The curious case of Wanko Tipsarevic

Wanko is NOT cutting the mustard

Chennai, New Year's Eve 2012, and Janko Tipsarevic is preparing for a hard court tour event. He beats Vasselin, Soeda, Bedene and Bautista Agut (3-6, 6-1, 6-3) to win the final and he was 9th in the world rankings.  Was this a great achievement to begin the New Year....well no...not really? The rankings of the aforementioned players were 102, 60, 86 and 80. In those matches, the last two were 3 setters in which he lost the first set, so it was hardly a ringing endorsement against a weak field.

Roll on 27th July 2013, and where the hell is Tipsarevic at at the moment? Not in a good place, that's for sure. Tipsarevic's failures in truth could be traced to before the New Year. Before this event in Chennai he went 3-11 in a run against players worthy of a game. He lost to Zemjla in Vienna, before retiring in Valencia against Simon. He then beat Sijsling and Monaco before a poor run against Janowicz, Federer, Del Potro, Ferrer, before beating Murray, and then losing to Almagro and finally Ferrer.

He came unstuck against Almagro again, again retiring in the Australian Open Last 16 when down 2-6 1-5. He does like a retirement when losing. He then lost to Michael Llodra in Montpellier in R16 in straights, then Tursunov in Marseille. Then Davydenko in Dubai R32. In Indian Wells he was completely outclassed 2-6 0-6 v Gulbis in R64 but put up a slightly better showing in Miami losing to Simon in R16. I could go on, but you should be getting the picture by now, that Tipsarevic just isn't anywhere the player he was. He is 14-14 YTD, with prize money of $509,870 and he's barely earnt a dollar of it in truth.

He's had a quarter final in Bogota last time out, beating Ruben Behelmans (ranked 153) before losing to Falla (122) in three sets. In Wimbledon he was dumped out by the scandal hit Troicki (ranked 44) after a R32 exit in the French, and a R16 loss to Pella in Dusseldorf. So, let's do some further analysis. Since the start of 2013, here are the rounds and the rankings of the players to which he lost to -

R16-11. R16-62. R16-119. R32-46. R64-67. R16-13. R32-34. Q-69. R64-19. R16-101. R32-31. R128-44. Q-122. 

This is ABSOLUTELY incredible. His ranking in that time has gone from 9th, to 10th, to 12th, to 14th, to 16th. Not only is he not beating anybody ranked around him or better than him, he's losing to players that are ranked miles from him. It's been an absolutely appalling tale of Tips falling completely to pieces. You can only to begin to imagine the odds if you had layed him throughout this time!

Something clearly is up and one cannot be sure if it's a combination of form, personal issues, motivation, or what. He certainly gives off the impression these days that he is a bottler and doesn't like a fight anymore. He is developing a bit of a reputation as a cry baby and he is definitely one that cannot be trusted in a bet.

A while back I had Tipsarevic on my shit list, and was laughed at by most in the tennis know. Since then, I have obviously been proved right and them wrong. When will this guy's run end? It's unclear. Things have been wonky for a while, and right now, there's no reason to predict a Tipsarevic turnaround. The guy has definitely lost something.