Tennis News

Bring on the clay! Spring is in the air when you can hear feet sliding on red dirt. I am really looking forward to this year’s season which has a lot of interesting questions to answer.

• Will Nadal be as unbeatable as always?
• How will Djokovic perform after a spellbinding start to the season?
• Can Federer be able to convince the fans that he’s still a force or will the rivalry between Djokovic and Nadal tighten?
• Is it time for clay court demon Nicholas Almagro to step up and win a Masters title?
• Americans have suffered lately on the dirt, can they turn that trend around?

Read my answer and a lot of other tennis articles here

For Federer fans such as myself this is a pretty controversial or at least disappointing headline. What can the young Spaniard teach the Swiss maestro? Well maybe “teach” is the wrong word and maybe there isn’t a lesson to be learned about “wanting to win” but if there was, I could think of no better player to teach it than Rafael Nadal.

Because one of the problems in yesterday’s 6-3 6-2 beating in ATP Miami semi-finals was that Federer didn’t look comfortable from the second he stepped on court and after going down a break he didn’t seem to have it in him to fight back. We have seen this in Federer before, but it hurts every time. Sports is all about trying hard and giving your all and on this level you won’t get many games playing on 75 percent, even if you are the best player of all time.

Everybody has an opinion when it comes to rating the best and worst of things and it’s no different for sports. The year 2010 featured a lot of excellent athletic events and performances throughout the world, especially with the Winter Olympic Games and World Cup of soccer taking place. However, when it came time for 515 journalists across the world to vote for the sportsman of the year, the award went to 24-year-old tennis player Rafael Nadal of Spain.

Nadal had an exceptional year as he became just the fourth male ever during the tennis open era to win the tennis grand slam after winning Wimbledon, the French Open, and the U.S. Open. He ended up getting 16 per cent of the vote from the 515 journalists while Argentine soccer player Lionel Messi came in second place and Spanish soccer player Andres Iniesta came in third. Messi and Iniests are teammates with Barcelona of Spain’s La Liga.

Tiger Woods no longer represents “The Best a Man Can Get,” at least according to the marketing bigwigs at Procter & Gambel. The corporation announced that as of December 31, its Gillette brand is cutting ties with the now World’s No. 2 golfer, as well as several soccer stars including Thierry Henry, Kaka, Rafa Marquez and Lionel Messi.

The marketing bigwigs seem to be trying not to burn bridges with Tiger, as their generally phasing out their Gillette Champions campaign. However, Gillette is still keeping New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter, tennis champ Roger Federer, and Washington Capitals forward Alex Ovechkin.

According to USA Today, Tiger still has endorsement deals with eight sponsors: Nike Golf; Upper Deck; EA Sports; Tag Heuer; NetJets; TLC Laser Eye Centers; Golf Digest and the Tiger Woods Dubai Resort. Tiger is still expected to clear between $55 million and $60 million from those endorsements in 2011.