Feb/March 2022 Tournaments

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F A-A has beaten Murray and Cameron Norrie on successive days to reach the semis in Rotterdam. He's doing really well.

Djoko is expected to be back in action soon. Be interesting to see crowd reaction when he plays.

While Murray may soon not need WCs into the big events, the whole use of them can be questioned after what happened in a match in women's qualifying in Dubai today. Kuwait's Sarah Behbehani, with no ranking, was given a WC and played Britain's Harriet Dart.

Dart won in just 28 mins 6-0, 6-0, with her opponent winning FOUR POINTS. I don't know if this is some sort of a record but it's clear from the stats that this Kuwaiti girl should not have been on court.

Cameron Norrie beat Stefanos Tsitsipas 6-4 6-4 to reach his second consecutive final. Norrie was very impressive.

Rafael Nadal continues on his stunning run by outclassing Daniil Medvedev 6-3 6-3. Nadal has won 14 consecutive matches.

Bit ironic that we finally get a non big 4 number 1, and he clearly isn’t the best player in the world currently. Astonishing hard court form from Rafa.

14 match winning streak versus 8 match winning streak in the final. Rafa obviously clear favourite but Norris’s form is very impressive. He will enter the top 10 if he does win.

Men's tennis really is junk at the moment.

Bets on Rafael Nadal winning all the slams this year? However it would be very much a surprise if he reaches the Wimbledon final given his performance there since 2012.

Very unlikely Rafa will win all 4 - but he does look to have a decent shot at year end number one. The points might be quite spread around this year which means by the last months of the season the total required to come out ahead might be a little lower than usual.

Acapulco seems to have built up its reputation over the years, getting more bigger players there, used to be a tournament that only clay players played. I just checked and I see it changed to hard in 2014, I didn´t realize that was that long ago.

Andrey Rublev powers Dubai 500 victory over an extremely fatiguing Jiri Vesely. 6-3 6-4 the final score. Second set was more competitive after the Russian had a meltdown over som apparent missed let calls.
10th title and 5th at 500 level for Rublev.
For someone that looks relatively small, Rublev can really wack the ball.

Nadal takes another title with 4 and 4 win over Norrie in a match with lots of breaks of serve.

Astonishing start to the season by Rafa. He'll probably skip IW and Miami to put himself in the best possible position to do well at the clay-court season.

You can certainly envisage him returning to number one.

A couple of lower-ranked Britons who are doing well at the moment are Liam Broady and Jack Draper. Draper won a minor tournament last week to climb to a career-high 162 and he's reached another final this week.

Broady reached a career-high 116 last week and is currently 122.

While Medvedev breaks the 18-year monopoly of the Big Four of the number one spot, Andy Murray moves up to 84.

Jack Draper saved four MPs in a final set tiebreak to win a minor tournament yesterday and has risen to a career-best 145 in the rankings.

Svitolina - now Mrs Gael Monfils - has been drawn against a Russian in this week's tournament and is refusing to play her.

Dilemma now for tennis authorities. Do they ban Russian and Belarus players? It's more understandable if it's Fed Cup or Davis Cup when players are representing their country.

But should, say, Medvedev and Rublev be stopped from playing on the regular tour?

After all, in football Spartak Moscow have been kicked out of the Europa Cup.

sirfredperry wrote:Svitolina - now Mrs Gael Monfils - has been drawn against a Russian in this week's tournament and is refusing to play her.

Dilemma now for tennis authorities. Do they ban Russian and Belarus players? It's more understandable if it's Fed Cup or Davis Cup when players are representing their country.

But should, say, Medvedev and Rublev be stopped from playing on the regular tour?

After all, in football Spartak Moscow have been kicked out of the Europa Cup.

Yes unfortunately, neutral flag or they don't play.

The timing of the invasion appears to have taken into account the Winter Olympics.

Svitolina is still listed to play Russia's Anastasia Potapova in Monterrey tonight.

The match is scheduled for around 1am UK time. We'll have to wait to see what happens.

