Plus: choices for the unofficial best shot, match and quote of the season.
Hey everyone,
Canada wins the Davis Cup! The U.S. leaves the world’s best doubles player at home and, for some reason, brings a team with only four members! What passes for tennis’s offseason commences! But we can take that on next week.
Just as we handed out WTA awards last week, today we'll do the same for the men. For the record, ATP provided three categories and candidates for media voting (Comeback Player, Improved Player and Sportsmanship.) The other categories are ours. The envelopes, please…
Player of the Year
• At some level, this is a silly discussion. The rankings exist to quantify this. If you’re ranked No.1, you are, empirically. the MVP. Right? Well, not really. Tennis is gonna tennis and rankings don’t always tell the whole story—especially when the tours decide not to confer points on Wimbledon.
So…it's really a three-man race for MVP. Novak Djokovic won Wimbledon, finished strong, had the highest winning percentage and averaged the most points per event. But of course—by his own choice—he missed two majors and four TMS events because he declined a Covid vaccination. Rafa Nadal won half the year's majors, but faded in Q3 and Q4. Carlos Alcaraz has the top spot and won the U.S. Open, but “only” won one major—and didn’t make a semi at any of the other three. A simple question: whose year would you—and more critically, other players—prefer to have? The answer: Nadal’s. Majors are the coin of the realm. And two is greater than one. There’s a discussion for another day to be had about the overwhelming psychic weight of majors and whether this is healthy. But for now, give Rafael Nadal the MVP award.
Comeback Player of the Year
Andreas Mies
Borna Coric
Dominic Thiem
Edouard Roger-Vasselin
Stan Wawrinka
Yibing Wu
• Nice to see a couple of major champs—Thiem and Wawrinka, both of the one-handed backhand—back to winning matches. But the vote here goes to Borna Coric. Or Reborna Coric, as it were….A creditable player since his teenage years—who peaked at No. 12—Coric has spent too much of his 20s bedeviled by injuries. If the Hospital for Special Surgery in NYC gave reward points he would, sadly, have concierge floor access. The Cincinnati TMS1000 winner finished the year at No. 26.
Most Improved Player
(To the player who reached a significantly higher ATP Ranking by year's end and who demonstrated an increasingly improved level of performance through the season.)
Brandon Nakashima
Carlos Alcaraz
Constant Lestienne
Emil Ruusuvuori
Francisco Cerundolo
Harri Heliövaara
Holger Rune
J.J. Wolf
Jack Draper
Lloyd Glasspool
Lorenzo Musetti
Marc-Andrea Huesler
Marcelo Arevalo
Maxime Cressy
Pedro Cachin
Sebastian Baez
Zhizhen Zhang
• Note the quantity and quality of this list. (Multiple Finns! Doubles players! Multiple Brits! Multiple Argies. A serve-and-volleyer, committed to the part!) But let’s consider the category definition. “Improved” is vague. Carlos Alcaraz is extraordinary. But did he improve through the season? Or did he just bring the full force of his awesomeness? Jack Draper? A wonderful young lefty player. But he’s 20 and on the ascent. To me it’s more about rounding into form than material improvement.
Still ambivalent about it all, we cast our vote for Holger Rune, who started the year at No. 103—still taking the court armed with an Ikea bag—and finished at No. 11, posting photos aboard a private a jet. More granularly. He won a lot of matches (39) but also endured some rough stretches, including a summer skid where he lost eight of nine outings. Taking the “increasingly improved level of performance through the season” clause literally, that Rune finished off by winning two titles (Stockholm and Paris, capped by a final defeat of Djokvic) and 15 of his last 16 matches clinches it.
The Stefan Edberg Sportsmanship Award
(Goes to the player who, throughout the year, conducted himself at the highest level of professionalism and integrity, who competed with his fellow players with the utmost spirit of fairness, and who promoted the game through his off-court activities.)
