Hmmmm…what’s on the menu for the tennis fan today? We’ll have action from Munich, Serbia and Estoril so let’s have a quick look… Djokovic plays his good friend and “imitator” Janko Tipsarevic in Serbia Open. Tipsarevic is playing good tennis at the moment, but I doubt him taking a set from the Djoker. It looks like Italian mini-man Filippo Volandri is back in good form. He takes on Feliciano Lopez in the other Serbia Open semi-final and I think he is in for a good chance. Lopez has been serving well though so he is the favorite. In Estoril Del …
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Does size matter? Sports Illustrated tennis writer Jon L. Wertheim wrote the excellent book Strokes of Genius about the titanic battle of the Wimbledon final 2008 and since then I’ve followed his writing on twitter and on SI.com and enjoyed and agreed on much of it. His latest “mailbag” post discusses the interesting question of what would happen to Federer’s game if he changed from his Wilson BLX Tour with its 90 inch head to a bigger racket to increase his sweetspot and margin for error. I’ve always been a strong believer of this change and I’m happy that I’m …
It happened again. The Fed Express hit a wall. I am getting so used to it now, it doesn’t even sting anymore. Which is a strange thing to say for a Fedophile. I wrote an article about Federer’s failure in Dubai some weeks ago that I’ve pasted below. Then I wrote another one where “Nadal taught Federer a lesson” – I am too lazy to link it, but it’s up here on Tennisnerd. I am getting tired of writing about Federer’s losses and tired about hearing that the saga that was Roger Federer’s amazing career is on the end stretch. …
Bring on the clay! Spring is in the air when you can hear feet sliding on red dirt. I am really looking forward to this year’s season which has a lot of interesting questions to answer. Will Nadal be as unbeatable as always? How will Djokovic perform after a spellbinding start to the season? Can Federer be able to convince the fans that he’s still a force or will the rivalry between Djokovic and Nadal tighten? Is it time for clay court demon Nicholas Almagro to step up and win a Masters title? Americans have suffered lately on the dirt, …
Tennis writer Steve Tignor had something to say on Federer’s recent performance in contrast to Nadal and Djokovic. I paste a part of his post below. You can read the full thing here. As the most painful downtick in the very slow but inevitable decline of Roger Federer His semi with Nadal may have been the worst I’ve seen him play. Rafa was very good, and very solid when Federer showed a few tiny signs of life midway through the second set. But Federer looked confused from the beginning, unsure of how to approach the slow conditions and the fast …
For Federer fans such as myself this is a pretty controversial or at least disappointing headline. What can the young Spaniard teach the Swiss maestro? Well maybe “teach” is the wrong word and maybe there isn’t a lesson to be learned about “wanting to win” but if there was, I could think of no better player to teach it than Rafael Nadal. Because one of the problems in yesterday’s 6-3 6-2 beating in ATP Miami semi-finals was that Federer didn’t look comfortable from the second he stepped on court and after going down a break he didn’t seem to have …
Yesterday was a strange day at the French Open. It wasn’t easy to predict how the action was going to unfold, but at least there should be a few “given” matches. But it didn’t pan out that way. Firstly, Roddick played a horrible match, losing against Gabashvili in three straight sets. He just couldn’t get enough lead on the ball. They were all sitting up for Gabashvili, who played aggressively and hit 60 winners. Maybe it wasn’t so strange that he couldn’t get the needed weight on his shots, that was always a reason that Roddick didn’t do well on …
Well, it was the final we all wanted in the end, the first “Fedal” in one year. It was a good match, tight, not one of the best for sure, but entertaining. Federer looks like he has stepped up his game a level or even two since the horrible performances in Rome and Estoril. He can very well be a finalist at Roland Garros that starts on Sunday. But can be he beat Rafa? In my opinion, no. Rafa didn’t play his absolute best yesterday (neither did Roger) but he still manage to get the W by 6-4 7-6. He …