Nikolay Davydenko, number 6 in the world, is continuing his greatest performances this season. With multiple victories and the fact that many of the best players have been challenged this year, he looks like one of the future powers in tennis. He is certainly hoping that he can continue these winning tactics next season, starting in Australia and then continuing all the way to the US Open and Wimbledon. In the ATP World Tour Finals, for example, he beat all the rest of the top ten players, including Federer and Del Porto. Davydenko has established himself as one of the best players this year and it will be exciting to see if he can’t continue it even further.

Ana Ivanovic is reportedly planning to return to prominence in the tennis world over the next year or so. In 2009, she was riddled with injuries and other problems which she attributed to over-training that caused her ranking to drop below 20 for the first time in years. But now she believes that she has found the trainer that can get her back in shape and able to compete on the world stage again. This is the kind of player that can really bring an A game when she is in the proper shape. The current trainer that she just hired has worked with players like Federer, Stich and many women players as well. This way, she won’t suffer the kinds of stress injuries that we tend to see with an overzealous trainer. We hope to see her back in real action the way that was able to in 07 and 08.

Guess who made Athlete of the Decade just this last week? Nope, you might have thought it would be Federer. Fed has been one of the most talented people in sports for a long time and he dominated the tennis world for a long time. During the last year or so, his age has started to come and catch up with him. His back hurt at certain times and he just wasn’t able to win a lot of competition convincingly. But overall this decade he should be considered perhaps the best athlete in the world. But Tiger Woods has been named Athlete of the Decade by the Associated Press. I daresay that he’s not celebrating the way most of us would, since the latest reports put him in a depressed mood on his yacht. But congratulations to him nevertheless. Hopefully both of these guys will continue producing amazing sporting moments for all of us for years to come!

Zheng Jie has finally got herself separated from the Chinese Tennis Association. The hope is that she’s going to be able to have a bit more freedom to choose where she competes, how often and with whom. This way, she can start working her way up in the rankings faster than she usually does. Have we seen the last of Zheng? I hope not! Her style of play is top notch, but the CTA chief says that he thinks Zheng has actually gotten worse since she left earlier this year. Hopefully Jie will be able to get herself moving next season when she might be able to get herself into the Finals of Wimbledon and other Grand Slam tournaments. She has a lot of strength and just needs to get the coaching back to where it’s supposed to be.

Last week and this week there is an interesting debate taking shape about the potential for adding mixed doubles to the London Olympics schedule. This is a nice idea and it would be great to see what they end up doing with it. There are some problems that seem to arise everytime that mixed doubles happens. It was summed up by a tennis commentator back in the 70s, saying that mixed doubles is like the men’s game, just with two women on the court. This isn’t nearly as true now as it was then, because with some of the strongest players coming from the women’s game, the men can’t just ignore the women anymore. Just imagine a Federer and Serena Williams type combination. Obviously, they’re from different countries, so that wouldn’t happen, but just the image of two very strong players on each side of the net would be amazing. Why not mixed singles? I disagree with the writer of the opinion article on most of the counts he indicates, but clearly there are some issues to be ironed out.

Whenever you want to play the Davis Cup, make sure that you aren’t playing against Spain. This year, Spain has kept their Cup from last year. It started off well with Rafael Nadal winning with Ferrer on his side. Spain has become a powerhouse in tennis over the last several years and is highly respected in the sport now. The Czechs were among the other potential winners, but they weren’t able to match Nadal, who has been struggling with his knees over the last several months. But he was able to push that aside during this latest match to take the Cup. Obviously this gives the Spanish team bragging rights for the next year, when several national teams will try to unseat them again.

When the Sidney International is played at the beginning of the year, it is generally a way for the players to warm up for the Australian Grand Slam event. It’s going to be interesting to see what they are going to do, but we do know which of the top women players will be playing in Sidney. All of them except for one. Venus Williams will instead be playing in Bangkok for her warmup. It’s less important to all of them that they win, but rather that they get ready for the Grand Slam, because those are the big tournaments that everyone wants to win. You can have a great win-loss record, but it’s much better if you have a Grand Slam under your name. So we’ll get ready for Safina, Wozniacki, Jakovic and Serena Williams to play down under and then see who gets to start the year with a great competition.

While the World Finals of the ATP were important, probably the biggest story to come out of it was last weekends schlubbing of Roger Federer at the hands of Nikolay Davydenko. Federer has had a very nice year, replete with Grand Slam wins and injury comebacks. But he wasn’t able to stop the surging Davydenko, who has shown himself to be near the top of the rankings of younger players. The Russian has been among the best new players for the last year or two. He was very excited to  beat Federer in the semifinals, since he hasn’t made big splashes quite as much. He’s much more of a consistent fighter than he is a high caliber, flashy player. We will be hearing much more out of Davydenko over the next few years, as he matures and starts challenging more top players.