1993 when he entered Wimbledon ranked 30th in the world and made the final eight.
He fought his way to the Wimbledon semifinals a year later, losing to No. 1 Pete Sampras in four sets; and did the same at the US Open, losing to Andre Agassi.
The next season at Wimbledon, Martin engaged in one of the most memorable matches of all time, and not just because a streaker interrupted play. He battled fellow American MaliVai Washington for five sets before falling 7-5, 4-6, 7-6(6), 3-6, 8-10.
The 1999 season proved to be the pinnacle of Martin's career, but also the most painful in terms of near misses. He fell in the quarterfinals at the Australian Open and Wimbledon, then battled his way to the US Open final, making a remarkable comeback in the fourth round, dropping the first two sets against Greg Rusedski 5-7 and 0-6 before rallying for wins of 7-6(3), 6-4 and 6-4.
Agassi waited in the final though, and in an American classic, the world's No. 2 player took a stirring 6-4, 6-7(5), 6-7(2), 6-3, 6-2 victory. Martin would make one last push - the following year a the same tournament - but fell to Marat Safin in straight sets in the semifinals.
 Mary Joe Fernandez - Mary Joe Fernandez was a dominant player in the early 1990s, finishing in the top eight five times between 1990 and 1995. It was quite remarkable that Fernandez did not manage to win a major in that time frame, as she reached the final four of the Australian Open three times, the French Open twice, Wimbledon once and the US Open twice.
She was 18 when she broke through to reach the Australian Open in 1990, upsetting No. 4 Zina Garrison in the quarterfinals before being stopped by Steffi Graf in the final.
In 1991, she reached the semifinals before losing to Monica Seles, who beat her again in the 1992 final. She made the semifinals again in 1994, falling to No. 4 Martina Hingis.
On clay, Fernandez had two great shots at taking the Roland Garros crown, making the semifinals in 1989 as the No. 15 seed, with an upset of second-seeded Gabriela Sabatini, and reaching the finals in 1993 as the fifth seed, taking out third-seeded Sabatini in the quarterfinals and second-eeded Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario in the semifinals before losing a 4-6, 6-2, 6-4 heartbreaker to Graf in the final.
At the US Open, she reached the semifinals in 1990, losing to Sabatini 7-5, 5-7, 6-3 and again in 1992, where she lost to No. 1 Monica Seles.
Of the four majors, she had her least success at Wimbledon, but reached the semifinals in 1991, falling to Graf, 6-2, 6-4.
 Tim Henman - The pain of Henman's failure to win a Grand Slam in his native United Kingdom overwhelms all the good he did - reaching No. 4 in the world in 2002 and earning 11 ATP titles and more than $11.6 million in prize money. Henman's best event was always at home at Centre Court, and he came achingly close to the final a number of times without success.
In total, he fell four times in the semifinals and four more times in the quarterfinals, also reaching the US Open semifinals in 2004.
At Wimbledon, his semifinal appearances came in 1998 - a four-set loss to No. 1 Pete Sampras; 1999 - again a four-set loss to Sampras; 2000 - when he squandered a 2-1 set lead and fell victim to No. 125 Goran Ivanisevic; and 2002 - crushed in straight sets by No. 1 Lleyton Hewitt.
In 2004, he reached the semifinals of a non-Wimbledon Grand Slam for the first time, but was destroyed in straight sets by Roger Federer.
 Mark Philippoussis - The powerfully-built Australian lasted 14 years on tour, won 11 titles and peaked at No. 8 in the world, but could never break through the final barrier, falling in two Grand Slam finals. The first came on American soil in 1998, when as the No. 22 player in the world, he fell to fellow Australian Patrick Rafter in the final - the first All-Australian Grand Slam final since Mark Edmondson defeated John Newcombe in the 1976 Australian Open.
His other big shot came at Wimbledon in 1993, when, ranked No. 48 in the world, he shocked No. 1 Andre Agassi in the third round in five sets,but ultimately became the first Grand Slam victim of Roger Federer, who defeated him in three with a pair of tie-break set wins.
He made the Wimbledon quarterfinals on three other occasions, but never made it past the fourth round of his native Australian Open.
 Andy Murray - If Tim Henman ever wants to have a beer at the pub with someone who can understand his sorrow, Murray is the guy. The 24-year-old Scot has replaced Henman as Her Royal Majesty's best hope to break the kingdom's Grand Slam drought - soon to be entering its 76th year.
