It was the start of the third round matches and I already was no longer spoiled for choice, which meant in turn watching some matches that I wasn’t interested in.
Given the strong backcourt abilities of Del Potro, I would have thought that Muller would have been facing an uphill battle. He started off slowly thoroughly outplayed in the baseline rallies, and having to stave off break points in the opening few games. It was looking like maybe it would be a one-sided affair. Even when Muller started to hold serve more reliably later in the set, the statistics that flashed on the board consistently showed a big difference in points won between Muller and Del Potro, showing that Del Potro was definitely playing the better tennis despite not scoring a break.
After the first couple of games, Muller started to hold onto serve much better, mainly on the back of better serving from him, and not only did this win him cheap points but it allowed him to start off the rallies in his favour. Often this meant returning a midcourt ball as an approach shot and following it up at net.
I’ve started to notice that Muller is the kind of player that actually mostly relies on finesse, despite being a big server. His game relies on a combination of slice backhands and chipped shots to neutralise the play or move around his opponents, then throwing in the change of pace on the forehand which isn’t hit at such a fast pace, but there is enough of a speed difference to take his opponents off-guard. It also requires good touch to possess excellent volleys like he does. I don’t think he necessarily punches away his volleys that well, but well enough for the ball not to sit up and he gets excellent placement on them and rarely seems to miss a routine one.
As you can tell, my viewing of this match was from a very one-sided perspective. I did watch Del Potro, but given the kind of opponent he was up against, it was almost impossible to tell which errors were forced, and which were unforced. Especially when you consider that Del Potro has been known to struggle dealing with low slice backhands on occasion. It did seem like, however, that he was doing most of the controlling of the extended baseline rallies in the first set, before the trend changed in the second to something more neutral.
The first set tie-break was a strange one. It started off routinely, mostly going on serve, until Muller served a double fault to give Del Potro the clear advantage. But soon later, Del Potro handed it back with a double fault from himself, and subsequently Muller took the first set. Which led to a rather passionate racquet throw from Del Potro, who stands out to me as being more of a fiery character than I initially thought, given that sometimes he is branded as being a “gentle giant.”
The first half of the second set was clearly the best passage of play from Muller, now even having success in the longer rallies, and not only on serve. One particular shot that I really like from him is the short slice backhand, and short angled shots that he seems to be able to employ to make his opponents move up and down the court. But towards the end of the set is when his game started to drop off, making far more simple forehand errors off midcourt balls just when I was observing how solid his groundstrokes had been this match despite the fact that they don’t look technically reliable.
At first when Muller’s play started to decline, he would consistently put himself under a giant hole on serve, but would dig out a big first serve on almost all of the break points and follow it up if necessary. It was a display of very good clutch play, and one that understandably frustrated Del Potro, and almost drove him insane. But sooner or later, this loose play was going to cost him, and so it did at 5-5. But Muller did have one very brief opportunity the game earlier where he dumped a makeable backhand volley into the net. In the third and fourth sets, Muller’s game dropped off even more, showing far more inconsistency and errors on makeable shots which allowed Del Potro to take control of the match.
At the conclusion of the match, I headed over to Court 2 to watch Tommy Robredo play against Lu Yen-Hsun, who I have no idea why his name seems to be referred to in full on the scoreboard when everyone else has their first name abbreviated. I was disappointed to learn that Nadia Petrova’s opponent had retired after the completion of one set which meant that the match between Ferrer and Cilic, which I had planned to watch had fully completed already.
It was the first time I had watched Robredo play in person before, and my first impressions were that when he plays against an opponent lacking in firepower like Lu, he looks like a high quality player. The one thing that I like about Robredo is how he tries to stick to his strengths and implement his favorite patterns of play. What he likes to do the most is trade off-forehands to open up the court before taking it down-the-line, a pattern of play that won him large amounts of points against Lu. This was a particularly favourable pattern of play given that Lu’s attacking capabilities on the backhand side are nowhere near as good compared to the forehand.
