ATP/WTA Round Up: April 14-27
ATP
Monte Carlo Rolex Masters
April 13-20
Monte Carlo, Monaco
Surface: Clay
Stan "The Man" Wawrinka continues his torrid 2014 with a victory at the Monte Carlo Masters. The win also further diminishes the grip of the Big Four on the tour’s top hardware, as the group had won 34 of the last 36 Masters 1000 tournaments. To win the trophy, Wawrinka beat fellow countryman Roger Federer in the first all-Swiss final since 2000, a match won by Marc Rosset over an 18-year-old Federer. The victory for Wawrinka, by a score of 4-6, 7-6(5), 6-2, ended an 11-match losing streak to Federer. Wawrinka also previously snapped losing streaks this year of 14 matches and 12 matches to Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal, respectively. He leads all players this 2014 ATP season in points, and has climbed to number three in the world rankings.
Monte Carlo disrupted the natural order of the tennis world with two other big matches. Federer, who continues to reverse the trends of his downturn in 2013, beat Novak Djokovic 7-5, 6-2 in the semifinals, and now holds a 2-1 edge over his Big Four rival this year. And David Ferrer scored the biggest upset of the tournament, in terms of stature, when he took down Rafael Nadal in the quarterfinals, 7-6, 6-4, marking the first time since 2004 that Nadal did not reach the Monte Carlo finals. Nadal has been the king of Monte Carlo, winning it eight straight years from 2005-2012 before falling to Djokovic in last year’s final. Ferrer’s victory over Nadal also snapped his seventeen-match clay court losing streak courts to Nadal.
Barcelona Open Banc Sabadel ♦ April 21-27
Barcelona, Spain
Surface: Clay
Fourth-seeded Kei Nishikori won the Barcelona Open over surprise finalist Santiago Giraldo, the 47th-ranked Colombian, by a score of 6-2, 6-2. After a three-setter in his first match over Spain’s Roberto Bautista Agut, Nishikori rolled with relative ease to the trophy, winning his next four matches in straight sets, including over 27th-ranked Marin Cilic and 20th-ranked Ernests Gulbis. Nishikori climbs 12th in the rankings, continuing a strong month of play that included a semifinal appearance in his last tournament, Miami’s Sony Open.
But the story again was Rafael Nadal’s second straight early outing on clay. This time he lost to Nicolas Almagro in the quarterfinals, 2-6, 7-6, 6-4. Nadal hadn’t lost in Barcelona since his 2003 entry as a teenage wild card.
WTA
Porsche Tennis Grand Prix ♦ April 21-27
Stuttgart, Germany
Surface: Clay
Maria Sharapova takes home the Porsche Grand Prix hardware in a three-peat, winning the 2014 title in three sets over Ana Ivanovic. Sharapova, who has slipped to 9th in the rankings and was seeded 6th in Stuttgart, regained her form with wins over the 3rd (Agnieska Radwanska), 11th (Sara Errani) and 12th (Ivanovic) ranked players on the tour to claim her first title of 2014. She very barely escaped a flop and a different narrative in Stuttgart, surviving a first-round match that went as far as a match possibly can, when she beat Lucie Safarova 7-6, 6-7, 7-6, in three hours and twenty-three minutes. It was the first WTA match to go to three tiebreakers since 2010, a match won by Serena Williams over Vera Dushevina. Sharapova won the Porsche Grand Prix in 2012 and 2013 as well. She needed to reach the Stuttgart semifinals to remain in the top-ten, and there she remains.
ATP Player to Watch
Rafael Nadal
You won’t often see the world’s number one ranked player receiving the Player to Watch spotlight, but we’ve never before seen Nadal falter as much as he has in April clay tournaments. He has won at least one of the Monte Carlo or Barcelona tournaments each year since 2005, and he has swept the pair seven times in that period. So what does losing in the quarterfinals of both 2014 tournaments mean? It means he enters the French Open in the most vulnerable position of his career, without the hardware of either tournament in his backyard propping him up and with rival contenders smelling blood. Still, there are two Masters 1000 level tournaments left to play, in Rome and Madrid, before Roland Garros, which begins on May 25th. Nadal will no doubt be one of the favorites to win the French, but he’ll have two shocking losses lingering over him for the first time in his career.
WTA Player to Watch
Donna Vekic
The 17-year-old Croatian won the BMW Malaysian Open last week, defeating the top-seeded Dominika Cibulkova in a marathon final, 5-7, 7-5, 7-6. With her first tournament championship, Vekic becomes the first player under the age of eighteen to win a trophy on the WTA Tour since 2006, when seventeen-year-old American Vania King won a trophy in Bangkok. Vekic climbed from 95th to 70th in the rankings after the tournament. Add the Croatian sensation to your list of rising WTA stars.
They said it …
“I would say Rafa.” – Stan Wawrinka, at the Monte Carlo Masters, when asked who he thought would win the tournament after his quarterfinal victory over Milos Raonic. Wawrinka would go on to win the tournament, while Nadal lost later that day to David Ferrer.
“No. But in the end they were talking so loud I couldn't help hearing. I think they were saying in Italian, It's your fault, it's your fault. But Fabio is always like this. This is why we love him. He's a friend.—Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, after defeating Fabio Fognini 5-7, 6-3, 6-0 in the Monte Carlo Masters. Tsonga was asked if he was listening to what Fognini was saying to his father during the match.
“Well, yes.” – Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, when asked if against Fognini was the first time an opponent started complaining after the first point of the whole match.
