Articles by Steve Tignor

French Open Memories, #9: Andre Agassi d. Andrei Medvedev, 1999 final

Mon, 21 May 2018 11:47:00 +0000

Agassi and Medvedev had spent the spring of 1999 trading conspiratorial smiles whenever their paths crossed. Andrei the Russian was playing some of the best tennis of his career, and Andre the American could take more than a little credit for it.

That April in Monte Carlo, Agassi had come across Medvedev drinking himself into a stupor after a defeat. The 24-year-old Medvedev told Agassi he was through, he was old, he couldn’t play “this f---ing game anymore.”

Agassi sat down and said, “How dare you? Here I am, 29, injured, divorced, and you’re [complaining] about being washed up at 24? Your future is bright.”

Medvedev asked for a few tips, and Agassi obliged. Whatever he said worked. Medvedev spent the next month, in Agassi’s words, “on fire.”

Now, as he sat in his hotel room in Paris, Agassi realized that he may have done his job a little too well. The next day he would play in the French Open final for the first time in eight years; it was the only major he had never won. To do it, he would have to beat Medvedev.

“He has my game,” Agassi thought to himself nervously. “I gave it to him. He even has my first name. Andrei. It’s going to be Andre versus Andrei. Me versus my doppelgänger.”

WATCH: A Day in the Life of Agassi - The 1999 French Open Final

To the astonishment of his coach, Brad Gilbert, Agassi opened the minibar in his Paris hotel room and downed a bottle of vodka.

Andre the American, it turned out, was right to be anxious, because Andrei the Russian was still on fire the next day.

“He’s doing everything he’s supposed to do, everything I told him to do,” Agassi thought bitterly as Medvedev jumped out to an early lead.

Agassi lost the first 6-1 in nineteen minutes. He knew this was likely his last chance at becoming the first man since Rod Laver to complete a career Grand Slam, his last chance to forget the two French Open finals that he had lost here at the start of the decade, both of which he was heavily favored to win. He knew this was his last chance to put the demons of his misspent youth, the memories of his pink spandex outfits, his training meals at McDonalds, his tears of regret, behind him. Agassi knew this was his last chance at redemption, and he knew he was blowing it.

This time there was help, literally, from above: During the third set, it started to rain. The players retreated to the locker room, where Gilbert engaged in what be the most effective screaming fit in tennis history. After informing Agassi of everything he was doing wrong, he finished by telling him to “go down with both guns blaaaazing.” In a final flourish of rage, Gilbert opened a locker and slammed it shut. A few minutes later, Agassi walked back on court and won.

When it was over and Andrei the Russian’s final forehand had flown long, Agassi rubbed his head and sobbed.

“Winning isn’t supposed to feel this good,” he thought. “But it does.” He walked off court blowing kisses to the four corners of the stadium, and vowed that he would do that after every win for the rest of his career.

Agassi’s win at the French Open in 1999 was an end and a beginning. The “Image is Everything” underachiever of 10 years earlier had been vanquished. In his place stood a man who had pulled off one of the sport’s unique achievements: A career Slam.

But destiny, in the form of Brad Gilbert, wasn’t quite finished with Agassi that spring weekend in Paris. Flying back to New York on the Concorde, a smiling Gilbert asked Agassi who had won the women’s event at the French that weekend. Agassi smiled back; it was Steffi Graf, a woman he’d had a crush on for years.

“That’s right,” Gilbert said, before making a seemingly outlandish prediction that, we know now, would come true: You’re going to marry her, Gilbert said to Agassi.

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French Open Memories, #10: Yannick Noah d. Mats Wilander, 1983 final

Mon, 21 May 2018 11:45:00 +0000

There's nothing like Paris in the springtime, they say. As these 10 epics—the 10 most memorable French Open matches of the Open Era—show, there's also nothing quite as stirring or sensation as tenis in Paris at this time of year." [bold "the 10 most memorable French Open matches of the Open Era

There have been better contests, and much closer contests, in Paris over the course of the Open era. But the 1983 French Open men’s final still takes the emotional cake.

If you’re a fan of a certain age, you may have known people who kept a videotape of the 1983 men’s final at Roland Garros lying around, for those moments when they needed cheering up. If you were a French tennis player of a certain age, you probably knew dozens of your fellow countrymen and women who were inspired to pick up a racquet after seeing Noah complete his theatrical triumph. A 4-year-old Amelie Mauresmo knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life when she was finished watching this match.

Few expected Noah’s victory at the time. The last time a Frenchman had won at Roland Garros was 1946, and the 23-year-old from Cameroon was only seeded sixth, behind such legendary figures as Ivan Lendl, John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, and the 18-year-old Wilander, who was the defending champion. Noah was an established Top 10 player, but his volatile, acrobatic talent had never been reliable enough to take him past the quarterfinals at a major. “Some days he played as if he were the best in the world,” Jane Gross wrote of Noah in the New York Times, “other days it looked as if he would be happier sitting in a café reading his favorite romantic philosophy.”

That spring, though, Noah had found himself in a world-beating mood. Before arriving in Paris, he won the German Open, and ended a 20-match win streak by Wilander. Noah had also made a subtle but decisive change to his mindset.

“I worked hard,” Noah said of his preparation in 1983, “but I did that before. This time, I practiced to win. I thought about winning, not only a few matches, but the tournament. That was the difference. The difference was in my head. I was ready to fight to win the tournament.”

WATCH—Highlights from Noah's win over Wilander in 1983 French Open final:

With that new attitude, Noah tore through the draw with the loss of just one set. While he knew his way around a red-clay court, he wasn’t a classic dirt-baller. Noah was too athletic, and too much of a risk-taker and a showman, to do anything but attack. In the quarterfinals, he pulled off a rare victory over the third-seeded Lendl, in an even rarer 6-0 fourth set. In the semis, Noah recorded two more love sets, over his countryman Christophe Roger-Vasselin.

Still, Noah remained the underdog against Wilander, who was 13-0 at Roland Garros, and who had won his own love set over John McEnroe in the quarterfinals. But instead of doing what he had done so well in those 13 wins—counterpunch, defend, rifle pinpoint passing shots—Wilander chose to race Noah to the net. While Wilander could match the Frenchman’s tactics, he couldn’t match his emotion; with fists pumping and dreadlocks flying, Noah whipped the home crowd into a frenzy. Only when Noah served for the match at 6-5 in the third did Wilander find his service-return range. But fighting off cramps and nerves, Noah bounced back to win the tiebreaker going away.

“I was nervous,” Noah admitted. “I was so close to winning. I knew that if I lost that set, it would maybe be something else.”

When Wilander’s final return sailed long, Noah dropped to his knees, reached for the sky, and ended up in his father Zacharie’s arms. It was a reunion long in the making. Ten years earlier in Cameroon, a young and spindly Yannick had caught the eye of a visiting Arthur Ashe. Soon after, he left his home to train in France.

“For my parents it was very hard,” Noah said after the match, “maybe harder than for me. I wanted to be a tennis player, and now I made it. I’m happy to show them that all the help they gave me did pay off.”

Thirty-five years later, Noah’s win still stands above all others in recent French tennis history. Some matches and moments are unrepeatable. They can only be watched, on YouTube or on our old videotapes, over and over again.

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In Rome, Nadal took the new generation's best shot, and surpassed it

Sun, 20 May 2018 22:38:00 +0000

When Rafael Nadal was young, his all-knowing uncle Toni convinced him that he could make the skies open up with rain on command. Maybe Toni, after he retired from the road last year, transferred his powers to his brother Miguel Angel. How else to explain what transpired in the third set of Rafa’s 6-1, 1-6, 6-3 win over Alexander Zverev in Rome on Sunday?

This past week, Miguel Angel, a former professional football player, made a relatively rare appearance in the Nadal player box. And with Rafa down 1-3 in the third set and seemingly out of answers against Zverev, a storm conveniently swept across the Foro Italico, forcing a prolonged delay in play. When that delay was over, Nadal had answers again. He charged through the last five games for his eighth title in Rome, and reclaimed the No. 1 ranking in the process.

Miguel Angel’s presence aside, Rafa rightly said that it wasn’t the break in play that made the difference, but what he did with it.

“When it happened, delay, the rain delay, I didn’t feel in that moment that it would help me,” Nadal said. “But really, in my opinion, what helped me is that I came back with a clear idea in terms of tactical issues and in terms of decisions that I take after that break.”

WATCH: Nadal's second championship point in Rome, against Zverev

I had wondered if one of those tactical decisions would be to finally move up in the court a little for his service returns. A week ago in the Madrid final, Zverev had taken advantage of Dominic Thiem’s similarly deep return position, and by the third set of the Rome final, he was having his way with Nadal, too, moving forward unimpeded and using his 6’6” frame to knock off Rafa’s suddenly tame topspin forehands.

But while Rafa stayed deep in the court, he made an effort to hit his returns longer.

“The second serve, he was able to hit the first ball with perfect position,” Nadal said of Zverev’s domination early in the third set. “And I was just running to save the points. And when I came back, I believe I started to return again much higher and longer.”

Everything flowed from there. His deeper, higher returns forced Zverev back, which allowed Nadal to push his way forward and take command of the rallies again. Down the stretch, his flat two-handed backhand approaches were as skiddingly effective as they’ve ever been. Rafa’s doubts, it seemed, had blown away with the clouds.

In some ways, this match was a microcosm of the clay season so far, and a fitting way to send it to Paris. Nadal started out on fire, playing what he even was willing to call his best set of tennis on clay in 2018. His drop shots were deadly, and his forehand passes deadlier, as he broke Zverev every time he served.

