2012 US Open Men's Bracket Breakdown

The Grand Slam tennis season winds to a close with the US Open, but there's nothing to be wistful about; not yet anyway.  The two weeks when tennis' non-stop carnival decamps on our doorstep here in New York always yield some of the most dramatic, heart-pounding action of the season.  With one quarter of the men's game's Fab Four, Rafael Nadal, sidelined with a knee injury, this year's tournament is certainly down a few watts in terms of star power.  On the other hand, the Spaniard's absence is a crack in tennis' great wall that means opportunity for the rest of the field.  For the first time in a long time, the US Open has been rendered wide open.

So who will seize the day and emerge as the champion?  Almost just as importantly, what are the matches worth watching in the first few days of the Open?  Well, check out our 2012 US Open men's draw preview to find out...

Wimbledon Middle Sunday Bloggers' Bar

It's the middle Sunday at Wimbledon.  Which means the punters can get back to that favorite British pastime, downing pints at the local pub.  For those of us not necessarily at the All England Club, following the tournament on TV and Twitter has almost the same feeling.  Our barroom conversations may take place over fiber optic cable, but it doesn't make them any less compelling.  Welcome back to the Bloggers Bar, this is a becoming a regular feature on Blacklabel Tennis where we pose questions to some of our favorite writers in a virtual roundtable.  Our esteemed bloggers and writers today are:

• @AlvaroRama Alvaro Rama of EuroSport2 & Quality Sport
• @TennisNewsViews Lisa Marie Burrows of TennisNewsViews.com & World Tennis Magazine
• @TheFanChild Chris Oddo of TennisNow.com & The Fan Child
• @VBlacklabel Vito Ellison of BlacklabelTennis.com

In this installment, we discuss some of tennis' burning questions:

• Who had the most disappointing first half of 2012?
• Who has been the biggest positive surprise of 2012 thus far?
• Which man is most likely to end the Big Three's dominance?
• Will Maria Sharapova bea dominant World No. 1?

Find out which question half of our panel didn't even hazard a guess at...

Madrid Masters (5/8): Three Thoughts

School is Out: Milos Raonic is a young gun we've been hearing about for a long time, we'll hear even more in the next 24 hours as tomorrow he's scheduled to be Roger Federer's second round opponent.  For the second year in a row Raonic had a strong run on the hardcourts in the first quarter, claiming his second and third ATP titles in Chennai and San Jose respectively.

Of course, as you recall, Raonic's breakout 2011 season was hampered by an injury at Wimbledon that left him off the tour for a good chunk of the year.  Prior to that however, Raonic's momentum slowed during the European red clay court season.  The Canadian who grew up playing on green clay "quite a bit," opened up about his outlook for the remainder of the clay court campaign and 2012.

BLT En Espana: Barcelona QF Thoughts

If you haven't heard the news, well I guess you don't follow on Facebook or Twitter...and for that, shame on you.  In any event, Blacklabel Tennis is taking on the Spanish clay swing this spring this swing and we kicked off today in Barcelona.  We've posted a raft of our best shots on our Facebook page already, but we've saved some exclusives for you after the jump.  Plus here's the only place for our quick commentary on the day. 

Life In The Desert

Every fall there's a fair bit of hand-wringing about the tennis offseason, or lack thereof.  That mythical period between early December and New Year's Eve where the sport presumably disappears.  Given the fact that most of the Western World is engrossed in (not to mention engorged during) the winter holidays, I guess the question is "If the world is too busy to notice that a tournament isn't happening, was there an offseason after all?"

Short answer: No.

To the players, those few weeks are largely an extended weekend or so of relaxation and then a few weeks of training to prep for the Australian summer circuit.  I would counter that the offseason, perhaps more accurately penned as "off-season," kicks off the day after the players leave Melbourne.  Yes, there are Davis and Fed Cup ties, the appearance fee-rich tournaments on the Arabian peninsula, the remnants (ruins?) of the Euro winter indoor circuit, Latin America's "Golden Swing" and even a bit of home cooking for the Americans; but in a sport that's truly a 24/7/365 enterprise, the post-Australian swing is more of a swoon.  Then there's Indian Wells.

Australian Open - Back From The Beer Garden

As many of you know, I'm not a full-time blogger.  Sometimes the day job demands my attention and the couple of hours a day I would love to spend writing here have to be put aside for...you know, the matters that allow me to have the disposable income to watch tennis.  In any event, that doesn't mean I haven't been catching some Aussie Open tennis over the last few days and I certainly have some thoughts to share on what I've seen.  Let's backtrack a bit, shall we?

