His Time Has Come

Novak Djokovic has said before that he was born in the wrong era for men's tennis -- that if he were just a few years older or younger he could have won a slew of Grand Slam trophies by now and sat firmly in the top spot in the sport. Instead he had to contend with the likes of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, who've combined to win all but two of the last thirty Majors and have together been ranked #1 for almost seven years.

He was criticized for the statement, accused of being too cocky and dismissive, but when you think about it, it's probably not far from the truth. Djokovic had been firmly implanted in the top three for years, even making a jump to #2 for a few weeks here and there. Way before his heart-pounding win over Federer at last year's U.S. Open he had racked up seventeen titles, including four Masters trophies and a year-end championship, producing wins over the elite players to earn them.

Nole also had a championship in Melbourne, of course, but that was eleven Slams ago, and questions were being asked when and whether the next one was coming. He had trouble with his serve early last year and got rid of advisor Todd Martin, who'd he'd brought on about twelve months earlier to help his game. He often seemed to suffer in long, grueling matches, bringing his fitness under fire during five-setters. And yes, he had Major runs ended by Roger and Rafa, but he also lost to Jurgen Melzer, Tommy Haas and Philipp Kohlschreiber.

But something changed when he got back Down Under this year. After winning all his matches at the Hopman Cup, Djokovic came to Melbourne a week early and started his main draw firing on all cylinders. He had a slight hiccup against Ivan Dodig in the second round, but was relentless against a tough Nicolas Almagro and unforgiving versus Tomas Berdych, who incidentally ousted him at Wimbledon in 2010. In the semis against Federer, he repeated his performance in New York, but this time never found himself lagging -- after holding serve the entire first set, he didn't allow Roger to serve out the second and held on to his lead in the third for his only straight set win over the defending champ since that maiden title run in 2008.

Djokovic was the on-paper favorite in the finals, and though I knew he'd put up a fight, admittedly I wasn't convinced he'd ultimately prevail. Sure, he was higher-ranked than opponent Andy Murray, had an extra's day rest coming into the match, lead the pair's head-to-head by the slightest of margins. But the Scot had won his last three meetings with Nole, denying him titles in both Cincinnati and Miami, so he had some momentum of his own. He'd been no slouch in his first six matches, dropping only a handful of games early and finding a way to get aggressive when he found himself down against David Ferrer in the semis. He also had some luck on his side -- originally slated to meet Robin Soderling, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer if he were to win the title, he'd seen his path cleared by others and seemed rather fresh on Sunday. After two Major final appearances without so much as a set to his name, it looked like it might be his turn to finally capture the Slam.

I'm not sure anyone expected what we got.

The two kept it close to start. An amazing twelve-minute second game gave Djokovic a chance to get the early break, but when Murray eventually held it looked like this would not only go the distance, but it would be a marathon. Eight games later, when Nole converted for the first set, I thought last year's runner-up would raise his game like he did against Ferrer, but in twenty minutes he found himself in a 5-0 hole -- a bit later he was down two sets. There were some astonishing rallies, smart shot-making on both sides of the net, but Murray, usually so quick on his feet, found himself unable to get to balls well within his reach and became visibly and audibly frustrated with himself. Though he fought back to three-all in the third, Djokovic got the deciding break in the set and never looked back.



The win for Djokovic is more important than another feather in his cap. So frequently an also-ran in this sport, he made a statement with this championship, convincingly defeating the best in the game -- three top ten players among them. He's got to know now that he can beat anyone in the sport on any stage, and with the insurance Slam trophy soon to reside securely on his mantle, he is no longer in danger of being dubbed a one-hit wonder.

And his contemporaries notwithstanding, he might just add a few more titles to his name and make a run for that top spot. After all, he's already gotten this year off to the perfect start.

A Tale of Two Comebacks

When Kim Clijsters announced a few years ago that she'd be coming out of retirement, I knew it was just a matter of time before her compatriot Justine Henin did the same. The two were long-time rivals, just about splitting their twenty-two matches, each holding the #1 ranking for some time and both making a mark at the Majors. Still, you could argue that with seven Slams and three year-ends at the top of the game, it was the slightly older Henin who was more dominant in their first careers.

Oh what a difference retirement makes.

Just a few weeks after Kim won her second U.S. Open in 2009, Henin made the decision to return to the sport. She started out well, of course, making the finals at her first two tournaments back -- one, the '10 Australian Open -- and even won a couple trophies along the way. But she failed to make quite the impact of her countrywoman, who was making deep runs at the big events almost every time she showed up. When Justine suffered an elbow injury during her fourth round match at Wimbledon -- ironically, against Kim -- it seemed clear their fortunes were heading in different directions.