Joint statement by the tennis authorities. Russia and Belarus banned from the team tournaments (ie Davis Cup, Fed Cup).

But players from these two countries can play in WTA and ATP tournies as long as they don't appear under their national flag.

Moscow tournament later in the year is "suspended".

sirfredperry wrote:Svitolina - now Mrs Gael Monfils - has been drawn against a Russian in this week's tournament and is refusing to play her....

On an individual level her stance is entirely reasonable - it is looking like Russia is trying to take control of her country using extreme deadly force to do it.  Even if her opponent competed under a "neutral flag" it is still a stomach churning prospect.

sirfredperry wrote:Joint statement by the tennis authorities. Russia and Belarus .... players from these two countries can play in WTA and ATP tournies as long as they don't appear under their national flag....

I didn't realise that there was a nationalistic element inbuilt into the ATP and WTA tours with players otherwise having to play under a national flag.  I know that on all the draws they have the players nationality alongside their names but didn't think much about it - until now.

Djokovic and Vajda have parted company. Staggering decision.

On aside note, French car manufacturer Peugeot, has terminated deal with Djokovic over vaccination stance.

Svitolina did play Russia's Potopova in the end, winning the match 2 and 1. They shook hands normally at the net at the end.

Some might criticise the tennis authorities for not going further as far as players from Russia and Belarus are concerned.

But if you don't follow Davis Cup or Billie-Jean (Fed) Cup, you might not even realise which player represents which country.

I was not aware that Sabalenka, currently ranked third, was from Belarus, for example. I wasn't even that sure of Svitolina's nationality.

Allowing the Russian/Belarussian players to carry on with non-cup, tournament matches, to me, is far different from allowing, say, Russians to compete under a different banner at an international athletics event such as the Olympics.

At Olympics you DO represent your country. The medal table is a country-by-country thing. It's a nonsense to allow Russian athletes to compete under the label "You all know we're representing Russia but we'll pretend we're not."

Of course, some might think the tennis authorities have done something similar in allowing the Russians/Belarussians to play on.
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At the elite level I guess most tennis players as well as playing under a national flag are "globalists" with second and third homes outside of their birth country and with liberal (non nationalistic) viewpoints.   I suppose it depends on the individual.  Someone like say a Medvedev seems pretty "cool", quirky, independent minded.  

It seems that Djokovic is nationalistic and I wonder what happened when Yugoslavia was falling apart and Serbia was sending out tanks etc into neighboring areas that wanted their independence (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovenia, Kosovo).  That was of course before Djokovic's era.

Separate to that there is an issue of individual and team sports.  Teams sports where the team represents a country is quite obviously representative of that country, whereas individual sports or something like tennis doubles where individuals from different nations are allowed to form pairs etc is different - so that as long as you remove the national flag element then they would be competing as individuals rather than representatives. Similarly Russians playing for English football teams would be representing the English football team rather than their country.

Since we are talking about this national element - we have had the following on-going saga

"CNN (1 Dec 2021): The Women's Tennis Association (WTA) has announced an immediate suspension of all tournaments in China, including Hong Kong, in response to Beijing's silencing of sexual assault allegations made by Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai against a former top Communist Party official."

Peng Shuai made some allegation on social media and then later retracted it claiming it had been misinterpreted but the worlds press didn't believe it had been misinterpreted and claim she has been silenced or coerced to retract it.

Ivan Lendl, presumably fed up with playing golf all the time, is to work with Andy Murray again. Certainly can't do any harm.

Federer says he's likely to be playing late summer, so effectively ruling out any chance of appearing at Wimbledon.

He said he'd been on crutches for two months during his recovery so it looks as if he's had major work done.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian player Yastremska who fled her war-torn country reached the final in Lyon but went down in three sets.

Leylah Fernandez defended her title in Monterrey, beating Camila Osorio 6-7 6-4 7-6. Fernandez saved 5 championship points in the final set. Pretty good final.

