Credit: AP

Last night’s match between Federer and Andreev was truly a nail-biter for fans of both sides. Andreev was in control for most of the match, and yet it was Federer who had the lead in most of the sets. Andreev should have led by 2 sets to 1 as Federer was reeling and facing multiple set points. But did Andreev truly choke or was Federer just lucky? After all, that’s all we have been hearing from the pundits.

In reality, Federer made his own luck. He kept the ball low and in play and waited for Andreev to run out of inspiration and energy. Both seem to have happened last night. Andreev didn’t believe he could win. He had set points, and he went away from his game plan. That’s what makes great players. Was Roger lucky? If anything, he was very unlucky serving for the third set. He was also unlucky to get Andreev in the first round. But Roger has been here before. He was down two sets to Berdych and didn’t lose it. He was struggling badly against a hot Tipsarevic a couple of years ago at Australian and didn’t collapse. If you want to beat Roger, you have to stick to your game plan and execute perfectly.

Roger can’t win with this level of play, and I suspect he’ll improve. But to suggest he was just lucky or his opponent choked is not fair. Andreev was game but just ran out of time and got too impatient. He had Roger where he wanted. So have many others in the past. Not everyone’s Nadal.

He did indeed shock the world, but not by his performance. Rather, he has been busted for taking Cocaine and could face two years ban! That should be the beginning of the end for a promising youngster who never realized his full potential. Gasquet was expected to challenge for top honors just a few years ago, but not only he didn’t take that final step, he is not have to deal with the stigma of being busted for using drugs.

Maybe he will bounce back and come back a better player. But when he does come back, the world of tennis has moved on and new generation will be out in full force. Wonder how he will deal with it.

What’s your take? R.I.P Gaquet’s career?

We all saw it. Federer, a grown man, crying like a child whom had his favorite toy taken away. Federer did try his best to contain himself when he lost that heart-breaker to Nadal at Wimbledon. But the Australian Open was just too much for the master. He must have had flashbacks of Bjorg – McEnroe rivalry. Bjorg had the upper hand early but McEnroe caught up and surpassed him. Bjorg never really stuck around to allow us to see the end of that rivalry. But Roger has stuck around and Nadal has beaten him 3 straight times in Grand Slams (all finals). Roger may be a candidate for the GOAT, but so is Rafa.

Will Roger get back to No. 1? I am not sure he is interested in doing that. Roger wants to be considered the greatest of all time and for him to do that he needs to do 3 things:

• win 15 slams or more
• win the French Open
• beat Nadal in a Grand Slam final a few times

Roger hasn’t done any of those yet. I doubt he will actually win a calendar slam now that his window has closed. But he can still win the French in the next couple of years. He just needs to figure out how to beat Nadal on clay similar to how Nadal did it to him on grass. Will it happen? Probably not! Federer’s best chance to be considered the greatest of all time is to win 16, 17, or even 18 slams. He needs to put a big distance between himself and Sampras and make sure he denies Rafa from catching up to him. Rafa has 6 already and is 22. If Rafa wins 3 more French and a few other slams, he could catch up to Roger by the time he is 27. If Rafa gets too close or equals what Roger has done, Federer will have to be satisfied to be one of the greats and not the greatest. That is something that is even more repulsive to Roger than being the World No. 2.

There have been talks lately about Federer getting back his No. 1 status next year. In fact, a poll by ATP indicates that most people believe Fed will get back his No. 1 ranking in 2009. I personally would love to see Federer getting back his No. 1 ranking, but I just can’t see it.

Federer is one of the best players of all time. He is up there with Sampras, Laver, Bjorg, and others. But, his time at the top has passed. There are too many young players that have caught up with him. Nadal will probably lose his No. 1 position sometime next year but it won’t be to Federer. If you think about it, Djokovic had such a terrible second half of the year that it’s surprising that he is oh so close to getting the No. 2 position off of Fed. Had Novak won the U.S. Open and played a bit better at Wimbledon, he would’ve put up a good challenge against Nadal. 

Murray is the hottest player on the tour and even though he lost to Davydenko at Masters Cup, he was the star of the tournament by knocking out Federer and beating Roddick and Simon in the process. He will be a major factor next year. 

Let’s not forget about Del Potro, Monfils, Simon, Gasquet, Berdych, Cilic, Gulbis, and even Nishikori. There are too many hungry young guns out there, and I believe it’d be hard for Federer to continue his amazing record next year. Will Federer be a major factor in the next few years? Absolutely. Will he regain his No. 1 spot? I doubt it (and if it happens, it would be for a brief time). That doesn’t mean he will be regarded any less for his amazing career. 

You decide: Will Federer regain the No. 1 position next year?

I have been meaning to post about Andy Murray and his achievements of late. He has simply revolutionalized himself by beating Nadal, Federer, Djokovic (2 times) in a matter of a couple of months. Sure. He was awfully spanked by Federer at the U.S. Open, but that was partly due to his inexperience and lack of consistent serving. But he served a treat by serving bombs at Federer and edging him at Madrid Masters.

Murray is currently No. 4 in the world and is getting close to Novak by the minute. But if you take out the losses to Nadal and Federer, Murray has actually outperformed Novak in the second half of this year. With Djokovic going out to Karlovic last week, Murray had further chances to cement his position as the real No. 3 in the world. So here is the question for the rest of this year. Can Novak catch Federer at No. 2 or will he fail again like he did against Nadal and let Murray take over No. 3? The next Masters Series will reveal a lot about this question.

