TENNIS TUESDAY: Rafa Breaks More Records; Fed Cup Final Set; Babies Everywhere

NADAL WINS RECORD 11TH MONTE CARLO MASTERS ; 31ST MASTERS OVERALL
The King of Clay, Rafael Nadal won his 11th Monte Carlo Masters title (in 14 years) by defeating Kei Nishikori 6-3 6-2. Nadal won the title without dropping  a set and basially terrorized the rest of the men's field with his 6-0 6-2 drubbing of the "Prince of Clay" Dominic Thiem in the quarterfinals.
Nadal was able to retain his hold on the World #1 ranking by defending his title as World #2 Roger Federer is again sipping the clay court season to improve his chances at winning another Wimbledon title. Nadal nw has 31 ATP Masters shields, 1 ahead of the 30 Novak jokovic has and well ahead of Federer's 27, with two more clay court Masters tournaments to be played this year: Madrid and Rome.

FED CUP FINAL SET: UNITED STATES WILL FACE CZECHIA
The Fed Cup semifinals were last weekend and the United States defeated France 3-2 behind solid wins by Sloane Stephens and Madison Keys while the Czech Republic dominated Germany 4-1 with Petra Kvitova and Karolina Pliskova each eating Angie Kerber and Julia Goerges. The Czech Republic has been in the Fed Cup final.

BABIES, BABIES, BABIES! SPRING IS HERE AND EVERYBODY'S PREGNANT
John Isner announced that his wife Madison McKinley is expecting their first child. Also, Sania Mirza announced on instagram that she was pregnant, and noted tennis umpire Eve Asderaki answered Dasha Kasatkina's question "boy or girl?" while umpiring a Fed Cup match this weekend with "boy."

TENNIS TUESDAY: WTA Awards Announced, Fedberg Ends, Swiss Sweep Doubles In Rio?

WTA AWARDS ANNOUNCED AND WILLIAMS SISTERS WIN BIG
The WTA Awards were announced today and for the seventh time in her career Serena Williams was named the WTA Player of the Year. Other big awards announced were Doubles Team of the Year (Martina Hingis and Sania Mirza), Most Improved Player of the Year (Timea Bacsinszky), Newcomer of the Year (Daria Gavrilova) and Comeback Player of the Year (Venus Williams).

ROGER FEDERER ENDS COACHING RELATIONSHIP WITH STEFAN EDBERG
Roger Federer announced that Stefan Edberg will not be part of his coaching staff in 2016. Former ATP pro (and Federer friend) Ivan Ljubicic will join the team, with Severin Luthi remaining as head coach of Team Federer. Ljubicic had been coaching Milos Raonic for the last two years,

DOUBLES PAIRINGS FOR 2016 RIO OLYMPICS COMING INTO FOCUS
Federer has agreed to play Mixed Doubles at the 2016 Rio Olympics with Martina Hingis, who is part of the current Best Doubles Team of the Year. Federer famously won the Men's Doubles With Stan Wawrinka at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, so one would think that they would have a good chance in 2016 now that the team has 19 major singles titles between them. Additionally, the Women's Doubles team of Belinda Bencic (or Bacsinsky) with Hingis would be hard to beat. Could Switzerland sweep the doubles medals next year?

WTA TOUR FINALS 2015: Kvitova and Radwanska Reach Improbable Final

Much to my surprise, the two winners of the semifinals of the WTA Tour Finals in Singapore were not the two players in 3 round-robin matches, Maria Sharapova and Garbiñe Muguruza  but their 1-2 opponents, Petra Kvitova and Aggie Radwanska! These were quite surprising results, because Radwanska outlasted her opponent in a 2.5 hour marathon, getting her first win in 6 matches she played against Muguruza this year. In the other match, P3tra did not live up to her name, coming back from 1-5 down in the second set (after winning the first one) to force a tiebreaker, which she won, overcoming a 3-6 head-to-head deficit with the 4-time major champion. Muguruza apparently just ran out of gas against Radwanska, but, then amazingly was able to get to the Doubles final with her partner Carla Suarez Navarro. It's incredible that the 20-year-old was able to qualify in both singles and doubles (so did Lucie Safarova) but that she made the semifinals in both is quite a feat.
That being said, the Spaniards have almost no chance in winning the title against the best doubles team in the world, Martina Hingis  and Sania Mirza.