Andy Murray has announced he's donating all his prize money for the rest of this season to Unicef's Ukraine relief fund.

Meanwhile, three Britons - Watson, Dart, Boulter - have made it thru the first qualifying round of IW. Emma Raducanu is the 11th seed in the main draw.

Another GB player, Liam Broady, plays his first qualifying match tonight.

Djoko has been entered into the main draw at IW but it's unclear whether he will play or even if he'll be allowed into the US.

Andy Murray plays a qualifier in the first round and, if he wins, will take on Bublik in round two.

All three Brit women qualifying made it thru into the main draw. Liam Broady won his first qualifying match.

If Djokovic is unlikely to receive a visa what’s the point of him being entered in the draw? You end up with a lopsided draw as a result when he eventually can’t play.

At least with the women's draw they had time to create a 33rd seed and put her in the place of the now-unavailable top seed.

Looks like, as was the case in Melbourne, that we'll get an LL in Djoko's place and have the lopsided draw JN refers to above.

Djokovic refused entry into America and has withdrawn from Indian Wells and presumably Miami.

So this is how Djokovic himself portrays the situation, on his own twitter feed :

“ While I was automatically listed in the @BNPPARIBASOPEN and @MiamiOpen draw I knew it would be unlikely I’d be able to travel. The CDC has confirmed that regulations won’t be changing so I won't be able to play in the US. Good luck to those playing in these great tournaments “

Is there really such a process on the Tour as being “automatically listed” ….. ???

I’m struggling to make sense of his choice of words here (and we know that Djoko’s command of English is extremely good, so that’s clearly not the issue)  

I just don’t see - given his widely-known stance on vaccination - how the respective event organisers would ‘automatically’ list him - not least given the way things unfolded in Melbourne …… Put simply ….. no TD would, going forward, wish to be deemed at all responsible for a similarly tawdry episode.

So …..was it in fact Djokovic who ‘listed’ himself for both events ….. ?? I strongly suspect the answer is yes. Which in turn means he has been highly disingenuous both in his decision to do so, and then in the subsequent tweet. He has knowingly messed up the draw for IW, but hasn’t got the decency to apologise for his (continued) selfishness and the unwanted effect it has on other players, all of whom follow the rules.

Every time you feel you *might* want to give this guy even a little leeway, or a bit of a break, he seems determined to bring more shame upon himself.

I think he’s right to say that he’s automatically listed. What he omits to say is that, once he withdraws, he is no longer listed. He seems to have chosen to wait until the very last second, ruining the draw, in case the US changed its entry requirements.

Dimi has been drafted into the Djoko position in the draw as the 33rd seed. At least they can have "proper" seeding at Miami.

Liam Broady made it thru qualifying, while Harriett Dart had an excellent first-round win against Ana Konjuh who has been as high as 20th. Dart will face Ukrainian Svitolina in the next round.

Emma Raducanu will be up against former top-five player Caroline Garcia in the second round.

Bit of a blockbuster first round match tonight - Osaka v Sloane Stephens.

Broady plays Serbia's Kecmanovic with the winner taking on Cilic. A quirk of the draw means Andy Murray faces Japan's Daniel for the third time this season.

Osaka is up and running at IW, coming from 0-2 down in the final set to beat Sloane Stephens.

Kyrgios, now down at 132, dropped just four games in his win.

Brit's Watson and Boulter both lost. Andy Murray is first on v Daniel at 7pm UK time today, followed by Emma Raducanu v Caroline Garcia. Harriett Dart and Liam Broady also play today/tonight.

sirfredperry wrote:Osaka is up and running at IW, coming from 0-2 down in the final set to beat Sloane Stephens.

Kyrgios, now down at 132, dropped just four games in his win.

Brit's Watson and Boulter both lost. Andy Murray is first on v Daniel at 7pm UK time today, followed by Emma Raducanu v Caroline Garcia. Harriett Dart and Liam Broady also play today/tonight.

