The Mad Professah Lectures

Here are my predictions for the men's semifinals at the 2018 Australian Open. Last year I did not predict the quarterfinals but correctly predicted 1 of 2 men's semifinals and 2 of 2 women's semifinals. This year I predicted correctly 3 of 4 women's quarterfinals and 2 of 4 men's quarterfinals. I have also predicted the women's semifinals.

Rafael Nadal (ESP) [1] Marin Cilic (CRO) [6] vs. Kyle Edmund (GBR) Grigor Dimitrov (BUL) [3].  This was a very unlikely semifinal matchup (perhaps even more unlikely than the bizarre Tennys Sandgren-Hyeon Chung quarterfinal in the round before. Nadal had only lost one meeting in the six he had played against the 6-foot-5 Croatian. However, this time when he fell behind 2 sets to one, Cilic continued to play hard-hitting, confident tennis, and eventually forced a fifth deciding set against the World #1. It was clear Nadal was not at his best throughout the 4th set and early in the 5th (down 0-2) he pulled the ripcord and retired from the match, giving up his quest for a 2nd Australian Open title. But in some sense this was the lesser surprise result. Who would have thought that the first British player to reach a major semifinal this year would be Kyle Edmund? And he did so by defeating (primarily by outhitting) the World #3 (and last year's semifinalist) Grigor Dimitrov. Edmund and Cilic have only played once before, fairly recently at last year's Shanghai Masters and Cilic won in two relatively tight sets. Edmund has been playing some of his best tennis early in 2018 and is clearly better than his official World #49 ranking, but is he really ready for his first major final? Cilic is playing for his 3rd major final and I suspect he will get there, just so he can get another chance at denying Federer another major title. Mad Professah's pick: Cilic.


Roger Federer (SUI) [2] vs Hyeon Chung (KOR) Novak Djokovic (SRB) [14].  These two have never played each other. Although one would think this would make this result a slam dunk for the 19-time major champion, I seriously doubt it will be. Chung has already out-Djokovic'ed Djokovic and that game is something that has given Federer fits for years. However, I doubt that Chung has yet mastered the intangibles which make Djokovic so dangerous to Federer (winner takes all forehand service return winner down double-match point, anyone?) It's also true that Federer is not playing his best tennis either, but as a 19-time major champion he has figured out many ways to win matches when he is not playing his best and I suspect this will be another exapmle of this.Mad Professah's pick: Federer.

Here are my predictions for the men's quarterfinals at the 2018 Australian Open. Last year  I did not predict the quarterfinal rounds. This year I will also predict the women's quarterfinals.

Rafael Nadal (ESP) [1] vs Marin Cilic (CRO) [6].  This is the only quarterfinal match-up that was predicted to occur at the beginning of the tournament if results followed the seedings. In a tournament with lots of upsets it is significant that this match-up persisted. Nadal is playing excellent tennis and has only lost one set in four matches while Cilic has lost 2, one against Pablo Carreno Busta and another against Vasek Pospisil. The main problem for the hard-serving Croat is that he has played Nadal 6 times before and only won 1 match (and 3 sets out of 14 played) and half these matches occurred after he became a major champion himself. In fact, he has lost their 5 meetings in a row, including their one grand slam meeting, which was in Melbourne in 2011. That being said, Cilic does believe that he can beat Nadal and he has the game that could do it as well. I suspect he will win at least a set, and possibly even two but I don't see how he wins three. Mad Professah's pick: Nadal.

Grigor Dimitrov (BUL) [3] vs Kyle Edmund (GBR) Jack Sock (USA) [8]. Dimitrov has not been playing his best tennis for most of this tournament, but Melbourne often does bring out his best stuff, as he proved in last year's epic 5-set semifinal against Nadal. This year he had to survive a surprisingly tough early test against young American Mackenzie McDonald in the second round by coming back to win 8-6 in the 5th after losing the 4th set 6-0! I wonder if anyone has ever won a major tournament after suffering a bagel set loss in an earlier round? Fortunately for Grigor, after coming through a much-hyped showdown with Australian "It" boy Nick Kyrgios in 4 tight sets, his game seems to be peaking. He faces Briton Kyle Edmund who is playing in his very first major quarterfinal, which should give the now experienced Top 5 stalwart a key edge in this important match. Can we hope that lightning will strike 2 years in a row and we will have another amazing Dimitrov-Nadal semifinal match? I think we will, and this time I hope for a different result. Mad Professah's pick: Dimitrov.