Kvitova won this title along with her first major in 2011 while Radwanska has never won one of the five biggest titles in tennis. Kvitova has a significant 6-2 head-to-head advantage over Radwanska, but those two losses have both come at this tournament, the last one coming last year on the very same court!

I like both players so I will be happy with whatever the result is. I do think that the "better" player is Kvitova, and that she deserves the title more, but my game and my heart are leaning towards Radwanska, because I would like to see her perhaps repeat Amelie Mauresmo's history and become the second player to win the WTA year-ending championship without having won a slam and then go on to win a slam the very next year.

It's not that often that I miss calling the results of both semifinals in a big tournament (although the 2015 U.S. Open is a painful recent reminder that it can and does happen!) but that doesnt stop me from making a prediction in the final.

MadProfessah's pick: Kvitova.

TENNIS TUESDAY: Wimbledon Review, WTA Top 10 Reshuffled, Serena Has Huge Lead At #1

WIMBLEDON CHAMPS: SERENA, NOLE AND MARTINA (HINGIS)!
For the first time since 2006, the World #1 and #1 seeds won both the Men's and Women's single championships at Wimbledon, with Novak Djokovic defending his 2014 title and Serena Williams winning her 6th Wimbledon (and 21st major) title. 34-year-old Martina Hingis won two doubles titles: the women's doubles with Sania Mirza and the mixed doubles with Leander Paes.

WIMBLEDON STAND-OUTS: DUSTIN BROWN, VASEK POSPISIL, MADISON KEYS
There were several players who had stand-out performances at 2015 Wimbledon, starting with Dustin Brown who took out 2-time Wimbledon champion Rafael Nadal in the second round. Other surprising results were Canadian Vasek Pospisil's run to the quarterfinals and Madison Keys' deep run while not playing her best tennis (but still having the average fastest groundstrokes in the women's draw). Honorable Mention of Jelena Jankovic's upset of defending champion Petra Kvitova.

NEW WTA TOP TEN MEMBERS: GARBINE MUGURUZA, AGGIE RADWANSKA
Fresh off their Wimbledon successes (Finalist and Semifinalist, respectively) Garbine Muguruza and Agnieska Radwanska are now in the WTA Top 10, at #9 and #7 respectively. Maria Sharapova returns to World #2. Madison Keys is now up to #18 and Venus Williams is up to #15.

AS SERENA APPROACHES CALENDAR GRAND SLAM, SHE IS LAPPING THE FIELD
Serena Williams now is the defending champion of all four major championships and is the #1 player in the world. But this is just one measure of her domination of women's tennis. Amazingly, she now has more than twice as many ranking points as any other player on the list, the largest gap that has ever existed in the history of the rankings. Another measure of her dominance is that with her 21 majors, she equals the number of major titles the rest of the active field possesses: Venus Williams (7), Maria Sharapova (5), Petra Kvitova, Victoria Azarenka and Svetlana Kuznetsova (2) and Francesca Schiavone, Samantha Stosur, and Ana Ivanovic (1).

2012 FRENCH OPEN Day 12: The Dream Continues

Sara Errani had never beaten a Top 10 player before her win over Angelique Kerber in the quarterfinals on Tuesday. After today's 7-5 1-6 6-3 win against #6 seed champion Samantha Stosur, Errani will become a Top 10 player herself on Monday. The crafty Italian followed in the footsteps of her countrywoman Francesca Schiavone to use her superior movement and guile to outwit, outlast and outplay a strongly favored opponent in Sam Stosur. Stosur had never lost to Errani in 5 meetings, but the Australian appears to prefer to play her best tennis when she is an underdog, like when she won her first major final against Serena Williams at the 2011 US Open. Stosur is now a shocking 6-36 when she loses the first set in a grand slam match. Errani saw her opportunity and seized it, shocking the tennis world (and yours truly) to continue her dream 2012 and reach her first major final. Errani is also the first player since Kim Clijsters in 2003 to reach both the singles and doubles final in the same year here. (Mary Pierce was the last player to win the singles and doubles at Roland Garros in the same year in 2000.)

