Dear friends of Ubitennis, this 2020, a rueful year that has finally gone without even apologising for its own existence, was about to give you the latest bad news! What could be worse than the sudden and unexpected disappearing of the Crystal Bald, the only magician who really understands the game of tennis?
The stress caused by this horrible 2020 was hard on him too. It will be said that “misery loves company” because no magician – absolutely no one and not even the legendary Nostradamus – had foreseen the pandemic, no horoscope had mentioned it, but nonetheless it was too hard a blow to absorb for his immeasurable pride to realise that he had made predictions also for the six months of hiatus – he couldn’t act as if nothing had happened.
It is also true, as a partial excuse, that the Crystal Bald reads the future in a rickety silver salad bowl which for over a century has been called, for some reason, the Davis Cup. Anyone can guess how much more difficult it is to see through it, after that a year ago it was suddenly and incredibly muddled by a Spanish gentleman, a certain Piquè, so señor, who moves with cleats under his shoes and works with his feet rather than his hands and a racquet, and who is probably more adept to padel than tennis.
However, in the end, despite breathing hard, his oxygenation at 92, the Bald did not want to miss the appointment. Many colleagues of his have become famous by:
- interpreting the past on the basis of clues caught with ruthless cunning
- committing as little as possible and with the greatest possible vagueness (Nostradamus)
- giving sibylline answers (just like the Cumaean Sibyl) that allow for a thousand loopholes in the event that the foretold does not occur
- eluding any confrontation with the one’s previous prophecies in order not to lose credibility in cases of blatantly wrong predictions.
But the Crystal Bald is unique among all wizards because he is intellectually honest, and he is not influenced by those behaviours that his fraudulent and unscrupulous colleagues have instead adopted.
Let’s start from the comparison with the 40 prophecies of last year. Those that were spot on, entirely or at least partially, if within the same prophecy there were more predictions, were N.1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 19, 20, 21, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 32, 33, 34, 37, 38, 40. If I’m not mistaken, it’s a 25 out of 40 ratio. Since the Crystal Bald is not a cowardly magician who shies away from great risks, having guessed right over half of his predictions, and having missed some others just because of the pandemic that cancelled some tournaments, it is a positive result – forgive me for the poor word choice in the current climate; let’s stick with “good result”.
Of course, Covid helped him in guessing the first one (“Federer will never lose matches with matchpoints in his favour,” well, he only played six times…) or the fifth (“Nadal will no longer answer badly to Scanagatta who will be much more careful in asking his questions so that he will not be misunderstood” – we saw each other so little and I was only able to ask him questions via Zoom when I was allowed to!), or the seventh (“Scanagatta will do his best to make Djokovic answer another ‘not too bad'” because the one who actually likes that phrase is him!). In short, it was too easy! Oh well, let him guess some more. But I count on your innate and malevolent perfidy, on your malignant curiosity to go and check out the wrong prophecies and catch the Bald in the act. So, I think you will click on that link anyway.
But let’s be honest. The Bald wrote that Sinner would rise to number 16 in the world, just as Djokovic did the year after his first big leap, and, well, he claims the bragging rights for it! As a matter of fact, Sinner would have actually entered the Top 20 if the ATP hadn’t frozen the rankings, allowing underperforming 2020 players to retain their points from the previous year.
Then there are those multiple predictions like “The ATP Top 5 will be Djokovic, Tsitsipas, Medvedev, Nadal, Thiem” and “The WTA Top 5 will be: Andreescu, Osaka, Barty, Halep, Bencic.” Having rightly predicted four men out of five (with Tsitsipas at N.6 instead of N.5, trailing Federer who only played in Melbourne!) and the first three women out of five qualify them as successful prophecies. Oh well, you know that I’m biased. The first three, Barty, Halep, Osaka were all there, with only Kenin and Svitolina amiss.
The Bald does not do well with viruses and injuries: he was betrayed by Andreescu always getting injured as well as by Bencic. The Magician remains proud of having prophesied the following at the end of 2019: “Berrettini will struggle to retain the eighth spot in the rankings. The odds, after no Italian had made it to qualify for the ATP finals for 41 years, are against him. But we won’t have to wait another 41 years. And then it’s more important that Matteo succeeds in 2021, the year when the tournament will move to Turin and Federer will be unlikely to still be in the race, and who knows if Nadal will be. Years pass for everyone. Staying in the Top 10 would already be a great success.” In the end, things went well for him. Okay, at the US open he lost in the round of 16 instead of in the semi-finals like the year before, but it’s not his fault that he ran so early into Rublev, who is the player to have made the biggest leap when compared to 2019.
Here’s another correct prediction: “Serena Williams won’t be able to win a Grand Slam and tie Margaret Court’s record tally. The Crystal Bald held a grudge for having been betrayed by her in the course of two Grand Slam finals after he had predicted her to be victorious in at least one of them.” Well, it was uncool to conjure such bad luck on Serena, just to avenge a previous mistake, but still.
Now (after 8233 characters already written!) comes the difficult part, however, with the prophecies for 2021. The Crystal Bald sent them to me immediately after Christmas. I’ll just copy and paste, extrapolating only the first one – because it has already happened! “Roger Federer does not even dream of going to lock himself up for two weeks in a Melbourne hotel, without Mirka, his double twins, the babysitter and the cook, risking an injury to his knee only to find himself on a sunburnt court the next day. He’s almost 40, and not crazy! “
Here are the other 44 predictions:
1. Novak Djokovic, if Medvedev will not be in his way, will win his ninth Australian Open: he already suffers from ill-concealed envy in enduring Nadal’s 13 victories at the same Slam, and he would not survive Federer winning Wimbledon for the ninth time. Nole would feel okay only by winning in Melbourne. He will be more determined than ever and super careful not to hit random balls in any direction. Extrovert as he is, he will suffer more in the early rounds than at the end: at first, the solitary confinement in a hotel will weigh heavily on him.
