VENI, VOLI, VICI

[ I came, I volleyed, I won]

Fed beats Nadal in London

 

World No. 2 Roger Federer won his fifth title at the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals on Sunday when he defeated Rafael Nadal 6-3, 3-6, 6-1 in a gripping finale at The O2 in London.

As the undefeated champion of the world’s biggest indoor tennis tournament, Federer received 1,500 South African Airways 2010 ATP Ranking points and the maximum amount of $1,630,000 in prize money.  It is the fourth time that he has been crowned the undefeated champion at the season finale, having dropped only one set this week.

ATP

NESTOR WINS LONDON

Daniel Nestor and Nenad Zimonjic ended their three-year partnership on a high note Sunday as they were crowned champions of the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals for the second time. In a close final they defeated Mahesh Bhupathi and Max Mirnyi 7-6(6), 6-4 at The O2 in London.

Next year Nestor will team up with Mirnyi, while Zimonjic will join forces with France’s Michael Llodra. In the on-court trophy presentation Nestor joked: “We’ve had three amazing years. People wonder why we are splitting up. The truth is we play great tennis, but we really don’t like each other!”

ATP

LONDON - FORMAT AND MONEY

MOYA RETIRES

Former World No. 1 Carlos Moya has announced his retirement from professional tennis at the age of 34. The Spaniard has been troubled with a persistent right foot injury and informed media at a press conference on Wednesday afternoon that the injury has forced him to call time on his illustrious 15-year career.

Moya played his last match on the ATP World Tour at the Mutua Madrilena Madrid Open in May, when he suffered a heavy defeat to German Benjamin Becker. It was at that moment, he acknowledged, that the time had come retire after doctors had been unable to settle on an effective course of treatment for his foot.

“I wanted to play the big tournaments and say goodbye but I got to the Madrid tournament and I still wasn't 100 per cent. I am still young for life but for sport, I am already knocking on a bit," said Moya. "I realised with that match that the moment had arrived. It's not how I dreamed of ending my career."

ATP

LONDON SKED

 

 

LONDON - 21st NOVEMBER

PARIS QUARTERS MATCH-UPS

 

Subtract 5 hours to translate the given local time to our DST.

14:00 local time is 8 am Friday morn, here.

TAYLOR DENT - ENDANGERED SPECIES

Taylor Dent announced his retirement from tennis Monday.

It's not a total shock. Dent is 29, and that he was playing for the last 18 months or so was a sweet bonus for a man who spent nearly two years fighting debilitating back injuries, underwent three back surgeries in 2006 and 2007 and wondered sometimes whether he would walk unaided and without pain.

But it is a loss for tennis.

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For Dent is taking with him into retirement the kind of game we don't see anymore.

Dent is an unabashed serve-and-volley player, always at the net. In fact, he has always been unwilling to stay at the baseline and pound ground strokes. It wasn't how he was taught, by his father and former pro player Phil Dent, and it wasn't how he wanted to play.

"It wasn't my nature," Dent said. "I love to serve and volley."

After his 12 years on the pro tour, where he was ranked as high as No. 21 in the world, and as he has watched the ascendance of big hitters of ground strokes such as Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, Dent sounds almost wistful that this style of play is disappearing.

"In the past, tennis has been cyclical," Dent said. "You'd have a wave of guys who stayed back, then a wave of guys who served and volleyed, then a wave of guys who stayed back.

"But lately the technology of tennis is taking the game in one direction. The balls are heavier, the courts are slower, the strings and rackets are enabling players to hit so much harder and with so much spin, it all works against the serve-and-volleyer.

"You might see somebody like a Pat Rafter or a Pete Sampras who have serves so good and so accurate they could negate the technology, but I don't think you'll see many."

Dent, who has a 9-month-old son, said he and his wife, Jenny, sat down last week and talked about what's next.

"It's the deal we have had since my comeback," Dent said, "that at the end of the year we sit down and have a scheduled talk about whether to go forward or retire. I've been playing for 12 years now and I met a lot of my goals, almost all my goals after coming back from the surgeries and the time seemed perfect.

"I've got a son and a strong desire to be a family man. Pro tennis is a grueling schedule and it gets pretty tough after a while. My body was able to hang in there, a testament to my surgeon, but at the end of the day it's just a lot of little things."

Dent, who grew up in Newport Beach and who has been based in Bradenton, Fla., for the last couple of years, said he would probably settle down in Kansas City, where his wife is from. He said he's interested in exploring careers in coaching and in tennis commentating.

"We'll see where the chips fall," he said.

As for what he'll remember most fondly about his career, Dent has a list.