Then, at the start of the second set, the young German began to show what he could do, and why he’s not someone Nadal can run roughshod over, even on clay. He began by making a long-range drop shot that Rafa said “probably even exist,” and held serve. Soon Zverev was the one snapping off forehand winners, and Nadal was the one shanking the ball into the stands. The sky grew dark, the conditions slowed, and Rafa’s shots slowed with them; suddenly he found himself struggling to avoid getting bageled. Zverev came in having won two straight tournaments, and 13 straight matches, over the last 19 days. Was he going to sneak past Rafa in Rome and potentially make himself a co-favorite for Roland Garros?

“I think this week is the most, actually, satisfying,” said Zverev, who spent much of this tournament playing late into the night. “Because even when I was tired, still found a way against great players...And you know, I was not far away from beating Rafa on a clay court in a Masters final. So I guess I can take that to Paris.”

In the end, though, those late nights caught up to him; Zverev wasn’t ready to fight off a freshly charging Rafa after the rain delay.

“He came out way faster and played much more aggressive than I did,” Zverev said. “And the fatigue I had over the last—because of over the last few weeks, because of the break, it took me a very long time to get activated again and to get going. Obviously it wasn’t enough time.”

WATCH: Tennis Channel discussed the projected men's seeds at Roland Garros

Nadal and Zverev were both asked, naturally, what this match means going to Paris. And just as naturally, they didn’t really want to think about it yet. Zverev said he’ll talk about Roland Garros when he gets there, and while Rafa conceded that going into a Slam with a win is always a positive, everything starts anew in Paris anyway. It’s not like he doesn’t know how to win there by now, whatever the cicrumstances.

Nadal focused instead on how much it means to win in Rome again. Incredibly, he hadn’t been past the quarterfinals at the Foro since 2014, and hadn’t won the title there since 2013—a virtually unthinkable dry spell for Rafa on dirt. Watching him win his eighth title in Rome reminded me of his early five-set epics there, against Guillermo Coria and Roger Federer, in the 2005 and 2006 finals. In those days, many saw Nadal as just the latest in a long line of clay-court specialists, sluggers who ground their opponents into the red dust.

What we should have realized is that while young Rafa could grind, he also had the full repertoire of shots. In reality, he was a clay-court artist, rather than simply a specialist, and his game would eventually translate to every surface. But it’s not too late to appreciate his racquet skills. In the third set on Sunday, Nadal took an excellent Zverev lob, one that appeared destined to get over his head, and knifed it away with a leaping skyhook overhead while looking in the other direction. That’s no baseline grinder’s shot; that’s a born tennis player’s shot, an artist’s shot.

Thirteen years after he first won in Rome, and a few weeks before his 32nd birthday, Nadal can still take the best shot from the new generation’s best player, and come up with something better.

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Is back-to-back Rome champ Svitolina ready to take on Paris pressure?

Sun, 20 May 2018 20:16:00 +0000

Can a loss unfairly overshadow a win? In the case of Simona Halep’s stunningly rapid 6-0, 6-4 defeat at the hands of Elina Svitolina in the Rome women’s final on Sunday, the answer would seem to be yes.

Throughout the 19-minute first set, the talk on TV and Twitter, and most likely in the stands at the Foro Italico, was all about the Romanian. Where had the No. 1 seed’s game gone? Twenty-four hours earlier, she had gritted her way past Maria Sharapova in three long sets. Now, with the title on the line, she was rushing from one lost point to the next, shanking one shot after the next, while barely lifting her eyes from the ground. Even her coach, the normally upbeat Darren Cahill, told her that she was on her own with this one. While Halep played a better and livelier second set, she never seriously challenged Svitolina.

“I think I was a little bit tight, and the muscles were a little stiff,” said Halep, who was treated for an apparent back issue during second set. “...But it was not about the injury. Today I was just not fresh enough to start the match better.”

Anytime a player ranked No. 1 suffers a possible injury and loses, it’s going to draw headlines. Worse for Halep is that this defeat is part of a long-running trend. Since winning in Madrid last May, she’s 1-6 in finals, her lone victory coming at a small, International-level event in Shenzhen the first week of 2018. Not only does the WTA’s No. 1 player not have a Slam title, she currently doesn’t hold any Premier or Premier Mandatory titles, either.

WATCH: Holding Serve, Elina Svitolina

What keeps Halep, who is clearly among the game’s great talents, from crossing the finish line? She can get beat up on the way to finals, as she did during her two marathon wins at the Australian Open this year, and in her win over Sharapova in Rome this weekend. But her size, relative to most of her top-ranked opponents’, also seems to have Halep with a scrappy underdog’s mentality that she can only overcome for so long. While she was able to fend one powerful player, she couldn’t get back up and do the same thing against Svitolina, who was hitting every bit as big as Sharapova on Sunday.

And that, finally, brings us to the winner. Svitolina was mildly irritated when a reporter, looking at the match from the Halep point of view, described the first set as “strange.”

“Well,” Svitolina said, “I don’t think it was a strange match. It was a really good match, from my side.

“I think I dominated all the match. I was trying to put lots of pressure on Simona with my game, tried to really take the ball early and open the court. It worked really good today. I was feeling good.”

Svitolina didn’t hesitate to attack Halep’s short second serves, and keep attacking from there. Playing far into the court and taking the ball at its peak, she made everything look easy and risk-free.

While finals have become the bane of Halep’s existence, they’ve brought out the best in Svitolina in recent years. She has now won eight in a row, including two straight in Rome. The 23-year-old said on Sunday that her love of finals dates back to a wake-up call she experienced in juniors.

“I always remember when I lost very—was very painful final against Bouchard at Wimbledon, juniors,” Svitolina said. “This really taught me a lot...I that final, I was so stressed, so scared that I didn’t even play two balls into the court. So ever since that moment I decided that, I’m gonna go out there and do something.”

“Like today, from the first point I was trying to play really aggressive and to go for my shots.”

WATCH: Unstrung, Pallacorda Stadium

All of which leaves Svitolina in exactly the same position she was in one year ago. A Rome champion, and a solid dark-horse pick to win her first major title at Roland Garros. Last year, she lost a heartbreaker in Paris, after holding a match point, to Halep in the quarterfinals. That remains her best result at any Grand Slam event. The pressure is on for Svitolina to do more this time; to her credit, she says she’s ready to take it on.

“It’s gonna be different, definitely, from last year,” Svitolina said of her expectations for Paris. “Last year, I was almost—first time for me going into the Grand Slam as a favorite.”

“I’m going to take it as a challenge first. For me, very important to take one match at a time and just go out there enjoy playing on the big courts, atmosphere. Roland Garros, you know, that’s what we are training for. And I’m gonna give it the best shot.”

Judging by what she did to the world’s No. 1-ranked player on Sunday, Svitolina’s best shot is good enough. Now we’ll see if she can do something she hasn’t done before: throw that shot seven straight times over two weeks.

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In Rome, Nadal and Djokovic reminded us what Big 4 tennis is all about

Sat, 19 May 2018 16:44:00 +0000

You remember Big 4 tennis, right? Dazzling rallies, careening athleticism, ambition and sportsmanship in (mostly) equal measures?

“I missed it,” Novak Djokovic said today, speaking for just about every tennis fan.

With Andy Murray sidelined, Djokovic struggling, and Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer seemingly residing on separate tours this season, it had been a while since we were treated to tennis royalty going toe to toe. It had been even longer since we had seen the most hard-fought of all the Big 4 rivalries, Nadal vs. Djokovic, give us an old-fashioned, knock-down, drag-out battle. The last of them had come two years ago in Rome, when Nole held off Rafa in two tight, thrilling, see-saw sets.

In those days, Djokovic was the king of the men’s game, and Nadal was clawing his way back up the totem pole. But the beauty of the Big 4 is that, while the players live on, the hierarchies between them remain in constant flux. This time, when they met again in Rome on Saturday, Nadal was the top seed, and Djokovic was the man trying to climb the ladder and rejoin him at the ATP summit.

In the span of the last week, Djokovic almost made it there. On Thursday, he played his best set of tennis in two years in beating Albert Ramos-Viñolas. On Friday, he competed with all the anger and gusto of his glory years in coming back to beat Kei Nishikori. And on Saturday he pushed Nadal to come up with his best tennis of the year to sneak past him 7-6 (4), 6-3.

WATCH: Match point from Nadal's win over Djokovic in the Rome semifinals:

Djokovic controlled his share of the rallies, and won many of them with turn-back-the-clock lasers to the corners. In the first set, he came back from 2-5, and, after knocking off a powerful forehand, stood knotted with Rafa at 3-3 in the tiebreaker. From there, Nadal raised his game to a place no one else could reach on clay. He hit a full-cut, down-the-line forehand winner for 4-3, and closed the set with a backhand down-the-line winner on the outside of the sideline. While Djokovic raged to his coaches, he could take satisfaction in being the man who pushed Rafa to those heights.

“Rafa was just better in important moments,” Djokovic said. “He just managed to play right shots, and he deserved to win.”

“I don’t think there was too much of a difference, which is great news for me.”

The difference between the Djokovic who lost two tight sets to Nadal in Rome this year, and the Djokovic who won two tight sets against him there in 2016, was summed up by two points they played at 4-2 in the first set. The first point may have been the best of the match, a cat-and-mouse rally that took them scrambling up and back and side to side, before Djokovic finally closed it with a volley. Djokovic threw his arms in the air as he walked back to the baseline, and the crowd chanted his name. But on the next point, Djokovic tried a patented shot of his—the down-the-line backhand—and missed it wide. He was ready to play well, but not quite ready to do it for long enough to beat Nadal on clay.

Which is no shame, especially when Nadal is at his current, world-beating level. While Djokovic wasn’t ready to sustain his excellent play, Rafa was confident enough in his tactics and his execution to raise his game when he needed to. From 3-3 in the first-set tiebreaker, he hit a forehand winner, won two more points with forcing forehands, and closed with that backhand that clipped the sideline.