Murray has bee ranked as high as No. 2 in the world and taken 21 career titles and more than $19 million in prize money, but the one thing that will grant him sport immortality - and perhaps a future life as Sir Andrew - has thus far eluded him.
Unlike more than a few of the entrants on this list, Murray has made several Grand Slam finals, but that has made him look worse in the eyes of many critics, because of the way he has played in the title matches.
His first major final came in 2008, when Roger Federer dripped about two mililiters of sweat in crushing Murray 6-2, 7-5, 6-2. He put up more of a fight against Federer at the 2010 Australian Open, but it was still another sweep, 6-3, 6-4, 7-6(11). He returned to the Australian final in 2011, and while the opponent was different, the result was the same old, a 6-4, 6-2, 6-3 brow-beating at the hands of Novak Djokovic.
Murray went on to reach the semifinals of the other three Grand Slams in 2011, winning exactly two sets in three losses to Rafael Nadal.
Nadal has been his big-time nemesis in Grand Slams, also dismissing him in the 2008 Wimbledon quarterfinals (in straight sets) and the 2010 semifinals (you guessed it, straight sets).
 Caroline Wozniacki - Just 21 and with a long career still hopefully ahead of her, Wozniacki's lack of major crowns usually overshadows the fact that she's been ranked No. 1 nearly non-stop for 15 months and has racked up 18 career titles on tour. She has only one Grand Slam final to show for it, losing the 2009 US Open to Kim Clijsters. She was upset by a red-hot Li Na last year at Australia, her first time past the fourth round there.
She has made it to the final eight just once at Roland Garros, falling to eventual champion Francesa Schivaone in 2010; has never done anything of note at Wimbledon and has had three bittersweet experiences at Flushing Meadows, losing in the semifinals each of the past two years.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/21/2011 11:09:46 AM | with 2 comments
Look out, Wozilroy, here comes Scottovic.
Caroline Wozniacki and Rory McIlroy's seemingly ironclad hold on the best-looking tennis/golf burgeoning romance is being challenged by Serbia's Ana Ivanovic and Australia's Adam Scott.
The 24-year-old Ivanovic, ranked by many as the most beautiful woman on the WTA tour, is dating the 31-year-old Scott, after breaking up a year ago.
Scott has been ranked as high as third in the world on the PGA tour and was crowned the champion at the 2011 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational this August, collecting a $1.4 million paycheck in the process.
In a recent interview, Ivanovic cited Scott's laid-back attitude and domestic abilities as her favorite aspects of his character.
"I like the relaxed, laid-back Australian mentality," Ivanovic said. "And I also feel like he's very helpful around the house.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/21/2011 11:54:26 AM | with 0 comments
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Those darn Cheeseheads ...
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Novak Djokovic might have had the greatest year in recent tennis history, but it wasn't enough to earn him 2011 Male Athlete of the Year honors from the Associated Press.
Djokovic finished a distant third in the voting behind NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers of the the Green Bay Packers, who won the award with 112 votes out of 212 ballots.
American League Cy Young award winner Justin Verlander finished second, receiving 50 votes.
Djokovic was third, followed by NFL rookie quarterback Cam Newton, who won the Heisman Trophy a year ago while winning the national championship at Auburn University.
NASCAR driver Tony Stewart finished fifth with five votes.
John McEnroe was the last male tennis player to win the award, taking it in 1981. Prior to that, the last male tennis player to win the award was American Don Budge, who took the award in 1937 and 1938.
With far less professional leagues, there have been vastly more female winners of the award.
In all, a woman has won the award 28 times since 1931 -- Helen Jacobs, Helen Wills Moody, Alice Marble, Maureen Connolly, Althea Gibson, Maria Bueno, Billie Jean King, Chris Evert, Tracy Austin, Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graf, Monica Seles, Martina Hingis, Jennifer Capriati and Serena Williams.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/21/2011 10:07:23 PM | with 0 comments
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When Dry Spells Grow to Dry Seasons
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Americans tend to get a bad wrap when it comes to winning tennis tournaments, but there's one thing they do better than their compatriots in Paris, Sydney and London - win their own Slams.
While the United States is struggling to keep its own players in the Top 10, it is leaps and bounds ahead of the competition when it comes to defending its own turf.
