2019 CANADA: Serena In 1st Non-Major Final In 2 Years; Faces Bibi Andreescu (19YO)

For the first time in nearly two years Serena Williams is in the final of a regular tour-level tournament after reaching 3 major finals (2018 Wimbledon, 2018 U.S. Open and 2019 Wimbledon) in that period. She will face 19-year-old hometown heroine Bianca (Bibi) Andreescu who is playing in her 3rd final of 2019 in the Rogers Cup final in Toronto, Ontario.

Serena has been playing excellent tennis in Canada. In the quarterfinals she finally got her first win over Naomi Osaka (in straight sets!) on Friday 6-3 6-4. Defending champion Simona Halep retired against Marie Bouzkova after losing the first set, Serena was forced to win a 3-set semifinal 1-6 6-3 6-3 against the Czech qualifier.

Andreescu is the first Canadian woman in 50 years to reach the final of the Canadian Open. She has made incredible strides and will be in the Top 20 on Monday for the first time.

TUESDAY TENNIS: Stephens Wins 1st Title; Venus Bageled In TO; Kei Gets Revenge; Kerber Streak Continues

Sloane Breaks Through With Maiden Title At D.C. Hard Court Tournament
American Sloane Stephens was the only player in the WTA Top 40 (currently ranked #29) not to have reached a tour final. That is no longer true because not only did Stephens reach her first WTA final at the Citi Open in Washington, DC by defeating Samantha Stosur in the semifinal, she was cool and calm in a straightforward 6-1 6-2 win over Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in the final the next day.

Kerber Continues Streak With 4th Title Of The Year By Winning in Stanford
Angelique Kerber began 2015 with more losses than wins until March but since winning in Charleston on (green) clay she has won 30 of her 35 matches, and notched up three more titles, on three different surfaces (Stuttgart on red clay, Birmingham on grass and Stanford on outdoor hard courts). Kerber played one of the best matches of the year in the Bank of the West quarterfinals by outlasting Aggie Radwanska 6-4 4-6 6-4 and K3rb3r won the title match over Karolina Pliskova in another 3-set match. The German has now won all 4 finals she has reached in 2015 after going 0-4 in finals last year.

Venus Plays First Set Since Wimbledon, Gets Bageled And Loses
Since losing to her sister Serena Williams in the 3rd round of Wimbledon, Venus Williams has not played a WTA tour-level match. She returned to the court after 10pm in Toronto on Monday to face Sabine Lisicki following a near 9-hour rain delay and promptly lost the first 6 games in 24 minutes. Things got a little better after that but Venus still lost 6-0 6-3 to the hard-hitting German. Since she had reached the final at the Canadian tournament last year (beating Serena in the semifinals) her ranking will plummet to the mid-20s and if she doesn't do well in Cincinnati she might not be seeded for the 2015 U.S. Open.

Kei Nishikori and Marin Cilic Face Each Other On U.S. Hard Court With Different Result
Last year Kei Nishikori and Marin Cilic played the first grand slam final in over a decade that did not include a former Grand Slam champion at the 2014 U.S. Open. Cilic won that match but in Washington, D.C. the two met in the semifinals of the Citi Open but this time Nishikori was the victor 3-6 6-1 6-4. The Japanese player went on to defeat John Isner 4-6 6-4 6-4 to win the title.

2014 ROGERS CUP: Tsonga Beats 3rd Consecutive Top 10 Player, Can He Top Federer In Final?

As expected, World #3 Roger Federer continued his unbeaten record against Feliciano Lopez, as did Jo-Wilfried Tsonga against Grigor Dimitrov. It was Federer's 11th consecutive win against the Spaniard and Tsongas 4th consecutive win against the Bulgarian. It was also the Frenchman's 3rd consecutive Top 10 win in as many matches this week. He has beaten World #1 Nivak Djokovic, World #9 Andy Murray and World #8 Grigor Dimitrov. I actually expected Dimitrov to  turn things around against Tsonga, but instead he lost in straight sets.

Federer has a 11-4 head-to-head advantage against Tsonga and will be playing in his 120th career ATP Tour final, trying for his 80th title. Tsonga is playing in his 20th final, trying for his 11th title

MadProfessah's pick: Federer!

