atp tour

Tennis Bytes: Somdev rises to 94, a shorter ATP tour?

Somdev is hitting his stride and new heights on the ATP tour.

His ranking has risen to 94, his best ever on the ATP tour.

Somdev has been hovering in and out of the top 100 for the past few  months.

A ranking within the top 100 will ensure automatic entry into the majors allowing him to skip the grind of qualifying rounds.

Devvarman recently clinched the men’s singles gold at the CommonWealth Games in New Delhi, justifying his top seeding.

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Tennis Bytes: Sampras in the news, Federer wins 64th title

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Pete Sampras is in the news — in an active role and a passive one.

Roger Federer won the If Stockholm Open equalling Sampras’ record of 64 career titles.

Along the way, Federer passed 900 career matches —- the only current player on the tour to do so.

An interesting bit of trivia is that Federer has never retired from any of his matches.

This is hard evidence of his durability and mental toughness.

Federer’s powers may be on the wane but his popularity with fans endures.

The Stockholm Open did not offer any real challenge to Federer but sometimes the less challenging ones are harder to win.

Pete Sampras lost to Greg Rusedski 4-6,2-6 at Chengdu, China in an ATP Champions Tour event final.

The event also saw the debut of Thai star, Paradorn Srichapan.

The top seed in the event was Swede Thomas Enqvist.

This is one tour when the also-rans can get their own sweet measure of revenge for the many defeats inflicted on them by their better counterparts in their heyday.

Greg Rusedski boasts of just one win against the 14 time Grand Slam champion on the ATP tour.

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Roger Federer: Now A Fish Out Of Water

The writing is on the wall.

We’ve dismissed suggestions that Federer is fading and have hoped against hope to be rewarded with another Slam this year but we were destined to be disappointed.

Federer has lost his aura of invincibility. We just failed to recognise it for what it was.

We believed that it was only Nadal who stood in his way. How we have demonised that man from Mallorca!

But we forget that our Gods are human too. We forget that they age too.

That they succumb to their mistakes.

That their creaking bones may no longer withstand the rigors of a gruelling tour.

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Somdev scores a ton

The Ton Is Here!

He’s done it! Finally!

Somdev Devvarman has cracked the top 100 on the ATP tour. Another milestone in his fledgling career.

He becomes just the second Indian male player in a decade or so to be ranked amongst the top 100. Leander Paes was the last Indian male to be ranked so, achieving that distinction in 1999.

Somdev’s rise to the list of centurions has not been meteoric; rather it has been steady but sure.

He is now ranked 96 in the world. However, he is unlikely to be perched there for too long; he was thwarted in his bid to defend last year’s accumulated points.More on that later.