Tennis News

Roger Federer scored his best-in-the-business 327^th ATP World Tour Masters 1000 victory on Friday at the BNP Paribas Masters, easily downing Andreas Seppi 6-1, 6-1.

In 13 previous FedEx ATP Head2Head meetings, Seppi had defeated Federer on just one occasion: a 6-4, 7-6(5), 4-6, 7-6(5) third-round upset earlier this year at the Australian Open. But that seemed but ancient history at the AccorHotels Arena, where Federer overwhelmed the Italian in 47 minutes.

So speedy was the match that one reporter asked the World No. 2 if he had promised his children he would be home in time for dinner.

Federer quipped, “No, I’m too late now.”

“But it’s very pleasant to play matches like this one,” he continued. “Of course, I like great battles, playing two, three, four, five hours. But 47 minutes is always very pleasant. You need to focus a lot for the very short time you are on the court, not to make any mistakes. I’m very happy with this mental performance.”

Federer, 34, playing his first match since claiming his seventh Basel title on Sunday, played near-flawless tennis in taking the opening set in an efficient 19 minutes, winning 92 per cent of his service points.

The 28^th-ranked Seppi never seemed to recover in the second set. It wasn’t until, serving for survival at 0-5, that he got on the scoreboard. But it was too little too late. He finished with 18 unforced errors to just five winners.

Seppi fell to 2-8 against Top-10 competition in 2015. Federer, meanwhile, improved to 59-9 overall on the year. He will now meet John Isner in the Round of 16. The Swiss is 5-1 against the power-serving American in FedEx ATP Head2Head encounters.

“Indoors here in Paris, he’s played well historically,” Federer observed. “I’m aware of that, and I know it’s not going to be easy. I need to make sure I focus on my own game and see what I can do on his serve. There is only so many opportunities.”

Trailing 1-4 in the opening set against Viktor Troicki, 15th seed Feliciano Lopez of Spain battled back before falling 6-7(7), 7-5, 6-4. The Serb will next face Stan Wawrinka. Elsewhere, No. 9 seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga made quick work of Spaniard Roberto Bautista Agut, winning 6-2, 6-2 in one hour and two minutes.

“I wanted to keep focused and not give away anything along the way,” said Tsonga. “And this I did well. I didn’t want to get caught in a very long match. It was too dangerous.”

The Frenchman smacked eight aces and converted four of eight break points in earning a Round of 16 match-up with Tomas Berdych.

In a marathon match that lingered until 12:24 a.m. local time, Kevin Anderson outlasted Dominic Thiem 6-7(3), 7-6(4), 7-6(5) for the right to meet Rafael Nadal in the Round of 16. The two-hour and 44-minute affair saw Anderson register 30 aces, totaling 55 winners and 39 unforced errors. Both players saved match points before the decisive third-set tie-break, but it was the South African who would come through in the end.

For the first time since 2009, 14 of 16 seeds are through to the Round of 16 at the BNP Paribas Masters.

Perhaps it was the memory of their most recent encounter last week in Basel, when Lukas Rosol extended him to a third-set tie-break in the first round. But Rafael Nadal was in no mood for a long afternoon on Wednesday at the BNP Paribas Masters, where he rolled into the Round of 16 with a 6-2, 6-2 win over the 66^th-ranked Czech in just over an hour.

Nadal, who dropped just six points on his serve, is now 4-1 in FedEx ATP Head2Head match-ups with Rosol.

“I didn’t prepare differently,” said Nadal of facing Rosol in back-to-back weeks. “It was just another match, a tough match against a difficult player. He’s always tough, but I was playing much better than I did last week in the first round. I played a solid match, not many mistakes. I served well and went for the points with my forehand.”

The No. 7 seed raced out to 3-0 lead before Rosol managed to hold serve. Behind eight winners, including three aces, he would take the first set in 30 minutes.

The 29-year-old would hold at love to open the second set, and further distance himself with a break in the fourth game for a 3-1 advantage. With Rosol serving to stay in the match at 2-5, Nadal would convert his fourth and final service break of the match to seal the win.

Nadal improved to 57-18 on the year, but he has yet to snare an ATP Masters 1000 title after winning at least one per year between 2005 and 2014. He is coming off his sixth ATP World Tour final of the season in Basel (l. to Roger Federer 6-3, 5-7, 6-3).

Tomas Berdych needed three sets over two hours and 15 minutes to overcome qualifier Edouard Roger-Vasselin 6-3, 4-6, 7-5. The No. 5-seeded Czech struggled on his serve, totaling six double faults and landing just 47 per cent of his first serves. But he would make good on five of six break-point opportunities in securing the win to advance.    