Tennys Sandgren (USA) Dominic Thiem (AUT) [5] vs Hyeon Chung (KOR) Sascha Zverev (GER) [4].  This is the most unlikely men's major quarterfinal in years. 21-year-old Chung was ranked #58 coming into the tournament and is the first player from South Korea, male or female, to reach a major quarterfinal. His opponent, World #97 Tennys Sandgren is the American male player to reach the Australian Open quarterfinals in over 20 years. They both had very impressive wins to reach this round. Sandgren eliminated Dominic Thiem in 5-sets while Chung was even more impressive by defeating 12-time major champion (6-time Australian Open champ) Novak Djokovic without losing a set. The las time these two played there were 20 ATP ranking points, this time there will be 720 points, which is more than the final of all regular ATP tournaments except at the Masters Series or Majors. One key factor here will be which player will fare better in their first high-stakes showdown. Here I give the edge to Chung because he won the 2017 NextGen championships last year. Mad Professah's pick: Chung.

Roger Federer (SUI) [2] vs Tomas Berdych (CZE) [19] David Goffin (BEL) [7].  This a rematch of last year's 3rd round match when it became clear that Federer's form after a 6-month gap was high enough that he might actually have a shot at winning the tournament. These two have played 25 times on tour and Federer has a commanding 19-6 lead, but that means Berdych has beaten Federer 6 times before so that he should be confident that he can do so again.  Federer has looked fine all tournament long, and despite his draw looking much tougher than Nadal's at the beginning of the tournament, it has not turned out that way. If he gets past Berdych (which should happen), it is very difficult to see him not reaching the final, where perhaps another Fedal final awaits? I can't wait, eihter! Mad Professah's pick: Federer.

As I predicted, 35-year-old Roger Federer defeated 30-year-old Rafael Nadal in the finals of the 2017 Australian Open to win his 18th major title (5th Aussie Open), extending his lead at the top of the all-time men's grand slam singles leaderboard.

Playing for the 35th time and a record 9th major final, Federer's win over Nadal brought his record to 3-6 (3-2 in non-clay major finals) and changed the overall head-to-head to 23-12. It was the first time Federer had beaten Nadal at the Australian Open in four matches played and the first time he had won a major final since the 2012 Wimbledon, a drought of nearly four-and-a-half years after losing 3 consecutive major finals (2014 Wimbledon, 2015 Wimbledon, 2015 U.S. Open) to Novak Djokovic. It was the first time Federer won a 5th set in a major final since the 2009 Wimbledon win over Andy Roddick and the first time he had won a 5th set in a major final against Nadal since the 2007 Wimbledon final.

Men's Final Review: How The Title Was Won
R. Federer (SUI) [17] d. R. Nadal (ESP) [9] 6-4 3-6 6-1 3-6 6-3 in 3 hours and 38 minutes. 
Federer had more than twice as many winners than Nadal (73 to 35) and nearly twice as many unforced errors as well (57 to 28). However, the match was of a very high quality, with Federer at +16 and Nadal at +7. The match was primarily played on Federer's terrain, he was forcing things by going for more although, somewhat surprisingly, this was not because  of frequent serve-and-volley, although he was effective when he approached the net (29/40). The big difference in the match was Federer's backhand, which he hit flatter and with more pace and almost completely avoided his slice backhand entirely. He had 14 backhand winners for the match (to just 3 for Nadal). Forehand winners were closer, but again Federer had the edge there, 26 to 19. Clearly, Federer had learned some strategy from watching his fellow one-handed backhand players like Stan Wawrinka and Grigor Dimitrov had handled Nadal recently.