It seems we won’t be seeing the top guys in action anytime soon. No offense to Roddick, Ferrer, and other guys, but Federer and Nadal are very careful about their schedules. For Federer much more is on the line as he will need to win the two masters series to have any chance of overtaking Nadal this year. For Nadal, he has a huge lead over Federer, and a decent showing in both Masters Series will lock the year-end No. 1 position for him. But it’s great that these guys are saving themselves for bigger tournaments so we can enjoy seeing these guys in action for a longer period of time.

It’s official. Blake will not let us to see him play against Nadal on clay. I think the result really is a foregone conclusion as far as playing Nadal is concerned on his favorite clay. But it would’ve nice to see if James could keep it close with him. James had a few good wins on clay in the past couple of years, including his win over Almagro. But now Roddick and Querrey will have to try to get 2 points from their 4 matches.

I do think that James was dropped by McEnroe rather than him pulling out by himself. James form has been questionable and he seems to have not gotten over his Olympics and U.S. Open experience. After all, he has nothing to show for the U.S. hard courts season, so he may as well take some time off and recharge his battery for a push for that Masters Cup spot.

Just a year ago, it seemed almost unthinkable for Federer to lose his No. 1 ranking anytime soon. He had survived Nadal’s onslaught at Wimbledon and had dominated the indoor season with the victory at the year ending championships. Fast forward a few months and Federer is barely hanging on to No. 2 position. In fact, Fed could lose No. 2 if he fails to reach the quarters, and Novak goes on to win the title. Now many are asking why Federer has fallen so fast…

It’s really simple. Federer was playing out of his mind for the past few years. But he was going for hots that a normal human being wouldn’t be able to make in a consistent basis. You could say that he was going for 10% shots but making them 80% of the time. Well. The law of averages do catch up with you, and that’s why Federer is missing some of those shots. But the other reason for Federer’s incredible run was his confidence. You combine genius and confidence together and you have one powerful mix. Federer today doesn’t have the confidence though his genius is intact. Time is not on his side, and his confidence against Nadal seems to have all but shattered after the heardbreaking Wimbledon loss.

Nadal on the other hand is not as genius of a shotmaker as Federer, but he is close. But his level is so consistent that you can’t find a player who can go toe to toe with him for 5 sets. People give him  1 or 2 sets but ultimately winning 3 sets matters. More than that, nadal is supremely confident on the tour now. He has reversed his losses against Federer, Blake, Youzhny, Berdych, and now Djokovic, so there doesn’t seem to be anyone who goes into a match with Nadal thinking that he can be beaten. That is recipe for disaster really (which is why we have seen so many dominating results lately for Nadal).

Federer Nadal rivalry is more than about tennis. It shows you that in any sport, consistency ultimately beats genius. Whether it’s in tennis, soccer or MMA.

The new rankings for men’s tennis are out, and for the first time in about 5 years, Nadal is leading the ranking. He is leading it by a whopping 770 points! Nadal has 6700, and Federer has 5930. Djokovic is back at 5105. The interesting fact is the gap between Nadal and Federer is almost the same as the one between Federer and Djokovic. At this rate, I don’t believe Federer has any chance of winning the No. 1 back this year, but he can certainly be caught by Djokovic if he stumbles at the U.S. Open. Nadal has had one of the best years one can have, and he is surely going to challenge big time for the U.S. Open title. So he can push his advantage to more than a 1000 points if he wins the U.S. Open. The question at this point is, who gets Djokovic time time around being that Nadal has gotten him a lot when he was No. 2.

They say confidence does you so much good on a tennis court. Federer was all but confident last night when he basically pulled off a Houdini and even with that needed a major choke job from Robby Ginepri to escape to the third round and a matchup with the mighty Karlovic. So much for Federer trying to get his hard court season back on track.

The forehand is awful. The backhand is more vulnerable than ever, and the serve deserts him everytime he gets to most important parts of a set. He served for the first set against Ginepri twice and got broken twice. Then shanked his way through the tie-break. The second set, Federer was the better player. But once they got to 5-5, it seemed Federer forgot how to play tennis and dropped his serve to allow Ginepri to serve for the match. Thankfully Ginepri chocked like always, so there was no surprise. The third set was a bluh as Ginepri couldn’t find his game and the heat got to him. The way Federer played, I wouldn’t be surprised if Karlovic beats him.

Roddick was struck by a disaster yesterday. He came to court and seemed fine but then sit down and withdrew with back and neck pain. Even more odd that Phillip still had to play a lucky loser in the 2nd round after Roddick came to the court. Roddick blamed it on a rough night sleep, but regardless of that, he has had one awful season with early exits one after another.

With Roddick’s exit, we are almost guaranteed not to have an ESPN live match on Sunday, unless Federer and Nadal make it there. Last week, ESPN chose to show fishing instead of live Tennis. I bet they would’ve shown tennis if an American was involved in it. But with Roddick out and Blake facing Simon (who beat Blake a couple weeks ago), there is a good chance we will be watching fishing again this week.

What do you think of the matches so far? Can Federer bounce back or will Karlovic finally get a win over Roger? Please share your comments here.