2. Rafa Nadal will not win his 14th Roland Garros. He could be stopped by Jannik Sinner… but Dominic Thiem will win the tournament.
3. Federer and Schwartzman will drop out of the Top 10.
4. Federer will not reach the 109 titles attributed (improperly) to Jimbo Connors.
5. However, Federer will manage to win at least one tournament, perhaps two, albeit minor (Basel?).
6. Shapovalov and an Italian will (again) break into the top ten. Aliassime will continue to struggle.
7. Thiem, at least for a while, will reach N.2.
8. There will be two italians into the top ten at the end of the year.
9. … but in the ATP finals in Turin only one Italian will play – the other one will be a reserve.
10. Jannik Sinner will reach at least one Grand Slam semi-final.
11. Medvedev will always be ahead of Tsitsipas.
12. Rafa Nadal will not win any tournaments outside of clay.
13. Sasha Zverev will fail to leave his second serve struggles behind him.
14. Of Sinner’s opponents at the Next Gen 2019 edition, the one who will make the most progress will be the Frenchman Humbert.
15. Andy Murray will return to the Top 100 but, realizing that he is not as competitive as he used to be, he will announce his retirement (at least in singles).
16. Two or three of these eight other players will announce their retirement during 2021: Tsonga, Lopez, Federer, Karlovic, Verdasco, Simon, Gasquet, Monfils.
17. Seppi, on the other hand, has no desire to hang up his racket: at the Australian Open, he will play his 62nd Slam in a row since Roland Garros 2005. Lopez with 74 is out of reach, Verdasco with 68 too. To match Federer, who boasts a streak of 65, Andreas is expected to play all of them this year. Very, very difficult.
18. Canada will win a fairly successful ATP Cup. A 12-nation edition is better than a 24 one.
19. Naomi Osaka will become N.1 in the world, dethroning Barty.
20. Sofia Kenin will not win her second Australian Open.
21. Iga Swiatek will break into the Top 10, perhaps even into the Top 5.
22. Petra Kvitova and Kiki Bertens will drop out of the top ten.
23. Among the top ten players there will be at least one former n.1: Vika Azarenka, Garbine Muguruza?
24. Serena Williams will not win more than one tournament and she won’t be in the Top 10.
25. Martina Trevisan will reach the Top 50 in the world (now she is 85) and in any case she will overtake Camila Giorgi (N.76), currently more willing to perform as a Gio-Mila model (underwear influencer?) than as a tennis player.
26. Clara Tauson, a Danish eighteen-year-old and currently N.152, will leap up by 80-100 spots.
27. Kamilla Rakhimova, a 19-year-old Russian player, currently N.155, will enter the top 100 with some style.
28. Fiona Ferro, victorious in Palermo in 2020, will break into the Top 25.
29. Venus Williams will bid farewell to tennis at the next US Open.
30. Lorenzo Musetti will enter the top 80 at full speed, but without reaching Sinner’s best ranking in 2020.
31. The Italian tennis players in the top 100 will still be 8, with a better average than the current one (10-17-33-37-74-76-80-100: the total is 427, the average is 53.375), but they will not be the same eight.
32. The Italian female tennis players in the top 100 will be three and not four. One is Trevisan. In the ballot are to be found Giorgi 76, Paolini 96, Errani 131, Cocciaretto 132.
33. Giulio Zeppieri will gain about 200 spots.
34. Lorenzo Sonego will reach at least the Top 20, neck-and-neck with Fabio Fognini, but he will not overtake Matteo Berrettini.
35. Jannik Sinner will beat the record number of sponsors for an Italian tennis player.
36. Riccardo Piatti will become rich like Cresus, but he will have to choose: either manage Sinner or the Piatti Center.
37. The second edition of the Davis Cup in Madrid will be more successful than the first one and it will no longer force anyone to stay up until 4a.m.
38. Italy will do better in the Davis Cup than in the ATP Cup.
39. Sonego and Berrettini will play some tournaments in doubles and they will do well, but not as much as Cecchinato and Caruso in singles.
40. Monte Carlo and Rome will not be allowed to have more than 1,000 spectators in the stands, the French Open will have 2,000.
41. Tennis will return to Wimbledon, because the All England Club doesn’t hold the insurance card anymore.
42. The numbers of Ubitennis will grow, despite the fact for the first 6 months of 2021 the virus will not have been eradicated yet. The record of 2019 (5 million unique users, 22 million visits, 41 million page views) will be beaten, the sponsors will reappear but not Barilla; the contract with Master Pasta Federer is all but a dead end. Not Federer, just the contract. On Instagram, after crossing the wall of 10,000 followers, it will exceed the 15,000 one. And the newsletter will at least get close to 10,000 subscribers.
43. The ATP finals in Turin, the first post-vaccine tournament in Italy, will be a great success. RAI (the public television company) will try to slip between SKY and Supertennis.
44. Angelo Binaghi will make the most of it. He will be on TV for hours on end. Supertennis was also founded to ensure appropriate catwalks for executives and their pals.
Happy New Year to everyone, to Italian tennis in particular, from the Crystal Bald, the most reliable tennis clairvoyant in the world.
P.S: As director of Ubitennis, I, Ubaldo Scanagatta, despite having had excellent relations with the Crystal Bald for thirty years, warn you not to take his prophecies seriously. The Bald himself smiled and winked at me while relating them to me, magnified out of all proportion by the reflections of the Davis Cup that he kept rubbing during our conversation.