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In 1960, Mike Davies had only been a pro for a few months and the lean young Welshman was just coming to terms with sharing a locker room with his idols. Lew Hoad and Ken Rosewall were in that corner; Pancho Gonzalez and Pancho Segura – just about the only man who wasn’t scared to death of big Pancho – were in the other.

The locker room was at Wembley’s Empire Pool where Jack Kramer staged one of the biggest events on a tour that was keeping pro tennis alive in the dark days when anyone accepting money for playing the game was banned from Davis Cup and all the Grand Slam Championships.

The Impact Of Mike Davies

Mike Davies and I went out into the arena and watched Tony Trabert, former French, Wimbledon and US champion, playing another of the new recruits Kramer had picked off from the amateur game. And he started talking. The Welsh accent was stronger then and the ideas were just formulating in the expansive mind of this visionary who would start changing the way tennis was played sooner than even he could have imagined.

Davies talked of world-wide tours, linked by a points system that would have the top eight finishers playing in a Grand Final, televised across the globe to determine who would become recognized as the greatest player in the world.

I had known Mike for a while and had covered some of his Davis Cup matches and spats with authority which were fairly frequent because this young firebrand, who had left school in his native Swansea at the age of 15, was never afraid to tell the amateur officials what he thought. But this was the first time that I viewed him as a future leader of the game. The drive, passion and ideas were already in place. Maturity and the ability to develop them would surely follow.

When Kramer stepped aside from running his tour and Trabert took over, Davies was immediately singled out, along with Butch Buchholz and Barry MacKay, as players capable of taking on administrative positions. But the game was changing fast and, by 1967, Lamar Hunt had become involved, buying out a partner and taking full control of his new World Championship Tennis tour.

Hunt, already deeply involved in American football and soccer, needed a CEO and, after asking around, went out on a limb by appointing Davies.

“Suddenly I found myself lunching with oil millionaires at the Petroleum Club in Dallas,” Davies told me. “I tried to say as little as possible and they thought I was intelligent!”

Mike’s self-deprecatory humor was always one of his most engaging characteristics but he already knew what he wanted to do with Lamar’s baby. After forming what became known as “The Handsome Eight”, the full WCT tour soon was up and running, with Davies organizing three tours, the Red, Blue and Green groups, were carefully divided up so that each had their fair share of top players.

Only occasionally did Davies have to change his original selection. Once, on receiving details of the Red Group for which he had been selected, Laver called Mike in horror. “Mate!” he exclaimed. “I’m the only Aussie in the group. Who am I going to drink with?”

So Colin Dibley was hastily transferred from the Blue group to keep the Rocket company in the evenings.

Davies may have lacked higher education but he was street smart and knew how to deal with free loaders. An acquaintance who ran a string of hamburger joints in Dallas called him up shortly before the first WCT Finals and asked for half a dozen free tickets. “Sure, no problem,” Davies replied. “And, I tell you what, I am having some people round for a barbeque on Friday evening. Come a little early. And bring the meat.”

At one of his first promotions, tickets were selling slowly and Mike told me, “You know what? I’m almost inclined to close the stadium and play the first day behind closed doors. They’d be lining up if I did that. Keep people out and they want to get in.”

The WCT Dallas Finals, played originally at Moody Colosseum and later at Reunion Arena, set new standards for how to stage and present a top class tennis event. Of course, he had Hunt’s money to play with but Mike’s ideas did not cost much. He just wanted colored clothing and yellow balls and 90 seconds at changeovers which, of course, was a money spinner because it allowed NBC, the first major network to cover tennis, time to get in their commercials.

Davies became fascinated by television and, by watching and listening, was soon able to produce his own programs for WCT.  

After 13 years, the pressure started to tell and Davies needed a break.  But Butch Buchholz, then CEO of the ATP, soon coaxed him back into the sport and, ironically, it was Davies who took over from Buchholz a couple of years later. Mike’s marketing skills ensured that he took the Association from near bankruptcy to having $1 million in the bank. In a move for which every pro who has played since should be grateful, Davies also launched the Player Pension Plan.

In 1987, Davies ‘crossed the aisle’ and joined the International Tennis Federation as director of Marketing in a move that turned out to be highly beneficial, both to him and his employers.

If, as he has suggested, David Haggerty, the new President of the ITF, is looking for a new Davis Cup format, he needs only to look at what Davies circulating to interested parties a few years ago. It is a format that centers on a two week Davis Cup finals, involving eight teams and the detail is such that Mike could tell you which team would be playing on which court at what time before the event even started.

That was typical. Mike Davies spent a life time trying to work out ways to make the game he loved better. Happily for tennis, he succeeded.  

