Indian Wells Wrap-up

The stream of upsets that was going on all week in Indian Wells continued on finals day. Both the men's and women's finals ended in upsets, with two former top players who everybody had written-off as not having any real chance lately upsetting two players who were really supposed to get back to the top, now that their top competition was gone.

The women's final ended as Jelena Jankovic, the last big thing, beat the next big thing, Caroline Wozniacki. Jankovic hadn't won a big title in quite some time and hadn't been playing that great, so this was a surprising run for her. On the other hand, everyone expected Wozniacki to win this tournament, after the other top contenders dropped in early rounds. Well done for Jankovic, who may be ready for a return to form. The upset on the men's side was even more surprising, though.

Ivan Ljubicic, in his fourth appearance in a Master's series final, won his first title. He beat Andy Roddick, who had a cupcake draw to get to the final, while the Croatian had to beat Djokovic and Nadal to make it there. In a happy birthday to the recently-turned 31-year old, Ljubicic played great, and while he may have been just ever-so-slightly outplayed by Roddick from the ground throughout much of the match, it didn't matter when it came down to tiebreaks, and the match did. Roddick went down 0-40 in his first service game, but didn't face a break point for the rest of the match. Ljubicic faced 3 break points in the first set and 3 in the second, but it didn't matter. Nobody could convert.

During the tiebreaks, Roddick made a few more mistakes and couldn't serve as solidly as Ljubicic. While the American was leading the tour in tiebreakers won coming in to this tournament, he couldn't win either in the final, and Ljubicic went home with his maiden master's series title. Credit to the Croatian, who did something that absolutely no one gave him a chance to do at this point in his career. Literally, I don't see a single draw out of 17,000 on the ATP World Draw Challenge Circuit that picked Ljubicic to win it all.

But on the other hand, it's really a missed opportunity for Roddick, who may win another Master's Series shield in his career, but he will never get an easier chance than this one. His draw broke in every way he could have preferred, but he still couldn't seal the deal. I hope that the American closely examines the match to see if he was happy with his game. I'm not sure if he could have played differently in terms of strategy - it was just in the execution. He was out-aced by Ljubicic and basically outplayed in both tiebreaks. He may have just been tight, while the elder Croat could swing freely.

In any case, it'll be interesting to see how both do this coming week in Miami. The draw's out now, and I'll do an analysis tomorrow.