Life Etc Etc

The Indian Wells Masters is one tournament on the ATP calendar I've consistently enjoyed over the last couple of years. Not only is the tournament well attended but it also arrives on the cusp of spring just when everything is about to look up in the Northern Hemisphere. I still remember the humdinger of a final  from last year and was particularly disappointed that the defending champion Juan Martin Del Potro was unable to defend his title this year because of a nagging knee injury. The magnificence of Indian Wells (Courtesy: Tennis Tours ) The Draw This year though the deck was firmly stacked in favor of the number one seed Novak Djokovic who was in imperious form leading up to the tournament. Novak led the upper half of the draw and was ably supported by mercurially talented players such as Dominic Thiem, Alexander Zverev, Nick Kyrgios and Milos Raonic. Stefanos Tsitsipas who ousted Novak at the Toronto Masters and Federer at the Australian Open looked set to be dark h...

The year 2018 will go down in history as one of the great years for sports and today my friends I present sporting gold from the first half of 2018 (in chronological order). Here are some truly classic matches and moments which I had the pleasure of watching this year. Deontay Wilder vs Luis Ortiz: Two unbeaten heavyweights met for the WBC World Heavyweight Championship in March. Hard hitting American Deontay Wilder defended his world title against the Cuban technical specialist Luis Ortiz . Both the heavyweights approached the bout in contrasting manners. While Wilder searched for the one punch knockout Ortiz made life difficult for Wilder by adopting a sideways stance and picking him at will with his precise lefts. Wilder finally broke through in the fifth round to knock Ortiz down only for Ortiz to recover and give Wilder the beating of his life in the seventh. Wilder narrowly escaped a certain KO and came back with ferocious rights of his own before finally finishing off Ort...

It was a perfectly drab morning and I was gearing up for the day ahead by peering through the sports headlines. Nothing exciting struck me until I laid my eyes upon an ongoing quarterfinal match at The Queen's Club Championship between Tomas Berdych and Feliciano Lopez . Now Berdych vs Lopez is not exactly a match-up to crave about like Federer vs Nadal. Both men are in their 30's which is the age where most players retire. Both men are seemingly past their prime and both haven't exactly set the tennis world on fire in the recent past. If it was another day or time I would have moved on to do something else but today was different, I decided to go ahead and watch the match. You ask me why? I still wonder why? Is it because that both Berdych and Lopez are genuine grass court players? Is it because that on their day both men are extremely dangerous players? Is it because that it was a match up of styles between the power of Berdych and the silken finesse of Lo...