“I think I played with the right determination,” said Nadal, who now trails Djokovic 25-26 in their career head to head. “The important points, later in the tiebreak. I think I played aggressive with my forehand...The dynamic of the match was a little bit more for me.”

That dynamic will likely remain the same through Roland Garros and perhaps beyond. But for the first time in a long time, Djokovic has shown that he can still compete at the very top of the sport—“Week by week,” Nadal said today, “the normal thing is that [Djokovic] is gonna find his way and his level again.”

Rafa and Nole have played 51 times, more than any other male pair of the Open Era. Happily, now we know their final chapter is still to be written.

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With Rafa on the Rome horizon, The Novak Djokovic Experience returned

Fri, 18 May 2018 20:43:00 +0000

If you’ve missed the Novak Djokovic Experience over the last two seasons, you were, finally, in luck on Friday. Over the course of his highly entertaining 2-6, 6-1, 6-3 quarterfinal win over Kei Nishikori in Rome, the former No. 1 brought all of its classic elements back to the stage for the first time in what felt like years.

He raged, he roared, he tore at his shirt, he made his eyeballs look like crazy novelty eyeballs. He leaped into his service returns, pounded his backhands from one corner to the other, and played with a conviction that bordered on fury. He screamed until his neck veins popped out after losing one point, and punched the air in celebration after making a sliding, body-bending get on another. In the end, just as in the old days, he wore down an opponent whom he has now beaten 13 straight times.

Djokovic has played some decent tennis this spring, and he had all of us crying “Vintage!” during the first set of his win over Albert Ramos-Viñolas on Thursday. While he never reached that level against Nishikori, this victory was more significant, because it involved the one thing that he hasn’t been able to pull off this year: on Friday, Djokovic saw a challenge, and, rather than retreat, as he so often has since 2016, he rose to it.

WATCH: Match point, Djokovic vs. Nishikori

It’s hard to remember now, but Nishikori looked all but unbeatable through the first set. He took the ball as early as possible, and flicked it effortlessly into the corners for winners. When he began the second set by reaching break point, it looked like another fresh disappointment—another low after the high of the Ramos-Viñolas match—was in store for Djokovic.

But the Serb saved that break point by forcing his way forward and finishing the rally with a smash. And he broke in the next game with a series of corner-to-corner backhands straight from the way-back machine. So far this year, Djokovic has let the game come to him, and waited for his form to return. Today he finally went out and grabbed it himself.

By the middle of the third set, there was only one classic element of the Djokovic Experience that he had yet to unveil: that moment when, his back to the wall, he pulls the ripcord, swings from the heels, and comes up with the perfect shot. It finally happened when he was serving at 4-3, down 0-30. The match wasn’t on the line with the next point, but his one-break advantage was.

Old Nole fans knew what was coming, and he didn’t disappoint: With his first ground stroke, he let an all-or-nothing forehand fly that touched down smack on the baseline for a winner. Less spectacular, but just as important, was the shot that Djokovic hit three points later to hold serve: Instead of kicking his second serve to Nishikori’s backhand, which is his usual play, Djokovic sliced it hard up the middle and forced an error.

On Thursday, Djokovic the player returned; on Friday, it was Djokovic the competitor who made his reappearance. Will the two of them be enough to trouble his next opponent, Rafael Nadal? Whatever the result, it’s good to be reminded of what the Djokovic Experience is all about, and to know that we’ll get to see it again.

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Rome, then Roland Garros: Muguruza, Halep, Ostapenko, Venus face off

Mon, 14 May 2018 11:17:00 +0000

The women’s event in Rome will have to make do without the WTA’s most famous player, Serena Williams, as well as its most dominant player of the moment, Petra Kvitova. The former wasn’t quite ready for competition, while the latter was ready for a break after two straight weeks tournaments, and two straight titles. Otherwise, the Foro Italico will feature its usual well-stocked draw. For the top women, this is the last chance to get things right before Roland Garros.

*****

First Quarter

Is Simona Halep still the French Open favorite? Despite Kvitova’s recent run, and Serena’s impending return, Halep, a two-time runner-up in Paris, remains the logical, though hardly overwhelming, choice. But she has some work to do, and some points to defend, in Rome, where she reached the final in 2017. And she’ll have to start working right away: Halep will play either Victoria Azarenka or Naomi Osaka in her opener.

Also here: Sloane Stephens, Caroline Garcia, 2016 Rome finalist Madison Keys, and 2015 Rome finalist Carla Suarez Navarro

First-round matches to watch: Azarenka vs. Osaka; Keys vs. Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova. The Russian edged the American 6-4 in the third in Stuttgart two weeks ago.

Semifinalist: Halep

Unstrung, from Jon Wertheim: Tennis Moms

*****

Second Quarter

Are Garbiñe Muguruza and Jelena Ostapenko, the top seeds in this section, really the last two French Open women’s champions? They’ve been quiet through the clay season so far, and for much of the 2018 season in general. Can they build some momentum before Roland Garros? Muguruza began her 2016 RG run with a trip to the semifinals in Rome; her draw makes a repeat journey seem distinctly possible.

First-round match to watch: Three-time Rome champion Maria Sharapova vs. 16th seed Ash Barty

Wild card to watch: Francesca Schiavone

Lucky Loser to watch: Aryna Sabalenka

Semifinalist: Muguruza

*****

Third Quarter

If it wasn’t for Kvitova, her countrywoman Karolina Pliskova would be the surprise of the clay season. The Czech bomber has shown what she can do on dirt by winning Stuttgart and reaching the semifinals in Madrid. Now she’ll come to Rome, but another semi will be tough. This section includes Elina Svitolina, Angelique Kerber, Daria Kasatkina and Madrid finalist Kiki Bertens.

Qualifier for Americans to watch: Danielle Collins

Semifinalist: Bertens

*****

Fourth Quarter

Venus Williams reached the Rome final in 1998, and won the tournament in 1999; since then, it has become one of her favorite locales, even if no titles at the Foro have followed. Is it any surprise that the Eternal Player likes the Eternal City? This year Venus comes in as the No. 8 seed, in a section that includes Caroline Wozniacki, Coco Vandeweghe, Anastasija Sevastova, Anett Kontaveit and Kiki Mladenovic.

First round matches to watch: Vandeweghe vs. Kontaveit; Sevastova vs. Mladenovic

Wild card to watch: Roberta Vinci

Semifinalist: V. Williams

*****

Semifinals: Muguruza d. Halep; Bertens d. V. Williams

Final: Bertens d. Muguruza

Happy Mother's Day to...

Victoria Azarenka:

Ana Ivanovic:

Serena Williams:

Rome could bring us the most important pre-Paris match—Nadal vs. Thiem

Mon, 14 May 2018 10:56:00 +0000

While Alexander Zverev and Dominic Thiem were still in Madrid on Sunday, the rest of the ATP tour was already in action, or preparing for action, in Rome. The frenzy at the Foro Italico will begin in earnest on Monday, so here’s a quick look ahead at what we can expect from the draw—it could bring us the most important men’s match in the lead-up to the French Open.

*****

First Quarter

What’s the “most important” match I’m referring to above? That would be the potential quarterfinal between Rafael Nadal and Dominic Thiem. It’s one thing for Rafa to lose to an opponent once during the clay season; he’s done that plenty of times, only to turn things back around Roland Garros. He did it to Thiem himself last season. But losing to someone twice? That could make things legitimately interesting in Paris. Which is why Rafa probably won’t let it happen.

First-round match to watch: Tomas Berdych vs. Denis Shapovalov

Semifinalist: Nadal

Thiem falls to Zverev in Madrid final:

*****

Second Quarter

Novak Djokovic has always liked Rome. He’s won the tournament four times, recorded three wins over Nadal there, and, even during a dismal 2017, he managed to reach the final. Which means, of course, that he has points to defend and a ranking to protect this time around. Djokovic will start defending them on Monday against Alexandr Dolgopolov. The first seed he could face is John Isner.

Potential second-round match to watch: Grigor Dimitrov vs. Kei Nishikori

Semifinalist: Nishikori

*****

Third Quarter

Last week Kevin Anderson reached the first Masters semifinal of his 10-year career in Madrid. Now, he can he do it two weeks in a row? His draw makes it plausible: The top seed in this section is Marin Cilic, followed by Pablo Carreño Busta and Diego Schwartzman.

Already out: Stan Wawrinka, to Steve Johnson, 6-4 6-4

Semifinalist: Carreño Busta

*****

Fourth Quarter

Two of this field’s biggest guns, Zverev and Juan Martin del Potro, have been saved for the bottom quarter. They’ll come to Rome with opposing difficulties. Zverev, who has won the last two events, in Munich and Madrid, has played too much; Del Potro, who rejoined the tour last week and lost his second match, has played too little. Neither has a cakewalk to their potential quarterfinal collision: Zverev might start against Frances Tiafoe, who beat him last summer, and follow that with a match against Lucas Pouille. Delpo will play either Borna Coric or Stefanos Tsitsipas in his opener and, potentially, David Goffin after that.

Semifinalist: Zverev

*****

Semifinals: Nadal d. Nishikori; Zverev d. Carreño Busta

Final: Nadal d. Zverev

What looked like a breakthrough week for Thiem became one for Zverev

Sun, 13 May 2018 22:26:00 +0000

Dominic Thiem arrived in Madrid with the sides of his hair almost shaved off. By the end of the final on Sunday, he had nearly pulled out what was left on top of his head.

