My co-writer Nate just looked at the possible usurper to Roger Federer’s crown and found it hard to crown anyone but Novak Djokovic. A usurper is one who illegally seizes the crown of another and there’s nothing illegal in this case, it just seems that way because some of us might prefer the passionate Rafael Nadal or the promising Jo-Wilfried Tsonga to the sturdy but unspectacular Djokovic.

Djokovic will take one step closer to the kingdom if he sweeps the Indian Wells-Miami twofecta. That used to be Federer’s bailiwick – Federer swept these two tournaments in 2005 and 2006. Can Djokovic do it? Fatigue has been an issue for him and he seldom does well at consecutive Masters Series events with the exception of these two events last year: he reached the final at Indian Wells and took the title at Miami. However, he faced exactly one top ten player in each tournament and it was the same guy – Nadal.

I saw Nadal fend of three sets of howitzers from both Tsonga and James Blake at Indian Wells last week and I marveled at it until I saw him play Djokovic in the next match. Nadal’s racket was so slow by that point that he couldn’t handle Djokovic’s topspin shots and Djokovic is not known for topspin. Nadal had picked off two very troublesome players for Djokovic and paid for it.

This week, the rest of the field could well hand Djokovic the same gift by picking off those troublesome players before they get to him.

Federer’s Quarter

What about Federer? By the time he got to Mardy Fish last week he had nothing. All respect to Fish but Federer was out to lunch. It was probably a combination of two things: mononucleosis and discombobulation from the effects of mono. He reached the semifinals at the Australian Open and Indian Wells then suffered straight set losses presumably because he ran out of energy. Meanwhile, illness throws off your rhythm and feel. Sometimes he looks good and sometimes he doesn’t. I, for one, do not expect ever to see the Federer I saw before, at least not on a consistent basis.

Even if he fully recovers from mono, his psychological advantage is dissipating by the week and the rhythm in his game is way out of kilter. He may recover his rhythm and, if someone else besides Djokovic doesn’t come along in the next few years, the two of them will share some non-French Open slam wins, but I’m going to have to look elsewhere to see someone reach down and shift into a second and third gear in the middle of the second set and I miss that already.

The matchup everyone wants to see is Federer vs. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. As much as I’d love to see Tsonga win a tournament one of these days, he’d have to get past Andy Roddick to do it and Miami is a lot faster than Indian Wells and that’s a good thing for Andy. It’s a good thing for Jo-Willy too but I haven’t seen enough consistency from him yet to put him in the quarterfinals.

Federer could face Robin Soderling in the third round and the pesty Lleyton Hewitt in the fourth round but he looks pretty good in the early rounds and, of course, he’d love to meet up with Roddick and get his twelfth straight win over him.

Davydenko’s Quarter

Davydenko has never made it past the fourth round in Miami. Trust the little bugger to throw everything into chaos by getting out of this quarter but it’s doubtful because Mario Ancic, Andy Murray, Mardy Fish and David Ferrer are here too.

Ancic just recovered from mono himself and we could have some fun if Federer met up with him in the semis – mono a mono as Pat Davis puts it – and I can’t wait for Ancic to get to full strength because he tore up the tour in 2006. He plays well on all surfaces. He has an exceptional record indoors and a good record outdoors with a similar winning percentage on both clay and hard court. He’s not quite there yet, though, and Murray beat him indoors in Marseilles this year.

I don’t think Fish can continue the magic and as for David Ferrer, what is up with him? Anyone have a clue? Hyung-Taik Lee took him out in Indian Wells last week. If Murray gets past Ancic, he should be in the semis.

Nadal’s Quarter

Nadal could have faced Tommy Haas in the third round but Haas pulled out. He’s probably still suffering from the sinus infection that scratched him from his quarterfinal match with Federer last week. Poor guy, Haas is jinxed. My sympathy is tempered, though. He’s had three shoulder surgeries yet he hasn’t changed his service motion which is an over the top motion that strains the shoulder. If you keep doing the same thing and expect a different result, Einstein has a word for you: insanity.

James Blake and David Nalbandian lurk in the upper part of this quarter. Nalbandian might have to get past Radek Stapanek but I’m assuming Nalbandian won’t lose the second set to him 6-0 before waking up as he did in Indian Wells. Stepanek wins with smoke and mirrors and a bit of gamesmanship thrown in and Nalbandian should not be fooled twice.

