Firstly I'll talk about the Western and Southern Financial Group Masters, definitely the shock of the year I think. Where do I start! Ok firstly lets do what I always do, I'll split it into sections. 1st Section was headlined by Roger Federer, Andy Roddick having retired. We all thought that Federer would find it easy here but oh no it wasn't. Firstly we must have felt slightly shocked when Federer took so long to dispatch of Ginepri, it must have cast a shadow on our minds and then the tall Ivo Karlovic solidified are worries as he beat Federer in a tight three sets. For the people who don't believe that Federer is losing his dominance this is one of many steps that have made him lose grace. Down below Davydenko and Murray were the main seeds with Gasquet a very possible threat, however both Davydenko and Gasquet lost in Round 2. Tursunov having beaten Safin in the first round took another scalp in the draw by defeating Gasquet. It was left to Murray to save some grace for the seeds. Murray did just that by getting to the finals. The third section was headlined by Blake and Djokovic, Blake suffered like many of the seeds and went in Round 3. Novak Djokovic however ran past his competitors until having to go against Nadal. However Djokovic took little time in dispatching the reigning Wimbledon and Roland Garros champion beating Nadal 6-1,7-5. On the fourth section Ferrer had also lost out early along with Youzhny. Haas did well but was unable to beat Nadal in the 4th round. Honestly I don't remember the last time a Masters was played without the prescence of either Nadal or Federer. Also I have to say it's August (only a few months left) and Federer has only won one small title in Germany! How much more do I have to say before people think Federer is gone.
The next was the Rogers Cup and yet again shocks galore. Ok in the first section Federer and Roddick were drawn together again, but who would have thought neither would get to the quaters! Federer lost to Gilles SImon this time, in actual fact he lost in his first match here! Marin Cilic (the rising Croat) was the conqueror of Roddick. Blake and Davydenko were the top seeds in section 2. Haas yet again played well whilst this time Kiefer was the man. Tursunov also yet again did well. Murray and Djokovic were drawn together whilst Safin and Ancic were also drawn in section 3. Murray showed his determination to break the shadow of Djokovic and beat him twice in a row (in actual fact I feel slightly sad that he beat him as Djokovic must be hurt by the two losses, I hope it doesn't take his chances of winning the US Open away, I'd much rather Djokovic do well in the US than Murray as Djokovic needs to catch up with Nadal. Anyway DJOKOVIC I'm cheering for you in the Olympics and US Open. Gasquet did better here but lost to Nadal the eventual winner. I think if Djokovic beat Murray he would have got the finals as Murray's game doesn't work with Nadal whilst Djokovic has better chances of winning especially when he beat him last week and also because Nadal is weaker on hard courts. Anyway to people who still don't believe Federer has gone then I don't have anything else I could say to you but face the facts. I won't talk about the Country Classics yet because they haven't finished.
Friday, 8 August 2008
Catchup on WTA Tour
Ok so I have been away for about two weeks or so well I finally got something to get onto the internet with, my cousin had this Wi-Fi, HSDPA and 3G gadget thing which he lent me. Well a lot has happened since I have been gone and I am so dissapointed I wasn't able to follow it; I will talk about each and every detail that shocked me during these weeks and I'm sure all of you would know what I am talking about.
Well let's start off from the beginning the Banka Koper Slovenia Open, Maria Kirilenko was the to seed but sadly fell to eventual winner Sara Errani. Besides that I congratule Katie O'Brien for making the second round. Now the Nordea Nordic Light Open. Radwanska was the top seed but lost to eventual winner Caroline Wozniacki. Agnes Szavay also continued her unremarkable year losing to Dushevina this time around. The main tournaments of interest are the East West Bank Classic and the Rogers Cup, both amazingly won by Dinara Safina - go girl you finally show your potential that I knew was in there.
