Agassi's Great Matches, Part 1

He confessed his long blond hairs were a wig, to have used crystal meth and to have assumed, as a junior, performance-enhancing drugs given to him by his father. His revelations launched new shadows on the ATP directors: have they hided the dark secret under the carpet to avoid the toy broke itself?

Anyway, Andre invented a new way of playing, gifted tennis fans the greatest rivalry ever and one of the best matches in the history of this sport. This tribute is to the player and to his most unbelievable and remarkable matches.

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Agassi Makes a Confession

Andre Agassi confessed, in his autobiography that he tested positive to anti-doping tests but lied to the ATP to escape ban. The first player to complete the career Grand Slam in the Open era assumed an higjly addictive drug, the crystal methamphetamine: it’s not an enhancing-performance substance, but it’s meant for personal use, considered as a recreational drug like the cocaine.

He took the meth (possession of which carries a maximum five-year jail sentence in the US) in 1997, a period signed by doubts, falling form, and the ending of his turbulent marriage with the actress Brooke Shields. In his book, he so recalls the episode:

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New Lights on Marcos Baghdatis

Marcos Baghdatis is back. The Cypriot won the Stockholm ATP 250 over Olivier Rochus 61 75. Baghdatis, who hadn’t such a joy since February 2007 (in Zagreb, w. over Ivan Ljubicic) is the 10th unseeded player to clinch a title this season. Is this enough to talk about a Renaissance of the ex Australian Open finalist? Is this a sufficiently bright signal to turn off the critics of who considers Marcos nothing more than a meteor who lived only a summer of unexpected glory?

Probably not, although a victory is always a victory and should mollify attacks and oppositions. Marcos won a decent tournament, but surely not an astonishing tournament. The only top-10 in the main draw, Robin Soderling, withdrawn in the semifinal for an elbow injury, and gave up the hope of improving his ranking points replacing the 115 points of the success at the Sunrise Challenger. The quality of the event is testified by the semifinal between Olivier Rochus (who was the 21st best player in the world, has two career titles and, although his one-handed backhand and smart strategies would deserve more, hasn’t reached the fourth round in a Grand Slam event since 2005) and the Gstaad champions, the 21 year-old Brazilian Thonas Bellucci.

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Something Is Rotten in Denmark

Once upon a time, tennis was a sport for gentlemen. Then John McEnroe, Jeff Tarango arrived and a certain level of bad behaviour started to diffuse and be tolerated. Now that more and more people tend to associate "personality", "character" with sudden eruption of fury, the mood of Ilja Bozoljac or the Austrian Daniel Koellerer, whose motto is "If you respect your opponent, you have already lost", are becoming common.

And proliferate where the luxury and artificiosity of top-class events leave his place to the not-glamorous tournaments belonging to the second or third tier circuit, like Challengers or Futures. The last episode is only another confirmation of this stigmatizable evolution. If we should give a title to this story, the only suitable would be: "Something is rotten in Denmark."

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Bet on ... Davydenko

Nikolay Davydenko outclashed Rafa Nadal 7-6 6-3 to win the Shanghai Masters final and clinch his 18th title, in a manner of style even more impressing than the score would suggest. The Russian, renewed after the bet enquiry, the scandal and the suspects followed the sadly famous Sopot first round match against Vassallo Arguello in 2007, is now the most testing opponent to verify a player’s fitness. And Nadal, playing his first final for five months, showed to have some way to go to find his best form: he managed only nine winners to the 28-years-old Rusian’s 35. Davydenko is certain to finish the year outside the top-5 for the first time since 2004. And is now the player with the best result not to have played a Grand Slam final yet.

Now the Russian is seventh in the Year-to-Date and improves his odds to go to London for the World Tour Finals. All players can add points from the Atp 500 in either Basel or Valencia in the week of 2 Novembrer and again at the Paris Masters. But Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Nikolay Davydenko, Marin Cilic, Tommy Robredo and Radek Stepanek have all won two Atp 250 titles. And this could give some more chances for Robin Soderling, now n.9 in the YTD, now in Stockholm; because he won Bastad but has only 90 points from his second best performance in the ATP 250. So winning in Sweden, he could add 160 points to his ranking.