I’m gonna take Blake over Nalbandian because Blake beat him on the indoor slick courts at the year end championships two years ago. While Miami is hardly slick, Blake looked pretty good on the rather slow courts in Indian Wells last week. That sets up another Nadal-Blake showdown.

With Haas out, Nadal should be well rested and should be able to shoot Blake down again because Blake seems to become satisfied when he reaches a quarterfinal. He doesn’t scratch and crawl to win matches and he doesn’t scratch and crawl to win tournaments. He does as well as he can and leaves it at that. Nadal does whatever it takes until he just can’t move any more.

Djokovic’s Quarter

Neither Tomas Berdych or Richard Gasquet has ever won more than two matches here. Evidently this is not their favorite tournament. Gasquet could win a few more matches this time but I don’t see him beating Djokovic.

Picks

There you have it. Everyone picks off the tough players, Murray beats Federer in one semifinal, Djokovic beats Nadal in the other and, yes, Djokovic sweeps. Get used to it.

Extra points if you can pick out the player outside the top twenty who gets to the quarterfinals because, for sure, there will be at least one. Who will it be?

Conflict of interest abounds in the incestuous world of professional tennis.

After the Israeli doubles team of Jonathan Erlich and Andy Ram won the Australian Open in January, the ATP asked them to play the tournament in Dubai. The Arab emirates of Qatar and Dubai are a big deal in professional tennis. Both the ATP and the WTA have a tournament in each country and the WTA will move its year-end championships to Qatar for the next three years.

Shahar Peer was the first Israeli to play in the area when she played the WTA Doha event in February – Doha is Qatar’s largest city. Everything went swimmingly but she did take a bodyguard with her just in case. Qatar is one of the most liberal countries in the area but Dubai is a different story.

Israeli citizens cannot get visas to go to Dubai and, as I understand it, a passport with an Israeli stamp (meaning that the holder has visited Israel) will also keep you from getting a visa. I have a friend in Italy who had an Israeli stamp in her passport. In order to travel to Dubai, she had to get a new passport.

The scene was thus set for Erlich and Ram to do Dubai. Their manager, Norman Canter, flew to Dubai two days before the tournament started. Erlich and Ram were all set to fly to Dubai the next day. Canter met with the tournament director and the assistant tournament director but Erlich and Ram never took the flight to Dubai. What happened? In Canter’s words:

From that point on, I’m not making any comments. You can talk to the boys [Erlich and Ram], you can talk to the ATP, you can talk to Allah, to can talk to God, you can talk to Moses, you can talk to Jesus, and you’re not gonna get a lot of answers. And hopefully, some day, the human rights issue, which is what it’s about, will be rectified. It’s 5700 years, I don’t have any hope.

I don’t know what happened 5700 years ago. Tennis journalist Joel Drucker suggested that it might have been the year Joseph was refused entry to the Cairo Open thus demonstrating that a sense of humor is necessary in the face of centuries of conflict.

No one’s saying but it looks like the organizers of the Dubai tournament couldn’t get visas for the players. Erlich and Ram refuse to talk about the incident. Canter did say that he hadn’t planned to go to Indian Wells last week but he traveled there to take up the Dubai issue with the ATP.

Norman Canter is an interesting guy. He made his first million in his twenties designing packaging for Revlon Cosmetics. He moved on to safety equipment, then the oil business and, after that, energy conservation. He says he introduced the first fluorescent light bulb to the U.S. in 1985.

In 1994 Canter got involved in tennis management so that he and his partner, Richard DeVries, could, as he put it, “give people an opportunity to live their dream.” He also views himself as someone who is “trying to right the wrongs that are in tennis and fighting a losing battle.” In his view, tennis is an extremely corrupt sport.

What’s he talking about? Let’s start with Donald Young. A few days ago I mentioned that Young lost 11 straight ATP matches at one point. At the time, he was a client of IMG, the huge sports management company that represents players and owns tennis academies, tennis media, and tennis tournaments. Four of Young’s 11 losses came as a wild card entry in the tournaments at Miami and Indian Wells. IMG owns the Miami tournament and used to own half of the Indian Wells tournament.

