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Roddick to Play in the ATC

Former world number one tennis player Andy Roddick has confirmed his participation in the Atlanta Tennis Championships that is slated to be held in the city between the 14th and 22nd of July, 2012. Roddick played in the very first Atlanta Tennis Championships that was held in 2010 and he commented after confirming his participation in the tournament that he has very fond memories of the place as it was the place where he won his very first World Tour event of the ATP and it would mean a lot for him to come back and play there.

The 2003 US Open champion was the most dominant force of the fading United States tennis over the last decade and he is extremely excited to be coming back to the venue that he referred to as ‘’world class’’. Andy Roddick has 30 career titles in ATP Tour events including his only Grand Slam title and the 29 year old is looking to return to the top of the tennis mountain this year and is working extremely hard for it.

The 29 year old American, who is currently ranked number 14th in the world admitted that it would be difficult to overtake the younger players like Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and the likes but he isn’t giving up hope as yet and is looking forward to the first Grand Slam of the year that begins in Australia in a couple of weeks.

According to Andy Roddick, the men’s tennis circuit is extremely competitive in the middle but there are three standout players at the top including Novak, Rafa and Roger Federer and overtaking these players will be extremely difficult. Roddick will be joined by John Isner and Jack Sock in the tournament in Atlanta, but clearly Roddick is the favorite for the title.

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categories Uncategorized | | datetime January 4, 2012 9:47 am | comments Comments Off on Roddick to Play in the ATC

Serena Williams

Women’s tennis has evolved a lot over the last few decades with grace and elegance being replaced by power tennis of hard backhands, volleys and a customary shriek to go with it and the one woman player most responsible for bringing this power tennis into the game is Serena Williams. Having been ranked as the top women tennis player in the world on five different occasions and with a bucket load of Grand Slam titles to her name, Williams is by far in a league of her own when it comes to the greatest women tennis players in the world of all time and has certain legends such as Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graf and Chris Evert for company.

Serena and her sister Venus were groomed to be the best in the world of tennis by their father from a very young age and that effort paid off with both of them becoming world number 1 at some point or the other. Serena Williams has 27 major titles to her name, 13 of them being Grand Slam singles, 12 doubles titles, most of them won with Venus as her partner and also 2 mixed doubles titles as well. Williams’ skill lies in the simple fact that she is a very good baseline player and rarely ventures out of that comfort zone of hers, serving aces as if they were a piece of cake and bombarding her opponents with fierce ground stroke back hands and her powerful forehands accompanied by a strong shriek has been recorded as the second most powerful only behind Maria Sharapova.

The journey of Serena Williams as a professional tennis player began way back in the year 1995 when she was just 13 years old, participating in the Bell Challenge that was held in Quebec City. But in 1997, she began her steady climb to the top of the tennis world with scalps such as Monica Seles, Mary Pierce. All throughout the years 1999 to 2001, she fought a hard battle to reach the pinnacle of the tennis world that she had dreamed of doing and by the end of 2001; she had consolidated her position in the top 10 with a number of victories in singles tournaments and over opponents ranked higher than her, thereby earning more WTA ranking points.

During the 2002-2003 seasons, Serena Williams captured what is now known as the Serena-Slam, winning all the four major events within a year, thus becoming the only current player and only the fifth women player in the history of tennis to hold all the four major titles at one time. However, since the end of the 2006 season, injuries have constantly plagued the career of the younger Williams’ sister and for the first time in many years, she dropped out of the top 100 in 2010. But she made a comeback at Wimbledon in 2011 and did justice to her legendary status in the game despite losing in the early rounds. Williams has made a career for herself from scratch and won all that there is to be won and she is definitely on her way to greatness and immortality in the tennis world.

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categories Uncategorized | | datetime July 20, 2011 7:45 pm | comments Comments Off on Serena Williams

Pete Sampras

Tennis has seen the rise and fall of many legends over the last 100 years ever since it became a popular form of sport, particularly since the start of the Open Era – some became legends very quickly but could not sustain that position for a very long time but there were some others that were just destined for greatness and in his 15 years as a professional tennis career, there was none greater than the legendary Pete Sampras, winning a then world record of 14 Grand Slam titles during that time.

Sampras was born into an orthodox Jewish family in Potomac, Maryland and has Greek roots in both his mother and father. From a very early age, he showed great skill in terms of athleticism and at the age of three, he discovered a racket and instantly fell in love with it, hitting balls against the wall and practicing all day long. He grew up idolizing another legend in the form of Rod Laver and when his family moved to California, the 11 year old Pete had the chance to meet his hero and play a tennis match with him, which according to him, changed his life completely as he began to dream of bigger things, winning Grand Slam titles and carving a name for himself in tennis folklore. He became a member of the Jack Kramer academy and from there; Peter Fischer, who coached Pete Sampras till 1989, picked him up.

By this time, the 16-year-old Pete had turned professional the previous year and in his first match as a professional, he lost to Sammy Giammalva, Jr but he ended the year with a world ranking of 97. The following year, he got his first major scalp in the form of Jim Courier, who was then ranked, 79th in the world. However, at that time, his biggest victory was against the defending champion of the 1988 US Open, Matts Wilander, who was seeded 5th in the tournament and in 1990, he finished the year as the world number 5, the fastest climber in the history of tennis. This was the year he became the champion at the US Open, in turn becoming the youngest ever champion at the tournament and this victory used in the era of Pete Sampras.

