Archive: stan-wawrinka
It will be Novak Djokovic vs. Roger Federer in the World Tour Finals championship match, but not before some serious drama took place on Saturday at the O2. After Novak Djokovic held off Kei Nishikori 6-1, 3-6, 6-0 in the first semifinal, the nightcap saw Federer survive four match points to outlast Swiss Davis Cup teammate Stan Wawrinka 4-6, 7-5, 7-6(6).
There had not a single three-set singles match during round-robin play involving two of the original eight World Tour Finals participants. Alternate David Ferrer played one against Kei Nishikori on Thursday, but that was the extent of it until Stan Wawrinka and Marin Cilic took the court on Friday. Leave it to an almost entirely meaningless match to finally provide from excitement.
The relative disaster that was round-robin play at the World Tour Finals has given way to a pair of intriguing semifinal matches; ones that could end a disturbing trend of blowouts and inject life into London's O2 Arena. Saturday's proceedings will begin with Novak Djokovic going up against Kei Nishikori before the nightcap features an all-Swiss showdown between Roger Federer and Stan Wawrinka.
The drama has been taken out of just about every singles match right from the start so far this week in London. Novak Djokovic did the same to the battle for the year-end No. 1 ranking.
Round-robin action will conclude and the semifinal matchups will be set by the time play at the World Tour Finals ends on Friday. Group A is wrapping up with Novak Djokovic vs. Tomas Berdych and Stan Wawrinka vs. Marin Cilic. Djokovic is already almost guaranteed to advance, while Cilic is likely on the way out of London regardless of his third singles result.
It started so promisingly, as Stan Wawrinka started with the same confident free-swinging style as he had against Tomas Berdych in the first round robin match. Surely a mate against the two winners of the first matches would yield our most competitive match to date.
Singles match after singles match at the World Tour Finals has been a straight-set beatdown. Any one involving Novak Djokovic is not a particularly good candidate to end the trend. The top-ranked player in the world is simply playing too well overall, too well at this particular event, and too well indoors.
Singles competition at the World Tour Finals gave us its seventh consecutive straight-setter when Tomas Berdych rolled over Marin Cilic 6-3, 6-1 on Wednesday afternoon.
Click here to see the latest results and order of play from the ATP World Tour Finals in London.
Whilst it is easy to ridicule the Group A score-lines, surely Wednesday will yield at least one match with a more complex score-line? Let’s take a look at the candidates as the winners and losers do battle.
Earlier in the week an Italian journalist went on a routine of asking all the players which one of the other players they’d most like to have dinner with and what question they’d ask that player. Four — Nishikori, Cilic, Raonic, and Wawrinka — chose Roger Federer, for differing reasons.
It will be a tale of two very different matchups on Wednesday at the World Tour Finals. Novak Djokovic and Stan Wawrinka both handed out 6-1, 6-1 breadsticks in their opening matches on Monday. The winner of their showdown will be almost--if not officially--a lock to reach the semifinals. On the other hand, Tomas Berdych and Marin Cilic are in dire need of a win.
Earlier in the week an Italian journalist went on a routine of asking all the players which one of the other players they'd most like to have dinner with and what question they'd ask that player. Four -- Nishikori, Cilic, Raonic, and Wawrinka -- chose Roger Federer, for differing reasons.
It’s what all the cool kids do. Such can be the lottery of ticket-buying for the World Tour Finals, you have to feel for ticket holders for either the day session, the night session or, heaven forefend, both sessions on Day 2, when the crowd were treated to two one-sided encounters that both ended in an hour (but remember, tube time, so bonus).
Tomas Berdych's self-admitted worst performance of 2014 coincided with Stan Wawrinka's best match of this fall swing. The result was a 6-1, 6-1 blowout in the Swiss' favor that lasted a mere 58 minutes. Wawrinka is now 1-0 in round-robin competition at the World Tour Finals, while Berdych is 0-1 and likely to be in a serious tiebreaker deficit having won only two games.
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