Monfils shows he still has a lot to learn while Roddick shows flashes of his old form

Gael Monfils had been long touted as one of the young guns, one of the upcoming stars of the men's tour but failed to live up to expectations for a number of years. He had been frequently disrupted by niggling injuries for most of his career, and when he was healthy enough to play, there was a distinct weakness in his tactical game and he was constantly criticised for his overly defensive game.

In the last few months, he has slowly finetuned his game with the help of new coach, Roger Rasheed, Lleyton Hewitt's former coach, who apart from adding some discipline into the Frenchman's training regime, has also helped Monfils slowly transform his game into a more well-rounded game that is a healthy mix of offense and defense.

He still gets stuck behind the baseline on occasions, but he no longer appears to be pinned back with no options, instead being able to effectively neutralise shots before throwing in that change of pace or running passing shot that has been long known as one of his trademarks.

From a tactical point of view, yesterday's match up against the world number one, Rafael Nadal was a fascinating encounter because it would answer a lot of questions about Monfils' willingness to attack and how he would approach the match in general. The Spaniard is often known for wearing his opponents down and being relentless in his consistency, but more importantly because of his superior defensive skills, he forces each and every single player on the tour to play an aggressive game in order to threaten him.

Masters Series TV commentator, Robbie Koenig mentioned that Monfils had been practicing specific drills to upset Nadal's rhythm, including one that involved hitting a series of crosscourt forehands to open up the court to drill the forehand down-the-line into Nadal's forehand corner, which is the one clear weakness in the Spaniard's game. David Ferrer's two performances against Nadal at the US Open last year and at the Masters Cup specifically come to mind, where he exploited this tactic relentlessly and with little subtlety, as he frequently nailed his off forehand into Nadal's forehand side time after time.

Monfils started off the match doing exactly just that, showing excellent footwork and movement to consistently run around his backhand and hit big forehands. But unfortunately, that sort of aggressive tennis was short-lived as Monfils reverted back to the defensive game that he is known for, and what he is comfortable with. Monfils usually loves playing on the big stage, and with this being a centre court match in his home country against the world number 1, more fireworks were to be expected.

His entire performance in general reminded me much of the style of tennis that he exhibited when I first sat up and took notice of his game when he took out Marcos Baghdatis at the Australian Open in 2007, after Baghdatis had his magical run to the finals the previous year. Back then I noticed that he had one of the most unpredictable games, and that he often seemed confused as to how he should approach his matches. With most players, you get a feel for the patterns or combinations of shots that a player likes to implement. But while Monfils himself did have a general playing style, he would also often throw in awkward shots out of nowhere, but it didn't feel like it was brilliant, more that it was random.

Monfils's performance was not awkward yesterday against Nadal, but it was puzzling that he would achieve so much success with one particular tactic, but that he would completely abandon it for the vast majority of the match. One can only conclude that he found it too difficult to break out of his old habits and go out of his comfort zone, but in this particular match, he had nothing to lose. Nadal's performance himself left a lot to be desired, where a lot of his shots were sitting up high and looked very attackable.

Andy Roddick yesterday, in contrast was particularly impressive against Madrid finalist, Gilles Simon. Roddick hasn't really shown much form in recent times, despite having some moderate success at the lower level events. On occasions, Roddick can get caught into the trap of playing solid, consistent tennis, not making full use of the power that he is able to generate on his groundstrokes especially on the forehand side. Roddick tends to try and win service games by placing consistent pressure on his opponents and hoping to get one service break per set, which is all he needs to pocket a set on most occasions.

On a different note, Roddick also has a tendency to associate aggressive tennis with constant netrushing without acknowledging that he has to effectively set up a point to increase his chances of having success at the net. Often he only reserves his aggressive game for the top players, for example, against Novak Djokovic at the US Open where he had relative success going for his shots but crumbled on the big points. To be honest, because he does not attempt this sort of tennis often enough, it is still difficult to tell whether Roddick is actually able to implement this sort of strategy consistently with success.

However, yesterday against Simon, he was in particularly impressive form, where his groundstrokes looked dangerous and he had an extremely intimidating presence about him which isn't always the case. Simon, in contrast, with his energy-saving game, looked like a decidedly small and irrelevant figure although to be fair he has a knack of hanging around and generally beats his opponent in a much more subtle fashion.

Right from the outset, it looked like he wanted to send a clear message to Simon, and this was no clearer than when he stepped in and crushed Simon's weak second serve on numerous occasions. On the backhand side, he was stepping in and taking it early, making it difficult to Simon to extend the points as he would like to. The final game of the first set was the standout, where at one point, Roddick hammered three consecutive off forehands to take the set.

However, the second set had a slightly different tone to it as Roddick went down two break points, showing some overeagerness in his shotmaking, mishitting a couple of forehands and throwing in some double faults. But Roddick saved all of the break points, often opting for the high percentage well-placed kick serve, which caused Simon all sorts of problems. This pattern repeated numerous times later in the set, and whenever he needed a big point, he went for that same reliable and high percentage strategy.

The baseline rallies in this set were much more closely contested, as a result of Roddick stepping his foot off the accelerator as well as Simon playing more solid tennis and seemingly getting his teeth into the rallies more. I noted often that Roddick started off many of the points keen to get his opponent off the back foot by taking the ball early, but as soon as they engaged in longer rallies, Roddick started to hit those loopier, medium-paced shots again. However, in the final game of the match, Roddick went back to the successful strategy of attacking Simon's second serve, and despite some shakiness in the big points in that game, earned himself the crucial break to take the match.

Simon, for a brief moment, showed some of the fighting qualities that saw him reach the final of the Madrid Masters only just two weeks ago, but it wasn't enough for him to win the match. At one point, in the final game when moving out wide to retrieve a forehand, Simon slipped over and dropped his racquet in the process, but recovered quickly to hustle to the opposite side of the court, before Roddick made the error on the following point.

In the final match of the day, Nikolay Davydenko continued his dominance over Tomas Berdych extending his head-to-head record over the Czech to 8-0, barely dropping any games in a convincing 6-1 6-1 win. I remember watching one of their earlier matches from the Australian Open in 2005, which was closely contested, and featured some impressive ball striking from both players but since then Berdych has lost much of his belief against Davydenko, which adds up to the difficult match up problem that he faces.

Davydenko is one of the few players on the tour, who I feel are extremely difficult to overpower because he is able to use an opponent's pace against them to redirect the ball and move them around. Compared to Berdych, Davydenko takes the ball earlier than Berdych, is more accurate in his shotmaking and can generate better angles and is a better mover. I like the rotation that Davydenko gets on his groundstrokes which enables him to change directions on his groundstrokes effectively, and he was doing this frequently like he usually does, often going down-the-line on both sides.

In terms of game, Davydenko had the clear advantage, so Berdych needed to hope that Davydenko was slightly off his game, and that he himself was on good form. When that didn't turn out to be the case, the shoulders started slumping quickly for Berdych. As soon as Davydenko went up a double break in the first set, Berdych never looked like he was even going to make this a contest.