Excellent. At least we are more or less guaranteed to have both of them at 1 and 2 all year which should guarantee a few head to head matchups in finals.
Tennis 2018
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Excellent. At least we are more or less guaranteed to have both of them at 1 and 2 all year which should guarantee a few head to head matchups in finals.
If Nadal tweaks one muscle during the clay season he might lose half his points, though. It's a walk on a tight rope.
He confirmed he won't be playing in Dubai this week. Next on the schedule is IW and then Miami.
Nice....I'm just down the road from Indian Wells and may try to catch that.
Don't know about you guys, but I'd just love Federer winning Roland Garros again, this time beating Nadal in the final, just to revenge his loss in Wimbledon '08 
Yeah, not gonna happen though.
Yeah, not gonna happen though.
Has he? Last thing I heard was his post match interview where he said he wants to decide that in the coming week.
Don't know about you guys, but I'd just love Federer winning Roland Garros again, this time beating Nadal in the final, just to revenge his loss in Wimbledon '08
Yeah, not gonna happen though.
I doubt he’d even play at Roland Garros.
Even though the clay season is a free hit for him to get points, I doubt he’d put his body through that as clay is the most gruelling surface.
A fit Nadal would still absolutely devour Federer on the clay of Paris.
What the hell has happened to Djokovic ? Seems to have fallen off the earth. Is he done or what ?
So he might've changed his mind because he didn't rule out Dubai today.
Anyway, skipping it would be the better idea anyway I guess.
He had what he called a "small medical intervention" on his elbow after the AO.
His dad recently said that he expects Djokovic to return to Masters level tournaments in May, but since that's not from the horses mouth I'd say it's still very much unclear how he's doing. He might be keeping his cards close to his chests while planing to return for Indian Wells for all we know, he might be completely fecked up and not play for months...
Hope he doesn't anyway. He has the #1 spot till the end of IW, and in a row at this stage would definitely tax his body, regardless of the weak field in Dubai.
Physically Hard impacts your body more negatively than Clay, but the latter is more demanding on your stamina due to the grinding nature of the matches.
Nadal usually fecks his knees on hard courts because he exerts too much force on his joints and the blowbacks are more severe. He can run for weeks on clay. Federer though at this point is more concerned about priming himself for Wimbledon, so his clay days are pretty much done.
@Raoul I'm currently trying to get rid of two tickets for a Friday at IW. Meant to buy Sat but bought Fri. Let me know if you are interested.
If you plan on going, buy the tickets (From anywhere) now regardless. Regular tickets at decent prices are almost gone on the weekends.
Cool thanks. Not sure if I'll be able to make it depending on work, but i'll keep it in mind.
Any chance of Federer playing Clay season this year? Has he given any indications/hint regarding that? He can make up good number of points there given he has nothing to defend from last year. Doesn't even need to play whole season. Couple of tournaments including French open will be handy to gain points in no. 1 ranking battle.
The official word is he'll decide after Miami (again) but his fitness trainer explains pretty well why it won't happen towards the bottom of this article. The only way I see it happening is if he's launching an all-out assault on YE #1 and retiring at the end of the season, and even then it would be too risky.
Nadal pulls out of Mexican open. A doubt for Indian Wells and Miami.
He should just skip all of them and just wait for the clay season.
He should just skip all of them and just wait for the clay season.
Its going to be an uphill slog for him to regain last year's form imo. He'll obviously do well at RG, but other than that I wouldn't expect him to win much else.
The pattern in Nadal’s career thus far points to this being a dreadful year for him. Wouldn’t surprise me if he can’t even manage a Masters 1000 title, let alone Slam.
Should absolutely skip the rest of the Spring HC season. If Fed fails to defend both IW and Miami he might even automatically be back to no.1. Go all out for the clay swing.
Should absolutely skip the rest of the Spring HC season. If Fed fails to defend both IW and Miami he might even automatically be back to no.1. Go all out for the clay swing.
If Nadal skips the sunshine double, Federer needs 2 SF's to stay at #1, which isn't really a hard task. He's leading 600 points after Acapulco.
Which is why I said 'might'. If Fed twitch a muscle at IW then that's Nadal back on top.
Yeah, that would be the biggest obstacle for Fed - to stay healthy. Given the current pool and also injured Nadal, if Federer is healthy he has pretty good chance at repeating the double this year as well.
Spanish media is saying he is considering skipping both Indian Wells and Miami.
He’d be foolish not to. First clay tournament starts 15th April, so he’s got a lot of time to rest up.
He doesn’t need to play in hard court tournaments that really don’t lead to nothing. Not like there is a hard court slam to prepare. I know some regard Indian Wells as the 5th slam.
