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....
World No. 1 Roger Federer will soon begin his quest for a fourth ‘Sunshine Double’ at the of 36. The March title feat requires ATP World Tour stars to make big adjustments in order to master the dry, thinner desert air of the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells and the humidity and windy conditions of the Miami Open presented by Itau. Seven players, since the ATP World Tour’s top tier Masters 1000 events were established in 1990, have lifted the Indian Wells and Miami titles back-to-back — Jim Courier (1991), Michael Chang (1992), Pete Sampras (1994), Marcelo Rios (1998), Andre Agassi (2001), Federer (2005-06, 2017) and Novak Djokovic (2011 and 2014-16). In Federer's three 'Sunshine Double' years, he finished...
Roger Federer has been one of the premier hard-court performers on the ATP World Tour throughout his career. But since the beginning of 2017, when the Swiss was as low as No. 17 in the ATP Rankings, he has far exceeded his already-impressive average win-rate on the surface. In fact, Federer has led the Tour with a 52-4 record (92.9 per cent) on hard courts during that span, winning seven of his nine tour-level titles on the surface since the start of last year. Five of those seven triumphs came at either an ATP World Tour Masters 1000 event (2017 Indian Wells, 2017 Miami, 2017 Shanghai) or a Grand Slam (2017 & 2018 Australian Open). But perhaps what is most...
Juan Martin del Potro’s victory over World No. 8 Kevin Anderson in the Abierto Mexicano Telcel presentado por HSBC final is noteworthy for many reasons. It is the seventh time the Argentine has beaten a Top 10 player in a tour-level final. The win also completes a week in which he beat three Top 8 players — the last time anyone has done that at an ATP World Tour event outside of the Nitto ATP Finals was when Grigor Dimitrov raised the trophy in Brisbane last January. But Del Potro, who will return to No. 8 in the ATP Rankings for the first time since 2 August 2014 on Monday thanks to his first ATP World Tour 500-level triumph since...