Well first let's talk about the East West Bank Classic. Now that Justine Henin is gone I find that the womens draw is blank, anyone could win now! I think nobody is going to dominate the scene this year, maybe Sharapova will fight for the spot next year but this year I find it very gloomy unless the William's sisters have anything to say. Well Jankovic played easy opponents until Nadia Petrova got in her way (I see her as a resurgent power in the womens game currently), Jankovic was eventually stopped by Safina in a humiliating second set. Alla Kudryavtseva is also showing some promise taking her fellow russian Dinara Safina into a tense three sets. On the other side FLAVIA PENNETTA got to the final - great! I was in slight shock when I saw her name at the finalist section. Anyway that draw was weak so anyone could have come out the victor really. Sadly Nicole Vaidisova has still not found her form or she would have been able to capitalize on this weak draw. I feel so sad nowadays because she has been overtaken by fellow teens. Anyway congratulations to Bethanie Mattek and Melanie South for achieveing good results. Rogers Cup was packed with more top seeds but as I have said without the Williams or Henin the draw seems vacant.
Well where do I begin, Ivanovic as I have always said is probably the weakest No.1 (or least dominant) we have ever seen, she is not ready for this title and I think it would hurt her more than help her as the pressure will build on her to keep this title - she has also got it easy as her competition are all falling by the wayside. However it did shock me when Tamira Paszek beat her! Anyway on the other side the dominant Safina took the stage again and went straight to the finals, other notables include Flavia Pennetta who sadly lost to Larcher De Brito - probably because of fatigue. On the other side my demons began! MARION BARTOLI got to the semis!!!! Well I have to sauy it is mainly because of a weak draw, out of the top 8 Chakvetadze is the weakest to be honest and then Sugiyama is much too old to make a threat to the draws. Sharapova retiring also solidified my opinion that the womens game is weak currently. I thought with Justine gone at least Sharapova would take the spot but she looks so out of sorts lately, come on William's sisters play more - if you do I am sure that you would win most competitions you play in. However the spotlight was on Cibulkova, she thrashed Vesnina in the first round and then took out Dementieva, Petrova, Jankovic and Bartoli - a total of four seeds. As I said the womens game is the weakest I have ever seen it.
Well let's start off from the beginning the Banka Koper Slovenia Open, Maria Kirilenko was the to seed but sadly fell to eventual winner Sara Errani. Besides that I congratule Katie O'Brien for making the second round. Now the Nordea Nordic Light Open. Radwanska was the top seed but lost to eventual winner Caroline Wozniacki. Agnes Szavay also continued her unremarkable year losing to Dushevina this time around. The main tournaments of interest are the East West Bank Classic and the Rogers Cup, both amazingly won by Dinara Safina - go girl you finally show your potential that I knew was in there.
Well first let's talk about the East West Bank Classic. Now that Justine Henin is gone I find that the womens draw is blank, anyone could win now! I think nobody is going to dominate the scene this year, maybe Sharapova will fight for the spot next year but this year I find it very gloomy unless the William's sisters have anything to say. Well Jankovic played easy opponents until Nadia Petrova got in her way (I see her as a resurgent power in the womens game currently), Jankovic was eventually stopped by Safina in a humiliating second set. Alla Kudryavtseva is also showing some promise taking her fellow russian Dinara Safina into a tense three sets. On the other side FLAVIA PENNETTA got to the final - great! I was in slight shock when I saw her name at the finalist section. Anyway that draw was weak so anyone could have come out the victor really. Sadly Nicole Vaidisova has still not found her form or she would have been able to capitalize on this weak draw. I feel so sad nowadays because she has been overtaken by fellow teens. Anyway congratulations to Bethanie Mattek and Melanie South for achieveing good results. Rogers Cup was packed with more top seeds but as I have said without the Williams or Henin the draw seems vacant.
