Bleacher Report - Articles by Veeraraghavan Echambadi

The U.S. Open: A Preliminary Look

Veeraraghavan Echambadi — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:05:59 -0400

Despite the absence of the erstwhile World No. 1 and defending champion, Rafael Nadal, and the ever-present rain, Wimbledon served up more than its fair share of tennis drama that we have come to expect from SW19, thanks in large part to the heroics of Andy Roddick.

What the events of the last two weeks have done is to undoubtedly open up the floodgates for what promises to be probably the most open U.S. Open in the last five years. While we cannot afford to look too much past a certain Swiss gentleman who, incidentally is not only the five-time defending champion, but is also riding a wave of confidence after capturing the last two majors and regaining the No. 1 ranking, we also cannot overlook the upcoming return of the Spaniard, presumably at the Montreal Masters in early August.

Nadal, for his part, loves to prove his critics wrong, and despite beliefs that tennis pundits held during the early part of his career, has won titles at both the Australian Open and Wimbledon, the latter of which he was unable to defend this year. The question marks for him going into the U.S. Open will primarily relate to how his knees will hold up on his return and how soon he can return to form. Having said that, the U.S. Open will still be his most challenging event given the speed of the court and the stress the surface puts on a player's knees.

Putting themselves as legitimate contenders for the title will be Scot Andy Murray, a resurgent Andy Roddick, fast improving Juan Martin Del Potro and of course, Novak Djokovic.

Andy Murray was quick to proclaim after his Wimbledon semifinal loss to Roddick that it was only a matter of time before he won his first major. He also mentioned during last year’s tournament that the U.S. Open was his favorite and his game appears well-suited to the surface, more so than at Wimbledon. If his fitness holds, there is no reason why he shouldn’t be one of the top favorites with Federer to win the title in September.

Andy Roddick, in no small measure, signaled his comeback into legitimate contender lists, after playing that epic Wimbledon final against Roger Federer. Roddick seems to have benefitted significantly from his association with coach Larry Stefanki, who, it appears, has wisely focused on the American’s strengths and made them even better. Case in point – the body serve that he used so effectively against Federer was seldom used, if ever, in Roddick’s career before.

Del Potro, over the last year or so, has emerged as a very legitimate threat, with very good results on American hardcourts as well as at the majors. Notably, he has wins over both Nadal and Murray this year, and came very close to denying Federer at Roland Garros in the semifinals.

Serb Novak Djokovic has failed to live up to expectations ever since his Australian Open triumph in 2008, after which many people thought it was only a matter of time before he took over the reins from Federer and Nadal. His confidence seems to be lacking against top players recently; however, he has proved that he has the game to win at the biggest stage, and if he gets his confidence back and improves his fitness, there is no reason why he should not be considered one of the favorites for the title.

Dark horses for the title, or at least to get through to the latter stages of the Open, will be: Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Gael Monfils (if healthy), Robin Soderling and Tommy Haas, who have all proved that they can play on more than one surface.

All said and done, get your seatbelts on and get ready for a very promising U.S. Open.

The Big What-Ifs Of Tennis

Veeraraghavan Echambadi — Sat, 23 May 2009 00:48:50 -0400

What if Michael Chang was over six feet tall?
What if anything but wooden racquets were banned?
What if Marat Safin weren’t as delightfully crazy as he is?
What if Andre Agassi had his head straight early on in his career?
What if Monica Seles had never been stabbed?
What if Roger Federer were a left-hander?
What if Rod Laver had not turned professional in 1962, and therefore played in every Slam from 1963 to 1968?
What if Bjorn Borg had not retired from professional tennis at the age of 26 in January 1983, and had played more than just one Australian Open?
What if Nadal, Federer, Laver, Sampras, Agassi, Becker, Edberg, Borg and McEnroe had all been at their prime at the same time?
What if none of the above players ever played Tennis?

French Open 2009 Men's Draw Preview

Veeraraghavan Echambadi — Fri, 22 May 2009 22:19:50 -0400

The draw for the 2009 edition of the French Open, that oh-so-elusive major for many a Grand Slam champion of the past, was announced Friday in Paris.

