{"id":497,"date":"2007-01-05T21:02:07","date_gmt":"2007-01-06T05:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/?p=497"},"modified":"2007-01-05T21:02:07","modified_gmt":"2007-01-06T05:02:07","slug":"2007-atp-player-predictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/2007-atp-player-predictions\/","title":{"rendered":"2007: ATP Player Predictions"},"content":{"rendered":"

You don\u2019t lose a good friend without wallowing in a few bouts of self-doubt and blame. Not if you\u2019re human. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>
\nIt\u2019s been a disastrous start for a few players this week. Even though I picked him to improve on hard court this year, Rafael Nadal lost to Xavier Malisse at Chennai, in the semifinals no less. I suppose it could have been worse. David Nalbandian lost in the first round. I predicted that Nalbandian would continue his string of semifinals in slams and Masters Series events this year so I’m not doing so well either.<\/p>\n

It\u2019ll get worse for Nadal. His first round opponent in Sydney is Chris Guccione, the Australian wild card who went all the way to the final in Adelaide where he lost to Novak Djokovic. At least I got that right. I picked Djokovic to outperform all of the other young guns on the tour this year except for Andy Murray. If Nadal does get to the semis again, he could meet up with James Blake who has beaten Nadal in all three of their matches.<\/p>\n

Nadal and Nalbandian might forget those losses pretty quickly but Lleyton Hewitt could have a headache for a while to come. Hewitt has a disease that\u2019s fairly common on the tour. Andy Murray has it and Elena Dementieva has it too. When things aren\u2019t going well on the court they yell abusively at themselves and, sometimes, at their support staff. Hewitt did it one too many times during his round robin loss to Igor Kunitsyn. His loyal coach Roger Rasheed decided he\u2019d had enough and resigned. Hewitt was evidently stunned when Rasheed turned up at his house to announce his resignation. I have to admit that I\u2019m pretty surprised too.<\/p>\n

Rasheed is a pretty smart guy. Take a look at part of his press release regarding his resignation. He used the opportunity to advertise his services:<\/p>\n

I have also thoroughly enjoyed my time on the road and even though my wife and I have just become parents, I wouldn’t hesitate to jump back into a similar role, as this is the easiest time to travel with a family.<\/i><\/p>\n

In other words, \u201cI want you all to know that I am now immediately available for any other coaching opportunity. My bags are packed and ready. Just ring me up. Really, I\u2019m ready to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unbelievably, it gets worse for Hewitt too. He tore a calf muscle and won\u2019t play in Sydney and could miss the Australian Open. Add this to tendonitis in this knees and the calf muscle injury last year and you have a crumbling career. Hewitt will turn 26 next month, a prime age for most tennis players, but he was number one when he was 19 years old and he\u2019s pushed that tiny body of his very hard for a number of years. The last few against a barrage of big hitters. Maybe it\u2019s like a car, when it starts to break down, it continues to break down.<\/p>\n

Rasheed was Hewitt\u2019s good friend. You don\u2019t lose a good friend without wallowing in a few bouts of self-doubt and blame. Not if you\u2019re human. So even if Hewitt can get himself physically straightened out, his confidence has to be affected.<\/p>\n

If you looked at the Sydney<\/a> and the Auckland<\/a> draw, you might be wondering where all of the big boys are. Nikolay Davydenko, James Blake and Nadal are in Sydney and Tommy Robredo is in Auckland, but when will we see Roger Federer and Andy Roddick and how about Marat Safin? They are at an eight player exhibition event in at the Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club in Melbourne, the site of the Australian Open before it moved to Melbourne Park in 1988. Andy Murray, Ivan Ljubicic, Tommy Haas, Nalbandian, and Radek Stepanek are there too. Each of the eight participants will play three matches over the four days of the tournament.<\/p>\n

I have to say it one more time: scheduling a grand slam in the third week of the calendar is ridiculous. The players at the Kooyong event will have played three matches before the Open. I can\u2019t blame them for sitting out last week either. That\u2019s one way to extend the tiny off-season.<\/p>\n

Last week a reader asked me why I wasn\u2019t publishing my picks every week as I did last year. The short answer is that the ATP fantasy tennis season hasn\u2019t started yet and that\u2019s why I published my picks: to help people choose their weekly fantasy teams. The long answer is that I spent the off-season developing an automated method of gathering player statistics so I don\u2019t have to slog through three or four webpages for every match I pick. Unfortunately that meant learning XSL and XML – programs designed to work with databases. The off-season is not only too short for tennis players, it was too short for me. I haven\u2019t quite finished the whole XML\/XSL thing yet but as soon as I do, whether the fantasy season has started or not, I\u2019ll start picking draws again.<\/p>\n

Speaking of which, the tennis fantasy world is proliferating. Tennis-pool.com<\/a> has a new tennis fantasy game. You get a budget of $15 million dollars to pick ten WTA players and another $15 million dollars to pick ten ATP players. You can trade players during the trading period each week. I was looking forward to trading players because I\u2019ve read so much about fantasy baseball players trading their players within their fantasy leagues. I could see myself trading Amelie Mauresmo to some unsuspecting soul after I\u2019d just gotten inside information that she\u2019d sprained her ankle in a practice session and would miss the next slam.<\/p>\n

I was disappointed on two accounts. First off all, you don\u2019t trade with other people in the fantasy league. You can exchange any two players as long as you stay within your $15 million dollar budget. That\u2019s too easy. I prefer the ATP version. Even though you pick new players every week in the ATP game, you\u2019re only allowed to use the same player five times a year. Who did I choose as my top WTA player? Justine Henin-Hardenne who promptly announced that she\u2019s skipping the Australian Open for personal reasons. The Belgian newspapers are reporting that she is separating from her husband.<\/p>\n

Hopefully the season will improve for Hewiit, Nadal, Henin-Hardenne and me.<\/p>\n

<\/blockquote>\n

See also: 2007: ATP Players Predictions<\/a><\/p>\n

Submit this story to TennisVote!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You don\u2019t lose a good friend without wallowing in a few bouts of self-doubt and blame. Not if you\u2019re human. It\u2019s been a disastrous start for a few players this week. Even though I picked him to improve on hard court this year, Rafael Nadal lost to Xavier Malisse at Chennai, in the semifinals no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tennis-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}