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 ...

In my series of US Open matches flashbacks, we go to 2004 this time and take a closer look at the semifinal between Elena Dementieva and Jennifer Capriati. 2004 was the year the Russians dominated the grand slam scene, winning three of the four major tournaments at the French Open, Wimbledon and US Open. Just one year before, the Belgians dominated with Justine Henin and Kim Clijsters contesting the French, US Open and 2004 Australian Open finals. Therefore in the space of 12 months, the Belgians and Russians took over completely from the Americans. Prior to mid-2003, Lindsay Davenport, Jennifer Capriati, Venus and Serena Williams won all of the majors from the turn of the millennium bar Mary Pierce who won the 2000 French Open final. In 2004, the semifinals were a battle between the Americans and the Russians; surprisingly the Russians came out on top. Surprising because Lindsay Davenport and Jennifer Capriati were both multi grand slam champions and former number 1 players...

Every now and again I like to have a look at some of the classic matches of yesteryear.  This time we go back to the year 2000 and one of the classic rivalries of the previous generation between Pete Sampras and Richard Krajicek. Their last ever meeting took place at the quarterfinal stage of the US Open in the year 2000; and it turned out to be a brilliant match but so different to the type of tennis we see today. Also surprising is that they never played each other again, despite the fact that both players retired in 2003. Their previous meeting took place at the quarterfinal stage of the 1999 ATP championships in Cincinnati, and before that they met in the 1999 Miami Open also at the quarterfinal stage. Interestingly, their meeting in 1998 Stuttgart Super Nine (Masters) took place in the quarterfinal and their famous Wimbledon encounter in 1996 was also a quarterfinal. They played a lot of quarterfinals! The winner of these matches either went on to the final or won the t...

2017 is proving to be a challenging period for the players who hold the world number one position in tennis. Angelique Kerber regained the top ranking from Serena Williams during the clay court season whilst Andy Murray has been struggling to make an impression, with many early exits from tournaments since the season began at the end of December. What is really interesting is how similar the situation is for both players and I think this is worth exploring further.  The best way to do that would be to chart Angelique’s and Andy’s accent to number 1. For Angelique, 2016 was a great year; the best year of her career and may turn out to be the best ever year she will experience. Not many players in history have won two grand slam titles in one season and played in three finals. Not only that, Angelique also got to the finals of the Olympics, Cincinnati and the year end championships in Singapore.  The only slight downside would be that she could have won more finals an...

Johanna Konta wins Miami Open The clay court season is underway and we are about to embark on another great period of spring and summer tennis. This is a good opportunity to take a look at the one of the hottest properties on the tour right now in Johanna Konta.  Johanna has made a dramatic rise up the rankings in the last two seasons to a career high position of seven and recently won the prestigious Miami Open title, one of the biggest titles outside of grand slam level.  Let’s take a look at how Johanna has got to this position, assess her strengths and weaknesses and try to predict how far she can get in her career. Serve Johanna possesses one of the better serves on the WTA tour.  Johanna is a tall player at 1m 80 (5 ft. 11) and thus able to extend up and serve well into the corners.  Another asset for Johanna is her ability to consistently produce first serves of over 100mph which keeps her opponents honest more often than not.  As regar...