The 24-year-old Austrian, who has yet to win a Masters 1000 title, had looked unstoppable in his previous two rounds. In the quarters, Thiem had handed Rafael Nadal his first loss on clay in a year, and he had followed that up with his first win in seven meetings over Kevin Anderson. Coming into the final, Thiem had beaten his opponent, Alexander Zverev, in four of their five matches. This had all the makings of a breakthrough week for a player who has been tagged—rightly or wrongly, fairly or unfairly, relevantly or irrelevantly—as the possible successor to Rafa at Roland Garros.

And then Thiem stopped himself. In the first game of the final, before much of the crowd had settled into their seats, he made three unforced errors and was broken. That was essentially the first set, because Zverev hadn’t been challenged on his serve all week, and he wouldn’t be in his 6-4, 6-4 win today.

Match Point:

But Thiem went about making it much easier for his opponent than necessary. He stood 15 feet behind the baseline to return serve, giving Zverev a chance to start every rally with an overwhelming court-position advantage. Once he worked himself into the points, Thiem seemed confused about what he wanted to do. Against Nadal, he ripped every backhand in sight with topspin, and forced his way forward as soon as possible. Against Zverev, he chipped his backhand much more often and spent much of his time roaming the deep backcourt, just trying to stay in the points. Despite having the advantage in their head-to-head, Thiem played as if he had no idea what he wanted to do against his younger opponent.

“I just couldn’t maintain my level from the match against Rafa and the match yesterday against Anderson,” Thiem said. “That was the problem today. In general, I was not playing good enough. He was not serving better than Anderson yesterday; I had many returns on the racquet, but just didn’t make them, or played it too easy back for him. He was immediately in the offense. All in all, it was just a bad match from me.”

Thiem said the overall level from both players had been “average,” and it’s true, I thought this was one result that was more about what the loser didn’t do, than what the winner did do. Zverev took what Thiem gave him, which was a lot. He broke at the start of each set, and never gave Thiem a sense that he was in the match. Faced with his one moment of danger, down 0-30 at 5-4 in the first set, he fired off five service winners to hold.

Zverev’s level was exactly as high as it needed to be. What’s more important, and impressive, is the performance that the 21-year-old has put on for the last two weeks, in Munich and Madrid. During that time, he has won two straight clay-court titles, nine straight matches, and 16 straight sets; in Madrid, he didn’t face a break point all week. At 6’6”, Zverev can grind like any dirt-baller, but he can also serve his way out of trouble. Against Thiem, he never looked rushed or pressured or forced to do anything extra.

“I just feel confident and comfortable right now,” Zverev said. “Obviously I didn’t get broken one time [this week]. I don’t think I faced break points in the whole tournament. For me, this is an amazing stat to know in the back of my mind...All in all, I’m just really happy with how I played, that I could win my third Masters.”

In the jockeying for post-Rafa pole position on clay, this match might go down as the moment that Zverev passed Thiem—for now, despite the Austrian’s win over Nadal this week, the German has his nose in front. In the past, I’ve wondered whether Zverev was too content to grind; the fact that both of his ground strokes are so solid and reliable seemed to make him unwilling to take risks or be overly aggressive. This week we saw the upside of that safety-first style. Zverev’s height and reach, and his ability to attack equally well with his forehand and backhand, allowed him to stay in his comfort zone at all times. This was power-baseline tennis played with machine-like order and effectiveness.

Thiem looked unstoppable, until Zverev stopped him. Which player can stop Zverev this spring? There may only be one.

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Victoria Azarenka:

Ana Ivanovic:

Serena Williams:

Petra Kvitova's stubbornly magical run in Madrid ends in victory

Sat, 12 May 2018 23:40:00 +0000

“Sweet and weird.”

That’s how Petra Kvitova described what it felt like to win the Premier Mandatory event in Madrid on Saturday. Most fans and fellow players would agree with the first word she used: Every victory by the friendly and down-to-earth Czech is a popular one inside and outside the WTA locker room.

But judging by her history in Madrid, and her history so far in 2018, no victory by Kvitova can seem weird right now. Her 7-6 (6), 4-6, 6-3 win over Kiki Bertens, in two hours and 52 minutes, was her 11th straight in the last 14 days. It also left her with her a tour-best 30 match wins and four titles on the season; improved her record to 12-2 in three-setters this year; and gave her three titles at the Caja Magica since 2011. Along the way, she knocked off some of the most in-form players of the spring—Bertens, Karolina Pliskova, Daria Kasatkina and Anett Kontaveit.

By the time her marathon with Bertens—a “big fight,” as she called it—had reached the start of the third set, Kvitova’s face had turned bright red and her breathing had become labored—she was “exhausted,” she said. The match had been a stylistic standoff: On one side of the net, Kvitova belted line drives toward the corners and tried to impose her will, and her superior power, as soon as she could; on the other side, Bertens did whatever it took—scramble, slide, hack, loop, drop and bunt the ball—to make the rallies last a little longer, and make Kvitova run a little farther.

When the match reached the latter stages of the third set, and Kvitova began to trudge across the court between points, it looked like Bertens’ kitchen-sink tactics would prevail. Until Kvitova suddenly broke for 5-3 and held at love with her most convincing service game of the match.

How did she find the energy to make it across the finish line?

“I have no idea,” Kvitova said with a laugh. She took it, quite literally, one shot at a time. “I was really thinking that I can’t do it anymore. But then, when you step on the shot again, you’re just trying to hit the return, you play the rally, the serves, whatever.”

The fact that this was a final made all the difference to Kvitova, as it traditionally has. She’s now a stellar 24-7 in title matches. There’s something about seeing the shiny hardware on the court that makes her eyes, and her heart, get a little bigger.

“I love to play those finals because of the trophy,” Kvitova said. “That’s what we’re fighting [for] all week, for the trophy. It’s always pretty close, but pretty far as well.”

Two weeks ago, Kvitova’s countrywoman, Pliskova, won a clay-court title in Stuttgart. Neither player is what you would call a dyed-in-the-wool dirtballer—if they can’t win with offense, they usually can’t win. But in Stuttgart and Madrid, each was forced to temper her normal, go-for-broke style and play with more patience. They were forced, in other words, to break their usual bad habits, and it worked for them.

Can Kvitova keep succeeding on clay? Is she “in the conversation” at Roland Garros now? Better not to ask her.

Told she was now among the favorites for Paris, Kvitova rolled her eyes, laughed, and said, “It’s crazy.” On second thought, though, she admitted that she had reached a semifinal there once upon a time, that “probably” she can play well there, and that while there are “maybe better players playing on the clay” than her, “we’ll see what happens.”

It’s normal and logical to wonder if the champion in Madrid could be the champion at Roland Garros. But for now, with Kvitova, it’s also beside the point. And this is where the “weird” part of her comment comes in. It is weird—“amazing” is probably the better term, but this humble woman will never say it about herself—that less than a year after she returned to the sport after suffering a knife attack on her playing hand, Kvitova is the WTA’s player to beat, and in the running for its player of the year. While Madrid isn’t quite a Grand Slam, it’s the next-best-thing on the women’s tour, and a milestone to celebrate in its own right.

“I know I missed this event last year,” Kvitova told the crowd on Saturday, “but it’s made it sweeter to be standing here with the trophy.”

Rather than look ahead and wonder what Kvitova can do in the future, it seems truer to the moment to look back at the last 12 months in wonder at what she’s already done.

What, if anything, does Thiem's win over Nadal mean going forward?

Fri, 11 May 2018 18:53:00 +0000

“Can anyone take a set from Rafael Nadal on clay?” That was the question the tennis world has been asking for the last month. The response was starting to look like it might be “no.”

During that time, the Spaniard won his record 11th titles in Monte Carlo and Barcelona, and pushed his consecutive-set streak on the surface to 50. It seemed that Rafa at 31 was only leaving the rest of the ATP field farther behind on clay—making them, you might say, eat more of his red dirt than ever.

On Friday, though, we finally got a definitive answer—two of them, in fact. The player who could take a set from Nadal turned out to be the same man who had last accomplished that feat, in Rome 12 months ago. In Madrid, Dominic Thiem had to serve for the first set twice, at 5-4 and 6-5, but he closed it out with an ace. Then he went ahead and won the second set, 6-3, to end Rafa’s 21-match win streak on clay and topple him from the No. 1 ranking.

Match point from Thiem's win over Nadal in the Madrid quarterfinals:

“It was the best match since a very long time for me,” said Thiem, who had endured a mediocre patch of play this spring. The 2017 Roland Garros semifinalist had seemingly lost his touch on his favorite surface. In Monte Carlo, Nadal had routed him 6-0, 6-2, and in Barcelona 19-year-old Stefanos Tsitsipas had dismissed him 6-3, 6-2. Thiem hadn’t looked much better in his back-from-the-brink win over Borna Coric in the round of 16 in Madrid.

Sometimes surviving a close one helps you loosen up, though, and Thiem played with maximum freedom against Nadal. He moved forward, took the ball earlier than he had in Monte Carlo, dictated the rallies with his forehand, and didn’t let Rafa push him around on the backhand side. Thiem played straight-ahead, meat-and-potatoes, power-baseline tennis, and Nadal never found an answer for it.

“I love it here in Madrid, perfect conditions for me,” said Thiem of the Caja Magica’s quicker courts and higher altitude. In the final here last year, he and Nadal played one of the best two-set matches of the season; this time Thiem, playing mostly nerveless tennis, was even better.

“If I play normal against him, I lose probably,” Thiem said. “I have to play some special shots. I played today some more forehands down the line. I played a little more aggressive, and it worked out very, very well, obviously.”

“[My shots] were more aggressive, but also safe today, and that was the difference.”

The other difference, of course, was Nadal’s level of play. Rafa said he didn’t have the “right sensations” when he was hitting the ball—he had no feel. His serve wasn’t clicking, and he was predictable with its location. He missed regulation forehands and backhands he normally wouldn’t miss; Rafa has always had a little more trouble in the Madrid altitude because of the amount of air he puts under the ball, and it was sailing on him again today. And when the important rallies arrived, he couldn’t grab control of them.

