U.S. players won all three ATP and WTA events last week. Can you believe it?<\/b><\/p>\n
Whoa, what a week it\u2019s been for U.S. tennis and it ain\u2019t over yet. Pete Sampras<\/b> and Roger Federer<\/b> will meet tonight in the mecca of U.S. sports arenas, Madison Square Garden. MSG, by the way, was the site of the ATP and WTA year end championships for many years. Sampras is, of course, retired, and while I\u2019m not exactly sure what he\u2019s doing popping up all over the place in the past few years after a few years of hibernation, I am definitely not one of those people who think Sampras is planning a return to the ATP tour.<\/p>\n
That would be sad indeed. Is U.S. tennis in such bad shape? Luckily it\u2019s not. For the past few weeks the poll on our site has asked the following question: Which player will win his first ATP tournament this year? Jo-Wilfried Tsonga<\/b> got the most votes with 22. Sam Querrey<\/b> tied for last place with two votes.<\/p>\n
Turns out we were all wrong. Querrey is the winner after he took the title in Las Vegas on Sunday. He overcame an early bout of grumpiness to beat South African Kevin Anderson<\/b> in the Las Vegas final, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4.<\/p>\n
If you were wandering around Las Vegas you might have thought it was a basketball tournament not a tennis tournament. Querrey is 6ft6in (198cm), Anderson is 6ft7in (200cm), and John Isner<\/b>, who went out in the second round, is 6ft9in (205cm). We knew tall tennis was coming when we first saw those 7ft (213cm) three point shooters in the NBA – those huge hulking guys who are allergic to hard contact and prefer to set up far beyond the key instead of under the basket where they might get pushed around. Still, I\u2019m not happy about it. I\u2019d rather watch the smaller, scrappier David Ferrer<\/b> run all those tall boys silly.<\/p>\n
Las Vegas had a women\u2019s challenger running alongside the ATP event and there I saw the future of U.S. women\u2019s tennis. Asia Muhammad<\/b> got all the way to the final before losing easily to veteran Camille Pin<\/b>. Muhammad looks like a young Venus Williams<\/b>. She\u2019s long and gangly and she has a good serve, strong ground strokes, and a killer overhead. She\u2019s got a funky hitch in her serve – she drops her racket before completing her backswing – but there\u2019s lots to work with and she\u2019s in a challenger final at age 16. One thing she has that Venus doesn\u2019t have is a willing net game. She actually works at getting to the net. Hooray.<\/p>\n
Muhammad gets financial assistance from Andre Agassi<\/b>\u2019s foundation and she regularly hits with Steffi Graf<\/b> and Darren Cahill<\/b>. You never know who\u2019ll turn into a champion but she won\u2019t fail for lack of support.<\/p>\n
Speaking of Venus, I\u2019m really sorry I couldn\u2019t find footage of the match between Venus and her sister Serena in the Bangalore semifinals last week. Did anyone watch it? If so, please report in and we\u2019ll post it. This was the first match they\u2019ve played that went to a third set tiebreaker and it was their first meeting since 2005. Serena won the match, 6-3, 3-6, 7-6(4), and went on to beat Patty Schnyder<\/b> in the final in straight sets despite a bout of cursing and racket smashing. I like that because Serena is very tough to beat when she\u2019s mad.<\/p>\n
Why did Venus and Serena travel to the other side of the world to play in a small tournament the week before Indian Wells? Serena needed matches because she hasn\u2019t played since the Australian Open. And both of them needed a tuneup for Miami because they\u2019ve refused to play Indian Wells since 2001. Venus pulled out of a semifinal match against Serena that year and the crowd booed Serena mercilessly as she beat Kim Clijsters<\/b> in the final.<\/p>\n
Indian Wells will be a required tournament for WTA players next year so the sisters will have to work out an agreement with the WTA since they flatly refuse to ever play Indian Wells again, and they certainly don\u2019t want to pay a sizable fine for skipping a required event. I won\u2019t see the sisters in Indian Wells next year but I will see Justine Henin<\/b>. She skipped last year and isn\u2019t bothering to turn up this year either.<\/p>\n
Dubai was the biggest event of the week \u2013 eight out of the top ten ATP players turned up \u2013 and a U.S. player won that event too. Andy Roddick<\/b> surprisingly plowed through Rafael Nadal<\/b> and Novak Djokovic<\/b> before finishing off Feliciano Lopez<\/b> in the final in his first trip to Dubai. Roddick looks like he\u2019s at the top of his game and his timing couldn\u2019t be better now that Federer is showing some vulnerability.<\/p>\n
Three titles, one challenger final and a legend. Things are looking up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
U.S. players won all three ATP and WTA events last week. Can you believe it? Whoa, what a week it\u2019s been for U.S. tennis and it ain\u2019t over yet. Pete Sampras and Roger Federer will meet tonight in the mecca of U.S. sports arenas, Madison Square Garden. MSG, by the way, was the site of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}