In other news, Dmitry Tursunov wins a grasscourt title in Eastbourne

A couple of points into the Eastbourne final between Frank Dancevic and Dmitry Tursunov, and Dancevic looks up for it, ready to give the ball a good crack. Dancevic is one of the flashier players on the tour. When he launches into a shot, he throws all of his body weight into it. It's power, compromising balance. He's running to his backhand corner and he tries to hit a sweeping one-handed drive winner, literally with his legs above ground. I think, sometimes when he's moving, it looks like he's flying around the court, but I can't explain why I think this is the case. To set the record straight, he didn't make that backhand down-the-line and it wasn't even close, but the adrenaline was there.

And that's why he didn't win the match, nor did he ever look like winning the match. He doesn't have the balance when he's hitting a shot, although sometimes his athleticism makes up for it. Watch for it particularly on return of serve, how he catches himself in knots trying to change his racquet swing to make up for the fact that his feet aren't really in the right position. But mostly how his body doesn't seem to be positioned right in front of the ball, though he does better in this area in baseline rallies when he's running towards the ball.

He needs time to do what he wants with the ball, and Santoro gave him the opportunity to do so in the previous round, particularly on return of serve. His entire game is revolved around moving forward, taking advantage of any big shots or serves he hits by charging forward to the net. I love the forward movement he gets on his serve, how it seems so natural that he should find himself right at the net to follow it up with a typically high putaway volley.

Tursunov is a better striker of the ball, such a relaxed hitter of the ball, more capable of consistently controlling proceedings in neutral rallies. It's not like it's a secret that Tursunov is a big hitter, yet I think in some ways he is a deceptively big hitter of the ball because of how his forehand seems to pick up speed towards the end of its flight swing. Clearly this more casual, smooth approach to hitting has its benefits, being able to maintain a rhythm and timing on the groundstrokes.

But sometimes when I see how Tursunov handles shots on the dead run, attempting to hit shots with the same motion and backswing as he usually would and failing miserably, I think that in part has to do with laziness. For someone with such natural backswings, he really does lack in the improvisation department, and whether that's due to a lack of urgency, I don't know. On one point, at 40-0 down, Tursunov after seeing that his return of serve had popped up high in the middle of the court started strolling over to his chair for the changeover, which in itself doesn't mean a whole lot but I think it represents his character well. He doesn't have the same will to win as some of the other players.

If his normal effort isn't good enough for the day, then that's pretty much all he will offer – nothing more, nothing less. I don't often see him trying to dig out or scrambling balls on the dead run. As soon as he loses balance, that's when he'll go for the unlikely winner maybe just as much as a way to exit the point, rather than the intent to win the point. Maybe only on an important point, he'll decide to do some more running, like in the second set tie-break.

That wasn't much of a big deal today though, because Dancevic doesn't like to hang around in points much either, even less so than Tursunov. I think, quite simply because he can't. He gets pushed around if he doesn't push his opponents around first. In the end, it turned out to be mostly about first strike tennis, but on the odd occasion when it came down to second strike tennis (if you can guess what that means), then Tursunov had the advantage.

It all looked to be comfortable on serve for both players, then out of nowhere Dancevic makes a couple of awful errors: a missed high backhand volley, a shanked forehand and backhand that misses wide by metres. The kind of errors that generally creep into a service game in small amounts, but that you don't expect to suddenly turn a match around. Right now, I'm thinking that the intensity level in this match is almost as low as it gets.

Dancevic sometimes tries to go for the aggressive approach, big returns just like he did against Santoro but it rarely works. I think the more desperate he is for a point, the more he attempts the flashier winner like when Tursunov was serving for the first set. But when he blocks it back, it's just as suicidal with Tursunov taking care of the floating return easily.

Tursunov goes for a more instinctive approach on return of serve reacting to the ball if he needs to using the pace to hit a decent return, or going for a slightly more aggressive approach if he has time to do so. In the end, I just think he has better feel of the ball. He seemed to have the edge early on in the first set, threatening to break Dancevic's serve at 1-1 but Dancevic held on with good serving and with some luck on the net cord.

Strangely after the mostly serve-dominated proceedings of how the first two sets had panned out, the tie-break ended up being a largely unpredictable affair. But the one thing that remained consistent was that Tursunov was the slightly better player, more capable of winning points on return and the longer baseline rallies.

For a brief moment, the match had sprung to life. Dancevic had decided that this was his last chance to get things back on even terms, and threw every ounce of energy he had to hanging into the point at 6-4 in the tie-break. In the longest rally of the match, Dancevic finally drew the error from Tursunov, with some impressive hustling that I don't think you would normally see from him, without that added determination. But Tursunov bounced back quickly, forcing Dancevic to hit a shoelace volley on return and he dumps it into the net to finish the match.