Nadal’s 50-set streak on clay, which is the men’s record for a single surface, was remarkable, but Rafa’s own history said it had to come to an end. While he has dominated virtually every clay season for the last 13 years, he typically does lose one match in the spring, before closing with a title at the tournament that matters, in Paris. Next week he’s scheduled to face Thiem again in the quarters in Rome; that match, if it happens, will tell us a lot.

Or will it? Last year, Rafa lost to Thiem in Rome, before beating him in straight sets in the semis at the French Open. Can we expect a similar pattern in 2018, or does Thiem now pose a real threat to what had appeared to be another romp at Roland Garros for Rafa? Will a win in Madrid help make Thiem a winner in Paris?

Nadal’s 75-2 record at Roland Garros should be enough to offer an early answer to that question: Probably not.

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Can anyone beat Rafael Nadal? Breaking down the ATP draw in Madrid

Sun, 06 May 2018 20:08:00 +0000

Can anyone beat Rafael Nadal? That ship, for the moment, has passed. Instead, the first question that needs to be answered in Madrid is whether anyone can take a set from him—he’s won a record 46 straight on the surface dating back to the last May. The second question of interest this week will be: Who might emerge as the most likely player to reach the final at Roland Garros, and lose to Rafa?

Click here for the draw.

First Quarter

To say that Madrid isn’t Nadal’s favorite clay-court event isn’t saying all that much; he’s the defending champion. But he hasn’t won it, like, 10 times. The altitude and the courts make the ball move a little faster in the Spanish capital, so it is theoretically possible for a hard-hitting opponent to get it past him here. Could anyone in this quarter do that often enough to threaten him? Nadal might open against Gael Monfils, which should be entertaining, even if the match isn’t competitive. In the quarters, Rafa could play the man he beat in the final here last year, Dominic Thiem. The Austrian is the last player to knock off Nadal on clay, in Rome last spring. Which may be why Rafa beat him so badly in Monte Carlo a few weeks ago.

First-round match to watch: Pablo Carreño Busta vs. Borna Coric

Semifinalist: Nadal

Match point from Nadal's win over Tsitsipas in Barcelona Open final:

Second Quarter

If there’s a player who could, on the right day, place a speed bump in Nadal’s road to his 11th title at Roland Garros, it’s Juan Martin del Potro. The Argentine has beaten Rafa at majors before, and he’s been to the semis in Paris before. He also played some of the best tennis of his career to win the title in Indian Wells this past March. Delpo makes his clay debut this week; can he do some immediate damage, or will it take a week for him to get settled? He should be pleased with his spot in the draw, anyway. The other three seeds in his quarter are Kevin Anderson, Roberto Bautista Agut, and Tomas Berdych. That seems like a path that Delpo can ease his way along.

Semifinalist: Del Potro

Match point from Del Potro's win over Federer in Indian Wells final:

Third Quarter

What stage is Grigor Dimitrov in right now? So far in 2018, he’s already had a fast start in Australia, a nosedive in the States, and a resurgence on clay on Monte Carlo. Dimitrov is the No. 3 seed overall in Madrid, and the top seed in this section. But there’s competition.

David Goffin is the second seed; after a series of three-setters in Barcelona two weeks ago, the Belgian should finally have shaken off any post-injury rust. Lucas Pouille is also here: after positive results early this season, the Frenchman seems due for a Masters breakout. And then there’s Novak Djokovic. The Serb has had success in Madrid in the past, including a win over Nadal in the final. But if he was looking for an easy match or two to build his flagging confidence, he’s not going to get it here; Djokovic opens against a somehow-unseeded Kei Nishikori.

First-round matches to watch: Kyle Edmund vs. Daniil Medvedev; Denis Shapovalov vs. Tennys Sandgren; Djokovic vs. Nishikori

Semifinalist: Nishikori

Match point from Klizan's win over Djokovic in Barcelona:

Fourth Quarter

Is it a blessing or a curse to go deep the week before a Masters event? It depends on the player and the week, of course, but Alexander Zverev’s biggest win, in Montreal last summer, came the week after he won a smaller event in Washington, D.C. We’ll see if the pattern holds in Madrid, because Zverev will come there after reaching the final in Munich. He’ll have to make a quick turnaround: Waiting for him in the second round could be the latest NextGen hot shot, Stefanos Tsitsipas. Waiting for him in the quarterfinals might be the man who beat him in Miami, John Isner.

Semifinalist: Zverev

Final Call

Semifinals: Nadal d. Del Potro; Zverev d. Nishikori

Final: Nadal d. Zverev

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Will Halep find her rhythm in Madrid? Previewing the women's field

Sat, 05 May 2018 23:50:00 +0000

As they begin their first Premier Mandatory event this weekend in Madrid, and make the turn toward Paris, the women continue to jockey for position. Caroline Wozniacki and Simona Halep remain at the top of the rankings, but with her win in Stuttgart last week, Karolina Pliskova has made herself an early favorite for Roland Garros—or at least a more intriguing clay-court contender than she was two weeks ago. Who else might surprise us and join her at the head of the pack in Madrid? Here’s a look at the first all-hands-on-deck women’s draw since the Australian Open. As you would expect, there are a lot of interesting early-round match-ups.

WOMEN'S DRAW: Click here

First Quarter

If Halep is going to throw her hat back in the Roland Garros ring, Madrid would seem to be the place for her to do it—she’s the two-time defending champion. Even so, nothing ever seems to come easily for the Romanian, and this tournament probably won’t, either. The three seeds in her quarter are three players who have the potential to out-hit her on any given day: Karolina Pliskova, Sloane Stephens, and Madison Keys. Plus: Victoria Azarenka is here.

Player of Interest: Elise Mertens. The Belgian has won two titles this spring; she could face Halep in the second round.

First-round matches to watch:

Halep vs. Ekaterina Makarova

Azarenka vs. Aleksandra Krunic

Semifinalist: Halep

Highlights: Pliskova vs. Vandeweghe Stuttgart final:

Second Quarter

Garbiñe Muguruza and Venus Williams were last year’s Wimbledon finalists, and as of Saturday, they were the top two seeds in this section. But Venus lost her opener to Stuttgart semifinalist Anett Kontaveit; will the terminally up-and-down Muguruza, who may feel more pressure in front of her home fans in Spain, be next? If so, that could leave an opening for Petra Kvitova, who has always loved the quicker dirt in Madrid, and who won titles on it in 2011 and 2015.

Player of Interest: Danielle Collins. Remember the American who made such a great run from virtually nowhere in Miami? She has qualified and won her opener in Madrid.

Semifinalist: Kvitova

Match point from kvitova's win over Kerber in Fed Cup semifinal tie:

Third Quarter

While they haven’t lit up the courts so far in 2018, Elina Svitolina and Caroline Garcia would both seem to be under-the-radar dark-horse contenders for a maiden major at Roland Garros. They’re the top two seeds in this section, and each won her opener in straight sets on Saturday. They also have a history of marathon matches; might we be in store for another in the quarters this week?

Player of Interest: Aryna Sabalenka. The hard-hitting, hard-grunting young Belorussian qualified and won her first round. She could face Svitolina in the third round.

Semifinalist: Svitolina

Holding Serve: Elina Svitolina:

Fourth Quarter

Caroline Wozniacki, the top seed in this section, hasn’t consolidated her first major title, at the Australian Open, with any more significant wins, and it seems unlikely that this hard-court-lover will change that during the clay season. But at least she’s still in the event. The second seed here, and the defending French Open champion, Jelena Ostapenko, is already out, at the hands of Irina-Camelia Begu. Also out is Stuttgart finalist Coco Vandeweghe, to Kiki Mladenovic.

Who’s left? For the moment, this quarter contains two unseeded players of the highest interest: Naomi Osaka and 2014 Madrid champion Maria Sharapova.

Semifinalist: Mladenovic

Final Call

Semifinals: Kvitova d. Halep; Svitolina d. Mladenovic

Final: Kvitova d. Svitolina

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New School: College tennis is setting a course for the sport's future

Thu, 03 May 2018 04:00:00 +0000

All eyes were on us,” Luca Corinteli remembers. It was the spring of 2016, and the University of Virginia junior was playing in the final of the Division I NCAA Championships in Tulsa, OK. Two of the three doubles matches between Virginia and its opponent, the University of Oklahoma, had finished; each team had won one. Now the packed house at the Case Tennis Center turned its attention to Corinteli and his partner, Ryan Shane. It was up to them to bring home an all-important doubles point for the Cavaliers.

“We knew it could be the deciding factor in who won the title,” Corinteli says, “and there was an insane amount of energy across all the courts.”

Making the moment a little more insane was the score: it was 5–5 and deuce. In this case, deuce wasn’t a haven; it was a tightrope that both teams were trying to walk. In 2016, Division I began using no-ad scoring as part of a series of changes designed to speed up the college game. Those changes also included reducing doubles matches to a six-game set.

All of which meant that, as Corinteli began his service motion, he knew he needed to come up with something special.

“I hit an unreturned serve and felt an immediate swing in momentum,” Corinteli says, “and we ended up breaking in the next game to win. That had a huge impact on the rest of the match.”

Virginia would beat Oklahoma, 4–1, for its third Division I tennis title in four years.

“Points like that make no-ad so great for college tennis,” Corinteli says with a smile.

Danielle Collins, two-time NCAA champion at Virginia, beats Venus Williams at this year's Miami Open:

Corinteli may be slightly biased about that particular no-ad point, but his words are music to the ears of Timothy Russell, the CEO of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association since 2015. With backing from the USTA and approval from the NCAA, Russell and the ITA have tried to reduce the lengths of dual matches, make playing the sport more manageable for players while turning college tennis into a spectator-friendly experience that could interest TV and Internet broadcasters.