In the other semifinal,(as I predicted) results followed the rankings as World #2 Maria Sharapova beat her rival World #4 Petra Kvitova 6-3 6-3 to return to the pinnacle of women's tennis, cementing the World #1 ranking regardless of what happens in Saturday's final match. It was a very windy day, and for some reason the hard-hitting Czech was unable to take advantage of any wobbles on the Russian's serve and was also surprisingly ineffective in her own service games. Sharapova now has a 4-2 career head-to-head lead on Kvitova and has won the last three matches these two have played since the Czech shocked Sharapova in the 2011 Wimbledon final. Kvitova has yet to beat a Top 10 player in 2012. Now, Sharapova's dream of completing the career Grand Slam requires one more match win over a player who will be playing in her first major final.

Sania Mirza and Mahesh Bhupathi won the mixed doubles title. Serena Williams and Bob Bryan lost in the 1st round.

WTA ACURA CLASSIC: Quarterfinals Preview

The WTA Acura Classic is a hop skip and a jump from Mad Professah's stomping grounds in Southern California so I will be driving down with a bunch of other tennis fans this weekend to see Friday's last quarterfinal as well as both semi-finals on Saturday.

Patty SCHNYDER (SUI) vs Nadia PETROVA (RUS). The crafty lefty finally beat her more famous Swiss compatriot Martina Hingis for the first time in nearly nine years despite losing the second set in a tie-break to reach this quarterfinal against one of five Russians in the Final Eight at this important Tier 1 warm-up to the U.S. Open, the last Grand Slam tournament of the year. Petrova is the "most mentally challenged" of the top Russian players (well, except for Dinara Safina!) and Schnyder is one of the most skillful players onthe tour at getting into someone's head. Despite the fact Schnyder leads their head-to-head 5-4 they haven't played each other in more than a year and the Russian's power game should be enough to blow Schnyder off the court. Prediction: Petrova in 2 sets.

Elena DEMENTIEVA (RUS) vs Maria KIRILENKO (RUS). After she serves, Elena Dementieva has some of the prettiest strokes in the women's game, but they often are not enough to make up for her laughably atrocious serve. Kirilenko has just had the biggest win of her young but not so distinguished career, defeating the indefatigable Jelena Jankovic, currently the #3 player in the world, in three tough sets the round before. Matches between Russians are ugly at the best of times, and this one will be even uglier than usual as these two blonde beauties slug it out. Prediction: Toss-up!

Maria SHARAPOVA (RUS) vs Sania MIRZA (IND). It looks like the Muslim Miracle a.k.a. the Invincible Indian has finally started to live up to her hype and started to win matches. She made the final of Stanford last weekend and easily dispatched former Top 10 player Dinara Safina pretty easily to get to this quarterfinal match-up with the reigning U.S. Open champion. Mirza is a big match player, but the jury is still out on whether she has the weapons to match her will. Sharapova has been looking sharp this week, and her serve seems to be returning to it's former strength and consistency. Prediction: Sharapova in 2 sets.

Anna CHAKVETADZE (RUS) vs Venus WILLIAMS (USA). Chakvetadze is the hottest player on the tour right now, having won the last two tournaments she played in, at Cincinatti and Stanford. However, she hasn't really played anyone of the caliber of the reigning Wimbledon champion in her recent victories. Venus is clearly swinging freely and dispatched hard-hitting Daniela Hantuchova in the previous round in straight sets (including a bagel!), limiting the Slovak to a mere 3 games. (Venus has never lost to Hantuchova in 9 matches.) Happily, the organizers decided to schedule this quarterfinal as the evening match so MadProfessah will be able to watch it live in the stands. I suspect Anna will not go down as quietly as Daniela did, but Venus would love to set up another grudge match with Sharapova in the semis Saturday night. Whoever wins that match should easily defeat the winner of the early semifinal on the other half of the draw. Prediction: Williams in 3 sets.