Of the four countries that host a Grand Slam event, America is the only country to produce at least one male and female winner in its native major in the past decade - Andy Roddick in 2003 and Venus Williams in 2001 and Serena Williams in 2002 and 2008 at the US Open.
Once you start spanning the globe, the native winners get more and more hazy in one's memory, even though France, Australia and England have produced a long list of notable players in recent memory.
Here's the breakdown of Grand Slam slumps by host country.
Australia (Australian Open): WTA slump - 33 years. Last winner:  Chris O'Neil, 1978. O'Neil won just one Grand Slam, and did it as an unseeded player, the first woman to do so in the Open Era. She was 21 years old at the time and upset third-seeded American Beth Norton in the second round, and seventh-seeded American Betsy Nagelsen in the final.
 ATP slump - 35 years. Last winner: Mark Edmonson, 1976. Edmonson is the stuff by which every longshot thrives - the lowest-ranked winner of a major since the introduction of the rankings system. He was # 212 in the world and not surprisingly, unseeded to start the tournament. He was down two sets to one in the first round and needed 13 sets to get past his first three opponents. In the semifinals, he stunned Australian fan favorite and No. 1 seed Ken Rosewall in four sets, then did likewise to No. 2 John Newcombe in the final.
 France (Roland Garros): WTA slump - 11 years. Last winner: Mary Pierce, 2000. Pierce was 24 in the spring of 2000, five years removed from her big splash at the Australian Open in 1995 and six years removed from her 1994 finals appearance at the French Open. She entered the 2000 field as the sixth seed in a top-heavy tournament that saw second-seeded American Lindsay Davenport stunned in the first round. Pierce did not drop a set in her section and put together two of her finest performances back to back in the final eight, rallying past third-seeded Monica Seles 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 in the quarterfinals and top-seeded Martina Hingis 6-4, 5-7, 6-2 in the semifinals before sweeping Conchita Martinez in the final. She was the first French woman to win the title in 33 years and also teamed with HIngis to win the doubles crown.
 ATP Slump - 28 years. Last winner: Yannick Noah, 1983. The wildly-entertaining Noah had never been further than the third round of a major before his sixth season on tour, but right around his 23rd birthday he got red hot, becoming the first Frenchman to win at Roland Garros in 37 years. Like Pierce, he was the sixth seed and stormed through the opening rounds. In the quarterfinals, he bageled Ivan Lendl 6-0 in a clinching fourth set, then took out fellow Frenchman Christophe Roger-Vasselin, who had stunned No. 1 Jimmy Connors in straight sets. Noah terrorized his countryman to the tune of a 6-3, 6-0, 6-0 drubbing, then swept defending champion Mats Wilander in the final.
 England (Wimbledon): WTA slump - 34 years. Last winner: Virginia Wade, 1977. Wade was the empire's favorite daughter at the time, but seemed a distance longshot despite being the No. 3 seed, due to the fact that Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova were seeded ahead of her. More over, Wade's best days seemed behind her at age 32 - she had last won a major in 1972 at Australia and it was a full decade since she had grabbed the US Open crown in 1968. She breezed through the early rounds and stunned top-seeded Evert in the semifinals 6-2, 4-6, 6-1. Navratilova was upset by The Netherlands' Betty Stove in the quarterfinals, and even after the Dutch grabbed the first set, Wade rallied to a 4-6, 6-3, 6-1 win.
 ATP slump - 75 years. Last winner: Fred Perry, 1936. One of the most famous dry spells in sports history is England's lack of success at producing a male champion at any of the four majors. Perry won three straight Wimbledon crowns from 1934-1936, crushing Germany's Gottfried von Cramm 6-1, 6-1, 6-0 in 1936. Perry lost only one set during the entire tournament, losing the first to American Don Budge before rallying for a four-set victory in the semifinals. Von Cramm fell in three straight Wimbledon finals, but won the French Open twice and served for the Nazis in World War II.
Perry won eight Grand Slam titles total, taking the US Open later in 1936 to achieve the career Grand Slam.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/26/2011 12:25:48 PM | with 1 comments
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Straight out of a Vanilla Ice lyric
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Leave it to Serena Williams to have people talking about her choice of swimwear on Christmas Eve.