If the same company represents the players and owns the events, who does it work for: the player or the event? Young suffered a confidence crisis in his budding career as his management kept feeding him to the lions and he kept losing. IMG certainly didn’t represent Young very well in that case.

IMG shouldn’t have trouble getting wild cards for any of its clients because it also works for the ATP. One of its subsidiaries markets the broadcast rights to the Masters Series events. IMG not only represents players and owns events, it also works directly for the tour.

The ATP has a similar conflict of interest. It used to be the players union but now it represents both the players and the ATP tournaments. You can see where the ATP’s interests lie when they sell a tournament to Dubai even though Israeli players can’t play in it. Clearly the ATP was representing tournaments, not its players. The ATP deserves credit for pushing political change in Dubai, but it’s doubtful that political change was the guiding principle when the ATP accepted Dubai’s bid to buy a tournament.

Here’s a scary thought. IMG owns the Miami tournament and Canter said he heard that the tournament in Miami was up for sale. My stomach flipped when I heard that. What if a foreign country buys it? Could we lose our third largest event after the U.S. Open and Indian Wells? I haven’t been able to verify Canter’s information and even if a foreign country does buy Miami, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll move the tournament.

Doha owns part of the Masters Series event in Hamburg and it still resides in Germany. That part ownership, though, could be causing some problems for the ATP because Doha has some very deep pockets built up from its oil economy. The Hamburg tournament is currently suing the ATP to avoid losing it Masters Series designation and according to Canter, the ATP has spent $8 million dollars in legal fees on the case so far.

The tournament in Monte Carlo is also being demoted and the organizers of the tournament also sued the ATP. Monte Carlo accepted a settlement that keeps its Masters Series designation but drops it from the list of required tournaments. Would Monte Carlo have settled the case if it had Doha’s deep pockets backing it up?

Canter’s management company, Renaissance Tennis Management, currently represents Erlich and Ram, Benjamin Becker, junior player Lera Solovieva, and a few other players trying to make their way up the tennis rankings. It’s a small, independent management company at this point and Canter probably feels like he’s tilting at windmills given the nature of the tennis world, but IMG also started small so there is hope.

And if Canter’s management company does grow into a large organization, maybe Canter will have the opportunity to right some of those wrongs.

Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal lost in the semifinals at Indian Wells by the same lopsided score.

Two matches with identical scores: 6-3, 6-2, and the losers were the number one and two ranked players in the world. At least Rafael Nadal had an excuse. He played tough three set matches against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and James Blake his last two times out, and here he was playing the number three player in the world – Novak Djokovic – in the first semifinal at Indian Wells.

Nadal said he felt slow on the court and it showed. A number of times Djokovic’s deep shots bounced up and Nadal couldn’t control them. That’s not something you see every day.

Roger Federer had a tiny excuse. His quarterfinal match was a walkover because Tommy Haas developed a sinus infection and dropped out of the tournament. That may have affected his rhythm:

Federer’s semifinal opponent was Mardy Fish, though, and Federer had given up exactly one set in five previous matches with him. Federer looked terrible out there. He couldn’t keep his forehand in the court, he didn’t serve well, and he couldn’t do much with his backhand either.

Not that Fish is chopped liver, of course, and Federer went to great pains to point that out when a journalist mentioned Fish’s current ranking of 98:

It’s not like he’s been 98 for the first time in his life [and] he just made a career breakthrough breaking into the top100. The guy has been top 20 before, and he’s had big matches here…Let’s not talk about 98 in the world. We know he’s way better than that.

Federer is right, Fish was ranked as high as 17 and last February he was ranked 22 before he missed time with an injury. But Federer was pretty snarly in his response and that belied the calm he likes to project after a loss. Maybe he looked at the stat sheet and saw that Fish got only 34% of his first serves in and still managed to beat him handily.

It looks to me like the wheels are coming off Federer’s reign even if the players don’t agree. When someone asked Fish if players view Federer differently now that he’s having a tough time winning tournaments, he dismissed the thought:

We just kind of laugh at it. We just think it’s kind of a joke. He’s only played two tournaments. Semifinals (at the Australian Open) while he had mono is pretty good.