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Safin Refuses to Shake Hands

When you see Marat Safin walking with the shadows of his past glory beside him and with the end of his career approaching, playing against Mr Unstability Thomas Berdych, you could expect everything but a straight match.

The encounter filled up with the expectations. In the first set Safin dominated the match with 6 aces while Berdych was out-played and seemingly close to retirement. After that the Czech received treatment and finished to win the match.

Safin refused to shake his adversary's hand. Later, in the press room, he confirmed once again his genuinity and spontaneity of tongue and mind.

"Don't pretend that you are injured and then you start running around and start to hit winners and then all of a sudden you pull the hands up in the air after winning the match? ... So then of course the guy will say 'No, I've been injured but then I felt a little bit better'.

"Of course he will find 10,000 excuses. Still, it's not enough. You're playing or you're not playing”.

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Tennis News from the Orient

Novak Djokovic has won the ATP 500 in Beijing and is now certain to surpass Andy Murray, becoming the third best player in the ATP ranking. It was a “schizophrenic” final against Marin Cilic, with the Croat displaying flat groundstrokes with his feet well inside the backline.

But after an hour of rain delay the Djoker dashed and clinched the first set 6-2. The second set saw an alternation of breaks: 6 in all the match. Cilic near the net is quite disastrous and wasted an easy forehand to give Novak 3-3. Djoker lost serve twice in a row, but Cilic never succeeded in saving his and forcing the match to the third before losing the tiebreak.

Djokovic is now between the principal candidates for the victory at the Shanghai Masters 1000, where the Serb could clinch his fourth and most prestigious title of a not-so-memorable season. Anyway, Cilic failed to live up with the expectations, grew after he overpowered Nadal in the semifinals.

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The Serve in Modern Tennis

“Unless you're one of those rare mutant virtuosos of raw force, you'll find that competitive tennis, like money pool, requires geometric thinking, the ability to calculate not merely your own angles but the angles of response to your angles. Because the expansion of response-possibilities is quadratic, you are required to think n shots ahead, where n is a hyperbolic function limited by the sine of opponent's talent and the cosine of the number of shots in the rally so far (roughly)”.

If your thoughts on court are less analytical of David Foster Wallace's ones, the difficulties in answering increase. And the serve, as a fundamental of the game but principally seen as the stroke to start and determine your game, becomes more and more relevant. But how much? A possible answer, a first rough evaluation of the importance of service in determining the result of a tennis match, could arrive analysing the percentage of tiebreaks played out of the total amount of sets run off.

The data presented here consider this percentage only in Grand Slam tournament since 1980 to 2008, so considering also the not-so-world class last Australian Open editions at the Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club. This index has the advantage of being simple to be read and immediate to understand, giving a clear image without implying an excessive sacrifice to heuristic deepness.

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Davis Cup 2010: What a Draw!

Rafa Nadal against Roger Federer on the Spanish clay (the odds that Costa will choose the “red” to host Switzerland are great), Novak Djokovic in front of his Serbian supporters facing Andy Roddick. Those are just wo hot spots for the next Davis Cup first round, programmed for the weekend before the Indian Wells Masters 1000.

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Honour to Del Potro

The Goat (or what many considers as the Goat) lost to the best of his generation, beaten in the previous 6 meetings (also including when he went two sets up at the 2009 Roland Garros with 2 hours and a half of incredible tennis).


Federer-Del potro was not the most thrilling of the Grand Slam final, the game quality was a bit more than decent; but surely it has been the best U.S. Open final since 1999 when Andre Agassi surprised Todd Martin by coming back from 2 sets to 1 down (the last five setter before the yesterday's clash). This was anyway the most surprising final since 2000, when another first-timer, Marat Safin, stunned Pete Sampras. So Del Potro, 20 years and 355 days old, has become the fifth youngest player to win this tournament.

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Classy Cilic Overpowers Murray

When Andy Murray hit the last forehand long ending his misery, Marin Cilic realized that he probably has completed his personal puzzle, found his missing piece and started filling his standards.

