Sports Then and Now

Maria Sharapova joined elite company with her French Open title.

With her dominating victory in the 2012 French Open finals, Maria Sharapova became just the sixth player in the open era of women’s tennis (10th all-time) to claim the career grand slam. However, while each of the other five posted double digit victories in each tournament, Sharapova has yet to win any of the championships more than once.

Since emerging on the scene as a 17-year-old with a victory over Serena Williams in the Wimbledon Finals in 2004, we have been waiting for Sharapova to become the dominant player in women’s tennis.

The 6-foot-2 inch Sarapova certainly has the size and power to be a dominant player, but injuries and an inability to maintain her game at the highest level has kept her from being consistently dominant.

She won the 2006 U.S. Open and 2008 Australian Open before a shoulder injury hampered her over the next two years.

Sharapova reemerged as a top five player in 2011, but was unable to win a grand slam title. She reached the semifinals at the French Open and finals at Wimbledon, but lost both matches in straight sets. Read the rest of this entry →

Andrea Petkovic will be unable to compete in the Australian Open due to a stress fracture to her lower back.

With the first round of the Australian Open proper now just days away from getting underway the last thing the women’s draw needed was the withdrawal of another popular, highly ranked player.

Unfortunately for the Australian tennis fans preparing to hit Melbourne for the first Grand Slam of the new season, that’s exactly what has happened, with world number 10 and great German tennis hope Andrea Petkovic forced to pull out of the event after suffering a stress fracture to her lower back. Anyone Betting on Australian Open Tennis can remove her from the equation.

The news will come as a devastating blow to a woman just starting to make her mark in women’s tennis after a run of Grand Slam quarter-final appearances last year. Petkovic ended 2011 as the first woman of German nationality to finish a season in the top 10 since Steffi Graf dominated the tennis scene back in the late 1990s and was optimistic that the fading fortunes of the likes of Venus and Serena Williams would allow her and another few young talents on the WTA circuit to break into the big time. Those following the online tennis betting should remember this.

The player stated after the news broke that she is “really disappointed” because she loves Australia, but is already “looking forward to coming back to Australia” in 2013.

Should Petkovic use the next six to eight weeks of rest and recovery back home in Germany to refocus and come back even stronger both mentally and physically, 2012 could still turn out to be a great year for the 24-year-old, but there’s no doubt that her quest for her maiden Grand Slam title has now been made that little bit more difficult.

Over the last year the road has gotten a little tougher for former number one Roger Federer.

The question on many people’s lips this summer will be whether Roger Federer can get himself back amongst the Grand Slams, and add to his 16 titles so far. The Swiss Maestro hasn’t won a major tournament since the Australian Open at the beginning of last year, failing to reach a single final since that victory in Melbourne.

During his spell out of the spotlight, Federer has only been able to sit back and watch as Rafael Nadal has dominated the Grand Slams, with Novak Djokovic’s impeccable form making it hard to see how Federer will be able to break back into the top-two. While it is near impossible to see Federer stopping Nadal notching up his sixth French Open title next month, the Swiss star will once again fancy his chances of doing something at Wimbledon and lifting his seventh title, although the Wimbledon betting 2011 suggests he faces a tough challenge.

For Federer now though, he needs to start believing he can still mix it with the best and get back amongst the trophies, despite a poor run in the Grand Slams for the majority of last year and the beginning of this season. Thomas Berdych sprung a surprise at the quarter-final stage at Wimbledon last year to put Federer out and the former world number one will be looking to repay his loyal fans that turn up at the All England Club in such numbers each year.

A decent month on the clay-courts will give Federer that spark of confidence that he needs to get back onto winning form. Another disappointing year and Federer would face a mammoth task to get back amongst the younger top players.

Pete Sampras Vs. Boris Becker in 1996 ATP finals.

In 1990 the ATP World Tour Championships moved from Madison Square Garden in New York City to Germany, home of native tennis phenoms Boris Becker and Steffi Graf.

New York City was vacated, bowing to the wishes of the German tennis hierarchy to move the year-end tournament to Frankfurt––offering more convenience to Europeans on tour. Madison Square Garden had served as home of the “Masters Grand Prix,” as it was then known, from 1977 through 1989.

After six years, the tournament moved from Frankfort to Hanover where it was played on carpet.  Pete Sampras entered the 1996 year-end finals as the top seed while the German Boris Becker was seeded No. 6.

No one suspected the level of drama that would unfold in the final match for the championship. The German contingent, of course, hoped that Becker would do well and make the ATP final so the stands would be packed.

So far in 1996, Sampras had lost once in nine finals, ironically to Becker in Stuttgart one month prior to this tournament. Also  of note––during the year Sampras had captured one major––the 1996 U.S. Open.

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Somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout; but there is no joy in Mudville – mighty Casey has struck out.

At the start of the $5 million Breeder’s Cup Classic held at Churchill Downs on November 6, the track announcer kept repeating “And Zenyatta is dead last,” as the race continued.

It was her 20th and supposedly last career race for the finish line.  The big girl had made her reputation running over the competition including all the boys for the past four years.

In fact, she had never lost a race.  Now as the oldest in the field at age six, Zenyatta had one more hurdle––in order to allow her to go out as perhaps the greatest racehorse in the history of the sport.

Traditionally Zenyatta came out the gates slow and sat at the back of the pack until the final curve toward home. That’s when she turned on the afterburners launching her signature heart-stopping finish.

Zenyatta continuously left the competition panting and spent, wondering how this racing marvel had come so far so fast, beating them to the finish line.

During this race on November 6th, the track announcer at last began to report Zenyatta was moving forward, zigzagging in and out, squeezing her way past most of the pack.

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Since 2009, the WTF has been held in London.

It is a given in any sport that happens to light your fire––at the end of the season, fans need to crown a winner––the ultimate champion whose accomplishments set him, her or them above all the rest.

For men’s tennis, this event rolls around shortly in November.

The World Tour Finals, paradoxically referred to as the WTF––the latest moniker for the year-end tournament for men’s professional tennis––will be held in London for the second year. It is an unfortunate acronym, although purportedly unintentional.

Since 1970 men’s professional tennis has tinkered with the year-end tournament, finally settling on its current format in 1999 when the ATP and ITF decided not to compete with each other. At long last the guys at the top realized that competition between the governing bodies in tennis was counter-productive.

Now if they could do something equally as innovative for the Davis Cup, the tennis world could breathe a collective sigh of relief! The Davis Cup should be a premiere event instead of a lingering afterthought as it is now.

The Masters year-end tournament, first played in 1970, features the top eight players on the men’s tour selected based on accumulated calendar year ATP ranking points.

The top eight men draw to create two teams with members of each four-man team competing with each other in three round-robin matches. From each group, the two players with the best results move onto the semifinals where the top-ranked player from each group plays the second-ranked player from the other group.

The final is contested by the winners of the semifinal contests.  The winner of that match is accorded 1500 ranking points as well as the honor and prestige of winning in a field of the best eight players in the world. Ironically, last year’s champion, Nikolay Davydenko will not make the field in 2010.  It is tough out there when you get injured.

So in the 40 years the championships have been held, who are the greatest champions of the event? We will count them down here.

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