Sports Then and Now

Arthur Ashe Stadium at the U.S. Open under the lights offers thrilling action.

Is there anything more exhilarating in all of tennis then the famous night sessions on Arthur Ashe Stadium?  This is when all the stars shine in the stands as well as on the court. Celebrities pack Arthur Ashe to see the best the tennis world has to offer and generally they are not disappointed.

The last slam of the season sizzles in dying shades of summer as the northern hemisphere begins to edge toward desultory fall and sobering winter.  The extreme heat often reappears during the two weeks of the U.S. Open that may stretch over the Labor Day weekend.

Roger Federer continues to be one of the staples of the U.S. Open, having reached the finals there for the past six years.  Will he make it for a seventh?  That seems to be the question on everyone’s lips these days.

Let’s look back on a decade’s worth of Federer matches.

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Defending champion Roger Federer lost in the quarterfinals of the 2010 championships.

Last time we looked at those who either met or exceeded their Wimbledon expectations. However, one player’s success at a major comes at another’s expense, and a surprise victory by one guy requires him to disrupt another’s plans. Here are some guys who left SW19 with regrets, and what we can expect from them on firmer footing.

Roger Federer: There certainly have been better times to be The Great Swiss. After a triumphant turn Down Under, Federer has not won a single tournament and has lost at the quarterfinal stage of the last two majors. That said, when one looks at each of the matches he’s lost this year —from Marcos Baghdatis in Indian Wells to Lleyton Hewitt in Halle—one sees that each match was competitive.

Even his four-set loss to Tomas Berdych at the All-England Club went four sets and Federer had break points as the Czech was trying to serve the match out. This indicates that a piece of the puzzle is missing, and if he finds it he’ll be back in the last weekend of majors.

I can’t tell you what that piece is, though; if Federer could tell us we probably wouldn’t be having to ask him about it. 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 →

With victories in the French Open and Wimbledon, Rafael Nadal has solidified his place at the top of the tennis power rankings.

The Championships at Wimbledon have come and gone, just like that. It has been a historic tournament, especially with the Queen’s visit (on June 24) and the longest match in tennis history (John Isner vs. Nicolas Mahut, first-round, June 22-24).

In the end, though, it was all about Rafael Nadal, who claimed his second Wimbledon crown and his eighth major title. In doing so, he became the first man since Bjorn Borg to achieve the Roland Garros-Wimbledon double more than once.

Before the tour shifts to the second hard-court season of the year, most top players will take a summer vacation. The list below reflects the players’ form to some degree, although how well they will be able to keep it up after a multi-week break remains to be seen.

The Top 10

1. Rafael Nadal (Last Power Ranking: 1; ATP Ranking: 1)

Last Four Tournaments: Wimbledon [Winner], London [Quarterfinalist], Roland Garros [Winner], and Madrid [Winner]

Power Ranking Points: 2,536

Nadal has dominated the men’s tour since April, when the clay-court season began in Monte-Carlo. He won all but one (London) tournament that he entered, including two majors and three Masters. He accumulated 7,045 ranking points in three months—more than the total of second ranked player, Novak Djokovic. On the way, he surpassed Roger Federer as the new world’s No. 1 and Andre Agassi with the most number of Masters shields. Read the rest of this entry →

The Queen of England visits Wimbledon and meets the Queen of the Court, Serena Williams.

Wimbledon is over––the year 2010 tucked away in the record books.  Centre Court now sports a roof and artificial lights, an abrupt departure from tradition in favor of increased revenue and pressure from major television outlets.

Most of the traditions, however, stay intact like bowing to the Queen, strawberries and cream and no tiebreak in the final set.

While the elongated fifth set has been an issue from time to time, in 2010 it became historically significant as Nicolas Mahut and John Isner battled over three days in their first round match which finally concluded after 11 hours of match play, 70-68 in the fifth set.

Neither player could play on after that match even though both tried, Mahut in doubles and Isner in singles.  For that reason alone, some sort of limit needs to be established.

Most of the talk was of the men.  Without a “suggestive” outfit from Venus, the women seemed invisible throughout the tournament.  U.S. coverage focused almost entirely on the Williams sisters––what there was of that.  As usual, the men stole the headlines and the regular television coverage.

So Serena’s amazing win, with her sizzling serve-breaking records, received less attention than usual as all the world continued the Rafa-Roger debate.  Too bad because the ladies put on quite a show!

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Tomas Berdych has broken through to reach his first Wimbledon final.

The first time I watched Tomas Berdych play was in the fourth round of the US Open against Tommy Haas. He was only 18 then, but had already attracted some buzz for having knocked Roger Federer out of the Olympics in Greece just weeks earlier.

And at the time, it was impossible not to already be impressed with his shotmaking.

It was not like with Andre Agassi or Fernando Gonzalez, where even the viewers watching on TV could see and hear how hard the ball was being hit, but Berdych, when he had time to set up, had a way of almost casually flicking the ball into corners, lines, and angles that could not be retrieved.

In that first set alone, Berdych must have hit two-dozen winners, but it wasn’t enough. Haas squeaked out that first set and the big, lanky Czech went away after that. Read the rest of this entry →