The Croat, thought by many as a future and bright star, had failed in big appointments (though recently he did defeat James Blake in a dramatic Davis Cup five-setter). But today he was simply perfect, enjoyable, powerful and precise. This was the best performance of his career. He gained his first Grand Slam quarterfinal and the crowd could rub their hands thinking to the clash between the two big-bombers of this decade: Marin Cilic and Juan Martin Del Potro.

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U.S. Open First Week: Ups and Downs

Roger Federer – Not extraordinary, not so bad anyway. He managed his energies on court enough to find his form. Devin broke him twice, he lost a set to Hewitt but Roger defeated the Aussie for the 14th time in a row. He’s the main candidate to win the title. Vote: 6.5

Rafa Nadal – Not so bad. He’s in the third round despite an abdominal injury against Almagro, who has to learn the difference between playing a series of beautiful strokes and playing a match. Rafa was broken five times, really too many, but the Spanish derby was exactly what the new, leaner Nadal needed: a straightforward three-setter that tested him enough ... but not too much. Vote: 6.5

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Taylor Dent Makes Major Return

Taylor Dent returned to win a match in a major for the first time in four years, beating Feliciano Lopez in four sets. After three back surgeries and an entire year passed in bed for 23 hours a day, he came back to world-class tennis.

During the layoff, he tried to earn a real-estate license, studied religion and politics, became a champion at World of Aircraft video game. Against Lopez, despite a modified service movement, he realized 18 aces. And, despite a passion for "vintage style" tennis, he didn't alter his serve-and-volley style with 39 point at the net out of 58 attempts.

Now, to refresh your memory, the highlights of his memorable 4th round against Roger Federer in Miami this year.



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US Open, Day 1 Highlights

Roger Federer advances to the second round after beating former junior champion Devin Britton.



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Is Mario Ancic Retiring?

Last July, Mario Ancic hired the law office of Mary Turudic, sister of the famous Croatian judge Ivana Turudica, in Zagreb; and recently he's been seen in the building of Commercial Court. Ancic is working as an intern, and his working hours turn on increasing doubts about his return to professional tennis.

The gangly 6-5 Ancic passed a brief but extremely intense lustre in top tier tournaments, revealing himself in 2002 when, as a wildcard, he upset Roger Federer, then with a reputation of rising star after his success against Pete Sampras the year before. Ancic remained the last to defeat the Swiss at the Championships until the dramatic 2008 final.

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The Triumph of Patchwork Tennis

With a creative fusion of different styles Andy Murray has interrupted the duopoly Federer-Nadal, becoming the first player, when both present, to occupy one of the first two seeds in a Grand Slam tournament since Wimbledon 2005.

Multiplicity in unity. Andy Murray is the new paradigm, of a gestaltic synthesis of different influences and characters, styles and spurs generating an ensemble divergent and probably better in quality and quantity from the mechanical sum of the parts. He's a natural born showman, he speaks to his public with grimaces and snarls, with sulks and outbursts. He's genuine and spontaneous, on- and out-courts, and as a youngsters faced the inconveniences of journalistic misunderstandings.

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Profile of Sam Querrey

Profile of Sam Querrey, the 2009 Us Open Series winner

When he turned professional in 2006, Sam Querrey certainly didn't believe that in three years he would be capable of winning the U.S. Open Series, entering the top 30 and starting the last seasonal Grand Slam tournament as a seeded player. But all these dreams became real. The laid-back Californian, talented as a junior player but not skilled enough to be defined as "The Next", is extremely improved during the last year.



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Four Lessons We Learned from Cincinnati

1-God bless Father Roger
The Swiss champion didn’t seem too much diverted by his one-month-old twin daughters not to win his 16th Masters series title (in 25 finals), only one fewer than Andre Agassi, leader of this particular ranking. The surgical demolition of a slightly absent-minded Andy Murray and of Novak Djokovic are important signs of health, even more meaningful with six days remaining until the last Grand Slam tournament of the season, where he could face his old nemesis Rafa Nadal.

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