Over the next decade, he won innumerable titles, singles as well as doubles, winning two Australian Open crowns, the US Open a total of five times and the Wimbledon a record seven times. However, Pete Sampras never laid his hand on the French Open title and that is perhaps the only thing missing from his trophy cabinet. His main rival during this period was another legendary figure by the name of Andre Agassi with Sampras winning 20 of their 34 confrontations. He announced his retirement from professional tennis in August 2003, thereby bringing down the curtains to one of the most glittering careers in tennis, the likes of which will rarely be ever seen again but he has carved out a niche in the hearts of each and every tennis lover who call him as one of the greats of the world of tennis.

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Jennifer Capriati

Jennifer Capriati, in the opinion of many critics as well as her fellow tennis players was perhaps not the greatest tennis player of her generation, neither will she make her way into the book of legends but she was a model professional, overcoming her personal problems to play her heart out and give her all to the game that she loved so much. She began her career as a professional tennis player at the tender age of 14 years and was knocked out of her first tournament by Gabriella Sabatini in 1990. She was the youngest player ever to break into the top 10 of women’s tennis and she did it aged just 14 years and 235 days.

She won her first major title, the Gold Medal in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics where she defeated the highly fancied Steffi Graf in an almost one sided final. She lost in the first round of the 1993 US Open and after that, she took a sabbatical from the game that lasted for almost 14 months. During this time, she was in immense personal turmoil and to worsen things even more, she was caught red handed for shop lifting and was even arrested for the possession of marijuana and all these were documented by the world media in great detail adding to the turmoil that she was going through at that time.

After making her comeback to professional tennis, Jennifer Capriati had to wait for almost five years to win her first singles match since her return, which she did at the 1998 Wimbledon tournament. Over the next two and half years, Capriati slowly began to get her touch back and started to play the kind of tennis that had allowed her to break into the top 10 in 1990. She won the Strasbourg Open in 1999 that was to be the first title she had won in almost six years and in 2001, she defeated the much fancied world number one Martina Hingis to become the lowest ranked player to win the Australian Open. It was her first ever Grand Slam title and in the following months, she followed it up by winning the French Open title and claiming the number one spot in the world. It seemed that Capriati had buried her demons and would fulfill the immense potential that she had in her but that was not to be the case as injuries continuously plagued her throughout her career and her days as a professional player were numbered.

She did win the Australian Open in 2002 as well and that was to be her last ever Grand Slam title. Jennifer Capriati retired from professional tennis in 2004 on the back of several injuries, winning just 14 singles titles and one doubles title thereby ending a career that promised so much but delivered so little in the end. All in all, Capriati was a fantastic tennis player but she succumbed to injuries and her personal demons and could not do justice that her talent deserved.

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Andre Agassi

One of the greatest exponents of power tennis the game has ever seen has been through the rise of one of the most colorful characters in the history of the game, Andre Agassi. Critics, as well as the players who played against him and with him in the same team rate him as one of the greatest of all tennis players in the modern era and he is definitely a true pioneer of the game. Agassi joined the academy run by Nick Bollettieri when he was just 13 years old and the story goes that he was only supposed to be there for a period of three months time because his father could only pay that much fees but when Nick watched the young Agassi play for just 10 minutes, he gave his father the check back and told him that he would ready his son for the professional world of tennis for free.

According to Nick Bollettieri, he had not seen a more natural talent with the tennis racket than Andre Agassi and he could not let go of the opportunity of shaping his future, although he himself substantiated that it was not that much of a necessity because Agassi was destined for greatness. Turning professional at the age of 16 years, Agassi played and won his first ever match against John Austin. In 1987, he won his ever singles title at the Sul American Open. Andre Agassi was one of the most controversial figures in tennis declining to play in the Australian Open, which he won the most for the first eight years of his career. In a similar manner, he did not play at the Wimbledon from 1988 to 1900 stating that he despised the traditionalism of the event, particularly the tradition of all-white dresses during the tournament.

Agassi won his first ever Grand Slam tournament in 1992 defeating the hard hitting Croatian Goran Ivanisevic after a couple of near misses in which he had reached the finals and semi finals in the last two years’ French Open and US Open. Andre Agassi carved out for him one of the most glittering and prosperous tennis careers winning a total of 8 Grand Slam titles apart from an Olympic Gold Medal which he won in the year 1996 and his estimated earnings from prize money in tennis was in the region of $ 30 million and he also earned around $ 25 million a year thanks to his advertising commitments. Off the field as well, Agassi had a very colorful life marrying Hollywood actress Brooke Shields and then later, married another tennis great in Steffi Graf.

Agassi’s long-standing rivalry with Pete Sampras has entered into the history books of professional tennis with the latter having the upper hand in their duels and their match was indeed a spectacle for the neutrals. In 2006, Andre Agassi announced that he would be retiring from all forms of tennis and with the retirement of Sampras a couple of years earlier ended a very glittering chapter in tennis history.

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