With many university tennis programs being shuttered over the previous two decades, and with more resources going to revenue-producing college sports like football and basketball, there was a sense that collegiate tennis needed to be modernized.

“What are the time demands of student-athletes, and how do we maintain excitement in the sport? These were questions we wanted to address,” Russell says.

Those concerns dovetailed with the USTA’s commitment to shortening the time it takes to play and watch tennis at all levels.

The first of the ITA’s goals was to get dual matches to finish in under three hours, down from the four- or even five-hour marks of years past. No-ad scoring was instituted; doubles matches were reduced to six-game sets; dead rubbers were shortened; time between doubles and singles was cut; even the warm-up was eliminated.

Pushback was expected, and at first it was received.

“I don’t agree with it,” John Isner, who played for the University of Georgia, told USTA.com.

“Sometimes college matches can go long, but tennis in general can go long, as I’ve proven many times. I just don’t think it would be good for the development of players.”

Fast forward two years, though, and it’s harder to find a dissenting voice among those who play and coach in Division I.

“The changes have been great,” says Peter Smith, head men’s coach at USC. “I love no warm-up. No-ad has made the matches shorter, but more importantly, it has made them more exciting. Crowds are bigger, and they’re staying the whole time.”

“The experience has been positive,” says Roland Thornqvist, head women’s coach at the University of Florida. “You see more upsets now; there are about 10 teams that can win a national title, which I think is bullish for college tennis going forward.”

The new rules have also changed the way Thornqvist recruits, and the playing style he tries to instill.

“You want players who can dictate points,” he says. “Big hitters tend to succeed in shorter formats more than players who run and defend. Encouraging an aggressive style is a positive for players.”

How do the athletes feel about serving as guinea pigs for this turbo version of tennis? The scoring system teaches valuable lessons, but it has also frayed a few nerves.

“There’s no going back with no-ad, no second chance,” says Katarina Adamovic, a native of Serbia who became an All-American at Oklahoma State. “On deciding points, you have to be disciplined and stick to your game plan.”

In the 2016 NCAA finals, one of Adamovic’s teammates had a match point that was also a deciding point. She missed a shot by “two centimeters,” and Oklahoma State eventually lost to Stanford, 4–3.

While Adamovic laments the loss of the warm-up—“without it, you feel like you rush into the match,” she says—she’s come around to the scoring changes. “There’s a lot of pressure, but it’s fun.”

Russell hopes that sense of slam-bang fun will translate to larger audiences. The ITA has negotiated streaming deals for its national tournaments, and Oracle is sponsoring its rankings and its Fall National Championships at Indian Wells. In 2018, Tennis Channel began broadcasting dual matches from the USTA’s National Campus.

Ultimately, the ITA would like college tennis to take a leading role in reshaping the sport.

“We think the collegiate game can help promote new ideas that can be used elsewhere in tennis,” Russell says.

That agenda includes another perennial source of youth-tennis controversy: sportsmanship. In 2018 the ITA introduced PlayFair, a challenge system that uses PlaySight replay technology, at two events in California in January and at nearly 40 dual matches during the season. The system allows players to challenge line calls. But instead of challenging the judgment of an official, these players are challenging a call made by their opponents.

“We had seen a decline in sportsmanship and the treatment of opponents,” Russell says.

“PlayFair will be a deterrent to bad calls. We’ve heard from players who say that using it makes them more careful about calling lines.”

If there’s a cloud on the college-tennis horizon, it has come from the ITF’s announcement that it will begin a “transition tour” in 2019. A new, mini pro circuit will be created, with its own set of $15,000 tournaments and its own rankings.

“The transition tour will provide a more effective pathway linking the junior circuit and the senior professional game,” the ITF stated.

College tennis has been, and hopes to be, a similar pathway. In recent years, Isner, James Blake, Steve Johnson and Nicole Gibbs used their time at school as a springboard to the big show. This spring, Danielle Collins, a four-year standout at Virginia, upset Madison Keys in Indian Wells and reached the fourth round of the WTA Premier Mandatory event. But the ITF’s transition tour can offer something universities can’t: a paycheck.

Danielle Collins, at Virginia:

“We hope this won’t be an impediment for the collegiate game,” says Russell. “Most people agree that college is the way to go.”

Ultimately, as much as the ITA would like college tennis to serve as a pro-tour pipeline, its primary mission is to do what’s best for the athletes on campus.

“It’s still about higher education, and about finding ways to make tennis part of that education,” Russell says. “We want the emphasis to stay on the student part of student-athlete.”

According to Mackenzie McDonald, who won Division I singles and doubles titles in 2016 for UCLA, it’s possible for the athlete to thrive alongside the student.

“A developing player can gain a lot from college tennis,” says the 22-year-old, who calls the new scoring system “awesome.”

“Along with getting an education, being on a team, creating moments and competing along with some of your best friends,” McDonald adds, “it can make a player more mentally tough by playing for something bigger than themselves.”

“Competing along with some of your best friends” will always be at the heart of the college game’s appeal. The energy and emotion created in the team format—whether it’s joyful, like Corinteli’s, or bittersweet, like Adamovic’s—is something that only seems to have been heightened by its scoring changes. Whether or not college tennis continues to produce top pros, and whether or not its sped-up style catches on, the game’s mix of competition and camaraderie off-ers lessons for all levels of tennis.

“In college you can grow,” McDonald says.

That’s something we should want for all students, and for all athletes.

What's at Stake: A slow week could mean big things for the NextGen

Mon, 30 Apr 2018 13:31:00 +0000

This would seem, at first glance, to be a down week in the clay season. And it’s true, most of the top players are getting prepared for the dual-gender, Masters-Mandatory blockbuster that starts Saturday in Madrid. But don’t tell that to the men and women at the five other tour-level tournaments happening this week. Here’s a look at what’s ahead for them.

BMW Open by FWU (ATP)

Munich, Germany
$800,000; 250 ranking points
Red clay
Draw is here

Yesterday I wrote that there will never be a NextGen on clay until Rafael Nadal retires. But here’s a chance for two of the tour’s younger guns, top seed Alexander Zverev and fourth seed Hyeon Chung, to take a crack at a clay title without Rafa around. Zverev is No. 3 in the world, and he played well in Miami and Monte Carlo, but he’s still looking for his first title of 2018.

Also here: No. 2 seed Roberto Bautista Agut, No. 3 Diego Schwartzman and No. 7 Gael Monfils, who will make his 2018 clay debut.

Millennium Estoril Open (ATP)

Estoril, Portugal
$800,000; 250 ranking points
Red clay
Draw is here

Welcome to the grind, Stefanos Tsitsipas. The 19-year-old will celebrate his run to the final in Barcelona with a tough opening match in Estoril against Pablo Andujar. The Greek is rising up the rankings, but he isn’t high enough yet to earn a bye at this 28-player event. Judging by his form in Monte Carlo and Barcelona, though, it won’t take him long to get there.

Also here: No. 1 seed Kevin Anderson, No. 2 Pablo Carreño Busta and No. 3 Kyle Edmund, all of whom have reached the semis or better at a major within the past year.

All-American first round: Frances Tiafoe vs. Tennys Sandgren

WATCH—TC Live discusses Carreno Busta's altercation with Dimitrov in Barcelona:

J & T Banka Prague Open (WTA)

Prague, Czech Republic
$250,000; International
Red clay
Draw is here

Even before her final at the Porsche Grand Prix on Sunday, Karolina Pliskova was looking ahead with dread to her first round in Prague. That’s because she was facing her sister, Kristyna. So it came as little surprise today to learn that Karolina, the top seed, had pulled out after winning in Stuttgart. It takes time to learn to drive a new car, after all.

Kristyna’s gain is the tournament’s loss, but for an International-level event, officials have still assembled a quality draw. Petra Kvitova, Daria Kasatkina, Daria Gavrilova, Sam Stosur and Barbora Strycova all remain.

Grand Prix de Sar La Princesse Lalla Meryem (WTA)

Rabat, Morocco
$250,000; International
Red clay
Draw is here

Which WTA player had the best month of April? How about Elise Mertens? The 22-year-old Belgian has won seven straight matches—a title and two Fed Cup victories—and has raised her ranking into the Top 20. Now she’ll head to the red clay in Morocco as the top seed.

WATCH—Elise Mertens' TenniStory:

TEB BNP Paribas Open (ATP)

Istanbul, Turkey
$680,000; 250 ranking points
Red clay
Draw is here

Marin Cilic is the top seed at the week’s smallest men’s event, in Istanbul. He’s No. 4 in the world and 15-6 on the year, but he hasn’t been past the round of 16 at any tournament since he made his run to the Australian Open final. Istanbul would seem to offer a prime chance for Cilic to regain his early-season confidence.

Will Nadal lose a set this spring? Can clay bring out Pliskova’s best?

Mon, 30 Apr 2018 00:55:00 +0000

Thirteen years after Rafael Nadal won his first French Open, we may finally have reached the logical conclusion of his dominance on clay. We’re not watching to see if anyone can beat him on the surface; the idea seems too far-fetched to contemplate at the moment. Instead, we’re watching to see if anyone can take a set from him this spring.

With his 6-2, 6-1 win over Stefanos Tsitsipas, Nadal has now won a record 46 straight sets and 19 straight matches on clay, dating back to Rome last year. Sunday’s victory also gave him an equally ridiculous and almost certainly unsurpassable 11 titles in Barcelona. The only drama, or what passed for drama, during the week came in the second set of his quarterfinal against Martin Klizan, when Rafa had to save set points. Klizan had been the better player for the first nine games, and he deserved to push the match to a third set. But when it came time to close the set out, he tightened up the way most players would tighten up if they had match points on Nadal. That’s how momentous simply taking a set from him feels at the moment.