Since then, of course, Clijsters has won her third Major and her third WTA Championship. Despite a #3 seeding in Melbourne, many picked her as the favorite for the title, while Justine -- the winner here in 2004, again after beating Kim in the final -- was more of an afterthought, and even before her third round dismissal by Svetlana Kuznetsova, I wondered how long she would last. A few days later Henin announced a second retirement, pulled out of Fed Cup, and officially left the sport for good -- or at least for now.

Meanwhile Kim was working her way through the Melbourne draw and fought her way to the final -- the first Major championship match she'd play outside of New York in seven years. There she'd meet a spunky Na Li, her surprise vanquisher just two weeks ago in Sydney -- the Chinese had been down 0-5 in the first set before rebounding in grand style to win the biggest trophy of her career. Proving just how healthy she was, Li battled through her first five matches without dropping a set, dismantling my favorite Victoria Azarenka and coming back against top seed Caroline Wozniacki to go one better than her breakthrough run here last year.

She got off to a good start against Kim in her first Major final -- after losing the first eight points of the match, Li was not intimidated and kept up her aggressive hitting. Before you knew it she was giving the heavy favorite fits and broke her opponent three times to take the first set. They traded service games in the second, and Li was actually the one able to hold first, but it was then that Clijsters was able to up her game. She won three straight to pull even and another two to get the decider off to a good start. Though she dropped her next game, Kim was able to keep her cool, control her errors and finish off the third set in just over half an hour.



It was probably the highest quality women's final we've seen in a long time, and only the second in the past four-plus years that went the distance. But more importantly, it cemented Kim Clijsters as the one to beat in women's tennis -- when she was down she found a way to fight through adversity and prevail like a champion, and a third Slam title since returning to competitive play suddenly makes her second career even more impressive than her first.

All that sure makes the difference between her comeback and Justine's much more dramatic. And though Kim's alluded to the fact that her's might also be coming to an end soon, with the momentum she has it's hard to believe that will be the case -- just about two years into it, she might have several more to go.

A Moment, Please, to Appreciate the Magnitude

Let's just take a minute to reflect on what events of the past few days could mean for tennis:

Given recent upsets, ailments, and breakthroughs, there's a real likelihood that we'll see two first-time Grand Slam winners at this Australian Open.

It would be the first time that's happened since the French Open of 2004.

For the women, we have known for some time that there would be at least have a first-time Melbourne champ -- as soon as Maria Sharapova lost in the fourth round, all previous winners Down Under had been eliminated. Sure three of the top four seeds advanced to the semis with fairly little drama, but of them Kim Clijsters was the only one with a Major to her name -- all three, of course, in New York.

She took on recent foil Vera Zvonareva in the semis, a woman she beat for last year's U.S. Open title but has lost to three other times since returning to the game -- once, even, at that Slam over in London. Neither has played perfectly in Melbourne, and I have to admit I thought the Russian would bring her game a little harder on Thursday. But she lost serve four times during the match and was never able to get a handle on Kim's. Neither committed an inordinate amount of errors, but Clijsters kept her game ever so slightly clearer, and in just over an hour ended Vera's streak of two straight Major finals.

In the other half of the draw, last year's surprise semifinalist Na Li proved that previous performance was no fluke. She followed up an inspiring win in Sydney -- we'll get to that in a second -- by taking all ten sets of her first five matches, and rebounded when trailing top seed Caroline Wozniacki in the semis. She had twice as many errors as her opponent, but four times the number of winners. And though they traded breaks liberally, over more than two-and-a-half hours, Li had earned her first Slam final.

That sets up an unlikely rematch of the championship game from just two weeks ago. Kim was heavily favored there, but a spunky Li astonishingly came back from a 0-5 deficit in the first set and not only won the match, but did it in straights. She'll be the underdog again, maybe by an even bigger margin, as Kim is clearly more comfortable on the grandest of stages. But Li has wins over the Belgian, and has kept all their matches close. Plus this is the Asia-Pacific Slam, so you can't count out the benefit of homecourt advantage -- and nearly twelve years into her career, the big win now would be a breakthrough for the Chinese.

Things on the men's side are even more interesting -- for the first time in three years, and only the second since early 2005, neither Rafael Nadal nor Roger Federer will play in a Grand Slam final.

Let that sink in for a minute.

Though he didn't lose a set early in the tournament, the ailing top seed had been iffy for most of the fortnight and courageously fought but convincingly lost his quarterfinal match against countryman David Ferrer. It was the first time the Spaniard reached the semis in Melbourne, and coming off a trophy-run in Auckland, he is now on a nine-match win streak. To go one better, he'll have to get past last year's runner-up, Andy Murray, who has only lost one set this entire event. He actually lags Ferrer by a slight margin in their career head-to-head, but the Scot's won both their meetings on hard courts, so this won't at all be an easy run to at least repeat.