I woke up at 3:15am EST and watched the entire match, was completely riveting. Each of the first four sets began with early service breaks which ended up being determinative, with the third set being extremely notable because Federer was able to end the set with a consolidated second service break (something Nadal was not able to do in the 2nd set, despite being up 4-0 at one point). So when the fifth set began with an early service break for Nadal things did not look good for our hero. Then when despite having multiple breakpoints in Nadal's first two service games Federer failed to break, memories of previous Fedal matches where Federer would go 1/10 or 3/20 on break points came to mind. Eventually, Nadal built up a 3-1 lead in the fifth set. Amazingly, Federer was able to win the last five games in a row to close out the match. How did that happen? In the sixth game Federer was finally able to get the service break back and he held serve easily to go up 3-4 in the deciding set. In the epic 8th game Federer went up 40-0 on Nadal's serve but incredibly Nadal was able to save three consecutive breakpoints and get back to deuce. Amazingly, it took 2 more breakpoints (the 10th and 11th of the set!) before Nadal finally succumbed and Federer went up 5-3 to serve for the championship. That game did not start well with Nadal blistering a service return winner on the backhand side and another forced error, eventually led to a 5-3,15-40 situation for Federer. Down the stretch his serve bailed him out of trouble and two first serves got him back to deuce and on his first championship point Federer sent a forehand long. Happily, he was able to again serve an ace to earn a second championship point and this time he hit a forehand smack on the line which Nadal immediately challenged (even though the linesman called it good) so there was a brief pause until the computer could confirm that the ball was indeed in and the match was over!

Significance
Federer had (finally) won his 18th major title, doing it the hard way as the #17 seed by beating four Top 10 seeds (#10 Tomas Berdych, #5 Kei Nishikori, #3 Stan Wawrinka and #9 Rafael Nadal) and winning 3 five set matches along the way (Nishikori, Wawrinka and Nadal). He finally defeated his arch-nemesis at a Grand Slam tournament for the first time in nearly a decade  (the 2007 Wimbledon final). Amazingly, Federer achieved all this while playing in his first tournament since the 2016 Wimbledon, a injury-induced layoff of over 6 months. By increasing his lead in major singles titles over Nadal (and Pete Sampras) to four (18 to 14) Federer cements his status as the G.O.A.T. (greatest of all time) and makes it more likely this record will outlast the Big Four era since World #1 Andy Murray currently has 3 major titles and World #2 Novak Djokovic has 12.

Happy Federer Wins Day!

The semifinals of the BNP Paribas Paris Masters have now been set. The first surprise that Novak Djokovic is not there--he was upset in straight sets by Marin Cilic, which means that Andy Murray can become new World #1 if he reaches the final. The semifinals are Cilic versus John Isner (who dismissed fellow American Jack Sock in the quarterfinals to retake the American #1 slot) and Milos Raonic versus Murray. Murray dismissed Tomas Berdych, ending the Czech's chances of qualifying for the year-end championships, while Raonic did the same for Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. That mens that the 8th and final slot will be take by Dominic Thiem.

SERENA TURNS 35!
On September 26, 22-major champion Serena Williams turned 35 years old. Although she is no longer the #1 ranked player in the world, she is still a formidable force in tennis. She is more focused on chasing tennis history as she seeks to break her tie with Steffi Graf's for the most major singles titles in the Open era. The question is will she even play a match for the rest of the year? She has pulled out of the Asian swing, but not the year-end championships in Singapore, yet.

DAVIS CUP FINAL SET: ARGENTINA VERSUS CROATIA, AFTER BEATING GREAT BRITAIN & FRANCE
Juan Martin del Potro and Andy Murray had an epic first rubber match which ended up being the decider in which of their countries would reach the Davis Cup final for 2016. Del Potro won the 5-hour, high-quality match 6-4, 5-7, 6-7 (5), 6-3, 6-4. Murray was able to win two points for his team in the tie but the rest of the team  was unable to contribute (apart from his brother in the doubles). Argentina will face Croatia in the final after Marin Cilic and Ivan Dodig paired up and defeated the #1 doubles team in the world, Pierre-Hughes Herbert and Nicolas Mahut and Cilic was able to win both his singles matches, beating Richard Gasquet and Lucas Pouille relatively easily (losing one set and winning 6). The Davis Cup final will be in Zagreb, Croatia November 25-27.

CZECH MATE! KVITOVA AND BERDYCH WIN 1ST TITLES OF 2016 IN ASIA
When she's on, she's very on. In Wuhan Petra Kvitova played two of her best matches in a row all-year long to blast through Simona Halep in the semis and Dominka Cibulkova in the final after earlier outlasting World #1 Angie Kerber in a 3-hour 3-set epic. Kvitova lost just 5 games in four sets in the last two rounds to win her first title of the year. Fellow Czech also salvaged his 2016 season by outlasting Richard Gasquet in 3 sets to win the Shenzhen Open, just 5 weeks after having surgery to remove his appendix, which caused him to skip the US Open.

