Czech Us Out

Your Weekly Tennis Update

By Mason Walling

AAP/Image: Getty Images

The Czech Republic won the Davis Cup title this week in dramatic fashion for the second year in a row. 

With the Cup tied at two matches apiece, Radek Stepanek defeated Serbian Dusan Lajovic in the decisive final match by a score of 6-3, 6-1, 6-1.  The 23-year-old Lajovic was seriously overmatched in this final, as he faced the journeyman Stepanek, who has been on the professional tour for 18 years. 

It’s safe to say that Lajovic was a bit ill-prepared for competition of this magnitude.  He had never even played a best of five-sets match on the tour before, much less competed in the Davis Cup.  Lajovic’s world ranking coming into the match was 117, compared to his opponent, Stepanek, who came in at No. 44.  In fact, the only reason that Lajovic played in this match was because of a heel injury that sidelined Janko Tipsarevic.

Serbian Viktor Troicki was also absent from the Davis Cup, as he is currently serving a 12-month suspension for violating the ATP’s doping policies.  It would be easy for the Serbs to chalk this loss up to having to play without their second and third best players.  Missing Tipsarevic and Troicki undoubtedly did make a different, but Novak Djokovic is catching some flack over this loss.

The criticism is not stemming from Djokovic’s play; he actually defeated both Stepanek and Tomas Berdych in singles matches to account for Serbia’s only two points.  The complaints are due to the fact that Djokovic did not play in the doubles match against Berdych and Stepanek.  Instead, Serbia decided to let Nenad Zimonjic and Ilija Bozoljac take on the Czech duo, and they ultimately paid the price for it.

This decision was made by the Serbian captain Bogdan Obradovic after discussing the matter with Djokovic himself.  It is not a certainty that Serbia would have been able to defeat the Czech Republic even with Djokovic playing doubles, but you have to think that they would have had a better chance.

“Could have been” and “what ifs” aside, Stepanek deserves all the credit of coming through for his country when it really mattered in a high-pressure match.

Interestingly enough, it was Stepanek who stepped up for the Czechs last year by winning the last match of the Davis Cup over Nicholas Almagro to put Spain away.  2012 and 2013 are the only years in which the Czech Republic has won the Davis Cup since becoming an independent nation.

           

Djoker Gets the Last Laugh

Your Weekly Tennis Update

By Mason Walling 

Photo Courtesy of stevegtennis.com

Yes, Rafael Nadal finished the 2013 season as the No. 1-ranked player in the world, but Novak Djokovic is the one who went out with a bang.

On Monday, Djokovic defeated Nadal 6-3, 6-4 in the finals of the Barclays ATP World Tour year-end tournament.  In fact, after losing to Nadal in the championship match of the U.S. Open this year, Djokovic went on a 22-match hot streak without losing to finish out the season. 

Going into this matchup of already historic proportions, Djokovic and Nadal had met in the finals of tournaments a total of 18 times, and interestingly enough, the series was all tied up. Djokovic became the seventh man ever to hoist the Barclays Trophy in London three times over the course of his career.

Nadal was only able to hit a total of nine winners in this match, and he was broken an uncharacteristic three times.  Djokovic was able to utilize his serve to generate aces or jump ahead early in points by putting Nadal on the defensive.  On hard courts, Djokovic seems to be the heavy favorite at the moment, as he has won 13-of-20 over Nadal head-to-head.

This is the only final of great significance that Nadal has failed to capture in his career, as he has won all four Grand Slams, Olympic Gold, and the Davis Cup.  The only man to win all of these events and the Barclays ATP World Tour is Andre Agassi.

Djokovic will try to continue his late-year dominance later this week in his native land of Belgrade, as Serbia will take on the defending champion Czech Republic in the Davis Cup finals.  The Serbs, however, will have to do so without key members Janko Tipsarevic, who is battling a heel injury, and Victor Troicki, who is currently serving a 12-month suspension for doping.

Rafa’s Rise Back to the Top

Your Weekly Tennis Update

Clive Brunskill/Getty Images

By Mason Walling

On Nov. 6, Rafael Nadal clinched the accomplishment of being the world’s No. 1 male tennis player at year’s end.  To get started, let’s just put a couple of things into perspective here.

