Mainly tennis

One overseas’ friend of mine and his wife have just visited London and now another couple that I know are thinking about celebrating their respective birthdays there.

I am not quite sure that London would be at the top of my destinations to visit list. That said, it does have a lot to see and do during both the day and the evening and if you can put up with the dirtiness of the place, all well and good.

Tennis

So both Nadal and Federer are out of the Australian Open tennis championships, the first time in three years that neither of them will be in a grand Slam final.

Perhaps more notably, it is also the first time since July 2003 that Federer will not be the holder of at least one Slam. He has held 3 consecutive slams three times in his career and last year was the first time since 2003 that he only managed to capture one in any single season.

Is that the end of Federer? I doubt it. I am a long way short of being his biggest fan, but I suspect that he may manage to squeeze another one or possibly two Slams out of his career. However the task is getting harder.

He first started losing in slam finals to Nadal back in 2006 and he then lost the US Open to Del Potro in 2009. Now however his challenge seems to be one of reaching those same finals with his last four Grand Slam exits seeing two semi and two quarter final dismissals. Wimbledon still has to be his best opportunity, but with Nadal now a master of grass and Murray looking break his Grand Slam duck things can only get tougher.

I noticed that Ana Ivanovic was supporting Djokovic in the Federer match today. It is interesting that, by 19 years of age she was world number one, had made three Slam finals, winning one, and yet by 22 she was out of the top 20 rankings. Personally I never liked her. Her sportsmanship was in the same mould as Hingis and Henin and her bubble obviously burst pretty quickly.

The same, in terms of a ranking drop, is also true of Dinara Safina. In 2009 she was world number 1, but by January of this year (less than 2 years later) she had plummeted to number 75. However having accrued over $10 million in prize money I guess she will not be too concerned. Ivanovic incidentally has made a mere $8 million!