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"Any time I've won titles [four], those are big deals to me," he said. "Not very many players win at the ATP level. I've had some big wins in my day, over James Blake and Andy Roddick and Juan Carlos Ferrero. And if I look back on the broader picture, clawing my way back from surgery, it gave me a lot of pride because it wasn't something easily done and it wasn't only me but my whole supporting cast.

"There are things I'll regret that didn't turn out as I wished, the top prizes — being ranked No. 1 or winning a Grand Slam," he said. "Those would have been incredibly special. But as I look back I think I always gave myself a chance to do my best. So I'm proud of that."

diane.pucin@latimes.com

BALLS TO FOOTBALL MATCH

Outraged FC Basel and FC Luzern fans were so angry at a change to the kick-off time for their match at the weekend that they staged a protest by throwing thousands of tennis balls on to the pitch.

A Swiss TV company had engineered the early kick-off to allow them to broadcast both the Swiss Super League match in Emmenbruecke and Roger Federer's final against Novak Djokovic at the ATP Basel tennis tournament, with the football match moved to 12.45pm to ensure that it would be finished in time for the tennis to begin at 3pm.

That prompted the fans of the two clubs - who occupy the top two spots in the Swiss top flight - to protest their treatment with a flurry of tennis balls.

And, with the pitch almost covered in them, the referee had no choice but to send the players back to the dressing rooms.

But as soon as they were cleared by stewards and security staff, the crafty fans began to rain a second wave of balls on to the pitch - forcing a further delay at the Sportanlage Gersag stadium.

When the game was finally played Basel fans were left celebrating an injury-time equaliser that saw them rescue a point to remain top of the league - while in the tennis, Federer beat Djokovic in three sets to win the title in front of his hometown crowd for the fourth time in five years.

YAHOO

TSN (2) PARIS SKED

HOMEYS WIN

FERRER WINS VALENCIA

FEDERER TAKES BASEL

BRYAN'S CLINCH TOP RANK

Bob Bryan and Mike Bryan celebrated clinching the year-end No.1 ATP Doubles Team Ranking by defeating Daniel Nestor and Nenad Zimonjic 6-3, 3-6, 10-3 to win their 11th tour-level title of the season at the Swiss Indoors Basel Sunday.

The Americans, who will finish the year as the No. 1 team for a record sixth time in eight years, extended their perfect record in tour-level finals this season to 11-0, including two majors at the Australian Open and the US Open. It is the second time in their career they have won 11 titles in a season (also 2007) and they will look to set a new career-high tally in their final two tournaments of the season at the BNP Paribas Masters and the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals.

ATP

NESTOR TAKES HIS 70TH

Top seeded Daniel Nestor of Toronto and Serbian partner Nenad Zimonjic won the Bank Austria Tennis Trophy on Sunday for their sixth doubles title of the season.

Nestor and Zimonjic, ranked second in the world, defeated No. 3 seeds Mariusz Fyrstenberg and Marcin Matkowski of Poland 7-5, 3-6, 10-5 in the final for their first victory since the French Open.

“It’s great to be back in the winners’ circle,” said Nestor. “We played really well, beat one of the hottest teams on tour, so it’s a good feeling.”

The win was also the 70th doubles title of Nestor’s career, making the 38-year-old just the fifth player to reach the mark.

“It’s amazing. I’m fortunate to have had great partners,” said Nestor. “I’m playing well still, even at this age, and hopefully I can get a couple more years in there (and win a few more titles).”

Nestor and Zimonjic announced earlier in the month that their three-year partnership will end following the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals in London. Nestor is slated to join Max Mirnyi of Belarus, while Zimonjic will team up with Michael Llodra of France.

Both Nestor and Zimonjic had previously won in Vienna. Nestor triumphed with former longtime partner Mark Knowles in 2005; Zimonjic with Yevgeny Kafelnikov in 2000.

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/sports/Nestor+wins+70th+career+doubles+title/3755375/story.html#ixzz13znH4Uue

NESTOR - ZIMONJIC

Top seeds Daniel Nestor and Nenad Zimonjic made an emphatic start to their Bank Austria TennisTrophy campaign on Wednesday, crushing Italians Andreas Seppi and Simone Vagnozzi 6-0, 6-0 in just 33 minutes.

Nestor and Zimonjic have endured a barren run in recent months and are bidding to win their first tour-level title since Roland Garros (d. Dlouhy-Paes) in early June. Courtesy of winning five trophies in the first six months of the season, the Canadian-Serbian duo are assured of their place in the elite eight-team field at the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals, to be played at The O2 in London 21-28 November.