As expected, and quite rightly so, much of the attention on the men's side circles around the Big Four - Nadal, Federer, Murray, and Djokovic.

Here's a look at how the draw looks:

Top Quarter

Rafa opens his campaign for a fifth consecutive title against qualifier Marcos Daniel of Brazil.

Nadal does have a tricky third round proposition in Hewitt or Karlovic possibly, but the Spaniard should not face any issues at all until at least the fourth round, where, if the seedings are justified, he will meet fellow Spaniard and clay courter, David Ferrer.

Ferrer does have some wins against Nadal (3-7 record), but only one of his three wins were on clay and that came way back in 2004 when Nadal was barely beginning to become Nadal.

Should Nadal navigate through that, and he should, he would likely meet another Spaniard, Fernando Verdasco, Russian Nikolay Davydenko, or Stanislas Wawrinka. The only one of the three that could pose any kind of threat to Nadal is Verdasco in present form.

Pick for the top quarter: I'd be crazy to go against the world's no. 1! Rafa over Verdasco in four sets!

Second Quarter

The second quarter of the draw is the most open, and features Andy Murray and Gilles Simon. There are several dangerous players in this group, including Murray's first round opponent, clay courter Juan Ignacio Chela (Chela though is not who he once was and is in the declining stages of his career). Also in this group are Feliciano Lopez, Marin Cilic, Fernando Gonzalez, and Mikhail Youzhny.

Pick for this quarter of the draw: This is a hard one, but I am going against seeding here and picking home-court favorite Gilles Simon, over Radek Stepanek in five sets!

Third Quarter

Although this quarter of the draw has some not-so-unfamiliar names such as Marcos Baghdatis, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, and Tommy Robredo, given the results of the clay court tournaments this year, it would be hard to see anybody else besides Djokovic and Del Potro emerge from this quarter.

Pick from this quarter: Djokovic over Del Potro in four!

Bottom Quarter

Roger Federer does have a tricky draw here - clay courters Alberto Martin and Jose Acasuso in the first and second rounds, respectively. Should he clear these hurdles, he could face Frenchman Paul-Henri Mathieu in the third round and James Blake or Tomas Berdych in the fourth round.

His quarterful opponent is seeded to be Andy Roddick or Gael Monfils, but it is hard to see either the American or the Frenchman make it that far, the former for obvious reasons and the latter due to a painful left knee. In fact, Monfils may even pull out at the last minute, according to recent reports.

Pick from this quarter: Federer over Jurgen Melzer (though I would give Roddick a slight chance to be the opponent here given a favorable draw) in straight sets!

The Semifinals

Nadal over Simon - No contest - straight sets!

Federer over Djokovic - A slug fest - five sets!

The Final

Go to the official website of the French Open, and just in case you weren't aware, look up the results for the last three finals - Nadal in a slightly better contested four sets!

IPL: Kings, Super Kings, and Indians! What's In a Name?

Veeraraghavan Echambadi — Fri, 22 May 2009 21:35:42 -0400

Chennai Super Kings.

Deccan Chargers.

Delhi Daredevils.

Kings XI Punjab.

Kolkata Knight Riders.

Mumbai Indians.

Rajasthan Royals.

Royal Challengers Bangalore.

Eight teams, one mission, one thing in common!

Other than the fact that all of these teams play in the Indian Premier League, the one thing that separates these franchises from everybody else is in their respective abilities (or lack thereof) to come up with some creative names for their franchises.

It is truly amazing that, with the possible exception of Rajasthan and Bangalore, none of these teams have come up with a name that is of any significance to where they are located. A third grader from my nephew’s history class could have done better than these names!

My personal favourites:

The runner-up: The Chennai Super Kings!

Oh, I really wanted to name us the “Kings”, but didn’t have the time or the inclination to think about it, so I just added a “Super” ahead of it once Punjab made its choice.

