Nadal maintains momentum

The arguments against the Australian Open have been in place for some time. Among others, it's said it falls too early in the calendar for a Grand Slam - which is why there have been more surprise winners here than the other three slams - and because of the Australian climate the conditions are almost impossible for the players to produce their best tennis. Certainly the second of these is true of this year's event. A lot of withdrawals mid-match did detract from the tennis and serious consideration must surely be given to putting the tournament back a couple of weeks when temperatures won't be in the mid 40s.

In the build up a lot had been made in the press, and with bookmakers, on Andy Murray's chances at Melbourne Park after he beat both Federer and Nadal at an exhibition event the week before. I'm not sure I ever agreed, it's all very well doing it in minor tournaments or exhibitions but a Grand Slam is very different. Seven matches over two weeks are required with real mental toughness and I'm not quite sure Murray has that yet. What truly inspires Nadal and Federer to greatness is the pressure of the big occasion, which the Scot doesn't have yet. It's all that he is lacking to make that final step to winning his coveted first slam.

The most significant final in years

I thought Federer losing the Wimbledon final to Nadal last year would be a huge blow and one the Swiss would struggle to recover from only for him to win the US Open at Flushing Meadows two months later. Yet his five-set loss to the Spaniard in Melbourne almost seems to have broken him, a clearly emotional Federer broke down in tears upon accepting his runners-up plate.

He has now lost the air of superiority he had over the rest of the tour - and even Nadal at one point - and it seems that he doesn't believe he can beat the Spaniard any more over five sets. That Nadal had been taken the distance by Fernando Verdasco, Andy Murray's conqueror, in the semi-final and was visibly tired in the third set meant Federer knew he should win but just couldn't do it.

What now for Federer?

Although it's unfair to read too much into Federer's emotional speech, it shows how frail he is mentally at the moment. To have a microphone thrust in front of you five minutes after finishing an intense battle with the best player in the world and not let the situation affect you is asking a little too much, even for someone as media savvy as Federer.

A full-time coach must now be a priority, if only to formulate a battle plan when the Swiss takes on his tormentor-in-chief and someone to bounce ideas off instead of relying on his natural talent. Nadal has taken over as world number one because he has that thanks to his coach, and uncle, Toni who comes up with the plan for each match.

Undoubtedly Federer can get back to the top, but to do so a coach is essential, as it seems is equalling the all-time Grand Slam record which he's wearing like a millstone around his neck.

Rafael Nadal player of the year 2008

In the last of my blogs on the successes (the standard of play during the year) and failures (the damp squib of Shanghai) of season 2008 on the ATP tour, I've decided to blog on the biggest success story of the year - Rafael Nadal (left).

2007 had been one of Roger Federer's best. It seemed that the Swiss had even closed the gap to Nadal on clay and might go on to win the French Open this year, the only Grand Slam eluding him.

Away from clay, Nadal struggled to dictate points with his forehand because it sacrificed power for too much spin. Although still a formidable opponent, he appeared predictable and lacking ideas on hard and grass courts against the very best.

Nadal's technical changes for 2008

In the off season, Nadal made some subtle changes to his game. He modified his grip to give his forehand the extra power it needed to be a weapon away from the clay. The changes he'd been making to his serve also started to bear fruit.

The Spaniard's serve had never been a weapon to win quick, easy points which meant long rallies and resulted in late season fatigue. As a result, Nadal's body started to let him down despite having the best physique on tour. Nadal started to hit first serves harder, winning more cheap points and spending less time on court as a result.

Video taken from TennisOne's YouTube channel.

As the video shows, he starts from a wider base than in previous seasons and extends up through the serve better to get more power, hitting the ball at its highest point. Nadal's well established technique has always allowed him to serve very accurately, which added to the extra power he started to generate in 2008 has made him one of the ATP tour's most underrated servers.

Nadal the all-court player

The changes in Nadal's technique allowed him to perform better on faster surfaces in 2008. Whereas in the past the majority of Nadal's tournament wins came on clay, the Spaniard added more variety to his game to pick up victories at Wimbledon, the Olympic gold medal and the Toronto Masters among others.

His relentless groundstrokes from the beginning of every point put the Spaniard's opponents on the back foot and didn't allow them a route to attack in the point. Nadal ruthlessly exploited this tactic on the quick grass courts at Wimbledon in particular where because he was more aggressive he became dominant in the point earlier and cruised through the early rounds before the epic final against Federer.

Nadal's my player of the year... But what do you think?

The changes that the Spaniard made to his serving technique and the improved tactics he introduced on quicker courts won him the most (six) tier one events this year and make him my player of the year for 2008, but what do you think?

