Men's tennis rife with predictability
Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesNovak Djokovic is one of seven men who advanced to the quarterfinals in Indian Wells and Miami. Tennis goes in cycles, always has.
After nearly a month of super-concentrated tennis in the lovely locales of Indian Wells and Miami, it is clear we have entered into another one.
For nearly five years, men's tennis was Roger Federer soaring high above the field at No. 1, with utter chaos below. Anyone else in, say, the round of 16 seemed capable of beating anyone else. At the same time, most of the top women's seeds were advancing to quarterfinals of Grand Slams, dropping four or five games in predictable matches that required less than an hour.
And now? Men's tennis is as predictable as death and taxes -- maybe more so. Women's tennis? It's girls gone wild. From week to week, it's impossible to know who is going to show up in the quarters.
To put this role reversal another way, men are the new women. Or are women the new men?
The numbers are fairly astonishing:
Seven of the eight men who advanced to the quarterfinals at Indian Wells did the same in Miami: Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray, Juan Martin del Potro, Andy Roddick and Fernando Verdasco. Expanding the pool to include the Australian Open, where Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Gilles Simon also reached the quarters, only 10 different men have been to the last eight of the three biggest tournaments played so far.
As Greg Sharko of the ATP World Tour notes, seven of the top 10 players in the South African Airways rankings reached the quarters of those three events. Last year, the most top-10 players in a men's quarter was six -- and it happened only three times. And, this year is still young. When the best players advance to the quarterfinals, you get high-quality matches.
Nadal, No. 1 in the world, won at Indian Wells and the No. 4-soon-to-be-No. 3 Murray was the last man standing in Miami. The only upsets of note at the Sony Ericsson Open: Tsonga, ranked No. 11, beat the No. 8 Simon in the fourth round and now-No. 5 Del Potro beat an exhausted Nadal in the quarters. Even Federer is predictable, but now in a bad way; he has lost five straight matches to Nadal and four in a row to Murray. At Indian Wells and Miami, the last two tournaments, Federer fell to Murray and Djokovic, his two closest pursuers in the rankings.
Contrast this with what happened on the cathartic women's side. The winners were Vera Zvonareva in Indian Wells and Victoria Azarenka in Miami -- Nos. 4 and 11, respectively. And though the following numbers are skewed because Serena and Venus Williams declined to play in Indian Wells, consider this:
The only two women to reach the quarterfinals at both tournaments were the 19-year-old Azarenka and 18-year-old Caroline Wozniacki -- if you had that daily double, you might be in the wrong line of work. The other 12 spots were taken by 12 different players. In Indian Wells, Sybille Bammer and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, ranked No. 27 and No. 28, respectively, made the final eight. In Miami, Iveta Benesova, Na Li and Samantha Stosur -- Nos. 25, 29 and 31 -- reached the quarters.
Fold in the surprise quarterfinalists at the Australian Open -- Carla Suarez Navarro, Jelena Dokic and Marion Bartoli -- and you have 17 different women in the quarters of the three biggest events.
Of course, there is a reason for all of this diversity: completely uninspired play by No. 2-ranked Dinara Safina, No. 3 Elena Dementieva, No. 4 Jelena Jankovic and No. 7 Ana Ivanovic. Dementieva did not win a match in Indian Wells and Jankovic whiffed in Miami. Ivanovic and Safina, finalists in last year's French Open, each won a single match in Miami.
If they had played to form there wouldn't have been so many interlopers.
Sure, it was windy and hot and these Europeans were a long way from home for an extended time, but the same was true for the men. It is all the more impressive, in retrospect, that six Europeans, along with Argentina's Del Potro and the United States' Roddick, played so well for so long on a hard surface so different from the courts they grew up on.
To put that achievement in perspective, follow the Americans through the clay-court season that officially opens today. History says they will not be as successful.
Miami gave us two young champions who are playing the best tennis on their respective circuits. Azarenka is 23-2 and looks like a legitimate top-five player. The way she has been playing, she might have beaten Serena Williams even if Williams hadn't been hurt. The 21-year-old Murray, too, is on fire. He's 26-2 and won 11 of his 12 matches in the back-to-back ATP Masters 1000 events.
Play begins at Roland Garros in less than seven weeks -- who are the favorites? On the now-predictable men's side, the story line will be Nadal's quest for a fifth consecutive title.
The women? It's anyone's guess.
Greg Garber is a senior writer for ESPN.com.
