Rafael Nadal is one of the best players at the moment. When he enters a tennis court, we can be sure that it’s going to be an exciting match. He has won several grand slam tournaments in the last couple of years. But he hasn’t been able to win for quite a long time, because he has hardly been able to play for most of this year. It looked like he was going to have full command of the tennis world this year, since Federer was out for several months with back pain. But Federer has returned and battled for a couple of Grand Slam titles this year. Nadal had a knee injury that has kept him off the court for awhile. Here it goes, because another Nadal vs Federer battle will be amazing!

Dinara Safina has been one of the best women’s tennis players for many months now. She hasn’t won Grand Slam title yet, but she’s continuing her run of dominating the slightly lower level tournaments all around Europe and the rest of the world. This weekend, she won the Slovenia Open. She beat Sara Errani to take the title in three sets. Errani put up a good fight, but it wasn’t quite as good as it needed to be to take down a tough opponent like Safina. Safina is planning to try to get herself a first grand slam title at Flushing Meadows, at the US Open at the end of next month. Errani might try for higher levels, but it’s hard to tell what her plan moving forward would be.

Wimbledon’s junior women tennis champion Noppawan Lertcheewakarn will be given a diplomatic passport next week as a way to make it easier for her to compete on a world stage in the coming years. The red passport will eliminate the need for her to get an entry visa in each country where she competes. Meanwhile, for the Thai government, this is some good publicity and a good way to promote the sport in their country. Noppawan is one of the best young tennis stars around at the moment and it will be ineteresting to watch her play in tournaments of all kinds, also when she moves into the adult leagues. In Wimbledon, she impressed and surprised many people in the tennis world.

There are two stories right now about tennis retirees playing more tennis than they were before. Andre Agassi isn’t making a comeback, although there are small rumors to that effect. He’s playing a lot more tennis and practice matches than he did before. Agassi was one of the world’s best players back in the last 90s and the early 2000s. Meanwhile, Michael Stich, who has been retired for 12 years, will be playing at the Hamburg tournament next week. He will be playing doubles with a young German. They decided to play because the event is losing money and because he thought it might be fun to get back into it. He is 40 years old, won Wimbledon over Boris Becker back in 1991 and retired earlier than he had hoped.

American Tennis fans have been waiting almost an entire year already for their chance to see the best players in the world coming to their backyard! It’s been one crazy year for tennis players of all kinds, including several lead changes. At the beginning of this year, for example, it looked as though Rafael Nadal would take on all the best and remain number 1 throughout the year. I even said so at several points, when Federer seemed to be sinking like a stone and Nadal was winning consistently. But Nadal’s knees seem to have caught up with him, causing him lots of pain and making him stay out of almost all competition for several months now. The highly touted battles of Nadal and Federer may be back on track soon, because Nadal is coming back to the sport. Hurry up for great US Open tennis tickets to see these two and the other best players battle each other in New York next month!

The Monica Seles discussion is big right now. Almost everyone has heard about her in her new book. She was recently elected to the International Tennis Hall of Fame and it brings up her difficult story once again. She burst onto the scene in 1989, when she became one of the best players in the world almost immediately. By the time she was 19, she had 8 Grand Slams. Then, suddenly, during a changeover in Hamburg, Germany, she was stabbed. While her physical injuries weren’t so bad, her mental/emotional injuries took her years. Then her father/coach met a slow demise at the hands of cancer. She became depressed and got an eating disorder. She remained one of the best players, but slowly faded from the scene. She is finally better now, and she has been such a strong character through it all that she has gained the respect of many people!

Andy Roddick was beat last weekend in the Wimbledon Final. During the match, he slipped and winced as he stood up again. Interestingly, after the match, Roddick said that he didn’t hurt himself in the fall more than that initial “ouch”. But on Monday, he announced that he had a hip flexor injury and would not be playing in the Davis Cup with the US team. This leads to quite a bit of speculation that he’s disappointed by the result this weekend and needs some time away. Some have even suggested that he might be just tired of tennis at the moment. They describe it like being heart-broken, but it seems a little bit overstated, as far as I can tell. It’s not like he’s never lost before. Disappointing, yes, but career-ending, probably not.

In the Wimbledon Singles tournaments this last weekend, we saw wins by Roger Federer and Serena Williams. The Federer-Roddick match was the longest in tournament history, comprised of 30 games. Federer had been making hash of match points right and left, but they both hung in there for a long time. It was perhaps the most hard-fought Wimbledon final in recent memory. The Serena-Venus match was also hard-fought, but much more standard in style. Serena is ahead of her sister in their all-time matchups and blocked her sister from becoming the first woman to win three Wimbledons in a row since Steffi Graf. It would be fun to watch Serena and Federer go up against each other in an exhibition game, but that kind of thing doesn’t actually happen much.

In London, at the Wimbledon tournament, it’s getting down to the wire! There are only four players left on either side. The Final Four. On the Men’s side, Roger Federer has jumped into the lead, which was completely expected. Andy Murray will be trying to push him out of the way and get into the Wimbledon Finals. This will be an amazing match, because these two players are fairly evenly matched and a lot of fun to see. Andy Roddick and Tommy Haas are also in the Semifinals. This means there’s a possibility for an Andy-Andy Wimbledon Final, but it seems less likely. Federer is highly expected to go to the Finals and might even win the whole thing. For the women, we will see the Williams sisters, Dinara Safina and Elena Dementieva in the semifinals. It will be a lot of fun on both sides, with all the best players right up!