Black Tennis Pros

Even though both Frenchmen Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Gael Monfils have been having a pretty good go of it lately, Thursday morning presented all manner of issues for both of them at the Shanghai ATP Masters.

First up was Big Jo-Willie, whose forehand was an obstacle in and of itself. In falling to Swede Robin Soderling, Tsonga was all over the place. He couldn't seem to get his game organized in his head or on the court. I've rarely seen Tsonga so frustrated on court. He demolished one of his uncooperative racquets after an errant forehand. He may have killed that stupid racquet, but it didn't improve his game.

Soderling was playing much better and took advantage of the out of sorts Tsonga. He went on to defeat the number five seed 6-3, 6-3.

The same seemed to be true for fellow Frenchman Gael Monfils who went up against Croatian Ivan Ljubicic after the Tsonga vs. Soderling match. After losing the first set and continuing to play very poorly, down 6-3, 3-0, Monfils came to net, shook Ljubicic's hand, then retired.

I didn't catch the nature of the injury, but I'm sure we'll be hearing about it at some point today.

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I can only take so much drama on Mondays, it is not my best or favorite day of the week. As I was updating the list of upcoming ATP tournaments for the month of March, I saw a photo of Federer on the Dubai Tennis Championships home page. I was very glad to see him because when you can't count on anything or anyone else in tennis, Federer is the player to look to. For what, five years now? Federer has virtually been unbeatable. Of course the Spainard with the cute butt came along and changed that dynamic a bit, but other than that, Federer was still your man.

I must admit, Federer shook me up at the ATP Masters Cup in Shanghai, China at the end of 2007, where as defending champion, he lost to Fernando Gonzalez and suffered his first consecutive match loss in 4 1/2 years. At that time, I asked if we had just seen "The First Sign of The Apocalypse." Now, in the first round of the Barclay's Dubai Tennis Championships, he is defeated by Andy Murray 6-7, 6-3, 6-4.

To make matters worse, the annointed one mildly blasted Murray's game saying, “I don’t think he has changed his game a whole lot since the first time I played him and I really thought he would have done ...... He is going to have to grind it very hard in the next few years if he is going to play this way." When asked to elaborate Federer said, "He stands way behind the court. You have to do a lot of running and he tends to wait for the mistakes of his opponent. I gave him the mistakes today but overall in a 15-year career you want to look to win a point more often rather than wait for the other guy to miss. Who knows he might surprise us all."

I am just going to take this as a very disappointed Federer not knowing how to respond since losing has been a rarity for him. Oh well, I hope that I wake up on Tuesday to automobiles, not chariots.

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