As Americans are focused on "March Madness", a 65-team single-elimination basketball tournament for college teams, a few folks may have created brackets for Indian Wells. Few would have picked this final. Andy Roddick playing tour veteran, Ivan Ljubicic, in the finals. The semifinal match-up between Roddick and Soderling didn't look good for Roddick. Soderling had
Not a bad way to celebrate a 31st birthday. The most prominent bald man in tennis is now Ivan Ljubicic. Sometimes, having been on the tour a long time helps you get through a tough match like this. Nadal was playing aggressive tennis as usual and engineered a break in the first set and eventually
If you were told that Andy Roddick and Andy Murray were playing today, and one lost, which might you pick? Of course, the answer would depend on who they were playing, but minus that information, you might say Andy Murray, since he's ranked higher than Andy Roddick. OK, so let's look at the opponents. Andy
If you were to look at head to head records between Rafael Nadal and Tomas Berdych, you would see Nadal has won the last five times they've met. At 6'5", Berdych has a bit of power off the ground. Indeed, in his last match against Viktor Troicki, he won 6-1, 6-3. More impressively, against Fernando
The seeds, they keep a falling. It was already something of a miracle that Djokovic got this far. After watching his game spiral out of control in the second set in the previous around against Philipp Kohlschreiber, Djokovic had to scrap to fight off match points, get a break of serve back and eventually win
For about a set and a half, Federer looked like he was in control, at least on his own serve. When Fed would serve, he'd win quick points usually at 15, and be ready for his opponent. When Baghdatis was serving, Fed would make errors, as he is wont to do. Fed then had a
As Indian Wells heads to the later rounds, most of the remaining matches are scheduled on Stadium 1, the main stadium. The organizers wanted Americans, Sam Querrey and John Isner, to be the evening highlight. Little did they know that there would be two tense three set women's matches that would push the start of
In 2008, Mario Ancic got mononucleosis and this forced him off the tour for the better part of a year. He's not played much in 2 years. Winning two rounds prior to this (Bobby Reynolds in the first round, Julien Benneteau in the second), was considered something of a success for Ancic, but he had
For a set, Novak Djokovic was cruising against Philipp Kohlschreiber, up 6-3, with Kohlschreiber making errors. But then, his game left him. He couldn't get his serves in. He was spraying shot. And suddenly he lost the second set, 6-2, and then was down 3-0 in the third with a point to be down two
If you were to ask someone who hadn't watched tennis in 5 years, how Andy Roddick plays, you might get an answer that is at odds with how he plays now. Roddick used to have a fearsome twosome: his serve and his forehand. Over the years, Roddick has learned an old adage about tennis, namely,
