Reporting on standard, meaningless early round matches of Nadal and Murray

It's the first day of televised coverage in Miami, not exactly the most interesting day to be covering, but I have limited options to report given I’m usually sleep-deprived on weekdays.

To be honest, I'm not usually interested in analysing early round matches of top seeds, to the point of reading into the performances knowing that in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't mean a whole lot - but sometimes it's not about that. It's about the spectacle and dissecting certain parts of matches.

The best match of the day was the night match between Rafael Nadal and Teimuraz Gabashvili, which was like a fascinating thrill ride on Gabashvili's end, like I was right there feeding off every emotion that he was feeling throughout the match. It was the first official meeting between the two players, and right from the outset it looked like Gabashvili had read up on the "how to play against Nadal" manual executing that game plan that we see the more successful players against Nadal implement. Taking away the whole element of tactics as a contributing factor and making it all about execution.

But that wasn't the fun part, it was seeing Gabashvili relish the occasion as if he was having the time of his life. He got broken straight away on serve overplaying on shots going for too much, too soon. Then two games later, he hits this extreme backhand crosscourt angle winner, pumps his fist, what turned out being the start of a hot streak of Gabashvili hitting big winners from everywhere and running like a madman. One of those matches where I questioned myself how long it would last – five minutes, ten minutes?

So ten minutes it ended up being, of super-charged energetic shotmaking as if he was on a major emotional high. I think it’s the first time I got reminded of what it feels like to have one of those great days, admittedly those times when I get overexcited trying to do too much – but it's incredibly fun playing like that anyway.

Unfortunately but predictably the streak didn’t last too long. Gabashvili from 2-0 went up on a tear winning ten points in a row, but from 30-0 up on his own serve inexplicably made four cheap errors to go down a break yet again. There were spurts of brilliance after that, but it was clear much of the belief was gone, not that Gabashvili was capable of stringing together tennis like that for longer periods anyway.

I didn’t agree with the commentators' assessment that Gabashvili should be ranked higher based on a performance like that. Ultimately he still wasn't able to string together enough to read much into the match and it didn't really feel like he was playing a normal match, more like a free-swinging match.

Nadal himself was business-like on his end playing well in a far more continuous manner. It has to be incredibly hard to dominate rallies, or even take control of them when you see what Nadal does with his shots on the run consistently hitting forceful shots to either side. Despite Gabashvili trying to be the aggressor in the match, it was not a match played on his terms, more like a desperate attempt to break out of the pattern of Nadal pinning him on the defensive.

Earlier in the day, Andy Murray overcame a slow start to defeat Juan Monaco. Despite Murray lacking purpose in his shot selection, I found it somewhat fascinating seeing Murray trade groundstrokes of 40 shots or so with Monaco as if his consistency is so good, he can do it in his sleep. It also looks like he can move pretty well in his sleep too. But Monaco is a patient player himself too, and in rallies like that, he waited for his opportunity to strike and took advantage of Murray's passiveness.

I remember watching Monaco in 2007, his breakthrough year and watching this match, I was wondering, has Monaco lost some pace on his groundstrokes, whether it was just a tactic or whether he simply didn't have much pace to feed off? Because it didn't look like he had much finishing power off both sides unless if he had a short ball to deal with. He has good placement on both sides, particularly on the forehand side but it’s making things far more difficult than it could be needing to construct points like that each time to win points meaning that he needs to be near the top of his game to be doing well in matches.

Murray began to turn around the match in the second set after fighting off three break points in his opening service game with much better width on his shots, spreading the court making Monaco move much more than he did earlier in the match. From then on, it seemed like Murray was simply playing a better version of tennis than Monaco did, and was thoroughly in control.

In other news, David Ferrer needed three sets to defeat John Isner, a match which featured a nice contrast of styles. The match appeared to be heading in a one-sided direction in Ferrer's favour for the first set and a half, with the amount of points Isner won on Ferrer's serve somewhere near single digit figures.

Ferrer was getting a good read on the Isner serve, showing good hand-eye co-ordination in being able to seemingly connect with each return right in the sweet spot despite the ball bouncing incredibly high due to the high trajectory it was coming from. Robbie Koenig makes a good point that Isner doesn't really get the best out of his serve, mainly relying on the height he can create off the bounce off the back of his own serve coming from a great height himself.

It's hard to make out anything from Isner’s ground game himself which seems a bit inconsistent in general, capable of going through ups and downs. Though one thing is certain, that he should just not attempt to engage in long rallies because he is rarely going to win any of them. As soon as he reverted to a more aggressive game, looking to hit the one big groundstroke and coming in on it, he looked like a far better player often putting Ferrer under pressure far more often. The result was almost immediate in the second set breaking Ferrer’s serve twice to win the set.

But inconsistency is going to be something that always plagues Isner and the match started to turn again in Ferrer’s favour after a string of errors from Isner, as well as poor tactical decisions like deciding to approach the net on Ferrer's forehand.