2012 Australian Open Predictions: The Men (Blacklabel vs. the Computer)

Those four guys are still around, right?  You know, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Andy Murray right?  So why do the full on Australian Open men's bracket breakdown?  Don't we already know who's going to be around at the tail end of the tournament?  Maybe.  Anyway, let's have a little fun with this.  We got such positive feedback about our collaboration at the Bloggers' Bar at the ed of last year that we thought, why not bring in some outside perspectives again.  To that end, I've been corresponding with my fellow New Yorker Jeff Sackmann who runs a really interesting tennis blog called Heavy Topspin.  What I immediately loved about his take on tennis predictions is their bloodlessness.  Jeff's developed an algorithm that takes into account the quality of opponents (adjusted for surface), recency of result over two years and head-to-head results and then runs a million simulations of the ENTIRE draw to predict the outcome of a tournament.

What happens when V Blacklabel takes on Jeff and his computer?  Well, read on to find out:

Getting Into The Groove

Milos Raonic, winner of the 2012 Aircel Chennai Open

Are we here already?  I mean, really?  Seriously?!?!  It feels like yesterday we were just settling in for the interminable tennis offseason. We were trying desperately to figure out how we would spend all that free time now that there weren't pivotal second round clashes from some far-flung outpost of tennisland to hold our attention.  Well, the reality is, we didn't even have enough time to build a decent Spotify playlist before they were at it again.  Here's what we saw this first (official) week of the 2012 season.

Bloggers Bar Volume II: 2012 Tennis Predictions

A few rounds deep, we're back at the Bloggers' Bar.  This is the second in a series of posts where some of my favorite tennis writers/bloggers and I will talk through some of the important tennis topics of the day.

At the (virtual) bar today are:

• Erik G - Adjusting The Net
• V Blacklabel - Blacklabel Tennis
• Chris Oddo - The Fan Child
• Dan Martin - Tennis Abides

In Volume I we focused primarily on the top players and our outlooks for them going into 2012.  In this installment, we're looking at the tour and making our biggest, boldest predictions for 2012.

Once again, this isn't a private conversation, feel free to get involved in the comments, we would love to hear what you have to say; unless, we wouldn't, in which case, we'll politely ignore you.

Bloggers' Bar Volume I: 2012 Tennis Predictions

Even though the pro tours flit from Melbourne to London and virtually every spot in between over the course of a year; the tennis world remains a relatively small community.  When I started (officially) working on Blacklabel Tennis last summer, I also started reading a lot more tennis writing and interacting with some of the talented people behind it.  We might be spread out across the world, but when Sharapova's yips rear their unpretty head deep in the third set or Nadal hits a shot that seems a repudiation of the laws of physics, these are people with whom I'm virtually sharing that WTF moment.  While we tweet and e-mail, we never get the opportunity to really spend much time shooting the shit about tennis.

Thus, the Bloggers' Bar.

This is the first in a series of posts where some of my favorite tennis writers/bloggers and I will share our thoughts, ideas and delusions on what we deem to be the important tennis topics of the day.

Blacklabel Tennis Power Rankings - July 2011

Welcome to the first edition of the Blacklabel Tennis Power Rankings.  The idea's pretty simple, we'll tell you who the top ten players are RIGHT NOW every month, why they're hot, why they're cold and why you need to pay attention going forward.  Agree? Disagree?  Leave it in the comments.

Anyone want to take a wild guess who's at the top?

1. Novak Djokovic (SRB)
What's left to say?  Australian Open champion, Wimbledon champion, World 
No. 1 ranking, long term lease in the head of one, Rafael Nadal.  The man who single-handedly destroyed the gluten industry.  Oh, and one more thing, he's going into his favorite part of the year, the American hardcourt swing.  Right now, only two things can derail Djokovic, injury or complacency.  I don't think the latter is a possibility.  There's still a lot he wants to win and his next order of business will be claiming that US Open trophy from a guy he's beaten five times in a row.

Wimbledon Day Three (3 Thoughts)

The story of an athlete is not only written by his or her talent,work ethic or determination, they can inform only half of the story  The other half is written by their bodies.  An athlete's body may be many things, but it is undeniably their meal ticket.  Without a healthy, fit body, all the will and talent in the world are for naught, just ask Tommy Haas.