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Roger Federer’s bid to add to his lone BNP Paribas Masters title from 2011 begins today when the Swiss No. 3 seed takes on his 2015 Australian Open nemesis Andreas Seppi in the second round. The 35 year old is coming off a return to No. 2 in the Emirates ATP Race To London after his seventh Basel title, where he defeated Rafael Nadal in the final. 

It brought his win-loss record in finals this season to 6-4, with his only losses coming to Novak Djokovic at ATP Masters 1000 Indian Wells, ATP Masters 1000 Rome, Wimbledon and the US Open. Federer fell to Milos Raonic for the first time in the Paris qurater-finals last year. He will carry a 12-1 FedEx ATP Head2Head record into his match with Seppi, who opened on Monday with a 7-5, 6-3 win over Pablo Cuevas. 

The Italian is trying to reach the third round for the second time (after 2011). He started the season with a 10-4 win-loss record, highlighted by his first win against Federer in the third round at Melbourne Park before falling to Nick Kyrgios 8-6 in the fifth.

After his run to the Basel final on Sunday Nadal arrives in the French capital having risen to No. 5 in the Race To London. En route to the title match in Switzerland, the Spaniard held off his 2012 Wimbledon conqueror Lukas Rosol in a third-set tie-break. The pair will lock horns for a fourth time (Nadal leads 3-1) on Wednesday after the Czech opened with a 6-2, 2-6, 6-3 win over Spaniard Guillermo Garcia-Lopez. Rosol beat No. 10 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the second round in Vienna to snap a 14-match losing streak against Top-10 opponents. Nadal has a 3-3 record in finals this season but needs to win here in Paris to continue his streak of winning at least one ATP Masters 1000 title a year since 2005.

No. 2 seed Andy Murray will be out to avenge a defeat to Croatian teenager Borna Coric when the pair meets on Wednesday. The Scot was soundly beaten by the 18 year old in the quarter-finals in Dubai earlier in the season and returns to action for the first time since reaching the semi-finals at the Shanghai Rolex Masters. Murray has won four titles this season on three surfaces and will like his chances against Coric should he win the first set. He has a perfect 55-0 record this season after claiming the opening set. Coric, the youngest player in the Top 50, won his first-round match on Tuesday against Fernando Verdasco 6-4, 6-4. His 26 wins in 2015 are most among teenagers on tour.

Japanese sixth seed Kei Nishikori will take on local Jeremy Chardy in a tricky second-round clash. The pair is tied at 2-2 in prior meetings but they have not played so far this season. Nishikori has three titles to his name this year and returns to play having withdrawn from Basel last week with a shoulder injury. He is the last player to secure one of the eight places at the ATP World Tour Finals in London. Chardy opened with a 3-6, 6-3, 6-2 win over countryman Lucas Pouille on Tuesday.

Another Frenchman, No. 10 seed Richard Gasquet, will meet Leonardo Mayer for the first time after the Argentine downed Martin Klizan on Monday. Gasquet’s Davis Cup teammate, No. 9 seed Tsonga, faces Spaniard Roberto Bautista Agut, having narrowly claimed the pair’s only prior match in Montreal this year. Tsonga comes off a strong showing in Shanghai, where he defeated Nadal en route to the final, while Bautista Agut has reached back-to-back finals in Moscow and Valencia before his first-round win on Tuesday against Pierre-Hugues Herbert.

In other second-round encounters, 16th seed David Goffin and Serbian qualifier Dusan Lajovic meet for the first time, Grigor Dimitrov and 12^th seed Marin Cilic square off and 13^th seed John Isner takes on qualifier Aljaz Bedene. Fifth seed Tomas Berdych plays qualifier Edoard Roger-Vasselin, 15^th seed Feliciano Lopez meets Viktor Troicki and 11^th seed Kevin Anderson will look to maintain his unbeaten record against Dominic Thiem.

Leading the five doubles matches on Court 2 are top seeds and two-time defending champions Bob and Mike Bryan, No. 3 seeds and Wimbledon champions Jean-Julien Rojer and Horia Tecau and No. 4 Jamie Murray and John Peers. The oldest player on tour, 43-year-old Daniel Nestor, attempts to win his 1000^th career doubles match when he and Roger-Vasselin take on Rojer-Tecau.

ATP Staff

Benoit Paire takes it to another level with his reverse-spin backhand

The match may not have been the result Frenchman Benoit Paire had hoped for, but he can draw some solace from hitting a shot that will take some topping at this year’s BNP Paribas Masters in Paris.

Stretched low on a backhand volley against countryman Gilles Simon, Paire generated a remarkable amount of backspin, narrowly missing his head in the process.

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