#NEXTGEN BREAKTHROUGH: KHACHANOV, ZVEREV, POUILLE WIN TITLES
20-year old Karen Khachanov, 19-year-old Sascha Zverev and 22-year-old Lucas Pouille all won their first ATP tour titles recently. Khachanov beat Alberto Ramos-Vinolas in Chengdu, while Zverev beat reigning US Open champion Stan Wawrinka in St. Petersburg and Pouille beat fellow #NextGen Dominc Thiem in Metz. The most impressive of these wins is Zverev, since not only is he the youngest of the three but he beat the toughest competition. However, Pouille is the highest ranked of the bunch at #16, but Zverev is not that far behind at #24.

SHARAPOVA SUSPENSION REDUCED TO 15 MONTHS ON APPEAL; COULD PLAY 2017 FRENCH OPEN
The result of Maria Sharapova's appeal of her 2-year-suspension for using a banned substance (meldonium) was announced just minutes ago. Her ban has been reduced to 15 months, and since she has not played since January 2016 (the end of the Australian Open), she could be on court in time fo the 2017 clay court season and play in Madrid, Rome and Paris. It was very possible if the fine had not been reduced, then the 5-time major champion would have announced her retirement. It will be interesting to see how a then 30-year-old Maria will fare against the likes of Kerber, Pliskova and Muguruza after such a long absence.

The Rio Olympics has begun and half of the ATP top 10 is not there: Switzerland's Roger Federer (out with injury for 6 months) and Stan Wawrinka, Canada's Milos Raonic, Czechia's Tomas Berdych and Dominc Thiem of Austria. Rafael Nadal is playing all three events in Rio, but he is coming off a wrist injury which caused him to withdraw from Roland Garros and skip Wimbledon.

World #1 Novak Djokovic and World #2 Andy Murray are in Rio with Nadal. Murray was selected to be hold his country's flag in the opening ceremony. He is the defending champion, having won the Gold Medal match against Roger Federer at the 2012 London Olympics. Juan Martin del Potro won Bronze by defeating Djokovic, whom he faces in the first round here. Nadal is in Djokovic's half of the draw.


On the women's side, the draw has placed Venus and Serena in the top half together. The potential quarterfinals are: Serena versus Petra Kvitova (or Caroline Wozniacki), Garbine Muguruza versus Venus, Madison Keys versus Radwanska and Angelique Kerber versus Johanna Konta (or Sveta Kuznetsova).

Andy Murray (GBR) [2] vs. Milos Raonic (CAN) [6]

Here are my predictions for the 2016 men's quarterfinals and remaining Round of 16 matches at the French Open. Last year I correctly predicted 3 of 4 women's quarterfinals and correctly predicted 3 of 4 men's quarterfinals. This year I correctly predicted 3 of 4 round of 16 matches and 2 of 2 men's quarterfinal matches played so far.

Novak Djokovic (SRB) [1] vs. Tomas Berdych (CZE) [7]. Berdych has already surprised me once this tournament by defeating David Ferrer in clay. (I thought it would be a war of attrition, but in the end it turned out to be a relatively straightforward straight sets victory for the Czech.) However, Berdych defeating Djokovic this year at Roland Garros would count as an upset of cataclysmic proportions. These two have played 25 times and Djokovic has won 23 times. It is true that Berdych won one of their most  important matches (the 2010 Wimbledon semifinal) so he does have big match bona fides but the lopsided head-to-head is hard to overlook in order to make a case for a Berdych win here. Djokovic is playing in his 29th consecutive major quarterfinal (which surprisingly is only 7 behind Roger Federer's supposedly unreachable 36). Djokovic is 24-4 in major quarterfinals while Berdych is playing in his 14th major quarterfinal where he sports a 5-8 record. Mad Professah's pick: Djokovic.

