Nikolay Davydenko won his first ATP Finals Championship by beating Juan Martin Del Potro 6-3, 6-4. Davydenko was clearly the more aggressive player and possibly even fresher than Del Potro.

Nikolay Davydenko wins his first ATP Finals Championship (Photo by Christopher Lee/Getty Images for Barclays ATP Finals)

I’ve analyzed the match with my usual modified aggressive margin system and the system clearly shows what was going on during the match. (more…)

Novak Djokovic lost his second Round Robin match to Robin Soderling 6-7, 1-6.

Novak was very frustrated and angry because Robin played fantastic tennis – hitting the lines with his groundstrokes and sending serves with over 200 km /h with regularity.

The thinking that went through Novak’s mind was something like this: (more…)

Roger Federer lost his 2nd round match at the Paris Bercy Masters 1000 to Julien Benneteau 3-6, 7-6, 6-4. I watched the whole match and here are some tennis thoughts on it:

Roger Federer’s backhand (Photo by AP)

1.    Roger Federer played many more drive and top spin backhands than he did last week in Basel.

Some possible reasons can be:

a.    The court in Paris is slower and Roger had more time to set up for his backhand

b.    Roger saw that his slice backhand didn’t do much damage to Djokovic in the final and wanted to start working on the backhand to get it in form for the Masters Championship in London where he has to be in top form to win.

2.    Roger still isn’t in his top form but it seems to be improving. He missed some very important shots (forehand approach shots) and was unwilling (afraid?) to play winners down-the-line with his backhand when he had a chance. (more…)

I play tournaments every week but  i can’t seem to bring my game together on match day.

At training i play great but in matches i only play a good point once every two games.

One day i beat the number 4 seed the next day i lose to a hacker. How can i always bring my steady and aggressive game to my matches?

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First, you can’t always bring your steady game. Top players don’t win all the time.

We are humans and not robots – we have good days and bad days.

The more you accept bad days as something normal, the sooner they will disappear and the less they will appear.

What you resist, persists.

(more…)