In the US, you have to be a diehard tennis fan to watch tennis now.  Many people stop watching after the US Open, especially if they follow American football.  With the paucity of games in a football season (16 total, as opposed to 82 in basketball, and nearly twice as many in baseball), every game matters.  The NFL (National Football League) does an amazing job of keeping the season interesting for about half the teams.  With top teams getting byes in the first round of the playoffs, even the best teams can’t afford to relax.

Nonetheless, tennis does continue to go on.  Maybe it says something about the priorities of American sports commentators who want a shorter season, preferably to end after the US Open.  They still prefer American football and see tennis as an afterthought.  But, not here.  We still follow tennis!

The Asian swing of the ATP tour starts a little over a week after the end of the US Open.  In the week between the US Open and the Asian swing, they squeeze two simultaneous tournaments: Metz (in France) and Bucharest.  Bucharest is perhaps the last clay tournament of the year.  Then, the Asian swing runs through Bankok and Kuala Lumpur (two ATP 250 tournaments), then the following week, it’s Tokyo and Beijing (two ATP 500 events), and culminates at Shanghai (Masters 1000 events).

After that, play heads back to Europe once again.  Stockholm and Moscow are the first week (which is this week).  Next week, there’s three events: Vienna, St. Petersburg, and Lyon.  All five of these events are ATP 250.  Then, it’s Basel and Valencia (ATP 500).  This culminates at Paris (Masters 1000).  Then, a week off, and the year-end championship.  Oh yes, there’s also the Davis Cup finals the week after the year-end title.

The interesting tournament this week is at Stockholm.  Last year, Roger Federer played and won Stockholm.  Normally, Federer doesn’t play Stockholm.  It had been years since he last played Stockholm, but apparently Federer was trying to time a win at Basel to break Sampras’s career titles (Sampras was fourth behind Connors, Lendl, and McEnroe).  By winning Stockholm, he set up Basel as the tournament he would move ahead of Sampras.  It was a good accomplishment because Federer had to beat Djokovic at Basel to get that win.

This time around, Federer is sitting out, not planning to return to tour for another week and a half.  Instead, the story here is the “next four”.  These are Grigor Dimitrov, Milos Raonic, Bernard Tomic, and Ryan Harrison.  Three of the four are here.  Stockholm also marks the return of Juan Martin del Potro who hasn’t played since Davis Cup, the week after the US Open.

Dimitrov won his first two rounds beating Sweeting and Chela.  Chela is a solid win.  He’s a good player that makes you earn wins because of his ability to return serve.  Raonic needed three tough sets to beat Baghdatis in the first round, then beat Petzschner in the second round.  These wins are a bit more solid than Dimitrov’s win, especially Baghdatis.  Raonic needs to win like this on a regular basis if he wants to move into the top 30.  Raonic now plays Dimitrov and should be favored to win.  Dimitrov is still looking for a decent win.  Raonic wouldn’t be it, but it helps to beat a rival.  Harrison was able to beat Raonic earlier this year to get a decent win.  Raonic came off a hip injury which took him off the tour for a few months and only returned a few weeks ago.

Bernard Tomic showed his game is still in flux.  He beat Zopp, a qualifier from Estonia, but it took 3 sets (though he won the third set, 6-0).  He faces top seed, Gael Monfils.  Monfils hasn’t played much lately so he might be a bit vulnerable.  This would be a good win for Tomic who would like to get more consistent results and beat a top player every once in a while.

Kevin Anderson has been playing pretty well the last few weeks.  Along with Isner and Querrey, Anderson is another very tall player that is trying to leverage his height and power into wins.  His most direct role model, as it were, is John Isner.  Both Anderson and Isner played college tennis.  Anderson and Isner actually had somewhat early success.  Isner reached the finals at Washington DC back in 2007 when he was given a wildcard.  In the following year, Anderson reached the finals of the Tennis Channel Open where he lost to Querrey in Querrey’s first title.  All three struggled some for a year or two.  2011 has been Anderson’s best year as he won his first tournament.

This week, he’s beaten Garcia-Lopez and Tommy Haas.  This has meant playing 3 tiebreaks, but this is big-man tennis.  Hold serve, win tiebreaks.  Anderson will play the winner of Tomic and Monfils.

The big match was between Juan Martin del Potro, the second seed, and James Blake (who beat Rochus).  Most people had felt Blake was down and out, but he’s played somewhat well in the past month or so.  Blake played tough tennis to beat Juan Martin in straight sets.  He will next play the winner of Nalbandian and Dodig.  Both Nalbandian and del Potro are working hard to pull the Davis Cup upset in about a month.  They hope that one of them can upset Nadal.  Argentina has a decent enough doubles team that they could take the doubles (but lately, they’ve cobbled teams from singles players like Chela and Schwank).  The bad news is that neither Nalbandian nor del Potro seem to be playing great tennis, though admittedly, they need to play great clay tennis to win and all these upcoming events are on hard courts.

And although one top Swiss player is not playing, another is.  The bad news is Stan Wawrinka has already lost to Finnish veteran, Jarkko Nieminen.

Over in Moscow, they are holding a joint event with the women.  The Russians and Serbs are playing.  Tursunov beat Benneteau to reach the third round.  Davydenko beat Gabashvili and will play German Berrer in the third round.  Kohlschreiber plays Chardy in the third round.  Chardy upset Dolgopolov in the previous round.  Bogomolov (who is American but born in Russia) plays Troicki in the third round.  Bogomolov continues to have the best season of his career and stands to see his rank continue to go up.