The Mad Professah Lectures

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga returns to the Top 10 for the first time since March 1, 2009 after his surprising straight-sets win in the final of the ATP Canadian Masters over Roger Federer. Tsonga had an amazing run in Toronto, beating four consecutive Top 10 players in World #1 Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray, Grigor Dimitrov and Federer. He became the first player outside of the Top 10 to win a Masters series event since Ivan Ljubicic did it in Indian Wells in 2010. No other player had beaten four Top 10 players and won a Masters series shield since Guillermo Canas did it in 2002.

The ATP Masters tournament in Cincinnati has started but Victoria Azarenka has withdrawn, and Venus Williams lost a tough 3-setter against Wimbledon semifinalist Lucie Safarova just days after beating her sister Serena to reach the final of the Rogers Cup.

5'9" David Ferrer of Spain won his first ATP Masters shield by defeating 6'8" Jerzy Janowicz of Poland 6-4 6-3 in Paris. The 21-year-old qualifier made quite a splash at the tournament by defeating World #3 Andy Murray and World #9 Janko Tipsarevich both of whom will be joining Ferrer in the ATP World Tour finals which begin in London on Monday. He became the first qualifier to reach the final of an ATP Masters 1000 tournament since Guillermo Canas did it in 2007 at the Key Biscayne Masters tournament.

Ferrer's win was also historic, becoming the first player outside of the world's top 4 seeds (Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal or Murray) to win a master's shield since Robin Soderling won the 2010 Paris Masters.

It was the hard-working Spaniard's 7th title of 2012 and the 18th of his career. He now has won 72 matches in the year (one more than Djokovic) compared to 14 losses.

At the Sony Ericsson Open tournament in Miami the much vaunted "Serenapova" showdown which pitted reigning Australian Open champion Serena Williams versus reigning US Open champion (and #1 seed) Maria Sharapova ended up with a repeat ending from their last match: Serena Williams in a blowout. This time the beatdown was even worse than in Melbourne, there Sharapova managed to win 3 games, in Miami she only managed two: 6-1, 6-1 in 58 minutes. Clearly Sharapova is suffering a case of the dreaded serving "yips." She had no aces and 8 doublefaults today although her service percentage was 67 but the average speed was well below 100 mph. Serena's service percentage was only 58 and she had only 2 aces to one double fault (but she must have had at least a half-dozen service winners). Serena's average serve speed was a muscular 109.6 mph. Serena had 16 winners to 15 unforced errors (+1) compared to Maria's 8 winners to 16 unforced errors (-8). Serena improved to 4-2 against Sharapova and has now won the last 3 encounters with the Russian. After the match Serena raised one finger, indicating she intends to be or she already considers herself to be?) the #1 player in the world. She will play Nicole Vaidisova in the quarterfinals tomorrow, a repeat of the Australian Open semifinal. Will history repeat itself again?

And this was not the biggest story of the day! World #1 Roger Federer played Guillermo Cañas for the second time in 10 days, and having lost in straight sets to the Argentine at the Pacific Life Open the Swiss player was clearly looking for revenge. However, history repeated itself! Federer lost the match 6-7(2), 6-2, 6-7(5) despite leading 3-1 in the final set and having a "gimme" overhead at 5-5 in the tiebreak to set up match point. Instead of letting the high overhead bounce, Federer hit that overhead into the net, setting up match point for Cañas who grabbed the opportunity with a 125 mph service winner to seal his second consecutive defeat of the World #1 in under a fortnight. Federer had 58 winners to 51 unforced errors (+7) to his opponent's more modest 19 winners to 14 errors (+4). Cañas improved to a lifetime record of 3-1 against Federer as well as 2-0 for the year, while Federer is 14-0 against the rest of the ATP tour. And this is before the clay court season which starts next month, which is widely regarded as the Argentine's best surface. These two defeats have to put once-unthinkable thoughts into the head of Andy Roddick and Rafael Nadal as they contemplate 2007's remaining Grand Slam tournaments in Paris, London and New York.