Recounting Wednesday: Tsonga wins, Mauresmo struggles

Second day at the Brisbane International, and today was a different kind of day, one which featured many more extended matches, which in turn meant a lot of waiting around. To make matters worse, both Pironkova and Govortsova served for the match to take a straight sets victory, incidentally around the time when I started to make my way to the show court. Not that losing serve in a WTA match is that uncommon.



Up first, I had a look at the middle portion of Amelie Mauresmo's match against Julie Coin, my first WTA match for this year's event. Initially I had trouble readjusting my standards. What depth should they be hitting at, and what accuracy should they be getting on their shots? Because both these areas seemed to be lacking in comparison to the men. It was late in the first set when I started watching, and I noticed a lot of midcourt balls coming from the Mauresmo racquet especially on the forehand side. It was no wonder that she struggled quite a bit then.

But the most interesting part was seeing how she got her game together, or moreover, what she did to take her game up another gear. She forced herself to start moving forward into the ball more to try to get that additional depth and penetration needed to upset the rhythm of Coin. It didn’t initially work at first, or at least I thought her approach shots were extremely poor, I’d call them bluff approaches. But they actually worked a fair amount of times drawing the error from Coin, and I noticed that even though Mauresmo came to net a lot, it felt like she rarely had to hit any volleys, since I wanted to take a good, close look at that as well.

Eventually after some persistence, Mauresmo started to get better depth and accuracy on her shots, particularly on that sometimes troublesome forehand. She started moving Coin around better as well, with fewer shots landing in the centre of the court. I got to see the much-talked about Mauresmo backhand, and it is a beautiful shot. But what I like most about it is the variety of it, how she can change the topspin of the ball and make it jump up higher or flatten it out for a winner. Then of course, she has the slice backhand as well.

Of all the players I have seen so far, I think Mauresmo has the most natural looking game. What I mean by that is when I first arrived at the tennis yesterday, I noticed how well-trained all the players looked in terms of their groundstrokes from a technical point of view. To the point where their groundstrokes looked very mechanical, in that it was clearly obvious all of the repetitious training they had put in to be able to replicate that shot again and again. Which is interesting because I don’t get as much of that same impression on TV, but I later found that I got used to it, and no longer noticed it. It wasn’t that Mauresmo gave the impression of the opposite, but it seemed more natural rather than forced to me.

I had a brief look at the third set of the match, until around 3-2 to see how things had changed to become a more balanced match yet again. Coin, who was initially not doing much to even draw my attention, started to do what a lot of WTA players don’t do, come to the net. This reflected in her baseline play as well, as she started to strike the ball harder and closer to the lines and seemingly further away from Mauresmo compared to before. Mauresmo got back into a more reactive style of play, so they continued to battle it out. While I was in the outside show courts, I was keenly listening to the sound of the umpire’s voice which is very audible on the grounds, when the match went to the third set tie-break. 7-7, 9-8, until Mauresmo finally took it at 13-11.



What I was watching instead was the remainder of the match between Tsvetsana Pironkova and Sara Errani, even though I would have preferred to watch the conclusion of the Mauresmo match. There was one epic going on in Pat Rafter Arena, and yet another long, contested match here played at the same time. Pironkova was clearly the bigger and flatter hitter of the two and was sometimes able to hit big forehand winners. At first it looked like the match would be decided mainly on Pironkova's racquet due to her greater firepower, but then as I started to watch for longer periods, I noticed that Errani was playing a better tactical match. Moving her opponent around better and better defensively overall. She also had a loud grunt that seemed to only appear in particular situations.

It was a fiercely competitive match, and both ladies were relatively animated, often questioning calls. Both seemed to lose their trust in the officiating, challenging any shots that landed close to the lines. In the end, Errani’s greater ability to play the bigger points got her over the line.



So about three hours later after the start of play, Jurgen Melzer and Florent Serra made their way onto court, a match I had been keenly waiting for. As soon as the match started, I was surprised to see Serra adopting a more aggressive, inconsistent game compared to yesterday. However, he started to regain more of his consistency as the match progressed and was clearly the more solid player of the two.

It was a set that was mainly dominated by serve, with the majority of winning shots being set up by that shot, and neither player having any real opportunity to break until Serra did so to take the set at 5-4 on the back of two poor dropshots from Melzer. Melzer then regrouped briefly to break serve in the opening game of the following set, starting to take the ball earlier looking to move forward into the court and playing more of an all-court game, the kind of tennis that I like to watch.

Melzer seems to really enjoy hitting that big double-handed backhand change of pace that’s taken so early like a half-volley that it almost looks like it could be an approach shot. It takes exceptional timing to pull that shot off, and it doesn’t really work for Melzer much of the time. Neither does the change of pace off the forehand side, which looks to be an extremely flat stroke, but when it does come off, it shoots through the court in an impressive manner.

Serra then immediately broke back to level proceedings, and then was gifted a second break with two double faults coming off the Melzer racquet. It was a strange service game, the one that featured the second service break. Melzer looked like he was dejected after one or two bad shots already and seemed resigned to defeat, with some of those double faults looking like very careless shots. In the end, on match point, Melzer conceded the match relatively tamely by not even bothering to stick his racquet out on the return of serve. Then he didn’t even bother to shake the umpire’s hand, Steve Ullrich for some unknown reason.



