Few teams have the kind of firepower that the Spanish team has. With potential number 1 Rafael Nadal and perennial number 5, David Ferrer, Spain boasts a team that can't be matched by any other country. Even the great Roger Federer only has Stan Wawrinka. Wawrinka is good, but he can be beaten by any
About this time of year, or sometimes just after the US Open, you get tennis pundits, in particular, American tennis pundits who have solutions to what ails tennis. Davis Cup, invariably, gets a makeover. The key criticism of Davis Cup is that it's played over four distinct times, often the week after a Slam. The
Andy Murray's a bit of a chameleon. He seems to play a variety of different ways. If you saw him play, say, back in 2008, he would play patient ball, standing way behind the baseline, varying his spins and placement. He didn't hit harder than anyone else. Indeed, once he got to number 4, the
Male players had been clamoring for a longer off-season. The women just had their championship conclude the past week, so they are, for the most part, done (oddly enough, they run additional tournaments after the year-end championship). The ATP has to placate many tournament organizers who like hosting a world-class event. While tennis pundits (looking
No, Ferrero did not simply retire. He had long since decided to retire at Valencia where he and David Ferrer partly own the tournament. Ferrero was part of the Federer generation, the players that followed Agassi and Sampras and hung around a few years before Djokovic, Nadal, and Murray came up the ranks. Like Hewitt
The last few years, Novak Djokovic has challenged Federer at his home tournament in Basel. This year, he opted not to play. Let's see how this impacts Federer's chances at number 1. Currently, Federer has 12165 points to Djokovic's 11970 points for 195 point lead. However, Djokovic played last year and reached the semis. This
Everyone in tennis wonders: where are the next superstars. They aren't looking for those who find success at an older age. So as nice a story as David Ferrer and Mardy Fish are, players that have reached number 1 found success early on, some very early on. Let's list the top 17 players by weeks
Ivan Lendl had it rough. When he started, he was the new kid on the block. There was Connors. There was Borg. And although he and McEnroe were quite close in age, McEnroe matured earlier, so there was McEnroe. Lendl played well starting about 1981 when he reached the French Open final. He would make
In the US, there's this thing called the BCS. It stands for the Bowl Championship Series. It's a solution to a problem: how do colleges award a American football champion? There are so many teams that play college football, and football is such a violent sport, that there's no way for a reasonable number of
Gilles Simon is a peculiar player for a high-level tennis player. Male tennis players have a certain machismo when they play tennis. Perhaps no one embodies this more than players like Fernando Verdasco or Fernando Gonzalez. These two would rather hit you off the court with big shots than to win playing finesse. Some players,
