Happy Holidays!

Good ol' Saint Novak.

A very merry World Tennis Day to all!

Although I just found out such a day existed last week and only remembered it after roaming around the web this afternoon, 'twas a joyous and exciting 24 hours to be a fan of this beautiful sport.

Kudos to all the players getting involved in those lighthearted matches to spread tennis joy around the world.

Fortunately or unfortunately, the goofing off ends here. March is upon us, which means it is U.S. hard court season! Two combined events, loaded draws, and several thousand points and dollars to be awarded. Who's gonna reap the bulk of those benefits? Let's find out by taking a quick look back at an unusually busy February.

Doha: Serena is back at #1, but Vika had the last laugh in their final round match. Serena holds a big lead in their H-to-H record, but Vika has always played her tough and seems to be making more inroads each successive faceoff. Don't be surprised if Azarenka gets back to the top spot by year's end (Serena has a TON of points to defend this summer).

Dubai: Kvitova got back on track with this Premier title. The draw was trimmed down after the Doha finalists withdrew, but hats off to getting the job done. Now that she's pulled off playing well for two matches in a row, is it no longer wishful thinking that she could do it for consecutive tournaments? We'll see, but we do know she has all the weaponry to dominate.

ATP 500s: Federer is stunned at Rotterdam and Dubai. He can't seem to hold MPs anymore. The door is open for Murray, who was absent for the entire month, to leapfrog him in the rankings. Djokovic wins Dubai, undefeated in 2013. Nole's on a serious roll, 18 straight matches to be exact. Is a repeat of 2011 in store? He seems unstoppable at the moment, especially on hard courts. Nadal blows away David Ferrer in Acapulco. The scoreline may be ho-hum, but Rafa has only just started playing tournaments and is only going to get more comfortable out on court. The only question is will he play Indian Wells and/or Miami? WE STILL DON'T KNOW. It's not like IW begins in two days or anything...

I don't know about you, but I am so excited for Indian Wells and Miami because: a) combined events are easy to follow both men and women, and b) they are both in my country's time zone. Those of you who feverishly followed the Australian Open like I did feel me...

Leave a comment to discuss the happenings of February or to look forward to March. Should be another exciting month!

Remember When February Was Supposed To Be Dull?

I was really looking forward to my month off from blogging as tennis is usually quite dull, still suffering from the post-Aussie Open hangover. Foiled again by Nadal!

That's right Nadal made his return last week from a seven-month hiatus at Viña del Mar, an ATP 250 tourney, on his beloved clay surface in both singles and doubles with Juan Monaco, and things were going quite smoothly until he ran into the stalwart grinder we all recognize as Horacio Zeballos. And while I will neither confirm nor deny that I knew of Zeballos' existence on tour until a few days ago, I'm quite shocked he managed to spoil the King of Clay's welcome back party.

Nadal looked quite good in his matches leading up to the final (although he did say he was still experiencing minor knee pains during the event) and I really couldn't tell you what happened to him against Zeballos, but I yelled in surprise when I saw this picture on Twitter:

Don't get used to this image.

Nadal and Pico ended up losing in the doubles finals as well. All in all, I'm sure Rafa is both encouraged and disappointed by this week, but it seems like mostly good news. We'll see whether he gears himself up for the spring U.S. hard court Masters or save himself for the Euro-clay season. Best of luck, Rafa! We've all missed you...well, all except Andy Murray.

Any thoughts on Nadal's season to come? Will he keep up with his Big 4 brethren? Doha is up for the ladies with the #1 ranking up for grabs yet again! Sure to be another exciting week. In February, of all months. Who knew?

(edit: almost forgot, Rafa's Welcome Back Tour rolls on this week at São Paulo where he'll once again be in the singles and doubles draw (with David Nalbandian)! Be sure to keep tabs!)

Ugh...

I wake up this morning thinking I would see hundreds of orgasmic tweets from tennis journos covering Vika vs. Serena that would make me feel as if I were watching the match unfold live, but Azarenka was forced to withdraw due to a bad pedicure, not even joking! Apparently she suffered a toe infection that causes her pain, pain that she endured for the early rounds of Brisbane, but it would be too steep of a hill to climb against Mount Serena. Way to blueball us, Vika...

Still, Pavlyuchenkova can hit the hard, so we can hope for something at least slightly competitive in the final.

The ATP Brisbane is still rockin' though! Young gun Grigor Dimitrov has blasted through to the semis in a very impressive tournament run so far. "Baby Federer" is finally showing his potential over a stretch longer than a single match (or rather a single point). He's even rumored to be dating Maria Sharapova! Respect, Grigor.

And when did Nikolay Davydenko decide to make a reappearance?? He whipped #1 seed David Ferrer in the Doha semis and is ready for a finals showdown with Richard Gasquet. Between Davy and Pav, it's been a Russian Revival this week!

What do you think of these developments? Azarenka should be ready to go for Melbourne, but will lack of big time matchplay hurt her? Can Baby Federer show off his repertoire in a major? Is this just a flash-in-the-pan for the machinelike Russian? Leave a comment to discuss. Australian Open draw out in seven days!

Time After Time

Hey tennis fans!

We are less than 48 hours into 2013, yet there is so much to talk about! Granted, the season officially began on December 30th, 2012, but we'll just wait for the organizers of Brisbane and Shenzhen to figure that out...

The top Frenchmen on the ATP circuit are known for their flair and style, but a great deal of that pizazz comes from Gael Monfils. His on-court dramatics were missed by fans and non-fans alike, so it's great to see him back and doing well at the Qatar Open after rumors surfaced last month of him calling it a career. Even greater is this exchange with the chair umpire after a time violation warning during what would be an encouraging three-set triumph over third-seeded Phillipp Kohlschreiber:

So unfair.

Let me first say this: I feel his pain. I could be standing still on a lukewarm day and I'm sweating. Not a good look. More implicative of the tour's direction, he wasn't the first to be issued a time violation warning in Doha. David Ferrer was given notice about stricter clock-watching before his first-round match and Feliciano Lopez was called for a time violation while facing triple-set point! Crazy. Still, it's hard to feel bad for a guy who looks like this, even with something splayed across his face:



Ferrer tweeted en Español in defense of his fellow countrymen, and while I agree that that particular call on Lopez was too harsh and at such an inopportune time, we need to see more of this on the ATP. These matches are just too long, especially at the Grand Slam level. Almost exactly one year ago, my favorite player of the last 5.5 years defeated his primary rival in one of the most epic matches in history, but I would never want to see it in its entirety again. Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal are the two biggest time violators in tennis history, but they hardly ever get called out for wasting precious seconds ball-bouncing and tugging out wedgies! I'm still angry at them for waking me at 3AM and keeping me up until 10:30...

So I say "yea" to stricter timekeeping. It'll move along matches and promote tennis as a sport that the casual fan would want to check out every now and again. Plus, it'll help all of us rabid fanatics who are oceans away have enough energy to sit through the occasional red-eye match. Call it the Rafaole Ruling.

What say you? Agree with the impending harshness of the umps this season? Jealous of Feli's bod? Leave a comment and let's discuss. Unlike these tennis players, we've got all day.