Maybe you think Andy Murray's meteoric rise up the rankings make him the player of the year?

Or what about Novak Djokovic's stellar start and finish to the season?

Maybe you think Federer winning a 13th career Grand Slam deserves your vote.

You can vote in the top corner of my blog, or below to add to the debate.

Disagree entirely?

If you think someone else is the player of the year, please feel free to leave a comment below!

Picture by photoAtlas on Flickr.

ATP 2008 - Anything but predictable!

What the 2008 season has identified is a clearly defined top four in the world of Nadal, Federer, Djokovic and Murray who- for the first time in a long while- are able to pick up the victory against each other on any given day, which can only be good for tennis.

Although Federer's procession to title after title had been a magnificent exhibition of his tennis genius, it's good to see that he now has challengers worthy of the name who genuinely feel they can beat him.

Below is a timeline produced using http://www.dipity.com/ of the 2008 ATP tennis season. It contains videos, photos and a mini-report on every tier one event (Grand Slams and Masters Series Events).



More or Less Competition?

What the timeline also shows however, is that although there are now more than two players who will be favourites to win a specific tournament, it is unlikely to be somebody from outside the top four, because they are now so far ahead of the competition. Indeed, in 2008 only two of the 14 tier one events were won by a player outside 'the big four'.

This creates a similar situation to the Premiership in football where the league will be won by one of Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool or Arsenal. Although there is competition between these four, there is little competition when they face other teams in the league.


This raises the question will next year become boring and predictable?

Not if players like Gilles Simon, who exploded into the top 10 in the second half of 2008, can put together good tournament performances back-to-back. He proved that, with confidence high, good results against the best in the world are possible.

Few would have predicted not only that Federer would be knocked off top spot in 2008 by Nadal, but that he would be only two ranking points better off than Djokovic in third place and also that Murray would be so close to the three of them. It's just a shame that the Masters Cup was again a predictable end to the year as I blogged on last week.

Bring on 2009!




All videos on the timeline are provided by the ATP's YouTube channel, unless otherwise stated in the timeline.

Shanghai 2008: too predictable?

Spain's victory in the final of the Davis Cup against Argentina provided a brilliant end to the tennis year, but the Tennis Masters Cup in Shanghai doesn't have the meaning it should do as the end-of-season championships.

Novak Djokovic (left) was clearly ecstatic with his victory, and so he should be because it is a phenomenal achievement, but too many withdrawals and fatigue among the top four again played a part in the tournament. By contrast, the Davis Cup final was full of incident and fully representative of an excellent year in tennis.

What's the problem with the Masters Cup?

The problem lies in the structure of the tournament. The media pack for Shanghai says:

"This year’s Tennis Masters Cup is set to deliver another riveting finish to
the tournament circuit, with the heated Race to the Tennis Masters Cup providing
a snapshot of the caliber of tennis to be played. With the best of the best set
to go head to head, each match will provide high-quality and intense tennis akin
to a Grand Slam final."

Qualifying in the top eight in the world for the Masters Cup is the principle achievement, and not the tournament itself. This was especially true of this year's tournament because the year-end world number one, Rafael Nadal, had withdrawn, and wouldn't be present to pick up his trophy. Therefore there was little prestige to inspire the players to play their best tennis, to call it a "Grand Slam final" is not true.

How could the Masters Cup be improved?

One possible solution could be introduce a system similar to rugby league and rugby union where the league champions are decided by play-offs. This maintains interest through to the end of the season, and although it's often not fair it gives the season the send-off it deserves. This is especially true of rugby league's Super League Grand Final.

Would this work for Shanghai?

Whether this would prove successful for tennis is debatable, because consistently good tournament results show a player's class over a number of months. But if the Masters Cup was elevated to become a fifth Grand Slam with more ranking points on offer then it would get more recognition from the players who will want the distinction of playing in it.

There could still be the final, one-off, match declaring the '2008 World Champion', as well as crowning the player who ended the year as world number one.

The future for the Masters Cup

Therefore, for the Masters Cup to be as important as its equivalents in other sports, the ATP must give it the prestige it deserves as the curtain fall for individual achievement in world tennis. Otherwise it's just another tournament, which the last event of the year shouldn't be.

Picture by toga on Flickr.

The season ends as it started

With only the Davis Cup final between Spain and Argentina left to play, the tennis year came to an end with Novak Djokovic's victory over Nikolai Davydenko in the final of the Tennis Master's Cup in Shanghai. Djokovic won the Australian Open in January, so the season has come full circle with the Serb winning the first and last big tournaments of the year, regardless of my thoughts on the relevance of the end-of-season championships.

