Laurie's Tennis articles

2013 has been an interesting year for Angelique Kerber and her fans.   A season of consolidation, and finding out more about herself as a person and competitor; which culminated with a title and appearance at the WTA championships in Istanbul for a second consecutive year. Recapping the 2013 season, it started off with a semifinal appearance in Sydney with a loss to Dominica Cibulkova then a 4th round defeat at the Australian Open to Ekaterina Makarova.   Angelique missed the Paris Indoors due to injury which meant she could not defend her title.   Angelique then lost early in Doha and Dubai before flying out to Monterrey, where she got to the final but lost out to Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova. Forward to the hardcourts in North America where Angelique had mixed results, getting to the semifinals of Indian Wells and going out early in Miami.   The Indian Wells semifinal proved to be frustrating as Caroline Wozniacki resorted to employing some of the most ...

There has been a lot of debate about mens tennis, ultra long grand slam matches have been the source of everyone’s focus.    There’s an interesting dichotomy going on here; read the various tennis forums and there are threads full of complaints that surfaces are too slow and rallies / matches are too long.   Watch the BBC during Wimbledon and we are constantly told this is the greatest era with the best players ever seen.   The x factor is the paying public at the slams, and despite mega long matches, the paying public appear to love them and are prepared to sit through hours upon hours of tennis. Ultra long tennis matches are nothing new as the game is littered with examples in every decade.   For instance, in 1992 Stefan Edberg defeated Michael Chang in the US Open semifinal in 5hrs 26 minutes which is the longest match in the tournament’s history.   Amazingly, Edberg came back 24 hours later to beat Pete Sampras in the final which went f...

With the hugely surprising announcement of Marion Bartoli’s retirement overnight, its worth taking a look at other retirements that have surprised the world of tennis and sport in recent times.   But not only shock retirements it is also worth considering players who were big stars and major winners but kind of disappeared from the limelight almost overnight. In looking at players who retired suddenly, certain themes keep re-occurring.   They started their career at the top at a very early age, they suffered a lot of stress due to constant traveling, they found it hard to deal with tough losses, and they often failed to sparkle in their comebacks. Gabriela Sabatini Sabatini retired in 1996 at the age of 26 which is a crazily young age.   But by the time of her retirement, she had already been a professional for 11 years having turned professional in the mid 1980s.   Sabatini won the US Open in 1990 defeating Steffi Graf in straight sets.  ...