Laurie's Tennis articles

Andy Murray conquered years of questions and self-doubt to win his first US Open title.   Caroline Wozniacki so far has chosen a different path to Murray and now appears to be regressing in her career.   Is it too late for Wozniacki to win a major title? After his first three major final losses and other disappointments, Murray accepted change was needed to his game mentally and tactically.   By appointing Ivan Lendl as coach, Murray showed to the world he was prepared to take tough decisions.   The memo is that Lendl first approached Murray’s representatives towards the end of 2011 with a view to working with Murray.   Not that it matters who approached whom as it was clear changes needed to be made to Murray’s game if he wanted to win a major title.   Since the appointment at the beginning of January, Murray’s game more or less looks the same but the changes are more subtle.    First of all, Murray has cut down markedly on t...

2012 has proven to be a great year for Angelique Kerber, Angelique is rapidly becoming a household name in the world of tennis, mainly due to her exciting performances and rise up the rankings, Angelique is now an established top 10 player on the WTA tour with a good chance of making the year end WTA championships in Istanbul.     Angelique won her first career title at the indoor event in Paris in February, and backed that up with a title two months later in Denmark defeating Caroline Wozniacki.   However, the win in Paris showed what Angelique is all about, defeating Maria Sharapova in straight sets in the quarterfinal and Marion Bartoli in a three set final thriller in front of an extremely raucous home crowd.    In reality, Angelique’s good run started well before 2012, twelve months ago at the 2011 edition of the US Open, Angelique came from nowhere to get to the semifinal, defeating players of the calibre of Agnieszka Radwanska and Flavia Pen...

One month has made all of the difference for Andy Murray.   Murray went from despair in his Wimbledon final defeat to Roger Federer, to absolute joy one month later in the Olympic final against the same opponent.   So what made the difference?   There were a few factors that ushered the transformation, mainly change of mentality and approach to the game. Because it was the change in mentality which lead to the change in approach and tactical awareness, you cannot have one before the other. And during the Olympics I saw a Murray that played consistently aggressive from start to finish in most of his matches particularly in the semifinal and the final.    In the Olympic final, Roger Federer came into the match on the back of an incredible semifinal against Juan Martin Del Potro which lasted almost 4 hours and 30 minutes and went to 20 – 18 in the 3rd set.   Murray played two mixed doubles matches with Laura Robson on the Saturday, which left him ...

Womens British tennis is looking up after years in the international wilderness.  There is a long way to go before Britain can get into the elite group, but in Heather Watson, we have a player who has the desire and talent to make a real impression on the WTA tour for years to come.  We also have a situation where we have two British players of a similar age vying to be British number 1, the other player being Laura Robson.  That can only be good for British tennis if both players can push each other to ultimately rise up the rankings and be consistently in the top 30 of the womens game.   That process has already begun this summer.  Heather Watson reached the 3rd round of Wimbledon, which was the first time that has happened since Sam Smith in 1999.  And last weekend Heather won her first tour doubles title in Stanford with partner Marina Erakovic of New Zealand.  With that triumph, Watson reached a career high 71 in the WTA ranki...

Petra Kvitova relinquished her Wimbledon title in a defeat to 2010 champion Serena Williams in two sets on centre court on Tuesday.  It was a high quality match, particularly in the 2nd set, but the difference between the two players was the serve of Serena Williams.  Kvitova will be disappointed not to defend her Wimbledon title but should use this experience to learn from the defeat and become a better player longer term. By her own admission, Kvitova has not had a great start to 2012 in comparison to 2011.  By July 2011 she had won Sydney, Paris Indoor, Madrid and Wimbledon, plus played in the final of the Aegon Championships in Eastbourne.  However, so far in 2012 Kvitova has not reached a final of any event despite getting to 4 semifinals including the Australian and French Opens.  This has left some people to question whether she has the potential to become the best player in the world.  There are a few factors which have prompted this...

We have taken a look at Pete Sampras game by breaking it down into different facets. I will now take a look at how Sampras performed against his main rivals from the era of the 1990s through early 2000s.  Sampras v Courier It is interesting to look back on Jim Courier’s reign as number 1 in 1992; a player who made the most of his talent with hard work, Jim was compared to Ivan Lendl during this period – not least by Brad Gilbert in his book called “Winning Ugly”.  Courier used Lendl’s tactic of trying to dominate each match with his forehand and was extremely good on clay as a result. However, Courier did not possess natural athletic ability; therefore once his level started to drop at the young age of 23, he found it hard to get it back.   You could argue Sampras played a major part in that, because he frustrated Courier a lot in the major tournaments, Sampras was often in Courier’s way and that would frustrate anyone.  Courier won their 1991 US ...