Djokovic's form had been patchy in the weeks building up to the tournament, and he was far from convincing in Shanghai but produced an excellent display against Davydenko in the final. The Russian makes very few errors and makes his opponents win matches, instead of him losing them. And that's exactly what Djokovic did, his forehand packing the punch of the beginning of the year.



That Djokovic's form had been inconsistent may have helped his fitness in Shanghai. Roger Federer looked in need of a rest and a boost in confidence, and Andy Murray looked very tired against Davydenko in their semi-final.

As for my pre-tournament thoughts, Roddick pulled out after one match, but Gilles Simon made the last four and Davydenko the final and none of the form players reaching the final- Rafa Nadal failed to make the starting line. Possibly a little too predictable in that case because I have seen this happen before in the Master's Cup with strange finalists in particular. Some of the matches- Federer against Murray as I blogged on in particular- did bring the tournament alive however.

Shanghai comes alive!

So it’s come to this. We’ve had one of the biggest names in tennis, Andy Roddick, pull out of the end-of-season Tennis Masters’ Cup half-way through the tournament – to be replaced by the world number 27 Radek Stepanek. I’m not really too sure why, but I’m sure the ATP have their reasons for bringing him in to play the final two group matches, which he duly lost to Roger Federer and Giles Simon.

The tournament is clearly an effort on the part of the ATP to squeeze a few more pence out of the ridiculously overcrowded schedule at the end of the year. As Laurence Kilgannon had commented on my last blog of the tournament, this event was clearly another example of sports’ governing bodies putting profits before the welfare of the athletes they’re designed to protect.

It’s surely only a matter of time before the Premier League accepts the proposed 39th game as an end-of-season money spinning initiative. The Guinness Premiership (Rugby Union) already has a system whereby the team that accumulates the most points at the end of the season doesn’t win the league. The teams that finish in the top four in the league go to a playoff stage to decide who goes forward to Twickenham for the ‘grand final’ to decide the league champions. Again, another exercise to provide the RFU with more money.

This is, at least what I was going to write before the final game of the group stages at Shanghai between Federer and Britain’s Andy Murray (above). Murray had already qualified for the semi finals and Federer needed a win to qualify. It was all set up for Federer to win and Simon to be knocked out, to get the big names through.

What actually transpired was a match full of incident which swayed both ways before Murray eventually came out on top and knocked Federer out. A truly absorbing contest, worthy of any end of season championships between two evenly matched rivals played out to win a single match, and not to get the big names through to the latter stages.

This is what sport is about. Not the multi millions of dollars on offer to the winner of a tournament that no one really cares about, but two players simply playing for the joy of winning. From a personal point of view, I’m glad that my prediction of Simon to get through a tough group has come to fruition!

Hopefully the semi-finals – Murray v Nikolai Davydenko and Simon v Novak Djokovic – will keep up the standard.

Maybe end-of-season tournaments are a good idea after all.

(Image of Andy Murray supplied by mandj98's flickr page)

The best and worst tennis tournament of the year

The end of season Tennis Masters's Cup began today in Shanghai. Basically, for those of you who don't know, it's a tournament for only the top 8 players in the world (pictured left) to battle it out to decide (unoficially) who the best player in world is, and crown the end of year world number one.

Unfortunately, for those of you who do know what it is, you'll be aware that it is largely a pointless add-on to a schedule that is already too overcrowded with tournaments where the best player in world, previously Roger Federer and now Rafa Nadal, often comes unstuck because they're tired and can't really be bothered.

This has come to the point this year where Nadal has pulled out, citing fatigue. What he really means is Spain are in the final of the Davis Cup in a couple of weeks and he doesn't want to be too tired. He's guaranteed to end the year world number one, has had a great year and has earned this rest.

The fitness of the other two favourites for the tournament, Federer (back) and Andy Murray (fatigue) have also been brought into question. Added to second seed Novak Djokovic's loss of form since May and there could well be some surprises in Shanghai.

This could see Andy Roddick, Nikolai Davydenko and Gilles Simon (who's in great form) with real chances of picking up some end-of-season wins. But Roddick apart, they're not really stellar names are they?

I'll blog again later in the week on progress at Shanghai, but I'm not holding out for much. The tournament is like taking the top 8 teams in the Premiership at the end of the season and after Man Utd have won the league for example, the 8 play off against each other in the Far East for no reason in particular other than to get a bit of extra money, because all the major prizes have already been won. Pointless.

Hopefully Sepp Blatter (President of FIFA) doesn't get any ideas...

(Image courtesy of Tennis Masters Cup website)