Seven months ago, Denis Shapovalov made his name known worldwide at the Coupe Rogers, the ATP World Tour Masters 1000 tournament in Montreal, where he stunned Juan Martin del Potro and Rafael Nadal en route to becoming the youngest Masters 1000 semi-finalist. The #NextGenATP Canadian was back at it again on Thursday at another Masters 1000 tournament, the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells. The 18-year-old left-hander secured his eighth win of the season, beating Ricardas Berankis of Lithuania 6-3, 6-4 to reach the second round in California. Catch up on Thursday's action by reading our #ATPMasters1000 Live Blog: It's Shapovalov's first Masters 1000 victory outside of his home country of Canada, and he was on against the 2017 VTB...
Dominic Thiem’s clay-court credentials are well proven but that only makes the gifted Austrian hungrier for greater success on other surfaces. The 24-year-old is no one-surface specialist and has high hopes of making a statement at this year’s BNP Paribas Open where he returns as the No. 5 seed. Last year Thiem fell in a gripping quarter-final to Stan Wawrinka, an opponent who holds two hard court Grand Slam titles to his name. Only last week, he went down to eventual champion Juan Martin del Potro in the quarter-finals at Acapulco. It was there in Mexico he won his lone prior hard-court trophy to date, in 2016. Could Indian Wells deliver his next hard-court breakthrough? “I’m always trying to make some...
“The little things”: They can be hard to describe, but no one doubts that those tiny details can decide a match, a tournament and a season. #NextGenATP American Frances Tiafoe and his coach Robby Ginepri both admit that Tiafoe, who won his maiden ATP World Tour title last month at the Delray Beach Open, is handling “the little things” better than in the past. Ginepri, however, doesn't struggle to conjure up an example of how Tiafoe used to goof the specifics of his professional life, you know, “little things”, such as remembering to bring your racquets to practice. A year before Tiafoe triumphed in South Florida, Ginepri wanted to test his player's growing maturity, kind of like how parents test...
After a second-round loss to Novak Djokovic at the Qatar ExxonMobil Open in 2017, Horacio Zeballos, who won his opener at the BNP Paribas Open on Thursday, approached Djokovic and asked if he could take a selfie with his opponent to remember their encounter. Eehhh sorryy. Creo que tengo la mejor selfie del dia jejeje. Que groso Nole.un genio!! Y yo figuretiiii.. Me encanto!! pic.twitter.com/lMXDqKdcyl — horacio zeballos (@HoracioZeballos) January 4, 2017 A few months later, Zeballos made the same request of Rafael Nadal after falling to the Spaniard in the semi-finals of the Barcelona Open Banc Sabadell. Nadal obliged and posed for a photo with the Argentine before both headed to the changing rooms. Zeballos wasn't about to pass on...
Jack Sock could have written anything. The American had just beaten then-World No. 3 Alexander Zverev at the Nitto ATP Finals in November 2017. It was his third Top 5 win, and the upset had secured Sock's semi-final berth at the season-ending championships in London. Before his on-court interview, Sock, as has become custom these days, scribbled on the plexiglass, where players frequently write messages to fans in their home nation or draw various objects, such as hearts or smiley faces. The first thing Sock wrote: “Coach Wolf!”. When Sock was 10, he started working with Mike Wolf, who played collegiate tennis in the U.S. and was running – and still runs – a tennis club in Kansas City, Kansas....