TWEENER

GONZALEZ - HIP SURGERY

Chile's Fernando Gonzalez is bracing for an extended layoff after announcing that he will have hip and possibly knee surgery next month. The former Australian Open finalist and World No. 5 will have right hip surgery on 4 October in New York.

A statement on Gonzalez's official web site said that he could be sidelined for eight to nine months, which puts his return date at midway through or late in next year's European clay court season.

Gonzalez will have the surgery with Doctor Brian Kelly, who is a noted orthopaedic surgeon specialising in sports medicine and arthroscopic surgery of the shoulder, hip and knee.

ATP

BRAIN-BODY FITNESS

But it’s the neurological impact of sustained aerobic fitness in young people that is especially compelling. A memorable years-long Swedish study published last year found that, among more than a million 18-year-old boys who joined the army, better fitness was correlated with higher I.Q.’s, even among identical twins. The fitter the twin, the higher his I.Q. The fittest of them were also more likely to go on to lucrative careers than the least fit, rendering them less likely, you would hope, to live in their parents’ basements. No correlation was found between muscular strength and I.Q. scores. There’s no evidence that exercise leads to a higher I.Q., but the researchers suspect that aerobic exercise, not strength training, produces specific growth factors and proteins that stimulate the brain, said Georg Kuhn, a professor at the University of Gothenburg and the senior author of the study.

nytimes

BALLS

In 1480, Louis XI of France forbade the filling of tennis balls with chalk, sand, sawdust, or earth, and stated that they were to be made of good leather, well-stuffed with wool.^[1] Other early tennis balls were made by Scottish craftsmen from a wool-wrapped stomach of a sheep or goat and tied with rope. Those recovered from the hammer-beam roof of Westminster Hall during a period of recent restoration were found to have been manufactured from a combination of putty and human hair, and were dated to the reign of Henry VIII. Other versions, using materials such as animal fur, rope made from animal intestines and muscles, and pine wood, were found in Scottish castles dating back to the 16th century. In the 18th century, ¾" strips of wool were wound tightly around a nucleus made by rolling a number of strips into a little ball. String was then tied in many directions around the ball and a white cloth covering sewn around the ball. This explains why modern rubber tennis balls still have a cloth covering (in the early days of lawn tennis, it proved quite difficult to get the cloth to adhere very well to the rubber). This type of cloth ball, with a cork core, is still used for the original game of tennis, today called real tennis. With the introduction of lawn tennis in the 1870s, vulcanized rubber was first used to manufacture balls, often in tubes of four with a package, but not with the name of the brand.

Wikipedia

JERSEY GIRL

Kim Clijsters made short work of Ana Ivanovic on Sunday for her 18th straight victory spanning five years at the U.S. Open, the tournament at which she happens to have won her only two Grand Slam titles. There has not been such home-court advantage at

the National Tennis Center since John McEnroe.

Venus Williams is the last American in the women's draw, but Clijsters is the only player left with a commutable home in the New York area.

There are weeks during the North American hardcourt summer when Clijsters retreats to the house she owns in Wall, N.J., with her husband, Brian Lynch. Wall is one town inland from Belmar, where Lynch grew up a huge Knicks fan, the third of four sons of Richard Lynch, a retired Belmar police chief.

"My parents are still in Belmar and my brothers all live and work in the area," Lynch said. "I was the only one who ventured off."

They are not quite the cast of "Jersey Shore," but Lynch said that Clijsters seemed to enjoy being part of his big, noisy Irish family in the quiet beach community.

"The reputation has become tainted because of the show, but Kim really feels comfortable here, really at home," Lynch said after his wife, the defending Open champion, breezed into the quarterfinals with a 6-2, 6-1 dismantling of the unseeded

Ivanovic. "When Kim is comfortable, she is pretty tough to beat, so I guess, yeah, you could call her part Jersey girl."

She played the first match of the day in Arthur Ashe Stadium, when the crowd is sparse, typically sleepy. Two years ago, when Ivanovic looked like the next big thing in women's tennis, this might have been a premier slugfest instead of a third-round yawner. Then again, two years ago, Clijsters was at her primary home in Belgium, thinking she was finished with tennis, content with her 2005 Open title.

This is their story. Lynch played basketball at Villanova, where he was a teammate of NBA players Tim Thomas and Malik Allen. He graduated in 2000 and took his 6-foot-6 frame and small-forward game to Europe. He moved around - Germany, Israel, Greece, Poland, Italy, France, not in that order - before landing in Belgium in 2004.

The club team happened to be in Bree, Clijsters' hometown. Lynch knew little about tennis, less about Clijsters, but found himself in the VIP room after a game one night, talking to a woman who turned out to be Clijsters' mother.

