Today we have the final between Japanese wunderkind Kei Nishikori (born 1989!) and the king of clay, Rafael Nadal. This has perhaps been Nishikori’s year more than anyone else so far, he has won two titles and has an amazing 22-4 win record in 2014. After Madrid Masters he rightfully moves within the top 10. But that aside, I find it difficult to believe that he has a proper chance to win against Nadal on clay. If he plays spectacular tennis, I think he will win one set, but in the end Nadal will be too strong. If you’re a …
Rafael Nadal
ATP World Tour writes today that Nadal’s road to the title in Indian Wells look complicated. They’re right. He needs to get through Murray, Federer and Djokovic to win the title and with his absence from the hard courts since his injury in the Australian Open final, there should rightly be doubts about his ability to get through such a field on his least preferred surface. I doubt that even the competitive monster of Rafael Nadal can do it. Miami with its slower surface is better suited for Nadal and I think both Federer and Djokovic with their recent good …
Have you ever been in a tennis match and you’re playing brilliantly for three-four games and then suddenly you lose focus and start to throw away points like they were candy wrappers? I have. Did you feel have difficult it was to get back to the right mindset? That feeling is so disappointing i t’s disgusting. There are no simple remedies for this, everybody gets into a slump from time to time, but you can change your mindset to make it easier to get back that important match-winning focus. How do you do that? Just buy my secret focus potion …
It’s hard not to be mesmerised by this clip of a Nadal practice session. Look at Nadal’s shots and how the ball loops into the air and then the rotations start and it lands in. For a guy who hits a pretty flat shot, this get me very jealous. I find practice videos the best to study top player techniques and this video really gets you close to the action of Rafael Nadal striking the ball. It can’t be easy dealing with that amount of TOP SPIN! If you think it’s gear and not only technique, or you simply just want …
Yes, it’s a squirrel holding a bazooka. What else did you expect? Guys like Gulbis and Janowicz should get a license for their racquet. They pack so much firepower in their shots you think the ball is going to go straight through the fence and out beyond the court. Today they both showed what destruction that power can bring. I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw that Gulbis had raced to a 4-0 lead against Rafael Nadal. Yes, the Rafa that is almost impossible to beat on clay. But it was 4-0. And minutes later the first set …
David Ferrer played a great match against Rafael Nadal yesterday in the quarterfinals of Madrid Open. He hit the ball aggressively, used his backhand up the line to great effect and managed to get a lead of 6-4 4-2. Then something happened. Nerves, doubts, you name it. Nadal broke back to love and managed to level the match at 4-4. Nadal then broke Ferrer and was serving for set at 5-4. But Ferrer broke back and then held his serve. 6-5. You couldn’t help but think that Ferrer could win the match. It was definitely there for taking and Nadal …
Exactly how it happens we will never know. It was just one of those days when almost every shot you hit feels so, so good and somehow manages to catch the line. World #100 Lukas Rosol had the day of his life and #2 Rafael Nadal had his worst Grand Slam performance in seven years, resulting in a 6-7 6-4 6-4 2-6 6-4 win to Rosol. What impressed me the most was Rosol’s consistent strategy and the way he closed out the match where most people wouldn’t have been able to put a serve in play. Instead Rosol smacked down …
We are soon at the quarter-final stage of Roland Garros and right now I can only see one winner, Rafael Nadal. Djokovic looked awfully off his game last night against Seppi and was grumbling like back in the old days of being “only” #3 in the world. The conditions were tough and Seppi was really playing great tennis; not going for the lines but just being solid and consistent and remarkably clear-headed for a guy not in the top 20 (he will be after this though). Seppi impressed me a lot and I think he could even be a top …
Here’s my list of tennis booksyou have to read. I love reading about tennis, but a lot of the writing is dry and uninteresting. Since I’ve read a lot of the stuff on the tennis book market, I hope I can give you some valuable recommendations on tennis books you might’ve missed out on. Just click on the link to get to Amazon where you can buy the book, read excerpts (for some) or read some more reviews. The Inner Game Of Tennis is about becoming a better playing by focus on your mental skills and technique. Timothy Gallwey talks …