Well where do I begin, Ivanovic as I have always said is probably the weakest No.1 (or least dominant) we have ever seen, she is not ready for this title and I think it would hurt her more than help her as the pressure will build on her to keep this title - she has also got it easy as her competition are all falling by the wayside. However it did shock me when Tamira Paszek beat her! Anyway on the other side the dominant Safina took the stage again and went straight to the finals, other notables include Flavia Pennetta who sadly lost to Larcher De Brito - probably because of fatigue. On the other side my demons began! MARION BARTOLI got to the semis!!!! Well I have to sauy it is mainly because of a weak draw, out of the top 8 Chakvetadze is the weakest to be honest and then Sugiyama is much too old to make a threat to the draws. Sharapova retiring also solidified my opinion that the womens game is weak currently. I thought with Justine gone at least Sharapova would take the spot but she looks so out of sorts lately, come on William's sisters play more - if you do I am sure that you would win most competitions you play in. However the spotlight was on Cibulkova, she thrashed Vesnina in the first round and then took out Dementieva, Petrova, Jankovic and Bartoli - a total of four seeds. As I said the womens game is the weakest I have ever seen it.
Saturday, 12 July 2008
Departure Week
Next week I'll be leaving for Hong Kong so for more than a month I will be unlikely to post regularly or even post at all, but I will make up for it when I get back. Anyway about next week, I've only seen half of the draws but I'll post about them anyway.
In Indianapolis James Blake will headline the seeds, he should feel more comfortable on hard and in America. I will be cheering for Dmitry Tursunov, hopefully he'll do fine as his draw isn't too strong. The usual spread of Americans inhabit the bottom half of the draw but Tommy Haas will be my favourite here. So in Indianapolis I'll be cheering for Tursunov and Haas.
The draw in Amersfoot doesn't seem so interesting to be honest.
Serena will be headlining in Stanford. She should be fine with her early draw but I would love to see Gisela Dulko do some damage. Lindsay Davenport could be a possible threat to get to the quaterfinals but should be not too much of a problem for Serena. Then we have Petrova just off from a good run in Wimbledon, she faces an onslauught of young names before reaching a possible match up with Hantuchova. Bartoli will also be in this draw (sadly) and she will face equally unimpressive Anna Chakvetadze (sorry to her fans). Shahar Peer lurks beneath here. Anyway this draw should be for Serena's taking.
In Indianapolis James Blake will headline the seeds, he should feel more comfortable on hard and in America. I will be cheering for Dmitry Tursunov, hopefully he'll do fine as his draw isn't too strong. The usual spread of Americans inhabit the bottom half of the draw but Tommy Haas will be my favourite here. So in Indianapolis I'll be cheering for Tursunov and Haas.
The draw in Amersfoot doesn't seem so interesting to be honest.
Serena will be headlining in Stanford. She should be fine with her early draw but I would love to see Gisela Dulko do some damage. Lindsay Davenport could be a possible threat to get to the quaterfinals but should be not too much of a problem for Serena. Then we have Petrova just off from a good run in Wimbledon, she faces an onslauught of young names before reaching a possible match up with Hantuchova. Bartoli will also be in this draw (sadly) and she will face equally unimpressive Anna Chakvetadze (sorry to her fans). Shahar Peer lurks beneath here. Anyway this draw should be for Serena's taking.
Friday, 11 July 2008
Catella Swedish Open
Just quite amazed that the four top seeds in the Catella Swedish Open have gone through to the semifinals, haven't seen that in a while but I guess there wasn't anyone to challenge the top 4 there.
Monday, 7 July 2008
Next Week
I am so tired from Wimbledon that I don't have much energy to analyse the draws for this week, but I'll look at them anyway. Wawrinka leads the seeds in Gstaad on Red Clay. Personally without much analyse on many of the top players I don't know who will succeed but I will be cheering for the third seed; Youzhny. In Newport, USA Mardy Fish leads the seeds with expectedly quite a few Americans. I don't really have a favourite here so I will skip this draw until the final. In Bastad, Sweden Ferrer - the newly crowned No.4 in the world leads the seeds on Clay. Robredo, Nieminen, Mota, Safin, Berdych, Monfils and Verdasco look also to be title contenders. Hopefully Safin will play well here and continue his good run. This draw is interesting though so I'll be following it for the whole week. In Stuttgart Germany the newly crowned Wimbledon champion will go back to his favourite surface; Clay. He will surely be the favourite; but one question does lurk into mind - will he be too tired to play? Anyway besides Nadal it looks like Gasquet will also try to get back into the Top 10. But this draw doesn't ineterest me until possibly the Quaterfinals.
