David Goffin reflects on his battle against qualifier Matthias Bachinger in the first round of the 2018 Australian Open. Video courtesy Tennis Australia. Watch more video and live matches at www.ausopen.com.
Continuing our Season In Review series, ATPWorldTour.com revisits the top 5 ATP World Tour upsets of 2017. (5) Vasek Pospisil d. Andy Murray 6-4, 7-6(5) – BNP Paribas Open Second Round Vasek Pospisil has the game to beat the top players. In January 2014, he reached No. 25 in the Emirates ATP Rankings, and a year later, he was in the quarter-finals of The Championships, Wimbledon (l. to Murray). His serve-and-volley game can flummox the greatest. So even though Pospisil had been beset with injuries and had a triple-digit number (No. 129) next to his name, the Canadian, who had recently started working with former doubles No. 1 Mark Woodforde, surely believed he could shock the BNP Paribas Open and...
Infosys ATP Beyond The Numbers investigates where successful players at the Nitto ATP Finals preferred to deliver their first serve. Getty Images photo.
Where should your primary first serve location be? Straight down the T, or out wide to initially pull your opponent off the court? An Infosys ATP Beyond The Numbers analysis of the 2017 Nitto ATP Finals clearly shows that players who won their matches at The O2 utilised the first serve out wide more than down the T in their quest for victory. It begs the question: when players are behind in a match, does the scoreboard pressure them to go down the T more often to try and secure quick points to get back into the match? Serving wide is a higher percentage serve than down the T, offering a bigger target area to aim at, but down the...
Continuing our Season-In-Review series, ATPWorldTour.com revisits the fiercest rivalries of 2017. Today we feature Grigor Dimitrov vs. David Goffin What makes a rivalry — is it the mix of playing styles or personalities, the intensity of each battle or something different? In 2017, two perennial grafters with great potential clashed on five occasions, improving both tactically and mentally for year-end Top 10 finishes in the Emirates ATP Rankings. While Grigor Dimitrov beat David Goffin in four of their five FedEx ATP Head2Head series meetings this year, the statistic as read is too simplistic to be dismissed as one-sided — a non-rivalry. For while Dimitrov and Goffin are never going to relentlessly overpower an opponent, the fluency of their games and...