Cameron Norrie
Carlos Alcaraz
Casper Ruud
Felix Auger-Aliassime
Frances Tiafoe
Grigor Dimitrov
Hubert Hurkacz
Lorenzo Musetti
Matteo Berrettini
Maxime Cressy
Rafael Nadal
• Ah, yes, this award. It is deeply flawed as there’s no definition, much less data, for sportsmanship. And at some point we need to acknowledge that the scrutiny and pressures imposed on the stars is far different from what’s imposed on other players. It’s fair to wonder whether the ATP should be in the business of issuing the names of candidates, essentially taking a stance on who is (and is not) the most sporting. I posted this list on Twitter and, predictably, it led to tribal ugliness. Someone asked, “Is this award even worth handing out?”
Fair question, but I would say “yes.” Anything that highlights sporting behavior and calls attention to honor in competition—real or perceived—is a force of good. Should the ATP refrain from presenting a slate of candidates and simply let the voters choose. Probably. Should we acknowledge that this is highly subjective? Yes. Should we acknowledge that what might be a grievous, disqualifying offense to one group of fans—time delays, referencing “Greek yogurt,” failing to get a vaccination—is not-big-deal to another cohort? Sure. But keeping giving this out.
As for 2022, here’s an admittedly out-there take. Part of sportsmanship is disposition and accessibility and collegiality. But you could argue that part of sportsmanship is innovation and taking the sport to new places and fashioning new solutions for old problems. Max Cressy is a proverbial good guy—reasonable and well-mannered; hence his inclusion on the list. But committed as he is to the serve-and-volley, he also draws high marks for showing us the possibility within the sport. The creative approach is, in its way, the highest form of respect for the sport. And for this he gets out vote.
Doubles Team of the Year
• Rajeev Ram and Joe Salisbury. The recency effect perhaps, but after going SF/QF/SF at the first three Majors, they took the U.S. Open and World Tour Final.
Match of the Year
Rafael Nadal d. Daniil Medvedev at the Australian Open
• Medvedev wins this match and he cements himself (forgive the pun) as the winner of the last two hardcourt majors. Nadal wins this and he vaults past Djokovic and Federer in the major count, wins the double career slam, wins his first major after age 35. Nadal loses the first two sets and, after nearly five-and-a-half hours, wins 2-6, 6-7 (5), 6-4, 6-4, 7-5.
Quote of the Year
• Stefanos Tsitsipas lost to Andrey Rublev at the ATP Finals and assessed thusly: “It's a shame. I feel like the better player. I felt like I could do more with the ball today. I felt like I could just be much more creative. I don't even have to say that. I think it's quite obvious. But, yeah, he prevailed with the few tools that he has. He was able to really take advantage of them and win today.” This was the 2022 version of John McEnroe saying about Ivan Lendl, “I have more talent in my little finger than he has in his entire body.” While it doesn’t embody grace in defeat, it’s a splash of candor and friction, ultimately harmless, that is too often lacking in tennis. And it articulates the art-versus-science battles at the root of so many matches.
Coach of the Year
• Juan Carlos Ferrero. Not simply for guiding Carlos Alcaraz to the top spot. But for doubling as a mentor, friend and surrogate parent—during an exciting but fraught time for a 19-year-old.
The Roger Federer Award
• As with Serena last week, you can’t have a year-end award ceremony without acknowledgement the retirement of a—literally—a legend. Here’s SI’s sendoff piece.
The Unforced Error of the Year
• The Wimbledon fiasco. To refresh: In opposition to the villainy of Vladimir Putin, Wimbledon bans Russian players. The ATP responds by stripping the event of ranking points. Boris Johnson, whose government pressed the All England Club to exercise this power, gets booted from 10 Downing Street during the tournament. Players that do well at Wimbledon—yes, Djokovic, the winner, but also players like Timvan Rijthoven—are not given points. The rift between the tours and Wimbledon grows. Russia’s Daniil Medvedev ascends to the top of the rankings while sitting in his longtime residence in Monaco. Boy, tennis really showed Putin a thing or two.
Some Questions for 2023:
• How will the ATP handle its first year since the 90s without Roger Federer on the active list—and transitioning out of the Big Three Era? How long will Nadal, now 36, carry on? How many more majors will Djokovic, who will turn 36 this spring, win? Can Carlos Alcaraz keep on keeping on, as demands (commercial and physical) mount? Can Dominic Thiem find his mid-20s form? Is the PTPA for real? Where does the ATP stand on the moral compromise that is playing in China?
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