Nadal is not facing a radically depleted or wounded Roger Federer in the final. Federer won all 10 sets he played in picking up his 5th Halle title. Marcos Baghdatis and Nichols Kiefer stand out as solid wins in the quick transition from clay to grass. The Fed has also posted straight set wins over Robin Soderling, 2002 Wimbledon Champion Lleyton Hewitt, 2004 Wimbledon semifinalist Mario Ancic, and the enigmatic talent of Marat Safin. Nadal made a similarly quick and impressive transition from clay to grass, but he did so with the wind of victory at his back not the sting of humiliation. Federer has looked sharp at Halle and at Wimbledon.

If you are a fan of clay tennis, or really just tennis for that matter, you had to be impressed with the show Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal put on today in Hamburg.

Thanks to his impressive performance in Rome, Novak Djokovic is nipping at the heals of Rafael Nadal for that No. 2 ranking spot, and by this time next week he just might get it.

Disaster Series it sure has been. The last three singles matches in Rome have all ended abruptly in retirement.

When the going gets tough, sometimes the tough and the not so tough quit. And that’s just what the not so tough Novak Djokovic did today, just as he has done before, hitting the eject button when things turned against him in a big match.

Great champions rise up. And Roger Federer rose up today with a convincing 5-7, 6-2, 6-2 win over rival David Nalbandian in the Monte Carlo quarterfinals.

Ok. Streaking may be too strong a term to use at the moment to describe Roger Federer.

It wasn’t the dream final for tournament organizers or American fans, but Russian Nikolay Davydenko made a statement on Sunday by capturing the biggest title of his career at the Sony Ericsson Open in Miami.

The first two Masters Series events of the year obviously help set the tone for the tennis year. When Jim Courier won consecutive Super 9 titles at Indian Wells and Key Biscayne in 1991, it helped him gather momentum headed into the French Open, and Courier won his first Grand Slam title. Michael Chang pulled […]

I admit, I saw nothing of the match, and I honestly didn’t give it much of a look thinking Novak Djokovic would not lose to a qualifier named Kevin Anderson that he had never seen before today.