No matter the results of that match, though, we won't see a rerun of last year's final. Roger Federer, who had won four titles since the U.S. Open, was my early favorite to bring home the title an Open-era record fifth time. And when he met Novak Djokovic in the semis, he was favored by most to avenge that devastating loss in New York. The two kept it close for the first set -- neither allowed a break chance on serve -- and Roger even had a chance to pull even with the second on his racquet, but the three-hour, three-setter ultimately went the way of the Serb.

Novak, of course, is the only remaining player who's ever won in Australia, and he has just slightly positive records on both Murray and Ferrer. But he's by no means dominated either of them, so it's really anyone's game. And if we see an upset on Sunday, it could help usher in a new era of tennis power.

Clearly you have to like the chances of the more experienced player in these situations, and the odds will likely be on Kim and Nole to lift the trophies at the end of the day. But you can't discount the performances of these Australian Cinderellas, who've been just as unstoppable as their favored foes and, more importantly, shown no signs of tiring out.

And with what might be the only chance these guys have at a Major title for quite some time, I expect they'll do what they can to make history.

Opportunity for the Underdog

By the time most of us wake up in the morning, the final eight at the Australian Open will have been decided. Some know what it's like to be here, while others are treading on unfamiliar ground. And a very select few have the opportunity to do something great.

Half of the field has already been decided. Current world #1 Caroline Wozniacki has marked her best-yet performance in Melbourne and earned a chance to meet one of last year's surprise semifinalists for a spot in the championship match. And defending titleholder Roger Federer advanced in solid form and will face 2008 winner Novak Djokovic in the semis.

And while you have to give the advantage to the more-experienced players left to fight it out, their opponents are not athletes to be overlooked.

Petra Kvitova has played on the big stage before, making the semis at Wimbledon last year with wins over Wozniacki and Victoria Azarenka on the way. She followed up a title in Brisbane with big wins over Sam Stosur and Flavia Pennetta here. She's split her past two meetings with current opponent Vera Zvonareva, and though she began her match with two straight service breaks, she seems to have rebounded nicely and could do some damage if she pulls herself together.

Former top-ten player Aggie Radwanska was one of my picks to prevail in New York last year, but injury kept her from doing the damage I hoped for. Still reeling in recovery, she has been playing better tennis with each round Down Under and though she was taken to three sets in her last match, was only really tested in her opener versus Kimiko Date Krumm. She'll have to raise her game against Kim Clijsters today, of course, but for a girl who's probably desperate to display her potential, she might be able to do it.

It get's a little more interesting for the men. World #46 Alexandr Dolgopolov has beaten one favorite after another en route to his first career quarterfinal, including fourth-seeded Robin Soderling in a long five setter on Monday. He's lost his only match against Andy Murray, who he'll face next, but that was nearly five years ago -- and if the Ukraine has proven anything it's that he's not going to be intimidated by experience.

The player with the best chance at causing an upset, though, might be David Ferrer who last reached the quarters in Melbourne back in 2008. He faces compatriot Rafael Nadal, the top seed here, a man who's won eleven of their fourteen previous matches, but two of Ferrer's wins have come on hard courts -- one at the U.S. Open. He's also coming off a title run in Auckland, a tournament of which he doesn't seem to be feeling any negative effects.

Of course experience will be on the side of each of their opponents, but all these guys have done their part to prove they deserve what they've achieved so far -- I wouldn't be surprised if at least one of them pulled off the unlikely win today.

And who knows what that could lead to?

A Different Story

It's often said that real tennis champions always bring their best to the Majors -- Roger, Rafa, Serena even Venus back in the day can all lose match after match at smaller, lead-up tournaments, but somehow they manage to become unstoppable once they hit the courts at the Slams. But a couple performances in Melbourne this past week prove that the same attitude can be seen in other players too.

Flavia Pennetta had once become the first Italian woman to be ranked in the top ten, but over the past year or so she's become much more dominant on the doubles circuit. She lost a couple first rounds in singles late in 2010 and though she defeated Vera Zvonareva a week ago in Sydney, she fell to then-world #77 Bojana Jovanovski the next round in.

But once she arrived in Melbourne, Pennetta turned up the heat -- seeded twenty-second, her lowest in almost three years, she was flawless in her first two rounds and survived a tough Shahar Peer in her third match. She's broken her opponents' serve an intimidating fifteen times and has maintained a solid winner-to-error record. She has never made it to the fourth round here, but with her next match against Petra Kvitova -- a women she's beaten in three of their last four meetings -- she might have earned herself a golden opportunity.