ROGERS CUP 2013: Rafa and Serena Win Titles

At the Rogers Cup in Toronto (women) and Montreal (men), Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams ended the tournaments victoriously. World #1 Serena did not drop a set all week long, although she came very close to doing so in her semifinal against Agnieska Radwanska on Saturday, eventually prevailing 7-6(3) 6-4. Serena beat Sorana Cirstea 6-2 6-0 in the final and has now won 8 titles in 2013, the most in any year during her storied career. She looks very good going into the US Open in two weeks where she is the defending champion.

Nadal was probably even more impressive as he made his 10th final in 11 tournaments (his only miss this year was his shocking 1st round loss at Wimbledon to Steve Darcis), routing Milos Raonic in the final 6-2 6-2 to win his record 25th ATP Masters title. However, much more significantly than winning the title was the way he won his semifinal showdown with World #1 Novak Djokovic: playing aggressive hard court tennis, displaying superior mental toughness to go up 6-0 in the 3rd set tiebreak and eventually win the match 6-4 3-6 7-6(2). Nadal has reached the US Open final twice (splitting matches with Djokovic). It's surprising to say, but 2-time champion Andy Murray may be a bigger threat to Nadal in New York than the Serbian World #1. It's also true that there are other players outside the Top 4 who could give Nadal problems on hard courts, but not if he played the way he played against Djokovic on Saturday night. Th question is will the Spaniard have that opportunity?

ROGERS CUP 2013: Venus Loses 1st Match Back

Venus Williams returned to the WTA Tour on Tuesday at the Rogers Cup in Toronto after more than two months away and lost her 1st round match 0-6 6-4 6-2 to Wimbledon semifinalist Kirsten Flipkens. Venus is currently ranked World #38 while Flipkens is World #13 so in that light the result should not be thought of as an upset. Both players were coming off long absences from the game due to injury, since Flipkens had not played since Wimbledon and Venus had not played since Roland Garros (1st round loss to Urszula Radwanska).

The match turned in the second set when everything was on serve until 4-5 in the set. (I managed to watch most of the set while on a flight from Washington, DC to Los Angeles--thank you DirecTV in flight!) Venus could barely hit a serve up to 100 mph, a far cry from her typical speed well over 110 mph. She claims that she is treating her back injury gingerly and that explains her diminution of serving power. However, there were other reasons why she lost the match: she had 16 breakpoints compared to her opponent's 8 but they both broke the same number of times, so Venus was exactly half as effective on important points as her opponent.

Interestingly, Serena Williams will face Flipkens tomorrow in the 3rd round. If Serena loses, that would be a shocking result. Other interesting matches include Sloane Stephens and Agnieska Radwanska, Li Na and Ana Ivanovic, Petra Kvitova and Samantha Stosur as well as 2013 Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli and Magdalena Rybarikova (She won the Citi Open last weekend).

Celebrity Friday: Ontario Now Has Lesbian Premier

Oh Canada! Kathleen Wynne has been elected to head the Ontario Liberal Party, which means that she will become the Premier of the Province of Ontario, Canada. Ontario contains the nation's capital city Ottawa as well as its largest city, Toronto. A Province in Canada is equivalent to a State in America and a Premier is the equivalent to an American governor. However, due to the parliamentary system the people do not directly elect the Premier, Premiers are selected at party convention by members of parliament and other activists in the party or coalition which currently has the most number of seats in the provinicial parliament. It is this election which Ms. Wynne won, making her the first woman and first openly LGBT premier in the history of Canada, according to the Globe and Mail:

A policy wonk with a laid-back, likeable persona, Ms. Wynne successfully pitched herself as a woman ready to govern, promising to bring the legislature back next month and push forward the party’s agenda by working with the opposition.

Despite concerns she was too low-key to fight her way to victory, Ms. Wynne turned in a formidable performance at the convention, with a raucous entrance that saw her supporters dancing on-stage, followed by a speech that combined personal anecdotes with partisan rhetoric.

She also addressed, head-on, the worry some Liberals had expressed that an openly-gay candidate could not win a general election. She pointed out that the other candidates – a Portuguese-Canadian, an Indo-Canadian, a Catholic and a woman – would once have been thought unelectable.

“I don’t believe the people of Ontario judge their leaders on the basis of race, colour or sexual orientation,” she said to loud cheers from her supporters. “I don’t believe they hold that prejudice in their hearts.”

