Robin Soderling, ranked number 4 in the world, reached that rank by playing consistently well in Slams and Masters 1000 events. He hasn't, however, won that many tournaments. Last year, he won Rotterdam (over Youzhny) and he won Paris. That was it. This year, barely a month into the new year, Soderling has won two
This is a bit of a surprise. del Potro already in the semifinals! Although Lleyton Hewitt is not quite the number 1 player he was a decade ago, he is still a guy that fights. But the one part of del Potro's game that contributed to his rise to the top 5 is also the
It's hard to recall the last time a player ranked as high as del Potro (a top 5 player) that was sideline for most of a year. del Potro played 3 tournaments in all of 2010. He reached the quarterfinals at the Australian Open, then lost in two first round tournaments in the Asian swing
Wikipedia is an amazing resource for tennis. Whoever updates information about tournaments (and there are probably several people) do it lightning quick. Results are often posted in Wikipedia minutes after each round is complete. If you ever scan back to the mid 1980s and check the roster for the US Open, you'll see that up
Most of the top ten pros played last week and gave themselves a week off to practice leading up to the Australian Open. However, some players seem to prefer playing the week before a major. In Auckland, David Ferrer beat Santiago Giraldo, 6-3, 7-5, to reach the finals where he will face David Nalbandian who
I started watching tennis in the early 80s. In those days, cable was just starting to get popular. ESPN was already the premier sports channel because, well, there was no such thing anywhere else. Even so, it competed against the three big American networks: ABC, CBS, and NBC. For the most part, CBS and NBC
Currently, Soderling has 5580 points to Andy Murray's 5760 which means Soderling is 180 points behind Murray. With Soderling's win at Brisbane, he will replace a quarterfinal result in Marseille worth 45 points with a 250 point win or a net of 205 points, and just move ahead of Andy Murray. This means, with both
Maybe if Tomas Berdych had won, Chennai would seem like it was on par with Doha and Brisbane. Heck, the Hopman Cup, an exhibition had more star power (with Murray and Djokovic playing) than 2 of the 3 official tournaments played this week. But with Stan Wawrinka facing Xavier Malisse, Chennai felt something like the
Last year, Soderling went to Chennai and promptly lost in the opening round to Robby Ginepri. He went to the Australian Open and promptly lost the opening round to Marcel Granollers. Fortunately, this blip in his record didn't affect the rest of his year as he flitted with becoming number 4 in the world. This
The circumstances were quite different last year. Davydenko was coming off a win at the ATP World Tour Finals. Nadal had not won a title in about half a year, but was playing good aggressive tennis to start the year. Federer was playing, well, he has lost the US Open to del Potro and lost