He’d be foolish not to. First clay tournament starts 15th April, so he’s got a lot of time to rest up.
He doesn’t need to play in hard court tournaments that really don’t lead to nothing. Not like there is a hard court slam to prepare. I know some regard Indian Wells as the 5th slam.
It's official. he's out of the sunshine double
https://www.facebook.com/Nadal/posts/10155643685711026
https://www.facebook.com/Nadal/posts/10155643685711026
Wise decision
Del Porto swatting aside Zverev to reach the Mexican open final.
Wawrinka has pulled out too. Just goes to show how tough it is at their age to come back from big injuries, so credit has to go to Federer for coming back the way he did last year.
Wawrinka has pulled out too. Just goes to show how tough it is at their age to come back from big injuries, so credit has to go to Federer for coming back the way he did last year.
Not a bad week for Del Potro. Beating Ferrer, Thiem, Zverev and Anderson.
Ferrer and Thiem are kinda useless on HC though.
Delpo on top form is probably the 2nd or at worst 3rd best player on HC currently, so not a surprise he can swat them aside.
They are still good players that he has to beat. He wasn’t making it far in these tournaments for the last few years. So for him to win this tournament with relative ease is a big boost for him ahead of IW.
I think Ferrer can hardly qualify as 'good' these days. He's ancient, currently ranked 38 and has been struggling for a couple of years in 500/1000/Slams now. And Thiem lost to him
.The only impressive name out of that list is Zverev and he has a big bottle job in him. Anderson is 0-6 against DelPo.
I think Ferrer can hardly qualify as 'good' these days. He's ancient, currently ranked 38 and has been struggling for a couple of years in 500/1000/Slams now. And Thiem lost to him
The only impressive name out of that list is Zverev and he has a big bottle job in him. Anderson is 0-6 against DelPo.
Jesus Christ, do you argue with everything? Ranked 38 doesn’t mean he is bad does it. You making it sound like he beat 4 players who weren’t even in the top 100.
It was his first ATP 500 tournament win in 5 years. 3 of the 4 players he beat are in the top 10. Without Djokovic, Nadal, Wawrinka and Murray that is the sort of players he’d probably be meeting in the later rounds of the tournaments. You can only beat whats in front of you. You were saying the shit about Nadal last year at the US open. But for some strange reason never say it when Federer wins a tournament.
Ferrer has won the Mexican open 3 times. I don’t care if Thiems not great on hard courts or Zverev is a bottle job. Del Potro wasn’t winning tournaments like this for years, so it’s great he’s finally regaining consistency and beating top 10 players.
What? I said right off the bat that I consider him the 2nd or 3rd best hard court player at the moment and but for a bit of luck with injury/draw etc he could have ended last year on a high note with a win in Basel or made it to the WTF. I merely made the point that it was not a surprise he beat them as he is well capable of it.
Rank 38 is also pretty bad if you ask me. I have a bit of a soft spot for Ferrer and still keep an eye out for him occasionally but it's clear he's well past his sell by date at this point. Also, it's funny that you need to bring Federer and Nadal USO into this since I've said on many occasion that I don't believe the end result would be any different even if he had somehow scraped past DelPo.
Del Potro is 29. He's not ancient. That was the age Wawrinka started winning and Cilic just made 2 Slam final in the past 12 months at the same age. He had a bad time with injury but since the tail end of last year he's been on good form and should be beating the likes of 35 year old Ferrer, Thiem and Anderson. Believe it or not, people can like a player and still be reserved with praise.
Just listening to a tennis podcast and they are talking about potential changes to the Davis Cup (something Gerard Pique is involved in). Don't have an article explaining it, but what are people's views, if any?
I see Rafa is back to #1 this morning after Fed had 990 points removed.
Doesn't Federer get to defend his points before they get withdrawn? Live rankings have him dropping to No.2 but the official rankings still have him at No.1
Yeah i was looking at the LIVE rankings chart this morning. I'm guessing his performance this week will change that back to Federer being number one after he goes a bit deeper into the tournament.
Needs SF or better to stay at #1. The points from last year are dropped prior to the tournament, but the new rankings are refreshed after the tournament ends.
In this case however the tournament will end not next week but after 10 days, so I think Nadal will be #1 for the week 12-18 of March..
I think the points of players still playing in a tournament don't get changed unless they are out of the tournament by the time the refresh happens. Might be wrong, but Federer should stay Nr. 1 throughout if he reaches the SF.
Serena with a straight sets win on her return. Be interesting to see how quickly she can get into some good form.
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