 David Goffin (BEL) [12] vs. Dominic Thiem (AUT) [13]. 
The 22-year-old from Austria has 40 match wins  in 2016 (only one less than World #1 Novak Djokovic). In this major quarterfinal he will be playing his good friend, 25-year-old David Goffin from Belgium, with the winner being rewarded with a  first-tie berth in the ATP Top 10 for the first time . Thiem and Goffin have already played six times in their short time on tour and the elder (and higher ranked) player has a 4-2 advantage! Interestingly, neither of them has faced a seeded player in Paris so far so it's hard to predict how they will do against each other but I believe I need to give the edge to Thiem due to his overall record in 2016, despite the fact that Goffin won the last time they played, which was at the 2016 Australian Open, in four sets. Regardless of which player loses this match, I am firmly convinced that both players will be in the Top 10 by the end of the year. However that future achievement will be little solace to the player who misses reaching his first major semifinal. Mad Professah's pick: Thiem.

Here are my predictions for the 2016 men's quarterfinals and remaining Round of 16 matches at the French Open. Last year I correctly predicted 3 of 4 women's quarterfinals and correctly predicted 3 of 4 men's quarterfinals. I will try to predict the women's quarterfinals (and remaining Round of 16 matches) in a separate post.



Andy Murray [3] vs Richard Gasquet (FRA) [9] Kei Nishikori (JPN) [5]. Andy Murray has clearly been the second best player on clay this year (behind Novak Djokovic) and this year has a win on clay against Nadal (in Madrid!) and also a win against Djokovic (in Rome!). After playing 13 times in his home country's slam and never getting to the second week, Richard Gasquet put on a clinic of stylish tennis to dismiss a surprisingly erratic Kei Nishikori in their Round of 16 match on Sunday. Murray will not be daunted by the fact that the vast majority of the crowd on Roland Garros' largest court will be backing his opponent, hoping a Frenchman can finally reach a final again (Henri Leconte did it in 1988). Over the years, Murray has done well when he has been faced with dashing the hopes of Gael Monfils and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga He will probably play better knowing that the fans don't want him to win. I think Murray has an excellent chance of reaching his first French Open final this year. He has a 7-3 head-to-head against Gasquet and has won their last five consecutive meetings. There's not much to suggest that this match will have a different result. Mad Professah's pick: Murray.

Stan Wawrinka (SUI) [3] vs Albert Ramos-Vinolas (ESP) Milos Raonic (CAN) [8]. This is not the Spanish lefty anyone would have predicted would be playing in the Roland Garros quarterfinals this year. All his compatriots: Rafael Nadal, Fernando Verdasco and Feliciano Lopez have left the tournament but Ramos-Vinolas is still here, playing in his first major quarterfinal.  This is a lucky break for Wawrinka, but the defending champion would not have had much of a difficulty against the seed who should have made it this far, Milos Raonic. I'll be shocked is he has trouble against someone who has never won a clay court tournament on the ATP tour. Mad Professah's pick: Wawrinka.



Novak Djokovic (SRB) [1] vs. Roberto Bautista Agut (ESP) [14]. This match was suspended at 3-6 6-4 4-1 but even if it wasn't I would still be surprised to see Djokovic lose this match even if the scores were reversed and play was resuming. With Nadak out of the picture, this is Novak's year to complete his career slam. Mad Professah's pick: Djokovic.
David Ferrer (ESP) [11] vs. Tomas Berdych (CZE) [7]. This could have been a semifinal or quarterfinal a few years ago when both players were in the top 5. Surprisingly, Ferrer owns a 8-6 career head-to-head over his much taller opponent, but they have split their head-to-head meetings on clay. Even more surprisingly, despite playing so badly that he was double bageled in Rome (by David Goffin), just the week before this horrible performance Berdych was able to beat Ferrer on clay in Madrid. This match should be a nearly interminable war of attrition. In that case, I'll give the edge to the indefatigabe Spaniard (although Berdych has one their one best-of-five grand slam match). Mad Professah's pick: Ferrer.

Marcel Granollers (ESP) vs. Dominic Thiem (AUT) [13]. 
The 21-year-old from Austria is one of the hottest players on tour all year long and is finally making it count in a major. I wouldn't be surprised to see Thiem reach a semifinal here. After all, he has a win on clay this year against Nadal, even after being down match point! Mad Professah's pick: Thiem.

Ernests Gulbis (LAT) vs. David Goffin (BEL) [12].
Gulbis was the beneficiary of Jo-Wilfried Tsonga's 30-year-old body giving up on him in the round before. Goffin is a clear-thinking counterpuncher who loves clay and has been steadily rising up the rankings and this is an excellent time for him to make his first major qurterfinal. Mad Professah's pick: Goffin.