Florian Mayer gives the fans in Hamburg something to cheer about

I don’t think I’ve seen Florian Mayer lie on the ground like this.  This is one of the high points of his career, and this image is symbolic of many things.  Inspired tennis, a hard-fought match, and an epic home country win. 

Mayer is into the semi-finals now, defeating Juan Carlos Ferrero, who

played a tough match but started to run out of gas towards the end.

Mayer can be a frustratingly low key character sometimes, looking as if nothing could excite him.  When he’s not playing well, you wish he would just fire up a little bit.  Like yesterday, in the first set against Maximo Gonzalez, where he seemed to constantly walk little circles in between return of serves.  A sign of nerves, or confusion?  After taking an injury time-out late in the first set, he was a changed man and went on a roll.  It’s like he’s always walking a fine line between being the likeable vulnerable underdog, and the guy that doesn’t really know or believe in what he’s doing.

However it seemed like this time around, the slightly excitable Mayer turned up right from the start.  Because from an outsider’s point of view, I can’t really see why he can be so unfazed by his own play sometimes.  He plays a bit like a showman, but he doesn’t act much like one.  I watched him play in Wimbledon this year, and it came to my mind that I don’t think I’ve ever seen another player on the tour enjoy bamboozling their opponents as much as he does. 

It’s one thing to put disguise on your shots, and another to constantly try to make your opponents believe that you’re going to hit a different shot than you actually are.  I think, the main reason is that it’s incredibly difficult to pull off, and it seems easier to just try to hit winners instead.  For me, whenever I change my mind halfway through a stroke, it almost ends up with an error, or either it doesn’t really have anywhere near the effect I was hoping for.

Mayer is quite a talent on the backhand side.  Early on, he sets up for a backhand by jumping on it, then sets up to hit a dropshot and pushes a slice deep in the last minute.  That’s not one false backswing but two mindgames in the one shot, completely unheard of outside of exhibitions.  And that was good enough to get the job done.  It didn’t even matter that the slice backhand practically went mid-court deep, it forced an error from Ferrero because he had no idea where to set himself up.

Mayer can change the pace on the backhand crosscourt, create spectacular angles on it, hit cunning slice backhands, change directions down-the-line and hit jumping dropshots.  It really is one of the most difficult to read shots in the game.  Today, he seemed to be in a good mood.  Because he was jumping on a lot of backhands.  Definitely a good sign that plenty of energy was in reserves for today, and he really needed it.

This match wasn’t only about the high quality and varied play of Mayer today.  It was a great match all-round.  What makes the match even more spectacular is the physical ability that both players showed, in having to constantly chase wide balls and when you consider that means digging your feet into the ground and stretching wide all the time, that’s tough on the muscles.  This was a match full of long rallies, utilizing many angles, dropshots and changes of pace.  It was 3-1 in the first set, and even during those points, there were images of Mayer huffing and puffing, which in the end cost him his break of serve.

Ferrero was hitting the ball well, playing traditionally effective claycourt tennis which generally consists of a lot of side-to-side action and well-constructed points.  I’d say he is the epitome of a professional player, and I’m sure his experience has much to do with that.  His shots are consistently strong and he doesn’t give his opponents much to work with, when he’s hitting on the run.  They just don’t decrease in quality that easily. 

It was a battle on who would come out on top – whether Ferrero could keep Mayer on the run enough, or whether Mayer would throw just enough surprises to change the course of a rally.  In the first set, both players had their fair share of success in this area, but I did think that Ferrero would come through, mainly because Mayer was playing a little above himself while Ferrero looked like he could keep it up forever.

I wouldn’t have thought that as the match wore on that Mayer’s forehand would become more of a prominent feature than Ferrero’s.  I find it hard to believe that Mayer was having anything other than a spectacular day on this side, the way he cracked all these flat winners from up high in the second and third sets, often down-the-line. At first, he was lacking somewhat defensively on this side.  Often his elbow would lift up a little too much, and he’d float it into the middle of the court, and he’d have to work hard to turn the rally back around.  That was the exact weakness that he ironed out in the second and third sets, to manufacture a dramatic turnaround. 

He didn’t only improve his defensive forehand.  He tried to do more with it as soon as he had the chance to try to keep rallies more in his favour. I have to say I haven’t seen Mayer play this aggressively from the baseline before.  Usually he uses his strong shots to follow into the net, but this is clay, and perhaps he just can’t make it into the net as much.  At times, he surprised himself just as much.  By the third set, he was occasionally smiling at some of his big shots.  Let’s hope that he can carry this form into the semi-finals, because he knows it’ll be a good opportunity, playing against Andrey Golubev.  If he can play anywhere near as well as he played today.

Surprise this week! Some match reporting… for Hamburg.

It's been a while since I've sat in front of the computer, and had a look at the shot mechanics of a match. But it's been a quiet week for me, so I thought I would spend today staring as closely at the screen and the players, hoping that would provide some sort of inspiration.

In front of my screen was Thomaz Bellucci and Philipp Kohlschreiber. In particular, I remember writing about Bellucci around the same time last year, and it's good to re-write about young players because they sure improve quickly. Bellucci is no longer a player that you only see every now and then, and also more adaptable to other surfaces than he used to be. He's sitting at 22 on the rankings right now, and starting to develop some clear weapons on the serve and forehand.

I predicted more of an even battle, but early on, everything Bellucci hit seemed to be bigger and better. Better angles and better penetration. Kohlschreiber's signature backhand was no match for Bellucci's forehand, in the battle of crosscourt shots. It was a pattern which repeated again and again, and so the winner of that match-up convincingly won the match. This is where being left-handed helps, though you would have thought not in this case.

