My picks for the possibly exciting games for the first round:

Djokovic / Troiki – Djokovic hasn’t been at his tempestuous best, and Troiki can hit a good ball. I see Djokovic through in 4.

Bagdatis / Clement – Clement is no slouch, but Bagdatis has been getting better and better. Watch his cross court backhand passing shot for perfection, beautiful! Great shot maker, but a bit slow around the court. Bagdatis in 4.

Hewitt / Mathieu. Watching Hewitt is great. He’s such a fighter, and getting better and better after coming off his injury. I see him meeting the Fed in the third round and it being a good to great match. Hewitt in 3 or 4. He likes to get a feel for his shots.

Gulbis / Chardy. Gulbis is ALWAYS entertaining to watch. He’s like a combination of McEnroe and that crazy eastern European guy I can’t remember the name of. He’s got crazy good shots and ability, but his head gets in the way. Once (if) he gets his head straight, he’ll be top 10. This one could go either way, depends what mood Gulbis is in, but I give it to him on form coming into the Open. Gulbis in 4.

Nadal will breeze through to the ¼ finals. Nalbandian and Murray are the ones to watch out for. Mardy Fish (US) could also make a good play for the quarters or even semis if he keeps up his good form. He had Federer on the ropes but failed to deliver the final blow in the Toronto (or was it Cinncimati) tournament.

You can’t play good tennis without good mind control.

That’s one of the reasons I love tennis so much – it teaches you mind control through instant feedback. If you’re not concentrating on the ball when you prepare for a stroke, you’re not going to hit it well.

The first rule of good tennis is to concentrate on the ball. We all know that and we try. But there is subtle interference from the ego that is sometimes difficult to catch and eliminate. It’s what causes you to play so well during the warm up and then tank as soon as the match starts. The cause and solution to this problem is is what we will look at in this article. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the reason’s I like tennis is it can tell you what you’re feeling, who you are, and what pressure you’re not immune to. Your tennis game is like a personal barometer.

There are the days when your game…..well…..it sucks. For reasons unknown you can’t find the court. You wonder why you ever started playing this stupid game.

But if you’ve been reading this site, or books like Timothy Gallwey’s “Inner Tennis”, you have probably accepted the difficult fact that sometimes you can’t get away with blaming your racket, the balls, the weather, or anything external to yourself.

Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and look inside at those shadows in the closet that changed the way you were thinking or feeling without you even noticing it.

But now you have to notice it, because there it is. The easy mid-court ball you put wide. The second serve that just won’t go in. The easy volleys that hit the fence or the net.

Time to take a look inside and see what’s going on there. Something is. And the sooner you face up to it and deal with it head on, the sooner you’ll get back to playing your tennis.