Doha & Shanghai Thoughts
The Sony Ericsson Year End Championships have reached the semi-final stage, albeit in a bit of an anti-climactic environment. Today, both Serena Williams & Ana Ivanovic pulled out of their final matches, against Kuznetsova & Dementia, respectively. I know I would feel slighted if I were a Friday ticket holder. There are still matches in progress, but the matchups for tomorrow’s semi’s are set – Vera Zvonareva will take on fellow Russian Elena Dementieva in the first match; and Venus Williams will take on world #1 Jelena Jankovic in the second. In the all Russian affair, I see Zvonareva making a surprise appearance in the finals. She dominated her group winning all three of her matches, while Dementieva was only 1-1 and was the beneficiary of Serena defaulting today. Although Jankovic has been the most consistent performer on the WTA circuit this year, Venus seems like she is on a mission and I see her holding the Winner’s trophy on Sunday.
Shanghai starts up next week, and the groups are as follows: Red Group – Federer, Murray, Roddick, Simon; Gold Group – Djokovic, Davydenko, Tsonga, del Potro. The Red Group seems to me a little less competitive. Federer & Murray have arguably been the two top players in the world since Nadal won Wimbledon, and while Roddick and Simon did well to get to Shanghai, I don’t see either of them making it past the group stage. In my opinion, the Gold group is far more intriguing. Djokovic & Davydenko are the two higher ranked players, but del Potro and Tsonga have both been better over the past few months. On the other hand, this is by far the deepest into a season del Potro & Tsonga have both gone, and who knows how their bodies will hold up. No matter what happens though, I see Federer being the victor. In some strange, strange way, he simply has the most to prove. He made it to two Grand Slam Finals, and won a 5th straight US Open, but the feeling in the tennis world is that if Federer doesn’t win here, it will put the exclamation point on a “disappointing” year. It’s similar to a Boston fan being disappointed after the Red Sox only made it to Game 7 of the ALCS, after a Celtics championship and another AFC championship for the Patriots. Wait a minute, I am disappointed, but I digress…
Tennis.com provides some thoughts on Shanghai.
Interesting mailbag from Jon Wertheim. And, as always, his Ad In/Ad Out feature.
Great article on 2003 Wimbledon Finals from the CNN/SI vault.
Bonnie Ford’s ideas on next ATP CEO.
Greg Garber’s take on Shanghai.
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