It was almost scripted. After two epic five set matches in the previous slams (Australian Open and U.S. Open 2013), a third one was almost too good to be true. Yet, the tennis Gods smiles on us one more time and Djokovic and Wavrinka gave us another treat. This time it was Wavrinka’s turn to emerge victorious in a beautiful 2-6 6-2 6-4 3-6 9-7 display of tennis drama which …
It feels like a deserving duo in the Madrid Open final. Wavrinka has played amazing tennis of late, he won Portugal Open, beating Ferrer in the final and yesterday he came back from a break down in the final set to defeat Berdych 6-3 4-6 6-4. Nadal, well what can you say? He has played seven tournaments since his long injury time-out and he’s been in seven finals. A stunning …
What a line-up we have at Madrid Open (formerly Madrid Masters) today. We have lots of top players in action, Nadal, Federer, Murray Ferrer, Berdych, Tsonga, to name a few. The most interesting match-ups in my mind is another battle of the double-handed backhanders (yesterday we had Tommy Robredo vs Tommy Haas in a well-played match) with young hot-shot Grigor Dimitrov taking on Stanislas Wavrinka, in-form Tommy Haas playing clay-demon …
A lot of people are retiring during matches at the moment and it seems like we’re in some kind of injury period on the ATP Tour. Although clay can be more body-friendly to move on, the long rallies and matches (less reliance on the serve for example) really takes a toll for a lot of the players. But let’s not dwell on injuries and instead look at what happened in …
I love the one-handed backhand. It is a beautiful stroke and great players can make it look effortless. Among the strongest on the tour are Gasquet, Justin-Henin (WTA, but who cares, it is spectacular), Olivier Rochus, Federer, Wavrinka, Ljubicic, Kohlschreiber and I probably forget someone. Sadly, I can’t hit it as well myself but today I could look forward to two backhand greats in Olivier Rochus and Richard Gasquet battle …