Isn't this now their third meeting this season - checked their H2H and other that that, they met once in a Davis Cup tie back in 2016. Strange how this sort of 'streak' of drawing the same opponent sometimes happens.

Murray currently on 699 career wins, so a little statistical highlight coming up. Still quite some way behind Federer's 1250 wins, and I see that Djokovic is currently on 991 career wins, so two good tournaments from reaching his thousandth win.

Andy Murray comes from behind to beat Taro Daniel in three sets and win his 700th ATP match. Some cracking rallies in an entertaining and good quality match.

Yes, 700 up for Andy.

Bet you can't name all the guys who've achieved 700 main-tour wins?

I got 14 of the 18, there's a couple on there that surprised me.

I did terribly. Only got NINE of the 700-club members. Missed some very obvious and huge names, too.

Emma R dropped the middle set against Caroline Garcia but came thru.

Harriett Dart had a very good win against Ukrainian Svitolina who may have had more pressing things on her mind. Liam Broady went out.

Mega congratulations to Andy M not just on this latest result - but for ALL those 700 tour wins

What a fabulous career he has had. I doubt any of us could have actually imagined a Scottish kid from Dunblane making it to the very highest echelons of the sport, as underlined by a spell as World Number One.

Good to see Emma Raducanu back on track with an important win. She’s had a rough time with a series of niggling injuries, and also Covid …… not to mention all the media hype and expectations prompted (inevitably) by her stunning USO breakthrough triumph. Hope she can kick on from this.

The Raducanu situation is extraordinary in that you have a GS champion who is still remarkably inexperienced at the top level.

She's played only a handful of main-tour matches and this will be her first full season on the tour.

In her favour is the fact that she has no points to defend until Wimbledon.

Evans and Norrie in action tonight.

Rafael Nadal comes from 2-5 down in a he third set to beat Seb Korda 6-2 1-6 7-6.
16 straight wins for the great man.
Will play Daniel Evans in the next round.

Nadal also pulled out from Miami.

As well as Evans, Norrie is into the third round. Kyrgios, who has hardly played over recent months, got a WC and has had two good wins.

Korda served for the match twice against Rafa and was also ahead in the tiebreak. Not surprised Rafa has pulled out of Miami. I was a bit surprised he played IW having had so much tennis already and with his favourite time of the year fast approaching.

sirfredperry wrote: ……………. Not surprised Rafa has pulled out of Miami. I was a bit surprised he played IW having had so much tennis already and with his favourite time of the year fast approaching.

He clearly put everything into winning that match v Korda. That’s always been his approach / mentality, of course. BUT if Korda had taken him out (as he should have done), I suspect Nadal would not be feeling overly-disappointed today. He would have fulfilled his commitment to the tourney organisers …… and then left himself free to gear up for another season on the red stuff.

Well done Cam ….. well done Dan

Tommy Paul takes out Alexander Zverev at Indian Wells. The American won 6-2 4-6 7-6

Raducanu and Murray both beaten yesterday. Emma served for the match at 5-4 in the third but lost the last three games.

She had some back probs during the match but said she ought to be OK for Miami.

In better news for British fans, Harriett Dart had a 7-6, 6-3 win over experienced Kanepi to make the fourth round and get to a career high. Dart won the first set after being 5-2 down.

Andy had his chances (plenty of them) in that opening set and losing it was a sore one to take and he never recovered. Not a bad performance by any means but no good enough to beat the No 31 seed. Great win for Harriet Dart that propels her (for now) into the top 100 in the first time in her career. Tough match for her next against Madison Keys.

Gael Monfils stunningly upsets Daniil Medvedev at Indian Wells. The Frenchman won 4-6 6-3 6-1. The loss means Djokovic will become world number #1 again on Monday.
Got to be one of the low points of Medvedev’s career getting somewhat embarrassed by Monfils.

Rafael Nadal beat Daniel Evans 7-5 6-3 to continue his winning streak. Evans started off well, got an early break in the opening set, but the Spaniard was essentially too good.
This was Nadal’s 400th win at masters 1000 level - first player to achieve this.

