2015 End of Season Review

Nominate your top 3 in the following the categories for the 2015 season:

Best Match

Biggest Upset

Most Improved

Best Individual Performance

Biggest Controversy

Best Tournament

Here's mine.

Best Match:
1st Brown d Nadal, Wimbledon (I didn't even watch live as we were actually at Wimb on an outside court but could hear gasps, whoops, screams and cheers like never heard before coming from Centre Court so had to look it up on iplayer later - truely brilliant entertaining match even when the result was already known)  
2nd Isner d Lopez, Queens (not always my cup of tea, but sometimes fun to watch 2 players live & die by their clutch serve ability)  
3rd Azarenka d Kerber, US Open  

Biggest Upset:
1st Vinci d S. Williams, US Open (even to the last game, didn't think Serena would lose)
2nd Seppi d Federer, Aus Open
3rd Fognini d Nadal, US Open (I've included this one only because it was from 2 sets down, otherwise slightly par for the course for this season)

Most Improved:
1st Belinda Bencic
2nd Garbine Muguruza
3rd Young Americans (Donaldson, Fritz, Tiafoe - more prospects really, but had some great results in Challengers)

Best Individual Performance:
1st Federer, Cincinnati (only faced BPs in one game in 5 rounds, including defeating no.2 and no.1 ranked players consecutively facing no BPs)
2nd Federer, Wimbledon SF
3rd Wawrinka, French Open F (only down in 3rd because I thought Djokovic was nervy and a bit below his best, but Wawrinka was awesome nonetheless)  

Biggest Controversy:
1st Nick Kyrgios (for the Wawrinka comment specifically, but also in general!)  
2nd Nadal v Bernardes and time violations
3rd SABR!

Best Tournament:
1st French Open (Stan's final performance, home player in the semis, Serena surviving some v tough battles)
2nd Wimbledon
3rd Toronto WTA (was struggling for ATP tournaments that were anything other than predictable)

Best Match
Nadal v Brown at Wimbledon.
Nadal v Fognini at USO.

Biggest Upset
Vinci defeating Serena

Most Improved
Garbine Muguruza, but I was also impressed with Kevin Anderson.

Best Individual Performance
Stan v Novak at Roland Garros. Best I've seen Stan play and, I suspect, probably the best I'll ever see Stan play.

Biggest Controversy
This didn't attract much criticism, but the SF scheduling at Roland Garros was shambolic.
Two best of 5 matches to get through with storms forecast from mid afternoon onwards.
Do they start earlier? Do they play one of them on Lenglen?
No, they stick to the original schedule and the second semi (Djoko v Murray) has to be completed the next day.
Completely inept scheduling.

Best Tournament
Wimbledon.
I thought the tour finals were good this year too.

Best Match

1) Wawrinka vs Gasquet Wimbledon 2015 - Absolutely fantastic match. Gasquet for the first time showing some focus and bottle.
2) Murray vs Djokovic French Open 2015 - The one encounter this year between the 2 which wasn't so one sided.
3) Fognini vs Nadal US Open 2015 - A very enjoyable match. The Fog showing guts at long last and Nadal showing signs of form coming back.

A note for Williams/Watson at Wimbledon. Some clutch tennis at times.

Biggest upset

1) Djokovic beats Nadal FO. Even if you had Djokovic favourite, I still think many couldn't imagine Nadal losing at RG. I think the nature of the defeat was shocking. Nadal didn't show up and the ruthless manner in which Djokovic dispatched him was remarkable.
2) Vinci/Williams USO. A sure fire banker for a CYGS was Williams. Don't think anyone gave Vinci a fighters chance.
3) Russia beat Spain DC. A team still boasting Andjuar and Robredo and the Russians without a top 50 player in their team were 2-0 down after the first day and staged what was an amazing fightback with Rublev winning the decisive rubber.

Most Improved

1) Chung
2) Anderson
3) Bencic

Best Individual Performance

1) Federer vs Isner USO. Winning 2 TB's against the big man on 7-0!
2) Djokovic 2015. Say no more.
3) Wawrinka FO 2015. Didn't see it coming!

Biggest Controversy

1) Kyrgios. Managed to get headlines for all the wrong reasons.
2) Djokovic/Murray AO. Well Novak for the MTO heard around the world and Murray with Kim and that flashy Czech ****!
3) Wayne Odesnik 15 year ban. Many pro's/ex-pro's took to social media. Raised a few eyebrows...

Best Tournament
I would say Wimbledon, but due to the W/O's on the mens side. Wasn't 6-7?

I'd go with the US Open.

legendkillarV2 wrote:Biggest Controversy

...Novak for the MTO heard around the world...

Sorry to be a pedant, but there wasn't actually a MTO!

Novak just looked like he was dying for a couple of games. No stops in play though.

HM Murdock wrote:

legendkillarV2 wrote:Biggest Controversy

...Novak for the MTO heard around the world...

Sorry to be a pedant, but there wasn't actually a MTO!

Novak just looked like he was dying for a couple of games. No stops in play though.

There's always one isn't there!!

I was literally going by memory. It certainly caused a stir and I know many forums went into meltdown over it.

Best Tournaments:
Buenos Aires
Hamburg
Stutgaart
Basel

Best Match:
Nadal vs Berlocq in Buenos Aires

Worst Match:
One of Nadal's 400 defeats.

Biggest controversy:
Hawkeye finding out about the huge ATP plot against Rafito

Most Improved:
Dimitrov's love-life

Most Pointless season:
Berdych, who literally did nothing bad, and nothing good.

It would be something to see her research

The Williams defeat by Vinci was the biggest shock and also showed just how incredibly difficult the calendar slam is.

Stan the Man's toppling of Djoko in Paris may just have been the outstanding performance of the year.

Anderson has a good shout for the most-improved player.

Given how important it turned out to be, the Isner-Ward DC match could lay claim to be the outstanding clash of the season.

On controversy - Let's hope this time next year we're talking about Kyrgios's fine performances rather than his childish behaviour.

I just want to pick up on most improved. It's Garbine Muguruza by a country mile.

I thought that this girl has something about her game and she certainly looks and plays the part. Hard to crystal ball gaze but the next no. 1 perhaps when Serena calls it a day?Last year I saw her lose to another talented up and coming player Coco Vandeweghe rather tamely at Wimbledon but oh boy does her game measure up well now to the demands of SW17.

Pity that no such obvious talent is coming through in the men's. How long, for example, are we going to give Dimitrov and just how annoying is Kyrgios? The former blows hot or cold too much and the later seems guilty of either crass stupidity, naivety or maybe both.

Yes, looking fairly healthy on the women's side for the coming years, with more established stars (i.e. recognisable names) like Sharapova, Azarenka, Wozniacki, Radwanska, Ivanovic still relatively young, Serena and Venus still playing and winning and the youngsters like Bouchard, Muguruza and Bencic breaking through in slams and the Masters equivalents (and I get didn't even get to categorise the likes of Kvitova, Halep & Kerber).  

Muguruza seems very personable too - recommend a watch of her post Wimb final press conference for anyone who hasn't seen it:
https://youtu.be/oPnUDdt_kCE?t=159
(Newballs, earlier in the clip she laments the tame loss from last year that you watched).

I think Chung's advancement this year is very underplayed. I think he has played well this season. I just hope he doesn't go the way of Tomic!

Tomic only went that way so he could get the great name Tomic the Tank engine. Not the same ring to it for Chung.