Laurie's Tennis articles

There has been a touch of nostalgia surrounding the recent Nitto ATP Finals in London. It was announced before the draw took place that the groups would be named after Pete Sampras and Boris Becker in honour of the great matches they played in the ATP Championships, not only against each other but their consistent success at the tournament. Between 1990 and 1999 they appeared in eight of the ten finals winning seven and played each other in the 1994 and 1996 finals.  Sampras wrote a piece on the ATP website reminiscing about that 1996 final and Sky Sports put highlights of the match on their website. The perfect situation for one of my flashbacks as this is considered the greatest ever indoor match. The 1996 edition of the ATP Championships is significant. It was the first of four years the tournament would be played in Hanover, Germany; moving from Frankfurt where it was held at the Festhalle. The venue was built for Expo 2000 which was a world trade fair that would be h...

2017 has proved a very interesting year for mens tennis.  We have seen a revival of two of the games greats in Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal This came almost out of the blue and quite unexpected as the clock was turned back; because not since 2010 has Roger and Rafa won all of the grand slam tournaments in a single season and occupied the top two positions in world tennis. Let us consider that the top two players are 31 and 36 years old respectively. This is ironic as this is the first year the “Next Gen” ATP championships take place in Milan in early November. A tournament devised by the ATP who recognises that there is a problem in mens tennis. That problem being there seems to be no new stars coming through and that has to be addressed in some way.  Many of the changes that have been implemented by the ATP over the last 15 to 20 years have allowed those at the top to stay at the top even longer than in previous generations, which has left a vacuum and dearth of ...