The scores look nearly the same. Federer beat Tomic in the third round, 64 76 61. He beat Raonic today 64 76 62. And yet, the impression from watching both matches was completely different. Despite the thumping that Tomic eventually took in the third set, he was able to make Federer work hard. Tomic brought
This is the kind of match that the Australian Open epic. Wawrinka has been around 20s his entire career peaking briefly in the top 10. With all players coming back from training, it's time for players in that next tier to make that push. When the draw came out, everyone looked at Murray on Federer's
They call them: the "big 4": Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, and Andy Murray. These four have dominated Slam titles for half a decade with only one interruption: the 2009 US Open won by Juan Martin del Potro. Had del Potro not been injured and required surgery in 2010, maybe there would be a
Many local fans looked at the potential third round match between Roger Federer and Bernard Tomic with delight. Much like last year, Tomic started the pre Australian Open warm up strongly. Last year, Tomic used his slow slices and unorthodox hitting to get himself past a powerful, but erratic Fernando Verdasco. Then, he met Roger
Since I missed Day 4, let's recap. The top seeds, Roger Federer and Andy Murray, had few problems. Despite Davydenko recently reaching the Doha finals, this Davydenko was not the same as 2010 who was fresh off a win at London in 2009 and was in the top ten. Federer had too many answers for
Brian Baker, who spent 6 years, in and out of surgery, then had the Cinderella story of 2012 where he made the finals of Nice and did reasonably well at Wimbledon and the French Open, was winning his 2nd round match against Sam Querrey when he was recovering for a shot, and his knee buckled,
When the draw came out a few days ago, Roger Federer looked like he had a tough draw, relatively speaking. Murray landed on his half of the draw. His first round opponent is the talented Benoit Paire of France. Nikolay Davydenko, who gave Roget a scare in 2010, at the Australian Open and who recently
Technically, it wasn't an upset. After all, Julien Benneteau, the wily French veteran that pushed Federer to 5 sets last year at Wimbledon, was the 32nd seed, not the young Bulgarian, Grigor Dimitrov. Never mind that Benneteau reached the semis of Sydney, so he had a good tournament, but Dimitrov reached the finals of Brisbane,
Boris Becker once said the fifth set wasn't about tennis, it was about heart. There seems no better example than the fifth set of this marathon match that nearly edged six hours. The fifth set seemed like one of those Rocky movies with Rocky faced against an inhuman opponent, and both players took punches and
It's the third Slam in a row that world number 1, Novak Djokovic, will face world number 2, Rafael Nadal. When the curtains closed on 2011, the big questions were "Is Novak healthy" and "Is Rafa mentally ready?". Murray knew the answers to these questions. He was asked what he thought of his competition prior