The subject was bulldogs; they each owned one. When Lynch learned that the famous tennis star was the pretty woman across the room, he figured he had an opening: the canine conversation. He introduced himself. They went on a date and brought their bulldogs. The emotions culminating in marriage were unceremoniously unleashed.

When their daughter, Jada, was born in February 2008, the plan was for Clijsters to stay home while Lynch continued his basketball career, then for a team in Antwerp one hour away. Then there was bad news: Clijsters' father, Leo, had cancer.

"Whatever plan we had became irrelevant once we found out," Lynch said. "It was all about Kim and the baby spending time with her father." Leo Clijsters, 52, died in 2009. Looking for a distraction from her sadness, Kim agreed to play a few exhibitions. She took to the practice court and found that the ball-striking made her move her feet, move forward with life.

"I could see it develop over a month or so," Lynch said. "She would come home and say: 'Last week I couldn't move the way I used to. Today, I could."' She wanted to play tennis again. He knew it was coming and already had a new plan percolating.

"I'd already been playing nine years abroad," he said. "I was almost 31." He told Clijsters he would retire and travel with her on the tour. He would begin building bridges into the coaching career he fancies once Clijsters has gotten tennis out of her system.

When might that be? Lynch said he doubted she was back for the long haul. In her news conference Sunday, Clijsters said, "If I say in six months, 'OK, this has been fun,' and it's been good, you know, and I have achieved what I've wanted to achieve,then I'm the one who decides."

It is a nice place to be, she said, playing not because she has to or because she cannot think of anything better to do. These days, in a Grand Slam event, everything is at stake, or nothing, depending on how she wants to look at it.

"The pressure is a privilege," Clijsters said.

Like all tennis stars, she is a citizen of the world, belonging to whoever chooses to adopt her. She is not an American, but since she is the defending Open champion and part Jersey girl, Arthur Ashe Stadium is her house until someone takes it from her.

PROGRESS INDEX .com

$43 MILLION DOLLAR MAN (per year)

A few headliners will be on the sidelines when US Open play begins today including defending men’s champ Juan Martin del Potro as well as Serena Williams and Justine Henin who have won a combined 22 Grand Slam singles titles. The men’s tourney still features the sport’s two heavyweights Roger Federer and Roger Nadal who have won 20 of the past 22 Grand Slams. The favorite on the women’s side is Kim Clijsters who captured last year’s title after a two year retirement where she gave birth to a daughter.

Men and women typically play for vastly different sums of money in sports. Michelle Wie earned $337,500 for her second career LPGA victory this weekend, while Matt Kuchar’s paycheck was $1.35 million for claiming The Barclays men’s golf event on Sunday. The best paid players in the WNBA make $100,000 per season on the court, while men’s salaries can reach $23 million. Tennis is different though. The men’s and women’s Open champion will each earn $1.7 million for the title. The US Open has paid equal prize money the past 38 years, but credit Venus Williams who fought for equal pay at Wimbledon which finally acquiesced in 2007 as did the French Open.

Our look at the highest-paid tennis players exemplifies this kind of equality in the game. Half the top ten are men and half are women, although Roger Federer is light years ahead of anyone else thanks to his longtime dominance and 10 lucrative sponsorship deals. Several of these athletes showed up on our lists of the highest-paid athletes and female athletes this summer. In all cases for incomes we include: prize money, endorsements, exhibitions and appearance fees over the past 12-months without taxes or agent’s fees deducted.

The list below also includes a few big sponsors for each players. The shoe and apparel deal is almost always the largest endorsement for top players in tennis. The value of these deals can rise dramatically based on bonuses for tournaments won and year-end rankings. As in most sports Nike is the king in tennis when it comes to comes to signing the best (and most expensive) talent. It has deals with our four highest-paid athletes who have combined for 40 Grand Slam singles titles.

Player/earnings/sponsors

1. Roger Federer: $43 million (Nike, Credit Suisse, Gillette)

2. Maria Sharapova: $24.5 million (Nike, Prince, Tiffany)

3. Rafael Nadal: $21 million (Nike, Kia Motors, Babolat)

4. Serena Williams: $20 million (Nike, Hewlett-Packard, Kraft)

5. Venus Williams: $15 million (Wilson, American Express, Kraft)

6. Andy Roddick: $14 million (Lacoste, SAP, Lagardere)

7. (tie) Novak Djokovic: $10 million (Sergio Tacchini, Head, FitLine)

7. (tie) Andy Murray: $10 million (Adidas, Head, RBS)

9. Ana Ivanovic: $7 million (Adidas, Yonex, Rolex)

10. Jelena Jankovic: $5 million (Anta, Orbit)

FORBES