So who is a Super King? Just someone from Punjab who is a little better than his “Kings” and made the trip from the Northwest to the Southeast?

And the winner is: The Mumbai Indians!

Indians?

Really? In the land of Bollywood, in the city that makes the higher of movies in a year, you couldn’t really squeeze one drop of creative juice? The best you could come up with is "Indian?"

I was actually under the impression that most people in Mumbai are Armenians. You couldn’t even think of an animal just for the heck of it?

I am not really saying that there is much creativity to the names in the sports teams in the U.S. either, but there is some semblance of reasoning here in certain cases.

The Los Angeles Lakers were originally from Minneapolis, the city of Lakes.

The Detroit Pistons’ name came from the original Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons, which was named after the owner Fred Zollner’s foundry that manufactured pistons for car, truck, and locomotive engines.

Boston Celtics—Boston’s original Irish-Americans believed that they were ancestors of the ancient druid people called the Celts.

It’s not absolute, but, more often than not, there is a reason for the name. Heck, even my beloved Ohio State Buckeyes have a solid basis for their name, crazy as it sounds (it’s really a nut)!

So, why don’t we have traditional, meaningful names for our IPL teams? And before some of you pounce on me saying having a traditional name would not make sense because many of the players are from other countries, let me remind you, the I in IPL stands for Indian, not International!

After all, it is all in the name. And, please, no making fun of my name—it is about as Indian as a name can get!

Is Roger Federer Done? The Great Debate

Veeraraghavan Echambadi — Thu, 21 May 2009 15:31:15 -0400

Roger Federer is done—he will not win anything anymore!

Roger Federer is back—he just beat Nadal in a clay court final, in Spain of all places!

Every time the Swiss maestro does anything, of note or otherwise, everybody seems to have an opinion about it.

He got married and will be a father soon—he will soon retire to some lakefront property in Geneva and open a tennis academy to pass his time!

Just like everybody else, I have an opinion too. Simply put, here’s how it goes: Who in the world knows?

The first time anyone took serious notice of the arrival of this genius (yes, whether or not he wins anything more, he is clearly a tennis genius—and,correct me if I am wrong, as John Isner put it on Facebook, "If Tennis were a religion, then Roger Federer would be God!") was as a 19-year old in 2001, when he shocked the tennis world by beating the four-time defending champion, Pete Sampras, at Wimbledon.

Pete had won four in a row at the time and seven overall at Wimbledon. Little did the amazed media and public know that it would be another two years before they would see Roger win his maiden Grand Slam title—of course, it had to be at Wimbledon—at the ripe old age of 22.

Since then, until some point in 2008 (the exact point in time is debatable—the mononucleosis? The thrashing at the hands of Nadal at the French? The relinquishing of his beloved Wimbledon crown?). There was no looking back for Roger—he won almost everything in sight, with a few minor hiccups and of course, the much-fabled failures at the French.

How so many people began to write off Roger is incredible to me—if we look at the last twelve months, Roger had one Grand Slam title and three final appearances—all losses to Nadal. If you discount the hammering at the French, he could have really won three of the four—Wimbledon and the Aussie Open were so close.

For those of us who question his ability to fight hard, just take a look at Wimbledon—he could have so easily succumbed after being down two sets to love. Instead, he made a match of it!

Make no mistake, Nadal absolutely deserved that title, and he has deserved everything that he has gotten in his career. But what hurt Roger more in that epic Wimbledon final had a lot to do with his poor play in two games in the first two sets—the two games that ultimately gave Nadal the breaks that carried him through the set.

At the Australian Open, again, yes that fifth set was a joke, but he did take Nadal to five sets there as well, and choked at the end.

To all you Nadal fans, and I am one of them, again, I am not saying that Nadal does not deserve any of these titles, but I think there is very little to separate these two, except on the red dirt of course. And Rafa will be the first one to tell you that is the case.

