Sports Then and Now

Murray won the ATP Shanghai Masters.

The three-week five-tournament Asian hard-court swing ended last Sunday at the Shanghai Rolex Masters.

The following players left with one more title on their career list: Guillermo Garcia-Lopez (Bangkok), Mikhail Youzhny (Kuala Lumpur), Rafael Nadal (Tokyo), Novak Djokovic (Beijing) and Andy Murray (Shanghai). Not surprisingly, all of the winners are featured in this installment of men’s tennis power rankings.

And the European indoor hard-court season has started this week in Stockholm and Moscow. With four open seats yet to be filled in the World Tour Finals, this is a key stretch for those still hoping to qualify.

The Top 10

Andy Murray No. 1 in this week's power rankings.

1. Andy Murray (Last Power Ranking: 10; ATP Ranking: 4)

Last Four Tournaments: Shanghai [Winner]; Beijing [Quarterfinalist]; US Open [R32]; Cincinnati [Quarterfinalist]

Power Ranking Points: 1080

Andy Murray took several weeks off after his surprisingly early exit at Flushing Meadows and then joined the action at Beijing and Shanghai.

In the quartefinals at Beijing, Murray was unable to find his rhythm against a hard-hitting Ivan Ljubicic. However, he swept aside the competition at Shanghai, winning his sixth Masters 1000 title without dropping a set. His 6-3,6-2 final win over Roger Federer was most impressive, with his exceptional retrieving ability on full display.

After splitting with Maclagan, Murray has won two Masters 1000 titles, his only titles this season. However, already 23, Murray is yet to win that elusive first Grand Slam. Maybe more changes than his coaching staff are needed. How about giving up video games, Andy?

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Nadal celebrates winning his first U.S. Open and a career grand slam.

It was the day after the Australian Open. Rafael Nadal had slipped, in the space of a fortnight, from No. 2 in the world to No. 4, and was almost 4,000 points off the Federer pace.

But you can’t afford to turn your back for a moment in this fast-changing game of tennis.

Take the last two months. Wimbledon—and the grass season with it—came to an end. The normal hiatus that follows the frenetic action between the clay Masters and London is usually a welcome oasis in the middle of the tennis year. But this year, there has barely been time to draw breath between the clay, the grass, and the hard-court seasons.

First, France celebrated a famous win over champions Spain in the Davis Cup.

No fewer than three top players ditched their coaches: Nikolay Davydenko, Andy Murray, and Stanislas Wawrinka. Another, renowned for ploughing his own furrow, suddenly took on a coach: Roger Federer.

A handful of players had one last fling on clay before the rigors of the North American hard courts took over the tour—and that helped to ensure that the top three places in the Power Rankings would be filled by Spaniards: Rafael Nadal, Nicolas Almagro, and Juan Carlos Ferrero.

Many others turned early to their preparations for the U.S. Open Series on the searing courts of Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Washington.

The big names, though, kept their powder dry until the two Masters that provide the test-bed for the final Major of the year in New York.

They reaped the rewards for that reticence, too. Federer won the Masters in Cincinnati, Andy Murray took the Masters in Toronto, and Nadal shared the honors at the U.S. Open with Novak Djokovic.

So, yes, some things change fast. For every Mikhail Youzhny and Stanislas Wawrinka who has gate-crashed this month’s Power Rankings (PRs), there has been an exit by an early hard-court bloomer such as Tomas Berdych and Sam Querrey.

But the more things change, the more they stay the same. The second and third in the world, Djokovic and Federer, who were outside these rankings in August, are back again, ranked—you guessed it, second and third.

And that man who trailed by 4,000 points back in February? He’s now the one with clear water between him and the rest: on top of world. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…

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Rafael Nadal is now the fourth player from the tennis Open era to win the career Grand Slam.

With Monday’s victory over Novak Djokovic in the US Open final, Rafael Nadal joins Rod Laver, Andre Agassi and Roger Federer as the only Open era players to have won the career Grand Slam.

He and Agassi, Federer, and Jimmy Connors are the only men to have won majors on clay, grass, and hard courts. With nine major titles, he moves past Connors, Agassi and Ivan Lendl in terms of the number of majors won. He is the first man since Laver in 1969 to have won Roland Garros, Wimbledon and the US Open in the same year.

All in all, a pretty successful climb back from the thrashing he received at last year’s event. How he did it surely leaves some questions, and here are answers to a few of them.

Nadal won no tournaments for nearly a year. Then, starting in May, he has won nearly everything that counts. How does he do it?

The Spaniard rides momentum to a degree that I don’t think we’ve ever seen. Federer was solid pretty much throughout the season during his best years, but Nadal’s game centers around how well he’s hitting through his groundstrokes. At last year’s Open he had a persistent ab injury and ran into a really hot hand in Juan Martin del Potro, but the real reason the lopsided scoreline was that he had no wind at his back.

When he’s not feeling particularly confident, his groundstrokes can sit up, particularly on hard courts, and even his movement suffers. Clay has a way of revitalizing his play and that success carries over to other surfaces. It has ever since his first Wimbledon final of 2006. Read the rest of this entry →

As we get ready to head into the 2010 U.S. Open at the end of a long stretch of hard court tournaments in America, there are some traditional clear cut favorites who will claim the attention of the media and tennis fans.

