Italians Fognini and Bolelli pleased with form
The Italian pair of Fabio Fognini and Simone Bolelli, the first pair from that country to qualify for the year-ender ATP Finals, were not off to the best of debuts though yesterday.
In yesterday’s opener, the Italians went down 6-7, 6-3, 9-11 in the super tiebreaker against home lad Jamie Murray and John Peers of Australia. “There was no pressure on us. We both knew what exactly we needed to do out there. We had our chances, but we did not take these,” Fognini told Gulf News.
“But then that is sport. Our first match in this tournament and we were good out there. But in matches like these anything can happen. It’s a point here or a point there, so we’ve got to just take it and stay confident for the remainder of the competition,” he added.
“We have two more matches to play in the round-robin and we can stay confident and turn things around,” he added.
Meanwhile, uneasy calm prevailed in London in the light of the terror attack in Paris. “It’s not your usual sort of Sunday. We are all so sad with what has happened in Paris. It is just a question of a few people who do not like this idea of peace in the world,” Basheer Khan, a longtime resident of Oxford, said during a conversation on the way to the O2 Arena.
Top competition
And that’s where the attention of the tennis world will be, at least for the next few days as the top eight players and pairs seek to end the season on a high.
One cannot but help notice the dominant ones in men’s tennis. For the 12th consecutive season, the year-end No. 1 in the Emirates ATP Rankings has been held by one of three players — Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal. Federer leads the lot with five (2004 to 2007 and the 2009), Djokovic has four (2011, 2012, 2014 and 2015) and Nadal has three (2008, 2010 and 2013). The other interesting thing is that no other trio in the history of the Emirates ATP Rankings (since 1973) has held No. 1 for 12 years.
For the first time since 1996 all eight players in the season finale have won at least ten career ATP World Tour titles. While Federer has 88 titles against his name, Nadal follows with 67 and Djokovic with 58 — for a total of 213 between the three of them.
Novak Djokovic has no secrets to keep. At least not as far as his supreme fitness is concerned. The 28-year-old Serb is currently at the top of men’s tennis, with not many who may be in a position to displace him in the near future.
Djokovic’s secret, if any, occurred in Croatia during a Davis Cup tie in 2010. During the weekend he went and met Dr Igor Cetojevic, a nutritionist and fellow Serb, who suspected that the tennis player was sensitive to gluten, a protein found in wheat and other bread grains. That proved to be the turning point.
Bread and dairy is staple in Serbia. Djokovic’s parents run a pizza outlet. But the Serb was