Having said all of this, the question remains—will Roger win the French? I wish he would, but in my opinion, unless Nadal is hurt or beaten early in a fluke by somebody else, no! Beating Nadal in Madrid or Hamburg in a best of three-set final under severely different conditions (especially in Madrid) does not say much about his ability to beat Nadal in a grueling best-of-five match in Paris. Heck, Nadal has not been stretched to five sets in Paris yet, in four years of playing there!

Roger’s biggest curse will be that he is playing in the era of the greatest ever, not one of the greatest, but the greatest ever clay court player. If not for Rafa, there would not even be a question of who the GOAT is. As the Swiss himself put it recently, he “doesn’t have a problem on clay, he has a Rafa problem on clay”! And who wouldn’t?

The real test to whether Roger is still the Roger we all know and have come to expect will come not at the French, but at Wimbledon. For the first time in five years, Roger will not be the one opening proceedings on day one as defending champion. For the first time in four years, he will enter the lawns of Wimbledon as the No. 2 ranked player and No. 2 seed.

However, anybody that would place the odds significantly against Roger to win his sixth Wimbledon would just be crazy. There is nobody—even today, with the phenomenal rise of the likes of Andy Murray—that is close to Roger on grass, other than a certain Spaniard, of course. If anything, my hunch is that Roger will be very hungry come strawberries and cream time. And this time, there will be no faltering in the first two sets, should we be fortunate enough to see these guys do battle again on final Sunday!

And until we know what happens in that Mecca of Tennis, all bets are off as to what Roger is still capable of, no matter what he does at the French. As of today, there’s Rafa and Roger (in order of rankings) at one level, Andy (the Brit, obviously) and Novak at the second level (and sorry all you Novak and Andy supporters—until they consistently beat Rafa/Roger at the Slams, where it matters most, they aren’t quite there) and then there is everybody else.

I, for one, like it the way it is, and would just be extremely glad to see the Swiss and the Spaniard to do battle day in and day out for the next five years!

The Future Of Tennis: Nadal and Murray With a Sprinkling Of Federer and Tsonga

Veeraraghavan Echambadi — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 10:37:40 -0500

It was my original intention to write an article about who else but Roger Federer. But after some browsing, the realization hit me that he is probably the most written-about player in tennis history (though I don't have the stats to back it up). What I have instead settled on writing about is the plethora of talent that is right behind (and ahead of) Roger.

The remainder of this article is going to focus on predictions for 2009, and a prediction of how many Grand Slam titles each of these young stars might win. Hard to not talk about Roger when we talk about tennis, so there will be a few lines about him as well. So without much ado, here we go.

2009: There are three things that I am fairly confident about this year. Roger Federer will reclaim Wimbledon (his one challenge will come not from Nadal, but from Richard Gasquet), Rafael Nadal will continue his dominance in Paris and Andy Murray will win his first Grand Slam title.

Given that Murray himself has proclaimed his love for the hard courts of Flushing Meadows and backed that up with a fine showing at the 2008 edition, the U.S. Open seems to be the most obvious Grand Slam for him. That leaves the Australian Open, well, open. This one is easier said than done.

It is going to be very hard for Djokovic to repeat, and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, the talented Frenchman, seems to be much too inconsistent to yet win his first Grand Slam. While this may not be much of a prediction, I believe the Australian Open will be won by either of the other three - Nadal, Federer or Murray, or simply be someone that isn't really on the radar. Here are some other predictions by player:

The Forerunners

Rafael Nadal: Surely, there isn't anyone close to the Spaniard on the red dirt, and he should win at least three more French Open titles, much to the frustration of one Mr. Federer. Besides that, Rafa will get maybe another couple of Grand Slam titles purely because of his grit and determination. An Australian Open title is probable and another Wimbledon is possible while a U.S. Open seems quite unlikely.

You have to wonder how long his body will withstand the immense physical stress his style of play demands, but if there is one thing we should know about Rafa by now, it is that this kid just does not quit. All said and done, Rafa should finish a great career with about ten Grand Slam titles, highlighted by seven Roland Garros titles and no U.S. Opens.

Roger Federer: Will he beat Pete Sampras' record 14 Grand Slam titles? Absolutely! Roger definitely has two more Wimbledons in him, and a couple of other Slams.