But some players had been a little more in the weeds leading up to this tournament.

Marin Cilic, who'd won two of three tournaments to start off last year and was one of my favorites to close out 2010 at the top of the sport, hadn't put together back-to-back wins since August. The two-time defending champion Chennai not only couldn't reclaim the title earlier in the month, but he lost in the first round.

In Melbourne, though, where he reached the semifinals last year, he's transformed into his old self. He handled Donald Young and a tough Santiago Giraldo to open, and took big-serving John Isner to 9-7 in the fifth set, serving twenty-two aces and three times as many winners. He's got a fourth round date with top-seeded Rafael Nadal, who he beat in their only other meeting. It certainly won't be a walk in the park, but if he's in better shape than the flu-plagued champion, he might be able to pounce again.

Francesca Schiavone has tasted victory, of course, thanks to her unlikely run to the title in Paris almost a year ago. But since then she's struggled to really shine, beating a top ten player only once and having her Roland Garros win over Sam Stosur summarily avenged in Doha. At twenty-nine years of age, I'm not sure anyone gave her a chance in Melbourne.

Of course, Schiavone is the #6 seed, and so hasn't faced the most formidable of opponents -- she was even pushed to three sets in her first two match-ups and needed sixteen games in the decider against Rebecca Marino to get the win. It wasn't until her fourth round against 2009 French Open champ Svetlana Kuznetsova that we saw the kind of mettle that makes her a champions. Saving six match points she emerged the winner in the longest women's match ever at the Australian Open -- four and three-quarters hours -- and made her first ever quarterfinal here. Of course, facing world #1 Caroline Wozniacki won't be easy if she's at all worn out, but Francesca has certainly shown he can hang in against all the odds.

Tomas Berdych had also been struggling since his break-out last year. His amazing run in Miami was topped only by his stellar showing at Wimbledon, where he dismissed Roger Federer in the quarters. But though the Czech is at a career-high ranking, he's only won a handful of matches since the second half of last year, even notching a first round loss at the U.S. Open.

But Berdych seems reinvigorated in Melbourne. He rebounded from a set down against Philipp Kohlschreiber in the second round, and stayed tough against Richard Gasquet a match later. I have to admit I didn't know what to expect when he faced off against similarly struggling Fernando Verdasco on Sunday -- he just barely leads the career head-to-head, 6-4. But Tomas was surprisingly clean, committing only eight unforced errors while winning every one of his net approaches. I would never have guessed the match would be so one-sided, but after less than two hours, Berdych had earned the right to meet Novak Djokovic in the quarters. He's actually won their only meeting at a Major -- last year at the All England Club -- so you know he's got what it takes to give the former champ some trouble.

It's nice to see these guys, some seasoned veterans, others still-emerging talent, up their game when they get to the big leagues, and it certainly shows how much damage they can cause to their opponents during a fortnight. There are still a couple of even tougher matches left for them to win, but if they keep their fortitude, any of them just might be around come next weekend.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

I've been writing about numbers for almost fifteen years, and one thing I've learned is that you can make data say anything you want it to, depending on how you look at things -- and that doesn't make it any more predictive of an outcome.

And that's especially true in sports. How many times have you heard how Team A has never beaten Team B when trailing at the half, on the road, in January, when it's below forty degrees in Houston? Or that Player One has a perfect record against Player Two in games played in the southern hemisphere before noon Pacific Time? Add enough caveats -- no matter how ridiculous -- to an assumption, and you can make a case for any result.

Statistics certainly have the ability to skew our perception, and they don't always tell the true story of how a battle was fought. And all you have to do is look at a couple matches at this year's Australian Open. There are some simple incongruities -- David Nalbandian and Lleyton Hewitt actually scored an equal number of points in their almost-five hour slugfest, while Ivo Karlovic again found a way to lose a match when out-acing his opponent, forty-eight to ten. But it can get more complicated than that.

Dominika Cibulkova lost her third round to top-seeded Caroline Wozniacki in straight sets, but it was the teeny Slovak who came out the aggressor. She barreled off thirty-one winners against the world #1, who only scored eleven of her own. She was a little sloppy -- over forty unforced errors, almost four times Caro's -- but that's more an indication of the chances she took versus a highly favored opponent. While Wozniacki seemed content to knock balls back over the net, it was Cibulkova who came up with the risky, more imaginative play, and maybe should have won the match.

