San Jose has to have a special place in Milos Raonic's heart. In 2011, Raonic made a run at the Australian Open to the fourth round, and everyone thought this Canadian would have places to go. He began to fulfill this promise by reaching the San Jose SAP Open in 2011 shortly afterwards. At the
Once upon a time, David Nalbandian was a big deal. Now that Murray has finally won his first Slam, maybe they'll point to David Nalbandian to be the best player never to have won a Slam. Nalbandian is a player of the Federer generation. These include such luminaries as Andy Roddick, Lleyton Hewitt, Marat Safin,
After posting how consistent Federer is, Federer apparently has a bad day where nothing is working well, and loses to Julien Benneteau. Benneteau is one of those veteran French players who has played solid over the years, but has never won an ATP title. Federer and Benneteau are roughly the same age. Both knew each
Comparisons are always made between Federer and Nadal. Federer is fluid, graceful. Nadal is bullish, strong. Federer's lithe movements lead to a long career. Nadal's grinding style will lead to an early retirement. Few make the key observation between the two. That observation can be found in a hilarious skit as Janko Tipsarevic plays Novak
While all attention was paid to Vina del Mar, and Nadal's shock upset, there were two other tournament finals being played, mostly without much fanfare. In Zagreb, Marin Cilic returned to his winning ways defeating Jurgen Melzer 63 61. Both men had tougher semifinals than finals. In Lyon, Richard Gasquet beat Benoit Paire in an
They don't call Rafa the "King of Clay" for no reason. He has maybe 20 losses on clay, and under 10 losses since he won his first French Open title in 2005. It's very hard to beat Rafa on clay. Furthermore, it's very hard to beat him if you're not ranked in the top 40
There were some hopes that Jeremy Chardy, who upset Juan Martin del Potro, could make a match of it against Rafael Nadal, who has not had that much challenge in his first tournament back since Wimbledon. But it was not to be. Chardy's game was all over the place, as he struggled to take control
Rafael Nadal was supposed to come back to play in time for the Australian Open. But he claimed he had the flu or some similar disease, and so without the capability of making a serious run at the Australian Open, he chose to skip it, and make a more low-key return to the tour. Vina
It's now been 7 months or so since we last saw Rafa play a real match. Last match was the shocking loss to Lukas Rosol. Rosol turned out not to be all that, but for one day, when Rafa wasn't feeling his best, Rosol went ballistic. Rafa announced shortly afterwards that his knees were bothering
Last year, at this time, Bernard Tomic was playing an exhibition in Kooyong which he won. He had a strong lead heading into the Australian Open. Despite being pushed to five sets by Fernando Verdasco and being down two sets to none, Tomic won and then made it to the fourth round. People thought Tomic
