The State of the Game in the Second Season of 2012: Djokovic, Nadal, Federer, Murray and Who else?!

Written by: Tennischiro on 28th February 2012

The State of the Game in the Second Season of 2012: Djokovic, Nadal, Federer, Murray and Who else?! |

You probably thought there were just 4 seasons a year, seemingly even less if you live in someplace like Southern California. But the professional tennis tour has more seasons than that. Those seasons are about the surfaces and conditions and the points, the damn points. Our articles from Daily Tennis will give you much more detailed exposition of the players’ battles to regain, maintain or enhance their individual rankings (for both the ATP and the WTA), but I want to give you a little idea of the flow through the year, especially for the ATP Tour. The WTA follows a similar cycle, but with Federation Cup instead of Davis Cup. The two circuits synchronize at just a few stops besides the Grand Slams and Indian Wells and Miami are two of those places, almost the entire month of March.

Season 1 is the Australian Open and the couple of weeks before it starts and concludes with the first round of Davis Cup just after the Australian Open. There are a maximum of about 2300 points available if you win one ATP250, the Aussie Open and 3 matches in a World Group Davis Cup tie (as David Nalbandian did for 105 points this month). Mathematically, there may be slightly more, but that’s about the limit. And it lasts just the first 6 weeks of the year. Djokovic was the clear winner of Season 1!

Season 2 follows on with the European/US indoor hard court season sprinkled with ATP500s in Rotterdam, Memphis transitioning to outdoors with the ATP500 in Dubai before getting serious for the Masters1000 events in Indian Wells and Miami. And again concluding with Davis Cup. That’s an absolute maximum of about 3000 points. Last year, Djokovic earned 2500 points with 3 titles in this stretch last year. Of course, there are the clay court events in Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires and Acapulco (an ATP500). But 8 of the top 10 in the world are in Dubai (Ferrer is defending his title in Acapulco and Nadal is still resting).

Federer is trying to run the proverbial table in this 8 week stretch. That is, he is trying to pick off a second ATP500 to go with his victory in Rotterdam before heading for the big points on the hard courts of Indian Wells and Miami. Fed took a tough loss in Davis Cup on his home court against John Isner, but looked to be in his best form as he dispatched Del Potro in the Rotterdam final. He was simply too much for the tall Argentine who had looked invincible coming into the match. But Juan Martin recovered to win last week in Marseilles, adding a convincing win over #6 Tsonga in 3 to the straight set beating he gave to #7 Berdych in Rotterdam. Del Potro and Canadian Milos Raonic have both picked up 550 points the last two weeks. Federer and Memphis winner Jurgen Melzer earned 500 points each for winning ATP500s. Melzer is a good example of how tough the ATP draws can be. The Austrian lefty dropped out of the top 40 after his first round Aussie Open loss, but used a quarterfinal effort out of qualifying in Zagreb and a couple of clutch Davis Cup wins against Russia to get his game back on track. Last week Melzer knocked off a hot John Isner in the quarters, Radek Stepanek and then an even hotter Milos Raonic in the finals. Isner may get another chance at Melzer in the quarters of Delray Beach this week, if they can both get there.

Almagro and Ferrer won in Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires and are probably going to fight it out in Acapulco later this week, but the real action is in Dubai. Can Federer regain the momentum he appeared to have coming out of the end of 2011, or is he only a threat indoors? Djokovic and Murray are returning to action having taken a break after their Herculean efforts at the Australian. Will they be tournament sharp or will they need an extra week to get up to speed for Indian Wells? Nadal is still laying low and won’t emerge until Indian Wells.

Del Potro appears to be the player on the verge of breaking into the rarefied air of “Top 5″; he has looked really impressive at times in his recent matches, but perhaps he is just too slow at 6′ 6″ and the time and confidence he lost with all the time off for the wrist injury in 2010 is too much of an obstacle for him to overcome against the “Top Four”. In his last 14 matches (12-2) he’s only lost 4 sets and no matches to anyone without the initials RF and 3 of those 4 lost sets were tie-breakers. He suffers very few bad losses and seems to repeatedly run into the top 4. 7 of his 18 losses last year were to Federer, Nadal or Djokovic. This year, 2 out of his 3 losses are to RF. We have to remember he is still just 23 and was not yet 21 when he won the US Open in 2009. His body has changed a lot over the last three years. In 2008, he rarely served over 100 mph. The problem may be that he is simply too NICE a man. Perhaps just a little too humble. The merciless air he carried himself with this last week and against Berdych before he played Federer in Rotterdam was missing when he went up against the Maestro, at least when it mattered most. If he could forget who is on the other side of the net when he is playing Novak, Rafa, Rog or Andy, it would make for a very exciting contest. The way he plays, he could almost play without knowing anything about his opponent. Almost…against those four he is going to have to do a little more than simply attack every ball; their weapons are just too good. Here’s hoping he embraces the challenge and becomes the next member of the club and turns the Fab Four into a quintet!

For my money, no one else is quite ready to make the move. Berdych and Tsonga can’t quite get over the hump; I’m a little disappointed in their recent progress, or rather lack of it. They’ve had plenty of chances. Monfils is just too fragile. Ferrer is wonderful, but he can’t handle those four in the Slams. Raonic has a great service game, but he is at least a year away; maybe by Wimbledon 2013 he will be a genuine threat, but he needs a lot of polishing. When I sat down to try and write a this little review about 14 hours ago, I got sidetracked by the Match Facts on the ATP site and I started doing a little statistical examination of the top 10 players; but then I wanted to add a couple of more (Isner, Monfils): and then I wanted to add the guys reaching semis recently: and Roddick and Young (Americans). Well, before I knew it, it took me 4 hours to collate and compare the stats on just the 6 service statistics that are on the site. I still have the 4 return statistics to do. (I’ll have that analysis for you in another piece in a couple of more days.) In any case, I applied some simple weighting to the % 1st serve points won, % 2nd serve points won and break points saved to get some comparative statistics on those players. Not surprisingly, Raonic and Federer came out way ahead of everyone else. It’s just service statistics for this year, but it does show it is no illusion that Raonic has a great service game. But to beat the best, his return game and defensive skills are going to have to get a little better.

Well, it’s late and there are a lot of matches to watch tomorrow on TennisTV. Murray, Tsonga, Federer and Del Potro are all up tomorrow(I guess it’s now today!). Murray’s match with Berrer should be routine, but it is his first in a month. Tsonga plays the almost always entertaining and dangerous Baghdatis, especially against a marquis player. Federer gets Llodra who reached the final in Marseille last week. And Del Potro gets 10sBalls favorite and always perplexing Alexandr Dolgopolov. For you clay court fans, coverage of Acapulco starts tomorrow. The WTA in Kuala Lumpur will be broadcast tomorrow as well.

I’ll try to get you the rest of my breakdown of the tennis seasons and my analysis of the ATP match facts later in the week.

10sChiro

Topics: djokovic, Federer, nadal