Hi all. Here's today's threead for tennis-related (and other) talk.
Continuing with the "Moments of 2008", here's one for ptenisnet. Nikolay Davydenko won the biggest title of his career back iat the beginning of April, defeating Rafael Nadal in the final to win his second Masters Series shield in Miami. At this point of the season the eventual year-end number one Rafael Nadal had yet to win a title, Roger Federer was in the same boat, and Novak Djokovic looked like the year's best player, having won in Melbourne and Indian Wells, though crashing out to Kevin Anderson in his first match in Miami. This was the second Masters Series shield won by Davydenko - his first came in Paris in 2006, albeit against a depleted field that saw him triumph against Dominik Hrbaty in the final - incidentally, the last of the Masters Series finals to be played as best-of-five.
Davydenko finished the year by reaching the final of the Tennis Masters Cup in Shanghai, after a semifinal showing in Paris. He won two other titles (Warsaw and Poertschach), reached the final in Estoril (during which he retired injured), and also achieved semifinals in Doha and Monte Carlo (the latter just a few days after that Estoril retirement). The low point of his year was the first-round straight-sets loss to Benjamin Becker at Wimbledon - his only grass-court match of 2008. He didn't go past the fourth round at any Slam in 2008, but managed to end the year ranked number five.
-- Rosangel Valenti