On the womens side it looks like the Top players are licking their wounds from Wimbledon as no Top 10 player will be active; you could argue that it is just a Tier III and IV tournament but I think it is somewhat to do with their early loss. In Budapest Szavay and Cornet lead a draw of blow Top 40 players. This draw doesn't really interest me. In Palermo it will be one of my favourites; Flavia Pennetta leading the draw. Her biggest adversary here is Medina Garrigues; who recently beat her. Alla Kudryavtseva will however want to say differently. Besides those three I don't see many other possible winners, unless Wickmayer can make a shock comeback.
On the womens side it looks like the Top players are licking their wounds from Wimbledon as no Top 10 player will be active; you could argue that it is just a Tier III and IV tournament but I think it is somewhat to do with their early loss. In Budapest Szavay and Cornet lead a draw of blow Top 40 players. This draw doesn't really interest me. In Palermo it will be one of my favourites; Flavia Pennetta leading the draw. Her biggest adversary here is Medina Garrigues; who recently beat her. Alla Kudryavtseva will however want to say differently. Besides those three I don't see many other possible winners, unless Wickmayer can make a shock comeback.
...and here we end Wimbledon
Well what a final it was for both the men's and the womens events. For the womens my knowledge told me to go with Venus as the winner though in my heart I was routing for Serena so it was always difficult to predict a winner their. But in the end I did feel Venus was going to have the upper hand and to be honest Serena blew herself out of contention; she started off so strong but couldn't keep it up as Venus surpassed her.
For the mens it was a rollercoaster and exhausting to watch. However from the start I believed Nadal was looking on top form I just overestimated the motivation Federer had (don't get me wrong he was definitely motivated). I think however with this blow to Federer it will be even more difficult for him to sustain the No.1 title. Some may disagree saying that the match could have gone either way but we need to understand that Federer was playing on his best surface! Now the only place he can find comfort is on Hard Courts but Djokovic is catching up on those as well! I do think next year we would see a No.2 or even No.3 Federer. At the start of the year I did say it was possible for Federer to lose the No.1 spot at least once and it is actually very possible with only 545 points seperating the two. I have to say though Federer's run to 14 Grand Slams looks to be in threat. Yes he will go to the US as the favourite but I'm sure Djokovic will be hot on his heels after the 2nd round defeat in Wimbledon. I do think he'll be back for a vengeance and though Nadal hasn't be too great here it looks like he could at least get to the Semis. I think once Federer starts dropping we'll see a split dominance. Nadal will be dominant in the French and Wimbledon whilst Djokovic will be dominant in Australia and the US Open. This is just my opinion though, however I do believe by 2010 we''ll probably be waving goodbye to Federer as No.1 (meaning by that time I don't think he'll get back to No.1 unless he has kept the No.1 spot until then).
Anyway the rankings are also interesting. For how long has the Top 4 been Federer, Nadal, Djokovic and Davydenko; I don't even know but now No.4 is David Ferrer. I wonder how long that will last. Murray has successful enetered the Top 10 which is great. Hopefully he'll find something in him to reach the Top 8 so he'll get an easier draw at the US. Gasquet sadly dropped 5 ranks though which is a shame whilst fellow frenchmen Tsonga also suffered a similar fate.
Feliciano Lopez (who has probably risen to my Top 20 in the past few months) has reached No.22 after his success in Wimbledon. Mario Ancic's efforts also got him to No.24. However the biggest jumpers must be Rainer Schuttler (+55 to 39) Marat Safin (+35 to 40 Yeah) and Arnaud Clement (+73 to 72). Though the tournament saw many upsets Marat Safin reaching the Semis was a huge payback for me! However with Tommy Haas' valiant effort he still had to drop 7 ranks.
