Sunday, August 7, 2011

Rogers Cup Preview

Like every year, the top players usually take a few weeks hiatus after Wimbledon to get ready for the North American summer hard-court season. Of course this allowed a bevy of players to snatch up titles in their absence including John Isner, Juan Carlos Ferrero, Robin Soderling, Gilles Simon, Mardy Fish, Marcel Granollers, Ernests Gulbis, Alexandr Dolgopolov, Robin Haase, and Radek Stepanek. But the big boys are back in town, more specifically Montreal, for the Rogers Cup, which begins tomorrow.


This is the first tournament where Novak Djokovic will be seeded first based on his #1 world ranking and his first non-Davis Cup tournament since winning his first Wimbledon title. Djokovic is set to meet 2009 finalist Juan Martin Del Potro early on and could meet 2-time champion and last year's finalist Roger Federer in the semifinals. 3rd seed Federer can meet 2006 finalist Richard Gasquet and 2009 semifinalist Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

On the other side of the draw, 2-time champion Rafael Nadal is playing in his first tournament since losing to Djokovic at finals of Wimbledon. Tomas Berdych and Fernando Verdasco are in Nadal's quarter, but it's 2009 and 2010 champion Andy Murray who Nadal can meet in the semifinals. Murray will need to get through Mikhail Youzhny, Stan Wawrinka, or Mardy Fish though those three have mediocre records at this tournament.

Can someone other than the top four seeds win the tournament? Unfortunately for the other players, history is against them as the top four of Djokovic, Nadal, Federer, and Murray have won the tournament every year since 2004.

3 comments:

  1. Can't believe I actually can't find any time to watch any of the games in the stadium this year. Although, if I did have time, it'd be fore the women's tournament in Toronto, but really bummed.
    I recently find the women's games more interesting, not because I think the games are more exciting (they're not) but because at least we don't know who the semifinalists will be. With men it's just become too much of the same thing.
    That said, I'm excited to see if Djokovic can win again.

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  2. Hi Amir! I'm not a huge Djokovic fan, though I understand he brings a certain excitement to the game, but it's nice to see another tennis fan commenting on the blog!

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  3. Andrey Kuznetsov will meet R. Harrison in today's game played in Roger Cup 2016 tournament. In their last H2H meeting played at Australian Open, Kuznetsov won the match with 3:0. I wonder if Harrison prepared us with a surprise today. Based on the past results of the two players, I would expect Kuznetsov to perform well during this game and go for a victory. It should be interesting to see if Kuznetsov will win by 3 sets difference as his last head to head meeting.

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