The United States has never had an openly LGBT person elected Governor of a state and there are only a handful of openly LGBT people who have ever been elected to statewide office in this country. I wonder how long before there will be an openly LGBT governor of  a state?

After all, Tammy Baldwin was just elected to the United States Senate in November from Wisconsin. It is very likely that Christine Quinn will be elected Mayor of New York City later this year, which is probably a more powerful position than being governor of certain states. Annise Parker is currently in her second term as Mayor of Houston.

(It should be noted that all the LGBT people who are making significant gains in politics recently have been women, not gay or bisexual men.)

Hat/tip to Joe.My.God

2012 Toronto Masters: Djokovic Defends TItle

Novak Djokovic won his first title in over 4 months by beating Richard Gasquet 6-3 6-2 in just over an hour in the men's final of the Rogers Cup, also known as the 2012 Toronto Masters. Djokovic was the defending champion and needed to win the title to remain within striking distance of the #1 ATP Tour ranking currently occupied by Roger Federer.

The match was a suspense-free affair with the Serb breaking the Frenchman's serve effortlessly in the 8th game of the match to go up 5-3 and serve out the first set. He then also broke the very first game of the second set and held easily, ending any lingering doubts about the result of the match. Gasquet seemed happy to be back in the finals of such a high-level event and although his backhand was a still a thing of beauty to behold, once Djokovic cranked up the speed of his groundstrokes Gasquet was simply unable to keep up and quickly succumbed.

It was Djokovic's 12th ATP Masters series shield, and only the second one he was able to defend from the record 5 shields he won in 2011 (Indian Wells, Miami, Rome, Madrid and Montreal). Four months ago he had defended his title in Miami by defeating Andy Murray. He is now 4th in the list of players with ATP Masters titles, behind Rafael Nadal (21), Federer (20) and Andre gassi (19).  It was also Djokovic's 31st ATP Tour title.

On the women's side, Petra Kvitova and Li Na will meet in a rain-delayed final in the Rogers Cup in Montreal on Monday. The men and women play their Rogers Cup tournament in Montreal and Toronto in alternating years.

2012 Toronto Masters: Djokovic v Gasquet Final

The final of the 2012 Rogers Cup will be between #1 seed and defending champion Novak Djokovic of Serbia and surprise finalist Richard Gasquet from France. Gasquet reached this point by defeating a listless John Isner 7-6(3) 6-3 on a very cloudy and rainy Saturday in Toronto. I was in the audience for this match and the talented Frenchman used his versatile backhand to excellent effect. He deployed the slice backhand to return the American's powerful serves and used the topspin backhand to laser winners over the court and out-last the American in cross-court backhand rallies. Isner attempted to be aggressive with his forehand but his footwork appeared to be tired and somewhat clumsy so he was rarely able to open up a point with his groundstroke weapon and instead made costly errors. The first set was pretty straightforward, with Isner able to save breakpoints with aces as high as 229 kmh (142 mph), leading to the inevitable tiebreak where he fell behind 2-5 and failed to recover, losing te set. The second set Gasquet pressed his advantage by serving more authoritatively, exploiting Isner lackluster return game and increasing his aggression on Isner's service games. This initiative was rewarded with two breakpoints in the sixth game. Isner saved one with an unreturnable serve but when he missed the serve and came into net Gasquet rifled a backhand winner down the line to go up 4-2. Serving for the match at 5-3 Gasquet saved a breakpoint but was able to close out the win to reach his biggest final in his career.

I also had tickets for the second semifinal, which was supposed to start at 6:30 local time. However, despite the sky being less cloudy at 6:30 almost immediately as the players were ending the warm-up his the skies opened up and the rain started coming down lightly at first and then in sheets of water. At around 7:15pm I gave up and took Toronto Transit back to where I was staying. I was glad I did, because the all-Serbian final between Novak Djokovic and Janko Tipsarevic did not conclude till well after 11:30pm (following another rain delay in the middle of the match after they began at almost 8pm), with Djokovic prevailing 6-4 6-1.

Looking forward to seeing my first Masters final live tonight! I full expect Djokovic to win, but Gasquet is playing well. Djokovic needs to win if he wants to try and wrest the ATP top spot from Federer this week in Cincinnati before the US Open starts in 2 weeks.