The 13-time Grand Slam singles winner and former No. 1 player was spotted on Miami Beach with family and friends on Dec. 24
Looking a good deal slimmer than earlier appearances this year, Williams told reporters that she had "swapped steak for salad" in her diet.
The paparazzi photographed Williams on a raft ride with friends in the two-piece bikini.
Williams missed the first 8-1/2 months of the 2011 season from complications of a foot injury suffered just after winning the 2010 Wimbledon title.
Showing next to no rust upon her return, she won two tournaments in the US Open Series and reached the finals of the US Open, but was upset by Samantha Stosur.
She finished the year with a 22-3 record and is expected to play in the Australian Open in January.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/27/2011 9:34:19 AM | with 0 comments
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Big Mac finds his way into the limelight again
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What's normally thought of as a jinx in the realm of John Madden Football games is still pretty much an honor in every other sport - and that honor has been given to Maria Sharapova, Novak Djokovic and John McEnroe - the three cover players for EA's new Grand Slam Tennis 2.
McEnroe's inclusion might get some queries of "who is this?" from younger fans of the game, but a big point of the game's marketing standpoint is the ability to play with all-time great players from the past as well as current stars.
Unlikely the most popular player, it's hard to argue that McEnroe isn't among the most well-known in the sports history. Despite having not played on the ATP tour in 20 years, he has kept himself a fixture in the national spotlight with his political views, TV appearances, role in the US Davis Cup team, color commentary, WTT and exhibition play and numerous advertising campaigns.
Djokovic is a slam-dunk choice for current men's players, considering he had one of the greatest all-time seasons and won three Grand Slam titles.
And there's no woman's player more popular than Sharapova, who returned to the Top 5 this year, just missing Slams at the French Open and Wimbledon.
In addition to McEnroe, users can take the court as former playing legends Boris Becker, Bjorn Borg, Stefan Edberg, Pat Cash, Pete Sampras, Michael Stich, Lindsay Davenport, Chris Evert, Justine Henin and Martina Navratilova.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/27/2011 9:44:58 AM | with 0 comments
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Politics even less fun than playing Caroline Wozniacki
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Plenty of athletes have left the playing arena for politics, but rarely do they come back.
Not so, Anna Chakvetadze.
The former Top 5 Russian player has decided to return to the tour after failing to win elected office to her country's parliament.
If she had won, she would have joined former men's top dog Marat Safin , who was one of a host of colorful Russian celebrities to gain a spot at the Duma (the Russian parliament).
Still just 24 years old, Chakvetadze began the year ranked 56th and was leading No. 2 Caroline Wozniacki 6-1, 3-5 in the second round at Dubai when she collapsed on the court.
She was given medical treatment during a seven-minute delay, returned for one more point and then forfeited, with tournament officials calling it the results of a stomach illness.
Whatever the reason, she didn't return ot the court for nearly a month, then bowed out in the second round to Maria Kirilenko at Indian Wells, retiring again.
She lost her last three matches, the finale at Wimbledon in miserable form (2-6, 1-6) to Maria Sharapova to finish the season 6-8, nose-diving to No. 234 in the world.
It was the first time she had finished outside the Top 100 since 2003.
Chakvetadze's best season was 2007. She started off the season with a victory at Hobart, reached the quarterfinals at the Australian Open and Roland Garros, won at 'S-Hertogenbosch over then-No. 3 Jelena Jankovic, won Cincinnati and Stanford back to back and reached the semifinals of the US Open - her best Grand Slam finish ever.
She also reached the semifinals of the Tour Championships, peaked at No. 5 and finished No. 6 overall with a 59-20 record.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/27/2011 6:10:23 PM | with 0 comments
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And just think of the triple word scores!
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Sure Novak Djokovic and Caroline Wozniacki are No. 1 on their respective tours, but how do they hold up on a scrabble board?
Suprisingly well, according to an on line Scrabble score generator that can spit out the point total for any combination of letters at a moment's notice.