Match point, Nadal d. Klizan

Otherwise, everything went according to the well-worn plan for Rafa at his home—or close to home—event. He got better as he went along, wearing down a game David Goffin in the semis 6-4, 6-0, and never giving the 19-year-old Stefanos Tsitsipas, who had knocked off Dominic Thiem and Pablo Carreño Busta in fairly routine fashion over the previous two days, even a hint of hope.

To me, Nadal has always played his calmest and most efficient tennis in Barcelona. Maybe it’s the familiar surroundings; maybe it’s the momentum he’s built up during Monte Carlo; maybe it’s the slightly weaker field that he faces at an ATP 500 tournament. Whatever it is, Rafa never seems perturbed or less than purposeful here, and he comes up the casually spectacular shots to prove it. This year it was a no-look sky-hook overhead, which he snapped past a stunned Tsitsipas with a simple flick of his wrist.

“I’m very happy for the victory against a very difficult opponent,” Nadal said. “Tsitsipas has an amazing future...I enjoyed the whole week and had great support from the crowd.”

“To win 11 Monte Carlos and 11 Barcelonas is something I couldn’t imagine doing,” he continued. “I’m just enjoying every week and the fact I’m playing in a tournament I enjoy so much means a lot to me.”

This was a breakout week for Tsitsipas, who has begun to show a sturdier all-around game this spring; his lanky mix of speed and flash is well-suited for dirt. Still, whether it’s Thiem or Tsitsipas or Alexander Zverev, any talk of a future champion on this surface remains premature. There has never been a NextGen on clay since Nadal’s career began, and there won’t be one until it ends.

Unstrung: Nadal at the top of the food chain on clay

Clay, at first glance, would not seem to be Karolina Pliskova’s surface. Yes, she reached the semifinals at Roland Garros in 2017, but before Sunday she had won just one tournament on dirt, three years ago at the lower-level event in Prague. Pliskova’s flat, low-margin shots, strike-first attitude, and sometimes-casual footwork wouldn’t seem to be a winning recipe for this grinder’s paradise.

But watching her edge Coco Vandeweghe on Sunday, 7-6 (2), 6-4, I started to wonder if clay isn’t the perfect surface for Pliskova. Because she knows she needs to be more consistent and more patient, she is more consistent and more patient. Because she knows she can’t win points as easily or as quickly with outright winners, she doesn’t try for as many outright winners. Because she needs to use her feet to survive rallies, she’s more diligent with her footwork. The Stuttgart draw was jammed with most of the Top 10, yet Pliskova, who hadn’t won a tournament this year, and who had become something of an afterthought at the top of the tour despite reaching No. 1 last season, made her way through the field with the loss of just one set.

“I think it’s huge for me because I did some work [over the last month], but not always after you do some good work, you get rewarded immediately with a title,” Pliskova said. “I think it was a great week with a lot of tough matches, which is always important. I think it was a good start, but hopefully I can have some more victories on clay.”

Embed from Getty Images

If you needed to be reminded of how wide open the French Open women’s draw will be, the Stuttgart final provided the early proof; while Pliskova had won just one clay-court event, Vandeweghe hadn’t won any. But both of them showed how much a powerful serve and ground game can mean on dirt, provided you do the little things to get yourself in position for shots and stay in points.

This was the type of big-hitting, serve-dominated contest you would normally expect to see on grass. Those types of matches are typically decided by just a few points, and Pliskova won virtually all of them against Vandeweghe. Pliskova has always had the serve and the shot-making skills, and she has always liked fast courts because of it. But slowing down her game just a little bit, which is what clay forces her to do, may be just what she needs.

What's at Stake: The women kick off their spring swing in Stuttgart

Mon, 23 Apr 2018 13:56:00 +0000

So far the clay season has gone according to plan: i.e., Rafael Nadal has won his 11th title in Monte Carlo, without dropping a set. This week the women kick off their own spring swing through Europe in Stuttgart, while the top men go deeper into dirt in Barcelona. Here’s a look at how those draws may play out, and who else might throw his or her hat into the Roland Garros ring.

Porsche Tennis Grand Prix (WTA)

Stuttgart, Germany

$816,000; Premier

Indoor red clay

Draw is here

As far as settings go, the WTA’s clay-swing opener can’t compete with the ATP’s. While the men look over the Mediterranean in Monte Carlo, the women are holed up in a dark and boxy arena in Germany. As far as fields go, though, the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix has a higher quality-to-quantity ratio. Stuttgart’s 28 players include four of the tour’s current Top 5: Simona Halep, Garbiñe Muguruza, Elina Svitolina, and Jelena Ostapenko. The second four seeds—Karolina Pliskova, Caroline Garcia, Sloane Stephens, and Petra Kvitova—aren’t too shabby, either. Whoever gets around the track first wins a Porsche, and grabs the early pole position in the race to Roland Garros.

Of note: Maria Sharapova, three-time Stuttgart champion, is here with Thomas Hogstedt, the man who coached her to the French Open title in 2012.

A draw this jammed is bound to have some eye-catching first-round match-ups:

Kvitova vs. Angelique Kerber

Daria Kasatkina vs. Magdalena Rybarikova

Stephens vs. CoCo Vandeweghe

Julia Goerges vs. Anastasija Sevastova

Garcia vs. Sharapova

Karolina Pliskova vs. Charleston champ Kiki Bertens

Potential second-round match to watch: Muguruza vs. Madison Keys

WATCH - Tennis Channel Live Discusses Maria Sharapova:

Barcelona Open Banc Sabadell (ATP)

Barcelona, Spain

$3,100,000; 500 ranking points

Red clay

Draw is here

Once upon a time, the 500 event in Barcelona stood deep in the shadows of the Masters 1000 in Monte Carlo that preceded it. Barcelona, with its high percentage of Spanish players, was essentially Nadal’s backyard party. Now that the Banc Sabadell has more than $3 million in prize money to offer, though, Rafa has some high-level company. This year that will include Grigor Dimitrov, Dominic Thiem, David Goffin, Pablo Carreño Busta, Kei Nishikori, Hyeon Chung, and, for the first time since 2006, Novak Djokovic.

Will Rafa show any vulnerability at all heading to Paris? You might think, coming off five matches in as many days in Monaco, this would be the week we’d see it. But we’ve said that many times before, and then watched him steamroll through another Barcelona draw.

Potential third-round match to watch: Nadal vs. Nishikori

Potential quarterfinal to watch: Nadal or Nishikori vs. Djokovic

Most intriguingly named wild card: Pedro Martinez

WATCH - Destination Tennis looks at Barcelona Real Club de Tennis:

Ten BNP Paribas Istanbul Cup (WTA)

Istanbul, Turkey

$250,000; International

Red clay

Draw is here

Who is the missing Top 5 player in Stuttgart? That would be Caroline Wozniacki, who has traveled to Istanbul instead—you didn’t really think she was taking the week off, did you? The Australian Open champion is the top seed at this 32-player clay event, followed by Svetlana Kuznetsova and Agnieszka Radwanska.

Gazprom Hungarian Open (ATP)

Budapest, Hungary

$850,000; 250 ranking points

Red clay

Draw is here

Lucas Pouille may have been the disappointment of the week in Monte Carlo. Playing in front of a home crowd, after getting off to a fast start in 2018, he went out in the opening round at a tournament where he had reached the semifinals in 2017. This week Pouille will try to reset in Budapest, where he’s the top seed, followed by Damir Dzumhur, Richard Gasquet, and Denis Shapovalov.

Nearing 32, Rafael Nadal is farther ahead of the clay field than ever

Sun, 22 Apr 2018 17:41:00 +0000

Would you believe that Rafael Nadal lost his game on Sunday?

It started midway through the first set of his final against Kei Nishikori in Monte Carlo, when Nadal suddenly couldn’t find his forehand. He missed an easy putaway long; he drilled another into the net; he shanked another into the alley. He was broken for just the third time this week. Soon after, he began to struggle with his volley, and the backhand that had been working so well for him this week also misfired. After one rally, in which he popped up a drop shot and lost the point on the next volley, Nadal looked over at his camp with—could it be real?—concern in his eyes.

And then he won, 6-3, 6-2.

Match Point:

The result, despite Rafa’s lapse, was never in doubt, and he ended the day the way everyone expected he would: with his 11th title in Monte Carlo. No one else in the Open era has won the event more than three times; Rafa has now won it five times without dropping a set. The scores of the 10 sets that he played this week went like this: 6-1, 6-3, 6-3, 6-0, 6-2, 6-4, 6-1, 6-3, 6-2.

The last two were his 35th and 36th straight winning sets on clay; as hard as it is believe that he can still set personal records on the surface, that’s a new one for Rafa.

“The margins are small in tennis,” we often hear, but not for Nadal on clay. He can lose confidence in his best shots, miss balls he normally wouldn’t miss and be forced to run from one doubles alley to the other—and still never be seriously challenged. In the semifinals on Saturday, Grigor Dimitrov played some of the best tennis of his life over the first three games, and found himself down 0-3 when they were over. On Sunday, Nishikori broke serve in the third game with a brilliant backhand pass on the dead run. Then he gave the break right back with a double fault.

You can’t play well for a few games against Nadal and think you’re going to be rewarded with any momentum. He forces you to win each point individually, as if the fate of the match depends on every one of them.