A good week for Rafa´s prospects to get to year end no 1 (if he achieves it, would be oldest every year end no 1 I think):

---Medvedev lost so no chance of him getting big points at IW
---Djokovic out of IW, Miami
---Rafa won a couple of matches so has a chance to win here

At this point, Rafa looks the favourite for year end no 1

sirfredperry wrote:Yes, 700 up for Andy.

Bet you can't name all the guys who've achieved 700 main-tour wins?

Interesting Murray quoted as saying going for 800 wins, unless he hasn´t really thought through that means he probably plans to play to and throughout 2024 at least, when he will be 37 years old.

Having a look here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Open_Era_men%27s_singles_tennis_players_by_career_match_wins

750+ wins is absolute hall of fame legends without exception, below that it drops off a bit, I definitely wouldn´t have got Brian Gottfried (702), I don´t even know who that is.

The career win percentage is interesting because Nadal, Djokovic, Borg, Federer, Connors, Mcenroe, Lendl are all about the same at 81%-83%. Surprised at first that Nadal is slightly ahead, but I suppose he got to near peak much faster than many others, that could be the difference. Nadal at 83.33% and Djokovic at 83.21% are in a battle for the all time record. Borg at 82.37% still has a chance to come out ahead if Nadal and Djokovic both play on for more than this year and have a win rate of around 70% or below from now on then they could both fall the 1% necessary for Borg to lead again. Federer in 4th place at 81.98% doesn´t seem capable of winning this one, I suppose as a consequence of taking a few years to really get good.

On the other hand Federer (1251) and Connors (1274) are clearly ahead for total match wins. I seem to recollect Connors just played a lot of winnable minor tournaments. Federer needs 24 wins to get that record. Hard to say if he'll make that or not. You can see him not quite making that if next year is his final hurrah. Of course, he could if he was determined to do it but he probably isn't. I imagine Federer's big numbers owes something to him playing quite a lot of matches per year in peak years and also no injuries for some years at his peak.

Can Nadal (1045) and Djokovic (991) catch the Connors record? Average 50 wins a season for the next 4 years? Looks challenging. If anything, I'd bet against it. Nadal, in spite of a strong start, may come up short because of too many mid career injuries. Novak is not really being helped by missing tournaments due to COVID.

When all the big three retire, there will be some records basically engraved in stone that can be virtually guaranteed to stand for 5 years. And some of them may even stand for decades.

Jenson Brooksby beat Stefanos Tsitsipas 1-6 6-3 6-2, biggest win of the American’s career.

Cameron Norrie beat Nikoloz Basilashvili 3-6 6-3 6-1 in a repeat of last years final. Faces Brooksby next

Reilly Opelka beat Canada's Denis Shapovalov 6-7 6-4 6-4. Will face Nadal next.

HB - Brian Gottfried was a steady player on the circuit but probably better known as a partner for Mexican Raul Ramirez. They were a very good doubles pairing, taking numerous titles.

Back to IW and Medvedev's reign at the top lasted just three weeks. As has been mooted above, Rafa may pose more of a threat to the Russian than Djoko when it comes to the number one position.

Another good win for Cameron Norrie. I thought he might struggle this year after his annus mirabilis in 2021 but after a slow start (probably due to Covid) he's already notched up some good results.

Watch out for Kyrgios who easily dispatched Ruud and will now take on Sinner.

Watched some clips of Harriett Dart's win over Kanepi. She looked good and has a chance against Madison Keys, although you have to tip the American.

Dart only managed five games against Keys but a good run by the Briton, nevertheless.

Matches in both the men's and women's yesterday went pretty much to form.

Today, Norrie takes on rising US star Jenson Brooksby. Nadal will be up against giant Reilly Opelka.

Arguably the most attractive match is Kyrgios v Sinner. The Aussie has had three good wins so far and could face Nadal if successful today.