Sports Then and Now

Serena Williams claimed her 12th Grand Slam title with a victory over Justine Henin.

The amazing comeback of Justine Henin didn’t quite have the final culmination she had hoped as Serena Williams, herself looking for personal redemption following her meltdown at the 2009 U.S. Open, defeated Henin in three sets to win the first major of 2010.

Playing in her first major since the 2008 Australian Open, Henin rolled through the field to reach the finals of the Australian Open for the first time since retiring due to illness in the middle of the 2006 final against Amelie Mauresmo.

This time around, Henin made it through the entire match, but it was a tough three set affair against the player that has replaced Henin as the top player in the world.

While Henin was looking to make the Australian Open her statement tournament following her 18 month retirement, Serena Williams was looking to regain some professional dignity following her disqualification at the 2009 U.S. Open.

The defending Australian Open Champion, Williams was looking for her fifth Australian Open title and 12th overall Grand Slam title.

Williams had tough quarterfinal and semifinal matches against Victoria Azarenka (4-6, 7-6, 6-2) and Li Na (7-6, 7-6), but managed to reach the Australian Open finals for the fifth time in eight years.

Squaring off in a Grand Slam final for the first time, Williams and Henin battled through the first two sets.  Williams claimed the initial set 6-4, but Henin battled back to win the second set 6-3. Read the rest of this entry →

Rafael Nadal's exit from the Australian Open was much earlier than he had hoped.

It seems barely possible that, in this very week just one year ago, the tennis world was predicting that Rafael Nadal could become only the third man in history to complete the tennis Grand Slam.

He’d just won his first Slam on the hard courts of Melbourne against one of the greatest hard-court players of all time, Roger Federer.

He’d beaten the king of grass, Federer again, in the previous Wimbledon final, in equally dramatic style.

With that Wimbledon triumph, Nadal had claimed the No. 1 ranking after more than three years at No. 2—behind the same man.

To cap it all, he’d won the Olympic gold medal.

Nadal had now got the better of Federer in the finals of three of the four Slams. With his win in Australia, he could probably win in the U.S. Open too. The French would be a shoo-in; it always was. And Wimbledon—well, he’d mastered the grass as well.

Little wonder, then, that when he won the Australian Open title, Nadal seemed set to dominate not just Federer but the whole of men’s tennis.

For a glorious window of four months in the spring of 2009, that looked like a sound prognosis. At worst, Nadal could beat Federer to a career Grand Slam, and at best, he could join the true elite of tennis with a calendar Grand Slam.

With his win on the hard courts of Indian Wells, Nadal moved more than 4,000 points clear of the field.

With the transition to clay, he won successive tournaments in Monte Carlo, Barcelona, and Rome.

In the process, he notched up wins against Andy Murray on hard and Novak Djokovic on clay.

As this correspondent wrote last March, before the Tour had even moved to clay, who could break Nadal’s vise-like grip on men’s tennis?

But beware the “Ides of March,” for there were hints that Nadal’s punishing style of play and all-out attack on the schedules were starting to weigh heavy on his knees.

Nadal had pulled out of Dubai in February to give those knees some attention, and the rumor mill ground away at the kernels of this ongoing story. But while his knees were permanently swathed in support bandages, Nadal’s movement around the courts never seemed compromised, and he constantly silenced the doubters. Read the rest of this entry →

Roger Federer and Justine Henin have been sporting similar colors and similar emotions during the Australian Open.

It was the first weekend of June 2009, and little more than a year after her dramatic retirement from tennis.

Justine Henin did not watch the women’s event at Roland Garros, for she had little interest in who would win the title she had refused to defend in 2008.

She did, though, watch the men’s tournament: “I feel closer to players like Roger Federer. And, of course, Roger was trying to win the only Grand Slam he had never won. Part of me wanted him to win but, in another way, I knew it would give me trouble mentally if he did.”

For like her male doppelganger, Henin had several times come within a whisker of winning the one Slam she was missing.

