Now That Thanksgiving is Over, a Mild Complaint

It has been a bit of an anti-climactic week thus far at the ATP World Tour Finals in London. Through eight round-robin matches, we have seen only one go the three-set distance- an entertaining see-saw clash between Nadal and Roddick which mirrored their encounter in Miami earlier this season. Every other match has ended in straight sets with relatively little drama. An event which boasts a draw consisting entirely of the world's top eight singles players brings with it the promise of many a close, bitterly-contested nail-biter, as we saw at this event last season.

With but the one notable exception, match after marquee match has proven a competitive letdown this week, even when local hero Andy Murray took to the court against Federer, or Djokovic against Nadal. There have also been relatively few surprising outcomes; Federer's bludgeoning of Murray and Roddick's collapse at the hands of Tomas Berdych are the only two that really come to mind.

On that note, the event has been an even bigger letdown from the perspective of a supporter of Mr. Roddick, who has continued to display his recent propensity for losing sets and matches from clearly winning positions. Against Berdych- an opponent who had not been playing at anything close to a top 10 level since Wimbledon- Roddick was clearly the better man through the first 10 games of the opening set, and held two set points at 5-4, each of which saw him returning standard second serves. Each time, Roddick responded with a soft, short slice return, simply hoping for a Berdych error, and in so doing, he not only enabled his foe to save both set points, but also awakened the sleeping giant that was a confident Berdych, with disastrous results.

Nevertheless, all is not lost even for Roddick just yet, as the identity of the second member of Group B (Nadal, Djokovic, Berdych and Roddick) to proceed to the semifinals (wherein Group A winners Federer and Murray await) remains as yet undetermined. The first criterion for semifinal berth is, of course, a player's round-robin win-loss record, but in the event that Nadal, who is 2-0 thus far in the event, should defeat Berdych and Roddick beat Djokovic today, then all three men will be 1-2, and the selection process will have to make recourse to total sets or even games in order to choose from the three. As I write this, Nadal is on the brink of a straight-sets victory. Going into the final round-robin match-up of this event, Roddick holds an impressive 5-2 head-to-head record against Djokovic and has won their last four meetings, though it does seem that Djokovic's form has improved of late, and that Roddick is low on confidence, as evidenced by his repeated losses from ahead, including one to Berdych, against whom he had previously held a dominant 6-2 record. I will be in his corner, and expect an entertaining match to punctuate the round-robin swing.