Robin Haase didn't last quite as long, but for the first half against veteran Andy Roddick, you might have thought you were witnessing an upset. The twenty-three year old Dutchman took control early, trapping his opponent at the net and allowing no break chances in the opening set. He won nearly eighty percent of his first serves and about half of Andy's. In the second he kept it close -- the two were equal on both winners and errors, and neither made a dent on the other's serve. When Roddick won that in a tiebreak, though, it was all over for Haase, and he dropped the next two sets in about an hour.

And then you have the surprising match between last year's runner-up Justine Henin and one-time French Open champ Svetlana Kuznetsova. The Russian had a surprisingly poor 2-16 record against her third-round opponent over their eight-plus year history and had never beaten her at a Slam -- in fact her only two wins came in tight three setters. And as one of my friends pointed out, Henin had only lost at the Australian Open to players ranked -- either at the time or at some point -- #1 in the world, and Kuzey topped out at #2.

But it was Sveta who came out firing this time. Though she made slightly fewer errors and a handful more winners, she was cleaner when it counted. She stayed strong after losing a break-lead in the second set and after failing to serve it out. She saved set points and withstood faster serves, and after two hours, Kuznetsova was the one left standing. Maybe she is heading for the #1 ranking...

So what can we learn from all this? Well for one thing, numbers -- whether stats, scorelines or match length -- clearly don't tell the whole story. And for another, past performance is no indication of future results. That's not to say that keeping and monitoring such minute records doesn't have it's place -- but it certainly can't beat watching the darn games!

A Chance to Break Through

We've reached that point in the Australian Open where, had there been no upsets, we'd see seeds play seeds across the board. But what fun would it be if there were no upsets? With so many of the sports top players dropping from the start, it's not only wreaked havoc with the draws, but given a couple lesser-known players a real chance to continue their early runs.

Twenty-three year old Monica Niculescu had only won one match in Melbourne before this year, but she downed a tough Timea Bacsinszky in the first round and followed it up by beating Wimbledon standout Tsvetana Pironkova on Wednesday. They might not have been the highest-ranked players, but with a third round match against a wholly beatable Francesca Schiavone, the Romanian might be able to make a big statement. It'll only get harder, of course, as one of two other Grand Slam champions -- Justine Henin or Svetlana Kuznetsova -- will be waiting in the wings, but for someone who's never won more than two matches at a Major, we're sure seeing some signs of progress.

World #46 Alexandr Dolgopolov is making his Australian Open debut, but he's been playing a lot of tennis recently. After making the quarters in Moscow and St. Petersburg to round out 2010, he romped Sam Querrey in Sydney. The Ukranian hasn't faced a seeded player yet -- his previous opponent took care of that for him -- but with a third round date with Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, a man he took to five sets last year at Wimbledon, he's in a similar position to show his strength and potential. Like Niculescu, though, he could meet an even tougher opponent after that -- Robin Soderling should have no trouble advancing -- but if Dolgopolov is going to continue climbing the rankings, he'll have to face the best players.

Julia Goerges is ranked just outside of seeding territory, so it's not the biggest surprise that she's made it this far. But though she's riding a wave of momentum that scored her wins over Petra Kvitova, Ana Ivanovic and Sam Stosur since the U.S. Open and even earned her first Tour trophy in Bad Gastein, she's never had much success at the big events. That could change though, as her next opponent, 2008 champion Maria Sharapova, is not looking quite as sharp as she once was. And with Venus Williams and Andrea Petkovic likely to wear each other out to make the fourth round, it might be Julia's turn to pounce.

Japan's Kei Nishikori has been building himself back up, having dropped clear off the rankings when an elbow injury took him out of contention in 2009. He survived a feisty Fabio Fognini in his first round and withstood a bagel in the third set against Florian Mayer on Wednesday to lock in his best performance yet in Melbourne. And though he's got two top-ten players coming up -- Fernando Verdasco followed potentially by Tomas Berdych -- neither is playing his best tennis these days, and might be surprised in their runs.

The biggest on-paper upset so far this tournament has come from twenty-five year old Shuai Peng who withstood several comeback attempts from seventh-seeded Jelena Jankovic yesterday to make the third round Down Under. And for her efforts, she's rewarded with what could be the best prospects of the underdogs -- she owns a solid two-to-one career record over Ayumi Morita, who she'll face next, and could face either an ailing Aggie Radwanska or former Juniors champ Simona Halep after that. Despite her ten-plus years on Tour, Peng's never made the quarterfinals at a Slam, and I've got to like her chances now.

It's always nice -- and sometimes commonplace -- to see some new faces emerge at the Majors, but these guys in particular have the added fortune of a fairly clear path for at least the next few rounds. I'm not saying they'll win the whole thing, but it sure is a great way to start the year.