Whenever Robredo had to chase a ball down on his forehand side, he looped it back up with more topspin to enable him to get back into the point, to try to find his way back into that backhand corner he likes so much. In short, Robredo is a very good tactical player in making use of the shots he possesses to achieve the desired result. In this particular match, he was the more aggressive player yet he didn’t go for outright winners when he was on the dead run if he could get himself back into the point.
Lu tried to change the pattern of play in the second and third sets by taking a leaf out of the Robredo book and deciding to take those backhands as forehands by running around them. This is when he started to look slightly more dangerous, but Robredo still looked like the superior player, with a stronger forehand and better defensive skills. The other big strength of Robredo was his ability to get almost all of his returns into play, even if the depth on them was not necessarily good, there was always the possibility of him turning it around by throwing in one of his more heavily topspun shots. Lu tends to struggle with trying to handle the higher bouncing ball. In the end, Lu started overplaying as a sign that he had run out of options and he was thoroughly outplayed in the end. Given the one-sided nature of the match, I was impressed with the loyal support of the Taiwanese fans, who continued to cheer on Lu equally as vocally as they did at the start of the match.
Personally I don’t find Fabrice Santoro to be as entertaining as some other people do, largely due to the fact that even though he possesses an unorthodox game, it is also relatively defensive. Maybe it’s the Martina Hingis effect that playing a top player has on him, not being able to use the creativity due to getting pushed back on the defensive all the time.
But it’s not that Roddick was hitting big shots past him, Roddick actually looked like he was playing within himself. Three quarter paced shots, placed well but with plenty of margin and patient enough to wait for the most suitable ball to strike on. It all looked far too easy for the American, and it always seemed to be a matter of time until Roddick would break Santoro’s serve during the set. I liked how whenever Roddick would hit an absolutely horrendous shot that he would immediately turn his back on it, as if to pretend that it never happened.
I didn’t find this match to be particularly engaging although I was fascinated that while I was waiting to head back into the stadium early in the third set, I noticed how the match looked more entertaining on the TV screen rather than inside the stadium. Maybe because the view on TV placed more of an emphasis on how well the full dimensions of the court were being used, the service box area and the baseline, where both players seemed to alternate from on a regular basis.
I managed to see some typical Santoro shots, trying to curve the ball in with his passing shots, short slices and approach shots but I didn’t get to see that many amazing lobs or volleys. The lack of effective lobs was particularly surprising given that Santoro can sometimes be known to throw them up on a very regular basis, in turn making himself cover large amounts of ground.
Berdych has shorter backswings and takes the ball earlier, and he tends to be able to create better placement and unexpected changes of directions. What he can do with the ball from deeply placed shots is extremely impressive showing that he has very good reflexes. Wawrinka is a heavier hitter of the ball, and uses larger backswings so he needs to be given more time to set up although on the odd occasion he was able to generate enough pace to hit a forehand crosscourt winner while the pair were exchanging crosscourt forehand rallies.
Wawrinka started the match breaking Berdych’s serve with three winners and managed to hold onto that break for the rest of the set. It was interesting to note the winners count as the set moved on. Wawrinka at some point had 9 winners to Berdych’s 0, but Berdych almost caught up midway in the set, until Wawrinka started to gain somewhat of an advantage in this category. Which by the way, both players had similar amounts of unforced errors, which makes these statistics rather relevant. Whenever Wawrinka made an error, it felt like he usually missed by large distances and sometimes mistimed the ball whereas Berdych’s shots usually only missed by the barest of margins.
From the second set onwards, Berdych seemed to be able to consistently hit returns deep down at Wawrinka’s feet putting him under extreme pressure. In the fourth set, Wawrinka changed tactics to start utlising more of the backhand slice crosscourt to extend rallies and neutralise the Berdych attack to some extent, which helped make it more of a closely contested match. I was surprised how little Wawrinka made use of his backhand down-the-line which is normally one of his best shots. In the end, Berdych’s ability to consistently do more with the ball, and his better serving and returning was enough to take the four set win.
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