Here are the Top 10 Scrabble Names out of the Top 100 Players on the ATP and WTA Tours
ATP
Philipp Kohlschreiber 43
Philipp Petzschner 42
Mikhail Youzhny 41
Mikhail Kukushkin 40
Novak Djokovic 37
Alex Bogomolov Jr. 37
Sergiy Stakhovsky 37
Guillermo Garcia-Lopez 37
Thomaz Bellucci 34
Janko Tipsarevic 33
Alexander Dolgopolv 33
WTA
Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez 58
Barbora Zahlavova Strycova 54
Anastasia Pavlyuchenova 43
Bojana Jovanovski 41
Michaella Krajicek, 41
Agnieszka Rawanska 40
Stephanie Foretz Gacon 40
Svetlana Kuznetsova 37
Caroline Wozniacki 37
Jelena Jankovic 37
Jarmila Gajdosova 37
Klara Zakopalova 37
Virginie Razzano 37
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/27/2011 7:46:04 PM | with 0 comments
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Hey whatever happened to ... oh, that's right
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Everyone is quick to exult on the new stars and high risers when they do their year in reviews, but what about the players who caught our attention for a few moments, only to fade back into the middle of the pack?
Here's a look at eight players who started strong and then fell into obscurity in 2011.
Jurgen Melzer - Melzer finished 2010 ranked eighth and was high as No. 7 halfway through the season. A first-round loss at Stuttgart started a downturn that included an injury withdrawal in the first round at Washington D.C and eight straight losses to players outside the Top 40. He finished the year 33rd.
Mikhail Youzhny - Ranked 8th in the world in 2008 is seeming like a distant memory for the 29-year-old following an up-and-down, 27-24 2011 season. Youzhny was ranked 10th as late in the season as February 7. Twenty-one of his 24 losses were to players outside of the Top 20, the worst a 4-6, 3-6 defeat to No. 327 Michael Lammer at Basel. Youzhny finished the season ranked 35th.
Ivo Karlovic - The tallest man to ever play professional tennis at 6 feet 10 inches, Karlovic got his name back in the spotlight in March when he won the first set of a quarterfinal match against then-No. 1 Rafael Nadal and pushed the 10-time Grand Slam champion to three sets before falling 7-5, 1-6, 6-7(7). He slammed 23 aces past the mobile Spaniard in a draining match that preceded Nadal's eventual loss in the finals to Novak Djokovic. The loss to Nadal came after Karlovic had defeated No. 6 David Ferrer and No. 31 Giles Simon in consecutive matches. Karlovic made the semifinals at Houston two weeks later, defeating popular American John Isner 7-6(2), 6-7(2), 7-6(9) in the quarterfinals, then suffered four first-round losses in a row, ultimately losing seven of eight matches.
David Nalbandian - Five years ago he was the No. 3 player in the world, and he was No. 19 in the world as late as mid-April of 2011 thanks to an appearance in the finals at Auckland and a stint in the Buenos Aires quarters. Nagging injuries cost himn three months between the Davis Cup and Queen's Club, and a first-round upset loss to James Blake at Washington D.C. saw him plummet 24 spots in the rankings. He struggled the rest of the way, ending the year with an injury withdrawl at Stockholm.
Sam Querry - Was it just a little over a year ago that America had five men in the Top 25? Querrey was 17th in the world in early February, but injuries ate up most his summer and cost him appearances at Wimbledon and in the US Open series, which dropped him from 26th to 125th. He came back via the Challenger route and defeated Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in reaching the Valencia quarterfinals to regain a spot in the Top 100 by year's end.
Maria Kirilenko - She ended 2010 ranked 20th in the world and was ranked as high as No. 18 in 2008. She had a banner 2010, making the Australian Open quarterfinals and at least the third round of the other three Grand Slams. She continued to impress in the majors, but the overall effort was less than impressive as she went 29-22, including a loss to No. 560 Galina Voskoboeva in Pattaya City. She was beaten in the first round on six different occasions and finished the year 28th.
Shahar Peer - The Isralei was No. 13 at the end of 2010 and reached No. 11 thanks to a third-round performance at the Australian Open. She followed that with a quarterfinal appearance at Dubai and again at Indian Wells to complete a 10-5 start. From there, she couldn't even tread water, going just 13-16 the rest of the way, falling out fo the Top 20 after a first-round loss at Roland Garros to No. 86 Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez. She lost int he first round at Wimbledon to No. 89 Ksenia Pervak before surging to the finals at Washington D.C., where she lost to Nadia Petrova. She ended the year ranked 37th.