This is the seventh season in which Rafa has won his first title in Monte Carlo; in three of those years (2008, 2010, 2017), he went on to finish No. 1. Winning here is about more than just getting his game together for the clay swing; it’s about getting his game together period. Monte Carlo is where everything comes into focus for Nadal, and where he can put any early-season doubts out of his mind. So far in 2018, the doubts have mostly been about Rafa’s health, but the combination of red clay and blue Mediterranean healed him again. By the end of the week, it was hard to remember that the guy criss-crossing the stadium court like a yellow blur was the same guy who hadn’t completed an event since October.

Nadal's Championship Speech:

A little more than a month shy of his 32nd birthday, Nadal moved as well and hit as aggressively as he ever has in Monte Carlo. It was that movement, and that aggression from the baseline, that made the difference against Nishikori, and covered up any temporary flaws in his play. He hit his forehand high and deep, while also forcing Nishikori to be ready to cover his crosscourt backhand. And when Nishikori did get Rafa on the run, he responded with lasered winners into the corners. The match was summed up for me by the look that crossed Nishikori’s face after one of Nadal’s backhands curled in from the alley and clipped the outside of the sideline. Kei pointed to the mark, as if the ball couldn’t possibly have landed in. Then, as he looked closer and realized it had indeed caught a smidgen of the tape, Nishikori let a slight smile of disbelief cross his face, as if to day, “He made that one, too?”

In 2017, Nadal gave us the spring of La Décima, when he won his 10th titles in Monte Carlo, Barcelona and at Roland Garros. Will this be the spring of La Undécima? Has his career just been an elaborate way to teach the world how the Spanish system of ordinal numbers works? By now, his triumphs during the clay season seem pre-ordained; Rafa himself barely felt the need to celebrate after the last point on Sunday. But as we saw when he briefly lost his confidence, winning finals is never as easy as he makes it look. None of Nadal’s victories over the next two months should be taken for granted or passed off as routine. What are the chances we’ll ever witness dominance like this, on any type of tennis court, again?

This Week on Tennis Channel Plus:

ATP Monte Carlo (4/15-4/22)
-Tennis Channel Plus has multi-court coverage of the 2018 Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters beginning Sunday April 16 at 7:00 AM ET, first to last ball!

WTA Dothan (4/17-4/22)
-Don’t miss the Hardee’s Pro Classic featuring Taylor Townsend and Madison Brengle live on Tennis Channel Plus beginning April 17 at 11:00 AM ET

Fed Cup (4/21-4/22)
-Tennis Channel Plus is your home for Fed Cup action! Watch live ties between USA vs. France and Germany vs. Czech Republic beginning at 6:00 AM ET on Saturday April 21

Get Tennis Channel Plus NOW at BuyTCPlus.com

Big Bang in Bournemouth: The Open Era Began 50 Years Ago Today

Sun, 22 Apr 2018 11:45:00 +0000

Nineteen-sixty-eight was a year of revolution, when cities from Tokyo to Chicago to Paris to Prague were convulsed with protest. Things got so wild that even the staid old sport of tennis joined the fun in the sleepy seaside resort town of Bournemouth, England. That’s where, at 1:43 p.m. on April 22, in front of 100 hardy fans and a shivering dog, a 22-year-old from Scotland named John Clifton squinted up through the mist and hit the first serve of tennis’ Open era.

As revolts go, this may sound a little mild. But that week at Bournemouth, tennis channeled the anarchic spirit of the 1960s. It was a decade when traditional divisions were erased and age-old hierarchies came crashing down. Black and white in the American south; men and women in workplaces and on college campuses; fine art and commercial art; jazz and rock: What had seemed like essential distinctions as the decade started had begun to dissolve by its end. In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriage; in ’69, female students were admitted to Yale and Princeton. In Bournemouth that spring, tennis added its own once-unthinkable commingling to the ’60s cocktail party: The end of the distinction between amateur and professional.

That division had been at the heart of tennis since its invention a century earlier in Victorian England. Amateur was the athletic version of “gentleman,” the man of inherited means who didn’t need to play a sport for money. The professional, by contrast, had to swing for his living. For decades, the two groups traveled on separate but unequal tracks. The amateurs gamboled on the grass at the Grand Slams while grabbing appearance money under the table. The pros drove through the small-town wilderness on one-night barnstorming tours; any place where they could put together a semblance of a paying audience would do.

WATCH: Our Stories of the Open Era video series, on cultural tennis icons

One writer compared the professional players to the ’60s original wilderness heroes: Fidel Castro’s Cuban rebels, who roamed the hills and bided their time before making their advance on the capital. Even the name of the pros’ objective—“Open tennis”—was an echo of that Civil Rights-inspired buzzword, “free.” After many setbacks, tennis freedom was achieved in March of ’68, when the sport’s amateur governing body, the International Lawn Tennis Federation, voted to allow the barbarians inside the gates.

Wimbledon, fearing irrelevance as more young stars joined the pro ranks, had instigated the move the previous fall. The club’s chief executive, Herman David, dropped a bombshell when he called amateurism a “living lie.” But, as Bud Collins wrote, “The British weren’t so brave or brazen to drop the bomb at the sacred Big W.” Open tennis would make its debut Off-Broadway, a couple of hours from London, at the British Hard Court Championships in Bournemouth.

Despite the rain and fog, tournament organizers described the ’68 event as a “bonanza.” Twenty-thousand fans attended, twice as many as the previous year. They were there to see those legendary, long-suffering professionals finally come in from the cold. Rod Laver (gone for five years), Ken Rosewall (gone for 10 years) and Pancho Gonzalez (gone for 17 years) joined Fred Stolle, Roy Emerson and others in the men’s draw, all of them competing for the $2,400 first-place prize.

These ghosts were spooky enough to keep many of the best amateurs away. Arthur Ashe, Ilie Nastase and Manuel Santana skipped Bournemouth on the men’s side, as did Margaret Court and Maria Bueno on the women’s. At this stage, there was still a question of whether other tournaments would allow amateurs to compete after they had entered an open—i.e., tainted—event.

A few of the male pros may have wished they had skipped Bournemouth as well. For them, it was put-up or shut-up time; anything less than total domination would be a headline-making embarrassment. Yet they were older and inbred now, having spent years facing only each other. “There are so many we’ve never seen or heard of,” Laver said of the amateurs.

Owen Davidson, an Australian pro, was so concerned about losing the aforementioned opening point of the event to Clifton—the first in history between pro and amateur—that he was left “ashen,” according to Collins. But Davidson went on to win the match; Gonzalez and Emerson weren’t so lucky against Britain’s top amateur, Mark Cox. His upset wins made him a front-page hero in London’s newspapers, which were firmly on the side of the amateurs.

“The mind boggles at the enormity of his achievement,” boomed Rex Bellamy of the Times of London.

“Somebody had to be the first to lose to an amateur,” the 39-year-old Gonzalez said with a weary smile after his three-hour, five-set defeat.

In the next round, Laver, solemnly determined to defend the pros’ honor, ended Cox’s run in straight sets. “He made mincemeat out of me,” Cox said.

In the end, the pros triumphed, and the crowds at Bournemouth saw a fine, if damp, show. Rosewall beat Laver for the men’s title, while Virginia Wade beat fellow Brit Winnie Shaw for the women’s. “There’s no going back after this,” said Derek Hardwick, chairman of Britain’s Lawn Tennis Association, champagne glass in hand, when the tournament was over. Tennis was open for business, and ready for Broadway.

Monte Carlo Masters final preview: Rafael Nadal vs. Kei Nishikori

Sat, 21 Apr 2018 22:10:00 +0000

If you wanted to give a tennis fan of the future some idea of what made Rafael Nadal so tough to beat on clay, you could do worse than to hand them a tape of the first game of the semifinal he played against Grigor Dimitrov in Monte Carlo on Saturday. Dimitrov came out at full speed, hitting brilliantly and moving beautifully. He tracked down everything Rafa threw at him, and showed off his own shot-making genius in return. And after 20 minutes, he was down 0-3. Most players have to redline just to match Rafa’s every day game on clay.

Match point from Nadal's win over Dimitrov in Monte Carlo:

Can Nadal’s opponent on Sunday, Kei Nishikori, redline for long enough to make this final a contest? He has the shots and the wheels to do it. He has the down-the-line two-handed backhand that Novak Djokovic, at his best, used to open up rallies against Rafa. He has a forehand that he can use to control points. And he has the timing to take Nadal’s high-kicking topspin on the rise. Nishikori is just 2-9 against Rafa, but he won their last meeting, which was for a bronze medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics, and in 2014 he led Nadal by a set and a break in the Madrid final on clay before getting hurt and eventually retiring. Nishikori also shouldn’t feel too worried if he falls behind early; four of his five wins this week have come in three sets, and he battled back from a set down to beat Alexander Zverev in the semis.

Match point from Nishikori's win over Zverev in Monte Carlo:

But bringing up Nishikori’s road to the final only invites comparisons to Nadal’s. While Kei has dropped four sets along the way, Rafa has dropped none; he’s lost just 16 games. Nishikori should make a worthy, one-day challenger to the clay-king’s throne, but Rafa has been fending off those challenges for 13 years now. It goes without saying that Nishikori will have to play his best; but his best may not do.

Winner: Nadal

This Week on Tennis Channel Plus:

ATP Monte Carlo (4/15-4/22)
-Tennis Channel Plus has multi-court coverage of the 2018 Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters beginning Sunday April 16 at 7:00 AM ET, first to last ball!

WTA Dothan (4/17-4/22)
-Don’t miss the Hardee’s Pro Classic featuring Taylor Townsend and Madison Brengle live on Tennis Channel Plus beginning April 17 at 11:00 AM ET

Fed Cup (4/21-4/22)
-Tennis Channel Plus is your home for Fed Cup action! Watch live ties between USA vs. France and Germany vs. Czech Republic beginning at 6:00 AM ET on Saturday April 21

Get Tennis Channel Plus NOW at BuyTCPlus.com