The last time Nadal ended the year as the No. 1-ranked player in the world was 2010, the same year that the Saints won the Super Bowl over the Colts, the San Francisco Giants ended a 56-year drought by winning the World Series, and LeBron James made the publicly televised decision to “take his talents to South Beach.”

While that might not seem like a long time to some, it was certainly a three-year struggle for Nadal.  The Spaniard’s unmatched agility on the court caused him to developing extreme tendonitis in both knees all the way back in 2009.  Many people thought his career was over at just 23 years old, writing him off as a champion that just pushed the limits of his body too much.

Nadal underwent controversial knee rehabilitation treatments known as platelet-rich plasma therapy, or PRP.  The treatment involves taking a small vial of a person’s blood, spinning the vial in a centrifuge in order to separate the platelet-rich cells, and then re-injecting that blood into the injured area of the body to allow the cells to speed up recovery.

The treatment is controversial because it was banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency in 2010 over a fear that thousands of athletes including Kobe Bryant, Troy Polamalu and Tiger Woods have undergone the same therapy.

On-and-off treatments helped Nadal drastically until July of 2012, when he was eliminated in the second round of Wimbledon after playing through excruciating pain.  The outcome was a partially torn patella tendon, and yet again the critics rationally assumed that his playing days were over.

Nadal tried the PRP method like before, but it couldn’t heal this severe injury the way it had previously worked for him.  With no logical recovery strategy, the clay-court specialist was forced into a seven-month hiatus from tennis. 

During this time of resting, Nadal would try to stay fit by exercising on an anti-gravity treadmill machine that allowed him to stay in shape without too much strain on the knees.

At the beginning of 2013, there was obviously a huge question mark on the stability of Nadal’s knee and his readiness to return to tennis.  He went on to shock the world by winning 10 titles in 2013, including his record eighth French Open title and his second U.S. Open title.

This year, Nadal became the first man to ever hold, lose, and then regain the No. 1 ranking twice in a season.  The man that kept taking it from him, Novak Djokovic, still had a shot at ending the year as No. 1 until Wednesday.

After winning his first match of the ATP World Tour finals over David Ferrer, it took Nadal two tight tiebreakers to overcome Stan Wawrinka and clinch the top spot.  These two wins also qualify Nadal for the semifinals of this season’s end tournament, which he doesn’t have to win to remain number one.

Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, Juan Martin del Potro, Stan Wawrinka, Richard Gasquet and Tomas Berdych are still in contention for the ATP World Tour Championship.

The Ups & Downs of Roger Federer

By Mason Walling

To the average tennis player, a win-loss record of 40-14 and a singles title to go along with it sounds like a great year.  For Roger Federer, stats like these are unheard of.

It’s no secret that 2013 has been a less than perfect season for Federer.  Despite the aforementioned record and lone singles title, Federer has only managed to win one match this year against a top-10 opponent.  This victory came all the way back in January when he downed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, who was ranked number eight at the time, in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open.

Adam Hunger/Reuters

Federer’s latest slip up came in front of his home country at the finals of Swiss Indoors against Juan Martin del Potro.  After dropping the first set in a tiebreaker, Federer rallied to take the second set 6-2.  Del Potro battled back to steal the third set 6-4 and, in the end, the Swiss championship. 

Now before you write me off as a Federer hater, let me tell you the silver lining to this story.

On Wednesday, Federer defeated Kevin Anderson in Paris in the second-round of the BNP Paribas Masters, the final tournament of the year before the ATP World Tour Finals.  This win secured Federer’s spot in the final eight that play for the year’s end title.  Up until this week, Federer’s fate was very uncertain.

Nadal, Djokovic, Ferrer, and del Potro are the four shoe-ins ahead of Federer, who is most likely going to fall into the fifth slot.  After these five, nothing is a guarantee. 

Tomas Berdych looks to be the safe front runner for the sixth invitation.  Stan Wawrinka and Jo-Willy Tsonga would receive the last two invites if the season ended right now.  They are only separated by a mere five points in the ranking.  From the outside looking in are Richard Gasquet and Milos Raonic, who would need to at least reach the final in Paris and hope for an early exit from one of the last three in.

The Tour Finals are slated to begin on November 4, in London, England.