Australian Open Day 3 Blog

(This Australian Open blog was posted on Tennis Week here.)

Last year at the Australian Open there were press reports of tension between Serbian and Croatian fan bases, so the first round encounter between Janko Tipsarevic and Marin Cilic was interesting from that point of view, to see the rivalling between fanbases. As soon as the players started to warm up on the court, the support from both sides was already loud and clear and both groups were trying to outdo each other which made for an entertaining atmosphere in Margaret Court Arena. At times, Carlos Ramos, the chair umpire had to advise the crowd to be quiet during play stating that these are “two very nice guys.”

As I started watching the match, it was getting clear that Cilic was the man that was more in control of the match. The more aggressive player, capable of changing directions and going down-the-line off both sides with ease. One of the things that stood out the most about Cilic’s game was the consistent depth of his groundstrokes. It felt like his strokes were naturally penetrating and that it was much easier for him to hit an aggressive shot, rather than Tipsarevic who needed to specifically try to force the play and generate the racquet head speed especially off the forehand side.

It was a relatively comfortable first set for Cilic but the second set was more of a contest. Tipsarevic seems to be a guy that needs to put in a lot of mental energy and determination to bring the best out of his game, so that extra bit of determination to not want to give away cheap errors brought him more success than before. This is made even more obvious by his grunts which only appear every now and then during particular stages of the match. But eventually after numerous hard fought games, Cilic converted the crucial break of serve towards the end of the second set to win it.

The third set was more of a temporary blip for Cilic rather than Tipsarevic playing good tennis, now starting to shank some shots on the forehand and dump shots into the net on the backhand. It’s interesting that players can look so technically sound to the point where it looks to me, that they would be able to repeat it at least to the extent of their game looking reasonably solid almost every single time. This kind of thinking usually seems to apply to the more relaxed, effortless players, but this is a misleading thought as Cilic proved by losing the range on his groundstrokes and making some awful errors at times.

I noticed that when Cilic is at his most consistent is when he looks to get his body weight moving forward into the ball, which doesn’t happen as much when he’s less confident. In turn, this led him to adopt a slightly more passive way of playing which allowed Tipsarevic to take control. My opinion was that it was Cilic’s play in this set that allowed Tipsarevic himself to play better for the most part. It was a scrappy third set that featured hard-fought rallies but numerous errors as well, so I decided to leave the action to take a walk to Hisense Arena to see the current World No. 1 Jelena Jankovic.



It was most likely going to be my only opportunity to see Jankovic over the course of my six day visit given that I had not purchased any Rod Laver Arena tickets. She was up against Kirsten Flipkens of Belgium, who to me was mainly known as the player that filled in for Belgium in Fed Cup whenever Clijsters or Henin were unavailable. Not that I had ever seen her play before.

What I most wanted to see from Jankovic was her superb athleticism and ability to maneuver her opponents out of position, to the point of wearing them out. But Jankovic is only just returning from illness. She stated herself that she hadn’t played a competitive match in about two months so not much was to be expected from her.

It was not an impressive performance, and if I looked too closely at what Jankovic was doing, then I found myself often disappointed. At no point did Jankovic look like she was actually in control of any point, in that she often gave Flipkens the opportunity to take the initiative in the rallies herself.

However she did hit some good counterpunching shots at times, with the passing shots and I got to see a glimpse of her backhand down-the-line. But for a shot to look impressive, it has to be implemented with success on a regular enough basis, with which Jankovic did not.

What made the match most interesting to watch was the play coming from the Flipkens racquet and her general style of play. Her game reminds me very much of some of the female doubles specialists, for example if Rennae Stubbs played singles, I think it would bear some resemblance to this. She doesn’t have the solid base of strong groundstrokes that the majority of women’s players have. Instead she plays an all-court game that mostly revolves around taking the ball early on the forehand side, and following it into the net. Flipkens seems to run around her backhand more often than any other female player I’ve seen, opting to sometimes hit forehands off shots that were about one meter away from the sideline. Flipkens implemented some of that net-rushing game to success in the second set but in the end, Jankovic made just enough passing shots to be able to finish off the match.

So the next match I watched was between David Nalbandian and Lu Yen-Hsun, which occupied most of my viewing day lasting almost four hours long. Coming off a tournament win in Sydney, some experts predicted a potential semifinal showing for Nalbandian given the form that he showed in that event. But Nalbandian in almost three years has failed to achieve anything in any Grand Slam event, not even reach the last eight which is shockingly awful for a man of his calibre rivalling Ivan Ljubicic’s career Grand Slam record in terms of unimpressiveness. And so his poor Grand Slam record continued bowing out to Lu, who had previously never advanced past the second round of a Slam.