Kimiko Date-Krumm - After an amazing Top 50 finish in 2010, the 41-year-old Date-Krumm finally showed her age in 2011. She started the season 1-6 en route to a 23-28 campaign, taking the biggest tumble from 68th to 81st after falling in the first round of the Tokyo-Pan Pacific, a tournament she won last year. She wound up 87th on the year, playing in three ITF tournaments at year's end - reaching three finals and winning one title.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/29/2011 9:22:56 AM | with 0 comments
The Hopman Cup kicked off Saturday in Australia with the United States as the defending champion, but nowhere near the No. 1 seed.
For the uninformed, the Hopman Cup is a best-of-three matchup featuring one man and one women player from each of a number of countries. The format is women's singles, men's singles and then mixed doubles with a first-to-10 tie-breaker.
There are four seeded squads and four wild cards split into two groups. The teams play a round-robin format within their own groups and the teams with the best records play each other for the championship.
Here's a breakdown of the two groups as the 2012 season winds up.
Group A - (1) Czech Republic; (4) USA; Denmark, Bulgaria
Analysis: The Czech Republic squad of WTA #2 Petra Kvitova and ATP #7 Tomas Berdych is the overwhelming favorite to win. Kvitova was phenomenal in 2011 with seven titles, the Wimbledon crown and a 60-13 record. Berdych won once and was 53-23. Kvitova matches up quite favorably with the three other women in her group, undefeated against American Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Bulgaria's Tsvetana Pironkova and 2-3 against Denmark's Caroline Wozniacki. Berdych is on the other side of the coin, 0-2 against his three male counterparts.
The fourth-seeded US squad has history on its side. America has won six Hopman cups and both Mattek-Sands (2010) and Mardy Fish (2008) have been part of title squads. Make no mistake, Mattek-Sands is here for her doubles prowess (27-12 in 2011), and not her singles game (0-5 against her three opponents). Fish went 43-25 on the year and beat Berdych at Wimbledon.
For Denmark to advance, it must get something unique out of Frederik Nielsen, who is ranked No. 236 in the world and played only seven matches on tour last year. Wozniakci meanwhile was 63-17 and won six titles.
That leaves Bulgaria, led by No. 46 Tsvetana Pironkova and No. 76 Gregor Dimitorv. Pironkova is only 1-6 against her rivals, while Dimitrov owns a win over Berdych in 2009.
Group B: (2) France; (3) Spain; Australia, China.
Analysis: Like the Czech Republic, France is the clear-cut favorite here with two players in the Top 20 - the 58-25 Bartoli, who has a least a .500 if not a winning record against the other three women in her group; and Gasquet, who has battled Spain's Fernando Verdasco 11 times and won five of them.
Verdasco suffered a down year, failing to win a title, while Medina Garrigues won two and moved up to No. 27 in singles, No. 30 in doubles. Hometown favorites Jarmila Gajdovosoa and Lleyton Hewitt will have the fans behind them, but if Hewitt isn't 100% healthy, they'll be in trouble.
Meanwhile China's Li Na is joined by Wu Di, the obscure #421 in the world who has never played any of the other three men and went 3-1 on tour in 20111.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/30/2011 11:24:56 PM | with 0 comments
10. "We're outnumbered now."
-- Lleyton Hewitt, referring to the status of he and his wife after the birth of their third child.
9. They had a question on Espn2: "Who do you think is the best server in tennis? Isner, Roddick or Federer?" What do you think? -- noticing someone missing from the list. -- @ivokarlovic
8. If you know James Blake's num text him right now. He is in Europe and it costs him 50 cents -- @MardyFish
7. "Mr roddick my mom wants your autograph. You're her 3rd favorite player." From a 9 year old at breakfast....... Lie to me kid!!! -- @andyroddick
6. "Umpires are like emotional girlfriends -- once they make up their minds, there's no point in arguing." -- Janko Tipsarevic
5. "I am gluten tolerant." -- Janko Tipsarevic, questioned about his diet after Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray hailed the gluten-free diet.
4. "I'm not the best player in the history of tennis. I think I'm amongst the best. That's true. That's enough for me."-- Rafael Nadal
3. "Seems to me a lot of people have evolved as has the Bible, unfortunately Margaret Court has not. Her myopic view is truly frightening as well as damaging to the thousands of children already living in same gender families." -- Martina Navratilova
2. "I would rather die than retire, so the decision was quite easy for me." -- Andrea Petkovic on deciding to play in the Western & Southern Open despite a tear in her meniscus.