Unfortunately for him, barring a miraculous early round loss by Rafael Nadal in the 2009 French Open, Roger's trophy cabinet will not include one from Paris, the same title that has eluded former greats such as John McEnroe, Boris Becker, Stefan Edberg, and most recently, Pete Sampras.

His fluid style of play will keep him healthy and competitive for three to four more years. All said and done, arguably the most illustrious career in modern tennis history will end with 17 Grand Slam titles—seven from Wimbledon, four from Melbourne, and six from the Big Apple.

Novak Djokovic: The talent is there. Unfortunately, so is the arrogance. More than half of the tennis world proclaimed Djokovic as the heir apparent to Roger Federer after Novak's title run in Australia earlier this year. Djokovic's mom is said to have announced, ".... the King is Dead! Long Live the King!"

Yes, there is a new king in the world of tennis after almost five years of Swiss dominance. However, the man atop the rankings isn't the cocky Serb, but rather the unassuming and ridiculously down-to-earth Rafael Nadal. Since winning his maiden Grand Slam title down under, Djokovic has losing records against not only Federer and Nadal, but also Murray and Tsonga.

At the end of the year, you are left wondering whether the Serb is really even top three material. While he is too talented to end up as a one-slam wonder, he will not win more than three (at the most) more Grand Slam titles.

Prediction: One or two more Australians and maybe a French if he does not have to face Nadal. Given that there aren't enough clay court "specialists" any longer, Novak certainly has a chance at winning one in Paris.

Andy Murray: The Scot has just been great during the second half of the year. As an ardent tennis fan, I love to watch beautiful shot-making and smart decision-making. It is absolutely delightful to watch the wide array of shots and intelligent play this young star brings to court, especially in an era when even grass court tennis is played from the baseline.

Not that Murray is a serve-and-volleyer, but just the simple fact that he knows how to volley is refreshing in itself. If Murray manages to keep his head together and stay injury-free, I for one would not be surprised to see the Scot at No. 1 or No. 2 by the end of next year. His talent tells me he has six to eight Grand Slam titles, with the French eluding him as well.

If he can remain fit and let his head stay on his broadening shoulders, there is no reason he shouldn't have his fair share in the coming years. A mouth-watering rivalry between Nadal and Murray, with a sprinkling of Federer and possibly Tsonga, would just be wonderful for Tennis.

The Wildcards

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga: Potential—tons of it! Probably the most complete young player on tour currently. Power, finesse, athleticism—you name it, the kid has it all. Question is, will he remain healthy enough?

This is the one guy where making a prediction is just so hard. If he lives up to half of his potential, he could end up winning about five slams. On the other end, he may end up to be someone like Richard Krajicek—a ton of injuries to offset some serious talent. As much as I like this flamboyant Frenchman, I believe he is going to disappoint.

He will win a Slam or two, but that will be it. I'll go on a limb here and say he wins one each at Flushing Meadows and in Australia.

Juan Martin Del Potro: I have seen very little of this lanky Argentine, so I may be completely off-base here, but his height may just end up being too much of a problem to overcome and will restrict his movement though I have to admit he is the quickest 6'6 player I have ever seen.

However, as of now, it's hard to imagine him go through a fortnight of best-of-five set matches against the best in the world. Prediction: A good career with a couple of dozen circuit titles but no Grand Slam titles.

Richard Gasquet: This one has to drive a tennis fan crazy! Absolutely the best backhand in tennis today, probably the best talent in the world, but yet nothing better than just a couple of semifinal appearances in the last couple of years. One hopes it's just a crisis of confidence that will disappear with that first victory, which could very well come at Wimbledon next year.

With a little bit of work, mostly in the head, Gasquet could end up having the best career of all of the young people listed above, with probably the exception of Nadal (only because Nadal already has five Slams to his credit). However, as it stands right now, it's hard to foresee anything more than one or two titles, probably both at Wimbledon, for this talented but not hungry-enough Frenchman.