Unfortunately, last year’s winner, Juan Martin del Potro of Argentina, will not be able to defend his 2009 U.S. Open Championship after undergoing wrist surgery in May at the Mayo Clinic in the United States. He has just recently returned to the practice courts.  This means he will not be up to match strength, denying him the ability to compete at such a high level over an extended period.

The usual suspects head the list of favorites starting with Rafael Nadal, the No. 1 seed, as well as No. 2 seed Roger Federer who has won this tournament five times in the past six years.  Additionally, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray have made the finals in 2007 and 2008 respectively. Most of the odds makers will focus on this quartet of top-ranked tennis elites.

It is also important, however,  to consider our Power Rankings, which highlight those players who have recently excelled on the hard courts leading up to the U.S. Open. These are the top ten contenders going into Flushing Meadows.

The Top 10

1. Roger Federer (Last Power Ranking: OLI; ATP Ranking: 2)

Last Four Tournaments: Cincinnati [Winner], Toronto [Finalist], Wimbledon [Quarterfinalist], Halle Germany [Finalist]

Power Ranking Points: 1359

Roger Federer won the tournament in Cincinnati just prior to the U.S. OpenPower Ranking Points: 1359

After suffering a quarterfinal loss at Wimbledon, Federer took some time off from the tour. As he resumed a rigorous practice schedule, Federer announced to the world that he would meet and work with Paul Annacone, former coach to Pete Sampras.

Their first tournament together was Toronto where Federer progressed to the final but was not able to overcome Andy Murray, losing 5-7, 5-7.  The Swiss came back, however, in Cincinnati to repeat as champion over Mardy Fish in a hard-fought three-set final.
Federer seems well rested and well-prepared to compete in his eleventh U.S. Open.

The state of his coaching trial with Annacone remains up in the air at this point with no real explanation as to why Annacone did not travel with him to Cincinnati.  Regardless, his recent play must revive Federer’s confidence heading into New York.

U.S. Open Success? Half of the time that Federer has gained entry into the U.S. Open, he has won the title.  He will remain one of the favorites going into the tournament to win it again in 2010.  That is not to say he will be without competition. Everybody enters to win. If Federer, however, plays as he did this past week, his chances look very good, indeed.

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Roger Federer tuned up for the U.S. Open with a win in Cincinnati.

Roger Federer: One could point to Federer’s easy start to the week, with Denis Istomin quitting in the first set and Philipp Kohlschreiber not even picking up a racket, and call it luck. But, as Thomas Jefferson said, “I find the harder I work the more I have of (luck).”

With a runner-up performance in Toronto and the win in Cincy, The Great Swiss has put forth his best pre-US Open summer hardcourt season since 2007, when he achieved the same results. He has not looked quite as dominant as then, when he steamrolled through Cincinnati and Novak Djokovic needed a third-set tiebreak to beat him in Canada, but he continues to compete well.

Despite losing the first set against Mardy Fish in the final, Federer managed to hold serve throughout the match before finally breaking the big-serving American in the second to last game.

He isn’t winning as easily as during the middle of the decade, but with Rafael Nadal playing uninspiring tennis at the moment, Juan Martin del Potro injured and Andy Murray yet to prove he can win 21 sets, competing well may be all he has to do.

Mardy Fish: And that fact that Federer had to turn to those competitive instincts to win on Sunday showed how far his opponent had come. Now 29 (less than a month younger than the Swiss), Fish lost their first five meetings, taking just one set. But in Cincinnati he not only pushed the most decorated player of the Open Era deep into a third set, he improved to 3-0 against Andy Murray this year and 2-0 against Andy Roddick.

Fish has always had the serve, the backhand, the return and the volleys of a top flight player, but in a game where top 10 players must erase all weaknesses, he had three: his movement, his fitness, and his forehand.

Having lost 30 pounds since last year, Fish is now moving and striking the ball better than ever, and may have emerged as the best chance, not only for American tennis at the Open, but for attacking tennis in general. This is happening just in time, too, with the major with the slickest surface just ahead. Read the rest of this entry →

One Wimbledon finalist was a familiar face while the other was a new one.

It’s too early to make predictions for the US Open; I think they at least have to play the Master’s Series events in Canada and Cincinnati before we do that. That’s especially true now that the defending champion of the event won’t be playing it due to injury, the player who has dominated the event in the past decade is slumping, and the man dominating the tour at the moment hasn’t been past the semis there.

But one thing we can do is look at the players who made a splash at this year’s Wimbledon, where they stand now, and what they need to do between now and then to be ideally prepared for the year’s last major. We start with none other than …

Rafael Nadal: After winning his eighth major and solidifying his stature as the game’s No. 1, we’ve seen a few, including (sigh) Chris Chase speculating about whether the Spaniard can match Roger Federer’s 16 Grand Slam wins.

Let me be emphatic: We should not be talking about this yet. It’s been five years since Nadal won his first major and he now has eight; he’s also been through a grocery list of injuries in that time and is having to schedule more and more carefully to avoid hurting himself. For now, let’s focus on a few other goals that more attainable but far from automatic.

First of all there’s the US Open, the one major he hasn’t won. This year is reminiscent of 2008 in more ways than one, now that Nadal has completed the Channel Slam for the second time and has firmly established himself as the best in the world. He fell short that year, losing to Andy Murray in the semis, saying later that the season had finally caught up with him and he had “nothing left.”

The US Open’s position as the last major of the year is always going to be tough for the player who works hardest on the court, and it’s surface is both faster than Nadal’s liking and least forgiving of his brittle joints. Read the rest of this entry →