Now lets go to the womens rankings. Sadly Ivanovic still hangs on to No.1 because of a weak effort from all 4 top seeds. Jelena Jankovic also sadly goes to No.2 putting Sharapova to third. But what most interests me is that the ranking points make it look ever closer to being a six way tie for No.1! Has that ever happened before! All the Top 6 are in the 3000 mark meaning another good effort from Serena and Elena will see them in the race for No.1. Marion Bartoli sadly only dropped 5 places - I was hoping for a 10 plus drop! It's also sad that Nicole keeps her ranking of 22 but as long as she can sustain a good run she'll easily get back to the top. One thing that really interests me is that now 4 chinese players are in the Top 50. I don't think it has ever happened. Anne Keothavong also makes it into the Top 80, hopefully she continue her rise.
For the mens it was a rollercoaster and exhausting to watch. However from the start I believed Nadal was looking on top form I just overestimated the motivation Federer had (don't get me wrong he was definitely motivated). I think however with this blow to Federer it will be even more difficult for him to sustain the No.1 title. Some may disagree saying that the match could have gone either way but we need to understand that Federer was playing on his best surface! Now the only place he can find comfort is on Hard Courts but Djokovic is catching up on those as well! I do think next year we would see a No.2 or even No.3 Federer. At the start of the year I did say it was possible for Federer to lose the No.1 spot at least once and it is actually very possible with only 545 points seperating the two. I have to say though Federer's run to 14 Grand Slams looks to be in threat. Yes he will go to the US as the favourite but I'm sure Djokovic will be hot on his heels after the 2nd round defeat in Wimbledon. I do think he'll be back for a vengeance and though Nadal hasn't be too great here it looks like he could at least get to the Semis. I think once Federer starts dropping we'll see a split dominance. Nadal will be dominant in the French and Wimbledon whilst Djokovic will be dominant in Australia and the US Open. This is just my opinion though, however I do believe by 2010 we''ll probably be waving goodbye to Federer as No.1 (meaning by that time I don't think he'll get back to No.1 unless he has kept the No.1 spot until then).
Anyway the rankings are also interesting. For how long has the Top 4 been Federer, Nadal, Djokovic and Davydenko; I don't even know but now No.4 is David Ferrer. I wonder how long that will last. Murray has successful enetered the Top 10 which is great. Hopefully he'll find something in him to reach the Top 8 so he'll get an easier draw at the US. Gasquet sadly dropped 5 ranks though which is a shame whilst fellow frenchmen Tsonga also suffered a similar fate.
Feliciano Lopez (who has probably risen to my Top 20 in the past few months) has reached No.22 after his success in Wimbledon. Mario Ancic's efforts also got him to No.24. However the biggest jumpers must be Rainer Schuttler (+55 to 39) Marat Safin (+35 to 40 Yeah) and Arnaud Clement (+73 to 72). Though the tournament saw many upsets Marat Safin reaching the Semis was a huge payback for me! However with Tommy Haas' valiant effort he still had to drop 7 ranks.
Now lets go to the womens rankings. Sadly Ivanovic still hangs on to No.1 because of a weak effort from all 4 top seeds. Jelena Jankovic also sadly goes to No.2 putting Sharapova to third. But what most interests me is that the ranking points make it look ever closer to being a six way tie for No.1! Has that ever happened before! All the Top 6 are in the 3000 mark meaning another good effort from Serena and Elena will see them in the race for No.1. Marion Bartoli sadly only dropped 5 places - I was hoping for a 10 plus drop! It's also sad that Nicole keeps her ranking of 22 but as long as she can sustain a good run she'll easily get back to the top. One thing that really interests me is that now 4 chinese players are in the Top 50. I don't think it has ever happened. Anne Keothavong also makes it into the Top 80, hopefully she continue her rise.
Thursday, 3 July 2008
Womens Final
Well it's the women's final and as I said from the very beginning it will be a Williams affair. Anyway I congratulate Dementieva and Zheng for trying to upset the stalwarts but to be honest they never had a chance. Anyway congrats also to Vaidisova - she is back (though not to her best). Lets see what happens on Saturday because this should be a classic - unlike last year! I have to say though, wouldn't it be interesting when even the Williams sisters retire! The time is looming over their shoulders and honestly when that happens how wide open would Wimbledon be!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)