What I'm Reading: Link Round-Up for Monday 11/30

Scotland's The Daily Record reported that Britain's Andy Murray split with his long-time girlfriend Kim Sears. The break-up could explain why Murray didn't make it out of the round robin portion of the Barclay's ATP World Tour Final.

Speaking of the World Tour Final, Nikolay Davydenko defeated Juan Martin Del Potro to win the title of this illustrious event. It seems that my predictions were pretty far off considering I gave Davydenko really no chance to win this event. Either way, I want to say congratulations to Davydenko for being one of the most consistant players on tour and finally winning a major title.

Are you feeling a little bitter that the tennis season as officially ended till January? Well, Peter Bodo, a blogger for ESPN, gives you all the reasons to be thankful for professional tennis. Unfortunately, he rips the lions in the title to his post. We all know they suck Pete, you don't have to make me feel any worse about being a lions fan.

Apparently, The Austrian Open has been removed from the ATP schedule. There was a tennis tournament in Austria? No skin off my back with this news.

Finally, I can't end this post without some Tim Henman love. Another thing we have in common, we both love the Nintendo Wii.

[Image via The Daily Record]

What I'm Reading: Link Round-Up for Monday 11/16

This weekend held the final of the last Masters Series event in Paris before the year end round robin event in London.

Novak Djokovic narrowly beat Gael Monfils in a three set thriller. Monfils had a good shot at taking this match down, and I think he is finally starting to come into his own.

Next week is the beginning of the end of the year Masters Event in London. Only the top 8 ranked players in the world qualify for the tournament.

The tournament should be exciting considering all the big names that will be playing in this event. The complete list of players includes Andy Roddick, Rafael Nadal, Andy Murray, Roger Federer, and Djokovic.

The Bleacher Report provides a preview on the event. The article thinks Djokovic has a good shot at it being the defending champion.

For more information, Ricky Dimon at Tennis Talk will write a preview of what we can expect to see from every player at the final tournament. He starts with profiling Fernando Verdasco.


I just can't see Federer not winning this event, even though he went out early in Paris. His only real challenge would come from Andy Murray, but he seems to still be suffering from a lingering injury.


Speaking of Federer, Paul Kimmage of the Times Online writes a great article on Federer's life as a new father. It's nice to see just how human these professionals really are.


Plus, Tim Henman is mentioned. Yeah!

[Image via Sports Illustrated]

My Favorite Tennis Players

Since I write about professional tennis a lot I wanted to list my six favorite tennis players.


So, in pictures here are my favorite players I have ever had the privilege to watch.

1. Tim Henman

2. Andy Murray

3. Gael Monfils

4. Jo-Wilfried Tsogna

5&6. Bob and Mike Bryan (Doubles Team).

What I'm Reading: Link Round-Up for Tuesday 11/3

CNN is reporting that the #1 German tennis player Tommy Haas has pulled out of the rest of the end of the year tournaments because he has contracted the swine flu.

I always figured being in top physical condition would keep you immune to the swine flu. I guess that is not the case, good luck Tommy!

Over at TennisX they profile Marcos Baghdatis' first tournament victory since 2007 in Zagreb, Croatia.

The Cypriot fell out of shape (he isn't the skinniest guy on tour) after making a miracle run to the Australian Open final in 2007. He became one of my personal favorites because of his light-hearted attitude and what seemed to be a love for the game.  Hopefully this victory propels him back to the top of the men's rankings.

According to the Mercury News, Andre Agassi's admittance to using     crystal meth will call for an anti-doping investigation.                                       

However, since it happened more than eight years ago, the ATP cannot do anything to Agassi. The investigation is pretty much pointless.

Staying on the same subject, The United Kingdom's Daily Mail provides a must read story by Piers Morgan on Andre Agassi, and why doing crystal meth is a forgivable offense.

Plus, he writes a little about Tim Henman, what's not to love?

Speaking of Tim, Bleacher Report looks back to the 2003 Masters Series event in Paris in which my man Tim Henman went on a miracle run to capture the title.

Oh how i miss those days, please come out of retirement Tim!

[Image Via J_Circle_Sh]                                 

More Tiger Tim

Hopefully this blog brings in readers that care about my tennis journey. But hopefully it also shows some people just how great my favorite tennis player, Tim Henman Actually is.

Don't believe me, huh!?!?

Check it, yo.



Who else has their own Wimbledon tribute video!?!?

Brings a tear to my eye everytime.

Player Profile: Tim Henman

In my last post I talked about what serve-and-volley tennis is, and how to implement that strategy into your individual tennis game.

I then got to thinking about how the best way to show exactly what serve and volley tennis was. This thought brought me to doing a player profile on one of my favorite tennis players of all time, the pride of England, Mr. Tim Henman

It is obvious that he is my favorite tennis player from his rugged good looks which can be seen to the right of the screen on the wikipedia page. However, despite his boyish charm I always loved watching him play tennis. His serve and volley style was a throwback to the 60's and 70's era of tennis. Also, watching him try and compete with the baseliners of the modern day game always gave his matches a little more excitement.

Even though he retired at the end of the 2007 season without a major championship to his credit he never tried to change his style of play, and was close to the top of the rankings for many years. If it wasn't for the fact that he played during the Agassi/Sampras era he probably would have had a few more titles to his credit.

I have included a few videos just to show what a true serve-and-volley game looks like (aside from Sampras of course), and I believe Henman was the best example of this because he did indeed follow the serve and volley fomat to a T and throughout his career hit amazing shot after amazing shot at the net.

Video: Tiger Tim Henman Benzer: tiger, tim, henman, tennis, sport

As you can see from these videos Tim is not always up at the net, but he does spend alot of time up there, and his volleys are always extremely crisp. This is what I hope to accomplish to some extent when I play my next match.