In this particular match, Nalbandian picked up where he left off from his first round match, struggling with his game yet again and particularly the serve. In recent years, it has been observed by some that for Nalbandian, if he serves poorly, then he plays poorly and that is what happened yet again. On a bad day, Nalbandian’s serve can be incredibly weak especially on the second delivery where it can be continually punished by almost any player on tour as evidenced by players like Gicquel and Lu jumping on it time and time again. I don’t know whether he slowed down his first serve, in an attempt to increase his first serve percentage, but that looked weak at times as well.

I would say that the level of play that Nalbandian displayed today was relatively similar to that he showed against Gicquel, except that Lu was able to match him in terms of being able to maintain consistency and was also better offensively. In short, for particular stretches of the match, it felt like Lu was the better player in all areas of the game: serving, returning, offense, defense. Because of that reason, it was difficult to find anything to admire in Nalbandian’s game today when you could see the other guy across the net doing the exact same thing better.

Lu is one of those incredibly solid players with good tactical awareness to play controlled aggressive tennis without trying to go outside of his abilities. He doesn’t really have the flair or the ability to create unexpectedly good shots like the top players do, but he makes his opponents play good tennis to beat him, and takes full advantage of any short balls and weaker offerings. I didn’t actually think his performance today was anything exceptional even for his own standards. It looked like something I had seen before from him.

One thing that Lu was particularly good at today was taking care of the midcourt short ball on the forehand side. The other area where he got a big advantage was on the return of serve. It wasn’t only the serve that was costing Nalbandian, but his return of serve was also a problem particularly whenever he had to block a serve back, he often sent it long or into the net on very makeable shots.

There were many breaks of serve featured in this match and closely contested games which added to the drama and nerve wracking nature of the match. I noticed that in the second and third sets which Nalbandian won, he seemed to be doing a better job of hanging in the rallies and extending them compared to the fourth and fifth sets which were relatively one-sided in Lu’s favour, given that he was up a double break in both of them. So what was it that went wrong that made the crucial difference?

I’ll admit that during the match, I was also looking up into the screen in between points to rewatch them to see if I could pick up anything different from a separate view. To see what Nalbandian’s footwork and movement looked like, to see how he was making those errors. But what stood out the most without even looking at the screen was that as the match reached the closing stages, Lu’s confidence grew more and more, and importantly his energy levels actually seemed to increase when it should be the opposite which allowed him to play a more aggressive brand of tennis. I guess you could say it was a sign of his adrenaline levels whereas Nalbandian’s energy levels went down instead.

It felt like within the stadium that Lu was somewhat of a sentimental favorite, maybe because of his quiet determination and his ability to keep his emotions in check, the sign of a good competitor. Not that it surprised me since I have seen him play before, but his body language and emotions seemed to rarely change over the course of the match, which fluctuated in fortunes for either player.

As for Nalbandian, while he may have often shown signs of disgust with himself, I still felt like it was a more composed performance for the main reason that it didn’t seem to affect his play in a negative manner. The final game of the match in particular was epic with numerous deuce points and Nalbandian squandering many break points unable to string anything together, allowing Lu to finally seal the match. So that was Nalbandian out of the tournament, which greatly disappointed me especially given the promise he showed leading up to the tournament and that I had yet to see him play a good match in this event.

So after witnessing a long and nerve wracking match that was mentally tiring for me, I wasn’t sure whether I’d be up to refocusing to watch another match. Initially I thought not, but I thought I should at least take a brief look at the match between Juan Martin Del Potro and Florian Mayer, to see if it was worth watching. It was a match that I had previously shown some interest in for the main reason of wanting to witness the play of the very creative and unusual Florian Mayer, a player that is just as unorthodox as Fabrice Santoro, but not acknowledged anywhere near as often for that fact.

Del Potro had just taken the first set 6-1 so this added to the feeling that maybe it wouldn’t be worth watching. The way Del Potro sets up his groundstrokes in making sure that he is in position at contact with the ball makes him appear very intimidating to play against. I like how incredibly low he bends down each time to hit his double-handed backhand.

The second set was where Mayer started to play some tennis that was highly entertaining. Mayer’s backhand in particular is a very entertaining shot. He seems to be able to generate this incredible angle crosscourt on an amazingly consistent basis, both off the topspin drive backhand and off the slice. He also hits a jumping double-handed backhand on a regular basis almost as if it were a showboating shot, which just adds to the appeal of his game. Then there was one point where he was running up to chase a dropshot and faked as if to hit a dropshot only to flick up a lob at the last minute. Although unfortunately that didn’t win him the point.

One thing that Mayer did well in this set was take the ball early on the short balls to follow up at net, and as you would expect, he has excellent feel up there. Mayer served for the second set at 5-4, but unfortunately it went downhill from there, losing that set 7-5 and convincingly losing the third 6-2.