Toronto Champion, Serena Williams

Rafael Nadal: As they did during the Masters events on the clay, Nadal joins Serena on the podium with another sensational week to maintain an unbeaten record on hard courts in 2013.  Nadal beat Milos Raonic, 6-2 6-2 and was never troubled in the final as he broke the huge Canadian’s serve on 4 separate occasions.  He picked up a massive win over Novak Djokovic in the semi-finals, his first away from the clay since the 2010 World Tour Finals, coming through in a third set tiebreak.

Montreal Champion, Rafael Nadal

Sorana Cirstea

Sorana Cirstea: The emergence of Cirstea as a relevant threat to the top names in Canada was a pleasant surprise.  It did all rather come crashing down in the final, but she should not let that overshadow what was the best week of her tennis career so far.  I also warmed to her as a person and she gave a delightful speech whilst trying desperately to not cry her eyes out.  Only time will tell whether this was just a flash in the pan or if Cirstea is set to begin her assault on the big time.  I anticipate it will be somewhere in between as I felt this week she showed signs of finding a balance between the winners and errors, and dare I say, developing a middle game.

Janko Tipsarevic

Janko Tipsarevic:   Sitting high and pretty on the disappointments list is Janko Tipsarevic, who fell in the first round to Denis Istomin.  He has now compiled a 7-15 W-L record since Australia and has not reached a semi-final since winning a title in the first week of the season in Chennai.  He posted on Twitter that “he had lost only one practice match since Madrid”.  Oh…

Andy Murray and David Ferrer: As a number of players made their first venture on the tour since Wimbledon, there was bound to be some rusty performances.  David Ferrer suffered a shock second round exit to Alex Bogomolov and Andy Murray was lacklustre as well in limping out to Ernests Gulbis in the third round, but I am confident both will do much better in Cincy.

Beyond the Baseline did a pretty neat recap of the situation HERE.  Although it was a good week for Raonic, this incident along with lengthy MTO’s and toilet breaks, meant he certainly went down in my estimations.

ATP Exhibitions in Toronto: I still cannot understand why an exhibition in Toronto between two first round losers in Montreal, Bernard Tomic and Feliciano Lopez was given a night billing on Thursday night when surely, another third round womens match could have been played on stadium court.  It would have made sense if similar exhibitions had taken place in Montreal, but it showed a general lack of respect for the women, who were also consistently omitted from the stadium court’s schedule in Washington last week.

Nadal d. Janowicz, 7-6(6) 6-4 (R3): I did not watch as much ATP tennis this week as I would have liked and I think Nadal-Djokovic may have topped my list had it not started at 1am in the UK.  However with the tennis I saw, I enjoyed the match between Rafael Nadal against Jerzy Janowicz, which was good fun, particularly the first set tiebreak where Nadal produced a touch of genius to claim the first set.

Full highlights from Cibulkova-Kerber if you have three hours to kill

Highlights from Nadal-Janowicz

Moo’s Predictions:
Champions: I correctly predicted Serena would win Toronto, but only had Nadal to the semi-finals in Montreal.
Quarter-Finalists: It was a solid week in the womens where I predicted 5 out of 8, but in a crazy week of shocks, I was just 3 out of 8 for the men.
Best prediction of the week: I was most pleased with calling Cibulkova to beat Kerber and then Paire to beat Wawrinka.  I also had Paire to the quarters, which nearly came off, but he fell in an epic match with Marinko Matosevic.

Did you enjoy Toronto / Montreal this year? Please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section.