1. "Because we are not named Serena or Venus Williams doesn't mean we don't know how to play tennis." -- Marion Bartoli, reminding the media that the WTA Tour has more than two players.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/31/2011 10:17:04 AM | with 0 comments
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The best of the best off the court
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It's not all about rankings, prize money and Grand Slam wins. Tennis players have lives off the court just like the rest of us (well not just like, but close enough).
Here's a closer look at the social comings and goings of the ATP and WTA tour members.
And Baby Makes Three...
Ivan Ljubicic and his wife Aida welcomed a daughter, Zara, in November 2011. The pair also have a three-year-old son, Leonardo. No word if future sons will be named Rafael, Donatello and Michaelangelo.
Wasting no time after getting married, American doubles star Bob Bryan and his wife Michelle are due to bring their first child into the world in January 2012.
 Anastasia Myskina, 2004 French Open champion, has announced she is pregnant with her third child. As with her first two children, both boys, she has not named a father, although she has previously dated hockey players Aleskandr Stepanov and Konstantin Korneyvev.
Former Top 10 South African player Johan Kriek and his wife Daga have announced they are expecting their second child this year. Kriek is 53 years old. It is Kriek's third child, the second with Daga. He also has an 18-year-old daughter from a previous marriage. They are expecting their second child next year.
Wedding Bells Ring
The social event of the season was the wedding of long-time Top 10 player Elena Dementieva to former NHL player Maxim Afinogenov. Dementieva, classy throughout her playing days, hung it up at the end of 2010 and started the "normal life" phase with a wedding of athletic royalty featuring Dinara Safina, Maria Kirilenko, Vera Zvonareva and Svetlana Kuznetsova.
As previously mentioned in this blog, Kevin Anderson married his college sweetheart Kelsey O'Neal at the golf course where her father is club pro in Illinois.
 She might have dropped off in the rankings, but Kateryna Bondarenko enjoyed a fine time when she married businessman Denis Volodko
 Angering men and breaking hearts everywhere, Argetine doubles beauty Gisela Dulko married Argetine soccer player Fernando Gago, who plays in the midfield for Real Madrid.
Off the Market ... for now
 Former sexiest man alive James Blake (still sexy, still alive) got engaged to publicist Emily Snider (not to be confused with Elsa Snider, the female villain in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) and the two have tentatively set a November 2012 wedding date.
 Lovely Russian Maria Kirilenko has upgraded in the boyfriend department from No. 115 ATP player Igor Andreev to mutli-time NHL all star Alex Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals. It was a good run, Igor, but let's face it - you were way out of your league.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/31/2011 12:07:31 PM | with 0 comments
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The similarities are astonishing
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If Andy Murray knows his history, and given his intelligence level, you would think he does, he should be commended for taking all-time legend Ivan Lendl as his new coach with the 2012 season right around the corner.
If Lendl is as cerebral in his new charge's game as he was in his own during the late 1970s to early 1990s, he's no doubt already appreciated the similarities between the two.
 Even though he has been ranked as high as No. 2 in the world, Murray has never won a Grand Slam title. The pressure to do so is particularly crushing because Murray represents the United Kingdom, itself Slam-less since 1936.
Murray recently completed his seventh full season on tour. In those seven campaigns, he has reached three Grand Slam finals and lost all three in spectacularly-bad fashion.
Lendl's seventh season was when he finally broke through, shocking John McEnroe at the French Open final after losing the first two sets. In the process, he broke McEnroe's undefeated streak to start the season and, although he could not know it at the time, kept McEnroe from taking three major titles in 1984.
Getting Murray to that point is the missing piece in the puzzle that Lendl must put in place. Lendl was 24 when he finally broke through against McEnroe. Murray is 24 now, and won't turn 25 until the 2012 Australian Open is in the books and the French Open is halfway done.
In 2011, he reached at least the semifinals of all four Grand Slams, but still could not break through to the winner's circle in any of them.
It is a feeling that Lendl knew all too well early in his career. Between his third and fifth season on tours, Lendl won 26 tournaments, but flamed out repeatedly in the Slams, making only one major final.
The breakthrough against McEnroe changed everything for Lendl. It began a six-year span in which he won at least one Grand Slam every year and was the undebatable best player in the world - starting with the 1985 US Open, which he won, he reached at least the quarterfinals of 14 straight Grand Slam tournaments.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 12/31/2011 8:17:54 PM | with 2 comments
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