So then I went back into Pat Rafter Arena to watch what ended up being easily the best match that I saw over the last two days, between Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Jarkko Nieminen. It was an interesting match even on paper, a match-up between two very different players. The explosiveness of Tsonga against the counter-punching abilities of Nieminen, who really enjoys using the pace of his opponents. Nieminen started out the match on top returning exceptionally well, and using the pace to redirect the ball to move Tsonga around. At this point, it looked like Nieminen would rather return serve, than serve himself.

Tsonga had his chances to break Nieminen’s serve in the opening two service games, but made too many wild errors to be able to convert. He hadn't yet found the range on his groundstrokes and was shanking balls, particularly on the weaker backhand side. Nieminen hit what could have been the shot of the tournament, when Tsonga hit a very athletic overhead jump smash, only to see it returned down-the-line for a winner. Just in case you didn’t notice how well Nieminen was playing this entire set. This is when Tsonga amusingly bowed down to Nieminen on court.

But the second set was a different story, after Tsonga went down the initial break of serve. It was almost like watching a completely different player, with none of the erratic play from the first set from Tsonga. Tsonga seems to have about three levels, or standards of play that he can play at. Either he’s making a lot of errors overall, or he’s forcing himself to play better through almost energy alone (this is usually where his game wildly fluctuates) or he's consistently good. The latter of which I will further elaborate on, because that’s how he played the second and third sets. He was in the kind of form, where I no longer watched his shots to see if he’d shank them and when he missed, it was by relatively decent margins, not the wild shots that I saw earlier.

Now one thing that I really enjoy about Tsonga’s game, and this seemed magnified in this match for some reason, is his straight to the point style of play. Every shot that comes off his racquet, is an attempt to attack and hurt his opponents, and there isn’t much waiting around for opportunities to come. He was controlling the centre of the court and quick to move into the net, where he seems to get a big advantage by having the ability to be able to hit a big enough forehand as an approach shot, the kind of flat shot that shoots through the court and skids, which is the sign of a good approach shot, one that doesn’t sit up. I like the way he is quickly able to move from the back of the court to further up the court to take advantage of the shorter ball, moving so swiftly that allows him to quickly move back into an aggressive position after getting pushed back.

Nieminen continued to play well, seemingly moving exceptionally quickly around the court and being able to hit effective passing shots with short backswings. By the end of the match, I had to admire the competitive abilities of Nieminen, but in the end Tsonga was just that bit better in the crucial moments to take the match.



After the excitement of the previous match, I took a bit of a mental break where I sat down to watch Olga Govortsova play against Sesil Karantantcheva, who is recently making a comeback to the main tour. There wasn't much interest in this match overall, and I was fascinated that the stands seemed significantly more full to watch Hantuchova and Sugiyama play doubles instead. This trend of spectators preferring to watch doubles of higher profile players continued later in the night when more people decided to watch Tsonga and Gicquel play instead of Stepanek against Llodra.

Govortsova had her fair share of chances to close it out in two sets, but frustratingly she blew it and to three sets it went. To be honest, I was more blindly cheering for whoever was leading the match, rather than giving it my full attention. Karantantcheva lead 3-0 with a double break in the third set, so I started cheering for her then when I noticed her serving nervous double faults serving for the match later on, I realized she couldn’t win it so I turned to Govortsova instead.

I couldn't help but notice the incredibly long rallies that the pair of them exchanged, to the point where it looked like I was watching two ball machines play against each other. They also both possessed relatively weak serves, but it didn’t look to be that crucial given that they were almost guaranteed to get into a rally yet again. Except for when Karantantcheva served for the match.



Then Radek Stepanek took the court to take on Michael Llodra, a battle between two serve-and-volleyers, a marked contrast from the previous match, and there was big serving involved as well. Llodra is the flashier shotmaker from the back of the court, with his ability to change pace, while Stepanek is the steadier of the two and far more athletic. From a match-up point of view, I thought Stepanek's superior returning and passing shots would give him an advantage, his ability to be able to guide and place shots low down at his opponent’s feet.

There was no evidence of that in the earlier stages of the match, as both players held serve relatively comfortably apart from the one break point which Stepanek saved in the first set with a superb lob that landed marginally out of Llodra’s reach. The tie-break was then dominated by Stepanek who picked up his passing shots and often made Llodra hit low shoelace volleys.

I really like Llodra's volleys, by the way, particularly the high backhand volley which he really strikes firmly, to the point where it is unreturnable. He punches it away with such assertiveness and it skids incredibly low with it moving out of court. But in the end, Stepanek’s superior passing shots made the difference in this match. The other thing I noticed about Stepanek is the impressive flexibility that he possesses, his ability to be able to put his body in a position to return a shot on the full stretch.

Like Melzer, Llodra also seems to enjoy hitting that early ball backhand, except in Llodra’s case, he hits it with more of a point of taking a net position in the following point. Again, given the timing required of the shot, it was a relatively inconsistent shot. Llodra seemed to have the support of the crowd, where the applause seemed to be significantly greater whenever he won a point compared to Stepanek. Llodra’s verbal outbursts throughout the match also seemed to help in endearing himself to the crowd.