There were records, of sorts, to be broken. This year, Nadal still has an outside shot of winning six Masters 1000 titles if he can win Paris. This would break the record that he and Djokovic share of five Masters 1000 titles. However, it's surprisingly rare to win 4 ATP 500 events. Indeed, with del
Tennis is a peculiar sport. For the most part, players' rankings are determined by how many tournaments they play and how well they do in each tournament. Some, who follow tennis rather sporadically, tend to place the emphasis of who is playing and who is winning. To give an example, let's look at the women's
Let's take a quick look at each of the finalists before discussing the finals. Last time we saw Juan Martin del Potro, he was playing the best match of this year's Wimbledon in a losing effort to Novak Djokovic. In two previous matches, he had hyper-extended his knee, so no one knew much how he
Before we get to Ivo Karlovic, let's head across the pond to Hamburg and recap the events that happened there. Hamburg is a tournament that used to be at the Master 1000 level. Perhaps due to Spain's increasing prominence on clay or due to Ion Tiriac's business savvy or some other factor, there was a
Before we get started with how two of the top four players did today, let's review what happened this week. The grass season is among the shortest in the tennis calendar. There's the week after the French Open where Queen's Club (officially, the Aegon Championships) and Halle (officially, the Gerry Weber Open) are played. There's
You know it's the 2010's. Back in 2001, Federer beat Sampras at Wimbledon, their only meeting. Federer was a teenager, and such upsets were often caused by teenagers on the rise. Today, there are no bright teens waiting to upset the top players. In 2012, Lukas Rosol upset Rafael Nadal in the second round of
I guess it's safe to say that Nadal is back, at least on clay. Nadal has been called the king of clay with good reason. He's lost only 20 matches on clay in his entire career, and in the past few years, with the odd exception of his recent loss to Horatio Zeballos, he's never
Maybe no one's paying attention, but Novak's doing it again. In 2011, he started off on a streak that started to take off once Djokovic won Indian Wells having won the Australian Open and Dubai prior to that. Indeed, Djokovic's win streak extends to last year's year-end championship in London where he won all three
The semifinals had to be all the tournament organizers could hope for. Federer, Djokovic, Berdych, and del Potro all made the semis as if they had a plane to catch. They won efficiently. That left the semis. On one half, there was 3-time champ, Novak Djokovic facing Juan Martin del Potro. On the other, there
Fans love the best of the best. They want to see Federer. They want to see Nadal. They want to see Djokovic. They want to see them face each other. But the tour is more than the top few players, and sometimes, in the smallest of matches, there are stories behind the match. John Isner
