Sports Then and Now

BNP Paribas at Indian Wells provided upset after upset. Photo by Rajat Jain

How many of you picked Ivan Ljubicic to win at Indian Wells? Jelena Jankovic? Northern Iowa to upset Kansas in the NCAA Basketball Tournament?

Just as I thought. That is why I am a little reluctant to put my neck on the line when discussing the ATP top seeds’ chances at the Sony Ericsson Tennis Open this week in Miami.

That does not mean that the wins this past weekend were not significant or joyful each in their own way with the wily veteran Ljubicic finding a way to win against the stiffest competition the tour could throw at him.

It had to be a resounding vote of confidence, moreover, for the seasoned counter-puncher Jankovic to overcome the newly inaugurated No. 2 ranked player in the world, Caroline Wozniacki, also a counter-puncher.

The Northern Iowa victory, however, will be discussed in another venue.

Heading into Miami are all the top ranked women minus No. 1 ranked Serena Williams and No. 3 Dinara Safina, both suffering from lingering injuries. For the men No. 5 ranked Juan Martin del Potro is still out as is No. 6 Nikolay Davydenko, again both with lingering injuries.

In looking at the men’s draw, some interesting match-ups highlight a splendid field.

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Thrills and spills, big wins and surprise losses, seeds falling and new faces shining. Indian Wells has lived up to its billing as one of the biggest and best tennis events in the tennis calendar.

The venue is stunning, the crowds are huge, and the tournament began with a near-full complement of players—give or take the Williams sisters’ usual boycott and Juan Martin Del Potro’s injury.

It even attracted the very best of both current and past players in the tastiest exhibition night in living memory. As if Andre Agassi and Rafael Nadal facing Pete Sampras and Roger Federer wasn’t enough, the Hit for Haiti scheduled Steffi Graf and Lindsay Davenport against Martina Navratilova and Justine Henin. Tennis courts don’t come more laden with star quality.

Even the Indian Wells draw looked set to deliver up everyone’s favorite matches during the last few days.

There was the tantalising prospect of Nikolay Davydenko outhitting Nadal for the fourth consecutive time in as many months.

There was a chance that Andy Murray could seek revenge over Federer for his Australian Open defeat.

Best of all, there was the prospect—should the cards fall right—of two mouth-watering finals: Nadal against Federer and Kim Clijsters again Henin.

However, while some of the anticipated fireworks turned into damp squibs, there were also bangers and sparklers aplenty to keep everyone on the edges of their seats.
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Not one, but two Masters tournaments, the firsts of the year.

The only ATP events of the month, both centered in the sunshine of the United States.

These are the last hard courts before spring ushers in the clay. No more of the artificial, punishing surfaces until the tour heads back to North America in late July. Many, indeed, will postpone their transfer from the all-too-brief grass season until August.

So it is little wonder that Indian Wells and its Miami sister two weeks later draw the big names, the big crowds, the big coverage.

Indian Wells, in particular, is set like a sapphire in the Californian desert, a jewel in the tennis crown. More people soak up the tennis at this tournament than anywhere outside the Grand Slams.

It’s a place drenched in blue, wholly in tune with its watery origins. This most favored stop on the tennis tour, attracting the very best from both the ATP and WTA tours, offers a serene mountainous backdrop, cloudless skies, dry heat, clear air. It’s as close to paradise as wealth can bring to the desert.

More than 300,000 flock to the Indian Wells Tennis Garden. It overflows with tropical flowers, trees, and fountains, and the courts themselves sit like miniature Aegean Seas within their grass-green surroundings.

The pale violet and blue peaks of the distant Santa Rosa range provide a glorious setting as this oasis bursts into flower with a bouquet of wonderful prospects. Read the rest of this entry →

Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal resume competition in Indian Wells.

Finally play gets underway this week for the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells with a lineup that includes almost all the usual suspects.  Who will survive the test of time and layoffs to take the title this year?  That is the question lingering on everyone’s lips.

Roger Federer’s Quarter

There are some very intriguing match-ups possible in Federer’s quarter of the draw including a potential 3rd round clash with the No. 27 seed Marcos Baghdatis.  The Cypriot who found his way out of the deep freeze and into the semifinals at Dubai is well on his way to a legitimate comeback after spending much of 2009 on the injured reserve list.

Seeded players hoping to advance to week two of the tournament include Tommy Robredo, seeded No. 18 and the always dangerous Radek Stepanek who has been known to throw wrenches into the plans of many a higher seeded player.  Stepanek lives to wreak havoc with the draw and could meet Federer in the 4th round.

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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 →

The 2010 Australian Open begins on Monday, January 18th.

In tennis, the offseason between the outgoing year’s World Tour Finals (or the previous other names by which the year’s final ATP tournament was called) and the upcoming year’s first tournament is never too long.

It seems even shorter in the last few years with the advent of the Internet, which meant increased participation by fans; it went like a blitz this year as the decade came to a close. Pages worth of analysis were written, and tons of best and worst lists were formed, discussed, and argued upon.

In no time, Christmas and New Year’s Eve passed by…and suddenly Nikolay Davydenko had defeated Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal on back-to-back days, Robin Soderling got the 13th time luck against Federer (albeit in an exhibition match), Justine Henin and Kim Clijsters played a nerve-wracking thriller that was absent almost all of the last year in the WTA circuit, and—lo!—the draws of the year’s (rather, decade’s) first major have been released.

Australia, the Land Down Under, may be thinly populated, but it is probably the most dominant country in sports. Be it cricket, rugby, hockey, or football, they can teach the world a thing or two in each sport. In tennis, they boast of an unparalleled legacy. With legends like Rod Laver, John Newcombe, Ken Rosewall, and Roy Emerson, to name a few, they have fielded some of the finest tennis players ever to grace the game.

But despite this fine sporting history, their native Grand Slam tournament took time to establish itself. The Australian Open was constantly in a state of flux after the Aussie legends faded down the scene. Read the rest of this entry →