Mondays with Bob Greene
STARS
Andy Murray beat Novak Djokovic 6-3 6-4 to win the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals in London, Great Britain
Ekaterina Alexandrova beat Caroline Garcia 6-4 6-0 to win the Engie Open de Limoges in Limoges, France
Evgeniya Rodina beat Chang Kai-Chen 6-4 6-3 to win the OEC Taipei WTA Challenger in Taipei, Taiwan
Peng Shuai beat Patricia Maria Tig 3-6 7-5 6-4 to win the Shenzhen Women’s Tournament in Shenzhen, China
SAYING
“It’s a very special day. It’s been a tough rivalry. I’ve lost many of them, but obviously I’m happy I’ve got the win today. To finish the year number one is very special. It’s something I never expected.” – Andy Murray, after beating Novak Djokovic to win the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals and clinch the year-end number one ranking.
“It wasn’t my day. On the other hand, credit to Andy for being mentally tough and playing the right shots and making me play extra shots in every rally. He definitely deserved to win.” – Novak Djokovic, after losing to Andy Murray in the final match of the ATP World Tour season.
“I’ve known from the start that we could beat any team in the world. To do it on a consistent basis has been obviously a big plus. But to be contesting for these titles, I don’t think either one of us is surprised about that.” – Henri Kontinen, who teamed with John Peers to capture the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals doubles title.
“I think after the US Open things were tough. There’s many things I can improve. But if I look in general, the season was amazing for me. I won a Grand Slam, plus finished in the Top 5. I won in my home in Geneva, which was really important for me.” – Stan Wawrinka, who has been hampered by a knee injury since winning the US Open.
SMASHING PERFORMANCE
Andy Murray left no doubt as to who is the top player in the world. The Scot produced a brilliant performance to knock off Novak Djokovic in straight sets to win the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals and finish the year with the number one ranking. The victory also extended Murray’s personal-record winning streak to 24 matches as he claimed his fifth straight title and denied Djokovic a fifth consecutive win in the second-ending tournament. Murray became the 17th player and first Brit to finish the year atop the ATP Rankings. While it was Djokovic who held serve easier at the beginning of the match, it was Murray who took control, at one point ripping off four straight games to take the opening set and go up a break to start the second. When Murray was able to break Djokovic once more, the end was clearly in sight, even when the Serb got one of the breaks back. It took Murray three match points before he was able to convert when Djokovic sailed a forehand return wide. “It’s taken a huge effort the last five, six months to get there,” Murray said of his number one ranking. “I would obviously like to stay there. I’m aware that’s going to be extremely difficult because I had a great year this year. I only managed to do it by one match. To repeat that again next year is going to be extremely difficult.”
SIBLINGS STAR
It wasn’t just Andy Murray winding up 2016 with the number one ranking. His older brother Jamie and his partner Bruno Soares finished the season as the top doubles team. They clinched the position when Frenchmen Nicholas Mahut and Pierre-Hugues Herbert lost all three of their round-robin matches in the ATP World Tour Finals. Jamie Murray reached the individual doubles number one ranking during the season, but Mahut ended the year in the top spot. “We used to play against each other all of the time pretty much until we were like 12 to 14,” Andy Murray said. “But we did play golf together. We played squash together, table tennis. We were always competing against each other from a young age. Now we obviously don’t.”
Since the rankings began, no brothers have been ranked number one in both singles and doubles at the same time. Not so with the women. In mid-2010, Serena Williams led the WTA rankings in singles and teamed with her sister Venus to be the top-ranked team.
SINO STOPPERS
The OEC Taipei WTA Challenge wasn’t a happy event for the home crowd. Russian players swept their Taiwanese opponents in the finals of both singles and doubles. Evgeniya Rodina won the biggest title of her career when she stopped Chang Kai-Chen. Then Natela Dzalamidze and Veronika Kudermetova rallied to defeat Chang and Chuang Chia-Jung. “Chang played really well today, but I was lucky I came out on top in the important moments,” said Rodina, who was cheered on by her husband and young daughter. After battling past her opponent in the opening set, Rodina raced out to a 4-0 lead in the second, then held on. “It was great to have my daughter and husband here this week. It really helped,” Rodina said.
SURPRISE
Ekaterina Alexandrova surprised top-seeded Caroline Garcia to keep the French woman from successfully defending her Engie Open de Limoges title. Ranked 133rd in the world, the unseeded Russian recovered from a slow start and completely dominated the final. Alexandrova lost her serve to begin the match, but rallied to pull even at 3-3. She then won nine of the next 10 games to complete her domination of the French Fed Cup team. Besides Garcia, Alexandrova also beat Pauline Parmentier and Alizé Cornet during the week. It was Alexandrova’s first title away from the International Tennis Federation (ITF) circuit.
The doubles final also resulted in an upset. Elise Mertens and Mandy Minella knocked off the second-seeded team of Anna Smith and Renata Voracova.
SEES THE END
Venus Williams knows when she will finally call an end to her tennis career. “I’m kind of targeting the next Olympics,” the 36-year-old Williams said when asked if she has thought about retirement, “and that’s in what, 3-and-half years … and I’m not counting.” Williams, who turned pro in 1994, has won 22 Grand Slam tournament titles – seven singles, 13 women’s doubles, all with her sister Serena, and two mixed doubles.