Her “trouble” was Wimbledon. If Federer—like her in so many ways—could scale his final mountain at the French Open, maybe she too could scale hers at Wimbledon. After all, Federer was in his 28th year and, in 2010, she would be too.

“You know that little voice we all have in our heads…it was telling me Roger winning the French was very special…it made me think how much I’d missed by not winning Wimbledon.”

That little voice bothered her so much that it made her pick up her racket. It then made her, three months later, announce her comeback to the Tour. Read the rest of this entry →

Marcos Baghdatis will look to continue his Australian Open magic.

It must be something about the Australian sun that helps Marcos Baghdatis to burst into bloom in the first month of the tennis year.

And here he is again, jumping up the rankings and jumping all over his opponents, in one of the most highly anticipated come-backs of the tournament.

It was in his first Slam appearance in Melbourne in 2005 that he set the crowd alight with five-set wins in both the first and second rounds, and a demolition of No. 13 seed Tommy Robredo in the third round, before finally losing to Roger Federer in the fourth.

When he came into the 2006 Australian Open, he was newly in the top 100 but still unseeded. Again he set pulses racing with his thrilling brand of tennis and sunny personality.

He took out world No. 20 Radek Stepanek, No. 8 Ivan Ljubicic, and No. 4 David Nalbandian, all in five sets.

He managed to dismiss No. 3 Andy Roddick, in four.

Once more, he fell to Federer, but this time it was in the final, having taken the first set. It propelled him to his highest world ranking of No. 8.

Although 2007 saw him lose relatively early to Gael Monfils, Baghdatis was back to his dramatic Aussie ways in 2008, when he battled through five sets to beat Marat Safin, only to fall in another epic five-setter against Lleyton Hewitt. Read the rest of this entry →

Nikolay Davydenko will look to move past the traditional men's tennis powerhouses in Melbourne.

Parity has found its way into men’s tennis.  In terms of pure talent and potential, the field at the Australian Open seems wide open.

Oddsmakers, of course, factor in experience and past performance—but in Australia, in the land of sunnies and amber fluid anything is possible.

As we unveil our preseason power rankings consider the ramifications of the next two weeks upon the state of men’s tennis as the first grand slam of 2010 gets underway.

The Top 10

1. Nikolay Davydenko (Last Power Ranking: 1;  ATP Ranking: 6)

Last Four Tournaments: Qatar [Winner], London [Winner], Paris [R16], Valencia [Semifinalist].

Power Ranking Points: 316

Everyone is curious.  Has the wiry Russian changed his diet, his training regimen, or his racket?  All of a sudden he has become, if not everybody’s choice to win the Australian Open—at least everybody’s dark horse.  At age 28, Davydenko appears to be playing his very best tennis.

As the Australian Open gets underway, many expect Russia’s “Invisible Man” to become “Mr. Invincibility,” taking this title to win his first major.  His quickness makes Davydenko dangerous on the hard courts.  He is in Federer’s quarter so there may be a potential matchup.

If so, can Davydenko win three in a row over the man he had never defeated until the ATP World Tour Finals when the Russian took out Federer in the semis? He followed that in Doha with a semifinal victory again over Federer and a win over Nadal in the finals. Davydenko is hot, hot, hot!! Read the rest of this entry →

Jennifer Capriati defeated Martina Hingis in a memorable 2002 Australian Open final.

Jennifer Capriati and Martina Hingis competed against each other in one of the finest women’s matches in the past decade at the 2002 Australian Open.

Ironically, both started playing competitive tennis at an extremely young age and enjoyed immediate success and acclaim. But both endured controversy and ended their careers prematurely.

Capriati was pushed along early by her father, playing her first professional match in 1990 a couple of weeks before she turned 14. The teenager astounded the tennis world by upending some top-ranked players as she skyrocketed to the No. 8 ranking by the end of the year. She even made the cover of Sports Illustrated.

Capriati was young, bubbling over with enthusiasm. The public and the press adored her.

In 1991 she reached the semifinals at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. In 1992 she won a gold medal at the Olympics. The more success she enjoyed, however, the more pressure people exerted upon her to do more—win more. Read the rest of this entry →