tennis gut

  Sinner or Alcaraz It’s the end of the year and Carlos Alcaraz is the yearend #1.   It’s not very surprising – he won two slams this year and a total of eight tournaments. And right next to him is Jannik Sinner who also won two slams this year.   Sinner was #1 last year and won eight tournaments.   This year he’s a little behind Alcaraz in the tournament and points count, but part of that has to do with missing three prime months of the year while he was serving a doping suspension that he probably didn’t deserve. On the surface, it looks like Alcaraz and Sinner have formed a duopoly.   Each has won four slams in the last two years, each was #1 for one of those years, and their tournament victory count is about the same.   The two are rapidly distancing themselves from the field – no one else seems remotely in their category or able to really challenge them. They could easily dominate the next five, seven, or even ten years. So who is better?   ...

Ken Rosewall may seem an unlikely candidate for Greatest of all Time.   The scrawny 5 foot 7 inch Australian from the 1950’s was ironically nicknamed, “Muscles.” And he never won Wimbledon.   The reason Ken Rosewall belongs in this discussion is the number 23.   As in majors.   The same number currently held by Serena Williams and the greatest number for any man.   Of course, some lists of majors show Rosewall at only eight.   Why the discrepancy?   It comes down to understanding the tennis landscape of the 1930’s to 1970’s.   It used to be that amateur tennis was the true international face of tennis.   Professional players were seen by the elite as vulgar money grubbers and open tennis didn’t arrive until 1968, but the move to change started in 1927.   That year international tennis superstar Suzanne Lenglen left behind amateur tennis and went on tour as a pro.     The impact of Lenglen can hardly be overestim...

Cracks at the top? ATP 2019 Summary and 2020 Preview A new generation of players has arrived near the top of the rankings to challenge the established Big Three of Nadal, Djokovic, and Federer.   With a combined age of 103, it is simply astonishing that these same three names are at the top of the yearend rankings twelve years after they first landed there, in 2007.   But what’s new this year are their primary challengers. Last year’s ATP top 10 was proclaimed the tallest and oldest of all time, with only Alexander Zverev and Dominic Thiem in their 20’s.   But this year there are five players age 26 or younger – last year’s two plus Daniil Medvedev, 23, Stefanos Tsitsipas, 21, and Matteo Berrettini, 23.   When the Big Three, or more rightly, the Big Four, including Andy Murray, were first dominating, their primary challengers were the likes of Davydenko, Roddick, and Nalbandian.   A few years later, it was Del Potro, Tsonga, Ferrer, and Berdych. ...