SUPER TEAM
Henri Kontinen and John Peers aren’t surprised that they won the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals doubles title in their first trip to the season finale. “When I start to think what we’ve achieved probably in the last month, it’s been a great thing for both of us,” Peers said. “It just feels really good to know that all the hard work we kept putting in time and time again, even if we felt good or bad, that it’s all starting to pay off and we can contest for the big tournaments all the time.” The won the title by beating another team making its World Tour Finals debut, Raven Klaasen and Rajeev Ram. Kontinen, of Finland, and Peers, of Australia, finish the season on a 10-match win streak, which included their first ATP World Tour Masters 1000 title at the BNP Paribas Masters in Paris. The also won titles in Brisbane, Munich and Hamburg. “To be honest, it probably actually hasn’t sunk in,” Peers said. “It will hopefully sink in tomorrow once I get a flight back home.”
SECOND CHILD
After leading France to its first Fed Cup final since 2005, Amélie Mauresmo said she is stepping down because she is expecting her second child. When France was last in the Fed Cup final, Mauresmo was playing for the team. In her four years as captain, the two-time Grand Slam tournament champion led France from Fed Cup zonal relegation to the final, where they narrowly lost to the Czech Republic in the decisive doubles rubber.
SPLITSVILLE
After teaming up for the two best years of her career, sixth-ranked Karolina Pliskova is splitting up with her coach Jiri Vanek. The announcement came after Pliskova helped lead the Czech Republic to its fifth Fed Cup title in the last six years. With Vanek on her team, Pliskova broke into the Top 10 in 2015, then in 2016 won the biggest title of her career, the Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, and reached her first Grand Slam tournament final, where she lost the US Open in three sets to top-ranked Angelique Kerber.
Elina Svitolina says she and longtime coach Iain Hughes will no longer be a team. The 22-year-old Ukrainian had her best season this year, making the final of the WTA Elite Trophy Zhuhai and finishing with a career-high ranking of 14th in the world. In 2016 she was the only woman to beat both reigning number one players, defeating Serena Williams at the Rio Olympics and Angelique Kerber at the China Open.
SEASON EXTENDER
The ATP World Tour will last one week longer next year. The men’s tour announced that a new tournament featuring the world’s top 21-and-under singles players will be held in Milan, Italy, Nov. 7-11, 2017. The five-day tournament, named the Next Gen ATP Finals, will remain in Milan for five years, through 2021. The top seven players in the season-long “Emirates ATP Race to Milan” will qualify automatically, with the eighth spot reserved for a wild card. The tournament will feature a number of rule changes and innovations, which will be announced later. “This event will also act as a launch pad for tennis innovation as we bid to make our sport more attractive to the changing consumer habits of the next generation of fans,” said Chris Kermode, ATP executive chairman and president.
SUCCESS FINALLY
Marcus Willis had a fairytale Wimbledon where as a wildcard entry he advanced through qualifying and the first round of the men’s singles before losing to Roger Federer 6-0 6-3 6-4. “I had a plan and believed, rightly or wrongly, I could win,” Willis said at the time. The Englishman finally has won, an International Tennis Federation (ITF) USD $10,000 Kuwait Futures event. And Willis won both singles and doubles in only his second tournament since Wimbledon. He beat Daniel Altmaier of Germany 6-3 7-6 (8) in the singles final, then teamed with Altmaier to down Dutchman Roy Sarut De Valk and Frenchman Ronan Joncour 6-1 6-1 to win the doubles. For his victorious week in Meshref, Kuwait, Willis pocketed USD $1,310. He took home $68,900 for reaching the second round at Wimbledon.
SAD NEWS
Gardnar Mulloy was proof that tennis is a lifetime sport. The oldest member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame, Mulloy was 102 when he died at his home in Miami, Florida, USA. Mulloy won four men’s doubles titles at the United States Nationals – now the US Open – and was 38 years old when he reached the singles final at the Nationals and became ranked number one in the United States. In 1957, Mulloy, at the age of 43, teamed with 33-year-old Budge Patty to win the Wimbledon doubles, stunning the top-seeded Australian team of Lew Hoad, 22, and Neale Fraser, 23. “We talk of tennis as a lifetime sport. He’s living proof,” Hall of Famer Tony Trabert once said of Mulloy. A strong advocate for expanding senior tennis from age 45 and up to age brackets extending to 90 and above, the Gardnar Mulloy Cup is awarded annually to the winner of a men’s 80-and-over international event. Mulloy received a football scholarship to the University of Miami but rarely played. When he asked the school’s president why the university did not have a tennis team, he was told he could start one, which he did. One of Mulloy’s recruits was Pancho Segura, who won three consecutive NCAA singles championships from 1943 to 1945 and also is a member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
SHARED PERFORMANCES
Limonges: Elise Mertens and Mandy Minella beat Anna Smith and Renata Voracova 6-4 6-4
London: Henri Kontinen and John Peers beat Raven Klaasen and Rajeev Ram 2-6 6-1 10-8 (match tiebreak)
Shenzhen: Nina Stojanovic and You Xiaodi beat Han Xinyun and Zhu Lin 6-4 7-6 (6)
Taipei: Natela Dzalamidze and Veronika Kudermetova beat Chang Kai-Chen and Chuang Chia-Jung 4-6 6-3 10-5 (match tiebreak)
SURFING
Davis Cup: www.daviscup.com/en/
Honolulu: https://hawaiitennisopen.com/
TOURNAMENTS THIS WEEK
WOMEN
$115,000 Hawaii Open, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, hard
DAVIS CUP
Final
Croatia vs. Argentina at Zagreb, Croatia, hard