I don’t believe it. Federer didn’t used to lose this kind of match and as far as I can tell, he hasn’t lost a match 6-3, 6-2, since January 2003. One person, for sure, who’s licking his lips is Djokovic.

Nadal won this tournament last year and after Miami, he has to defend almost the entire clay court season and a final at Wimbledon. Djokovic reached the semifinals at the French Open and Wimbledon last year so it’s entirely likely that he’ll be breathing down Nadal’s neck by summertime. Djokovic could be the one to unseat Nadal at Roland Garros, not Federer, the way things are going.

How did Fish beat three top ten players at Indian Wells? By being the aggressor. At the first opportunity, he hit the ball hard to one corner or the other. He’s been going for shots before his opponent has and, according to Fish, his opponents were not comfortable with that:

They all defend really well but the way their bank accounts have grown is because they’re aggressive and they’re the aggressor. When I’m the aggressor, I’m not sure they like that as much.

Someone at Fish’s postmatch media session pointed out that the Indian Wells trophy has a whale on it in honor of the corporate sponsor Pacific Life, whose symbol is an airborne whale. A fish trophy for a Fish. How cool is that?

Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal lost in the semifinals at Indian Wells by the same lopsided score.

Two matches with identical scores: 6-2, 6-3, and the losers were the number one and two ranked players in the world. At least Rafael Nadal had an excuse. He played tough three set matches against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and James Blake his last two times out, and here he was playing the number three player in the world – Novak Djokovic – in the first semifinal at Indian Wells.

Nadal said he felt slow on the court and it showed. A number of times Djokovic’s deep shots bounced up and Nadal couldn’t control them. That’s not something you see every day.

Roger Federer had a tiny excuse. His quarterfinal match was a walkover because Tommy Haas developed a sinus infection and dropped out of the tournament. That may have affected his rhythm:

Federer’s semifinal opponent was Mardy Fish, though, and Federer had given up exactly one set in five previous matches with him. Federer looked terrible out there. He couldn’t keep his forehand in the court, he didn’t serve well, and he couldn’t do much with his backhand either.

Not that Fish is chopped liver, of course, and Federer went to great pains to point that out when a journalist mentioned Fish’s current ranking of 98:

It’s not like he’s been 98 for the first time in his life [and] he just made a career breakthrough breaking into the top100. The guy has been top 20 before, and he’s had big matches here…Let’s not talk about 98 in the world. We know he’s way better than that.

Federer is right, Fish was ranked as high as 17 and last February he was ranked 22 before he missed time with an injury. But Federer was pretty snarly in his response and that belied the calm he likes to project after a loss. Maybe he looked at the stat sheet and saw that Fish got only 34% of his first serves in and still managed to beat him handily.

It looks to me like the wheels are coming off Federer’s reign even if the players don’t agree. When someone asked Fish if players view Federer differently now that he’s having a tough time winning tournaments, he dismissed the thought:

We just kind of laugh at it. We just think it’s kind of a joke. He’s only played two tournaments. Semifinals (at the Australian Open) while he had mono is pretty good.

I don’t believe it. Federer didn’t used to lose this kind of match and as far as I can tell, he hasn’t lost a match 6-3, 6-2, since January 2003. One person, for sure, who’s licking his lips is Djokovic.

Nadal won this tournament last year and after Miami, he has to defend almost the entire clay court season and a final at Wimbledon. Djokovic reached the semifinals at the French Open and Wimbledon last year so it’s entirely likely that he’ll be breathing down Nadal’s neck by summertime. Djokovic could be the one to unseat Nadal at Roland Garros, not Federer, the way things are going.

How did Fish beat three top ten players at Indian Wells? By being the aggressor. At the first opportunity, he hit the ball hard to one corner or the other. He’s been going for shots before his opponent has and, according to Fish, his opponents were not comfortable with that:

They all defend really well but the way their bank accounts have grown is because they’re aggressive and they’re the aggressor. When I’m the aggressor, I’m not sure they like that as much.

Someone at Fish’s postmatch media session pointed out that the Indian Wells trophy has a whale on it in honor of the corporate sponsor Pacific Life, whose symbol is an airborne whale. A fish trophy for a Fish. How cool is that?

Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal lost in the semifinals at Indian Wells by the same lopsided score.