It was said that President Richard Nixon was talking to an Olympian who had won a silver medal and consoling him on not winning the gold. The Olympian didn't bother to tell the President that he was very happy with the silver medal. Nixon embodied the win at all cost mentality that sometimes pervades sports.
For the tennis cognoscenti, and these are the "true" fans of tennis, those who pin their hopes on players, and then complain when these players are unable to fulfill expectations, Sam Querrey went through a mini-brouhaha when he admitted that his heart wasn't into tennis shortly after a loss to fellow American, Robby Ginepri. With
Since the Slams are weighted more heavily than other tournaments, it's not surprising that the rankings have changed since the conclusion of the French Open. Rafael Nadal has reclaimed the number 1 spot, leaving Roger Federer one week short of tying Pete Sampras's 286 weeks at number 1. Nadal has 8700 points to Roger's 8390
If you were to watch clay court tennis from the 1970s or the 1980s, you'd find a style of play that would seem a bit quaint by today's standards. The best clay courters of the day were using heavy topspin because the clay would allow those shots to jump up and it allowed consistency. When
Now that the most important clay court tournaments are conclude (Monte Carlo, Rome, Madrid) and Rafael Nadal has become the first player to win all three titles, we must ask: who can beat Nadal on clay? Before we try to answer that question, let's look at clay court tennis. You only have to go back
It's a useful lesson to look at tennis history, at least, the last 40-50 years, to see how tennis has changed, because it's easy to fall into the trap of describing today's tennis by remembering tennis from 10 years ago. Many men, for example, can't stand women's tennis (just like many men can't stand women's
I want to begin by saying that the Madrid Open has, by far, the worst tennis website in the world. From the annoying Flash intro which loads slowly and plays music, to its practically unusable webpage (www.madrid-open.com) where you can't find anything of any value. The menu choices light up, but don't have submenus. This
Last year, it was not too hard to talk about the clay season. The clay season referring to the tournaments between Monte Carlo and the last tournament prior to the French Open. Think of this as a prelude to some grand symphony. The clay season used to have less significance because the top players didn't
I was perusing a website that was making predictions about the Monte Carlo semifinals which pitted Novak Djokovic against Fernando Verdasco and Rafael Nadal against David Ferrer. The thinking went something like this. Given that Nadal had easily mowed through his first two rounds, dropping one game each, and given that he dropped 6 games
By the start of 2009, people were looking at Nadal as being the next champ. He had claimed the number 1 spot, beat Federer at a Slam besides Wimbledon or the French (the Aussie Open) and left the number 1 in tears. Few expected 2009 to turn out the way it has. Nadal went into