Bellucci has the ability to hook his forehand wider and wider, hit across or above the head if needed and also to switch it down-the-line once there is an opening. Though perhaps he was also allowed some time on this surface to show this versatility, since he does have a rather long backswing on the forehand. I wonder if the key to a fearsome forehand is large amounts of racquet head speed. I'm surprised he doesn't shank it more than he does, with the low to high stroke production, and he also hits it more open stance than many other players.

Why wasn't Kohlschreiber able to pull out his backhand down-the-line, as a change-up? Perhaps Bellucci had him pinned too high and too wide, that the only thing he could do was to hit harder and deeper rather than using a greater range of shots.

Bellucci could have won this easier than he did, but he seems to sometimes suffer from overconfidence and overhitting. He broke Kohlschreiber's serve late in the first set, then cranked it up an extra level to a very aggressive mode as if it didn't matter anymore. It didn't take long to pay the price. His serve was dropped immediately after one complacent game.

Sometimes playing well can make you feel like you can pull off anything you try. A more experienced player would have known what intensity and "gear" they should be playing at, their optimum level. But at least that break of serve shook him up, and back to reality he was, to play the same type of tennis that won him the initial break, to break serve and attempt to finish off the set again. This time, he learned his lesson.

This set the tone for the second set, where Bellucci kept himself in front with an early break in the set. The rest then played out just like it did from the start. Kohlschreiber tried to throw off Bellucci's rhythm with very deep shots, but to no avail. It's not often you see Kohlschreiber overpowered like this. I wonder if he has trouble generating pace on clay more compared to other surfaces. On the other hand, his topspin obviously benefits. Like all good, proper claycourt players, there were many excellent dropshots from Bellucci usually thrown in for good measure, and often well-timed after a long rally.

Australian Open Day 6 Blog

It’s the first day of the weekend at Melbourne Park, and it shows in the crowd attendance. It’s hard to walk around anywhere, and it seems like there are big crowds wherever you go, too many people standing around doing other things than watching tennis matches because the stadiums are too full. The first couple of days of the tournament seemed fine with a greater spread of matches, but the last few days have been more problematic.

Today I decided to join the battle of trying to occupy good seats, although it was initially not my decision to do so. I had prepared to watch Mikhail Youzhny play then heard of his withdrawal so I walked into Margaret Court Arena to watch Vera Zvonareva play against Gisela Dulko.

The weather seemed continually threatening but in the end, it was simply a minor nuisance. What was probably more of a nuisance was the quality of the matches. By the end of the day, I felt like I just watched a first round day of coverage on TV where they pick the top players beating a poor hapless opponent for three tedious sets. For the first time, I left the grounds in the afternoon at 4:30pm, that’s how one-sided the matches were.

The match between Zvonareva and Dulko was fascinating to watch, just because it was refreshingly different to the other women’s matches I watched. Everything seemed at a pace slower, reminiscent of what 90s women’s tennis looked like, and at first this was exciting. This was tennis that was easy to watch, filled with rallies where players cared much more about accuracy than power.

Zvonareva can hit the ball significantly harder than Dulko, but at the same time it was obvious that she could hit it much harder if she wanted to. Instead, she chose to hit the ball side-to-side most of the time at about a medium pace.

In the first ten minutes or so, I found Dulko incredibly fascinating to watch. The way she hits the ball, she finesses it, she doesn’t drive through it. As a result, Zvonareva dominated the majority of points, and I thought it was an incredibly difficult way of playing because if she doesn’t find perfect accuracy then her shots end up being punished. Given Dulko’s stature, I am not sure why she can’t generate any more pace or whether she just chooses to play like this.

Dulko started poorly struggling with her serve and making far too many simple errors. But whenever they engaged in a rally, Zvonareva seemed to have the upper hand quite clearly, which made it difficult to shake off this preconceived feeling in the second set when things started to become more even.

I constantly wondered what it would look like, Dulko playing on a good day. She seemed too much of a crafty player to be overly reliant on her opponent’s errors. In the second set, I found out the answer to my question. She still swings at the ball just as timidly, and she doesn’t seem to find much racquet head speed at all. She finds that extra pace mostly through better timing. And with better timing came better depth and accuracy, and she ended up putting Zvonareva on the move more often than it would initially seem possible.

Still Zvonareva’s groundstrokes seemed too good overall, and it was more a case of her managing her own game. It was far more difficult for the Russian in the second set, but in the end she prevailed.

I hadn’t seen Nikolay Davydenko play yet this week, so it was my final opportunity to do so. He was scheduled to play against Juan Monaco, in what would end up being a one-sided victory for Davydenko.

From first glance, Davydenko has one of the more eye-catching games on the tour. I’m not sure why he has a reputation of not standing out when he clearly does. Compared to the majority of other players, Davydenko has an incredibly efficient game, and everything he does is so neat and perfect.

He has shorter backswings than the majority of players, and he takes everything so early that it looks like he’s catching it while the ball is still high. Every time he hits a backhand, it looks like a high backhand. I can see why they call him a ball machine, in a different sense. Because he manages to prepare early enough to be able to hit every shot almost exactly the same way, and this looks ridiculously good. Surely it has to be tiring to be so quick and early to every single shot. Everything he does, he does at a fast pace, whereas the majority of players are more selective.

When I watch Davydenko on TV, I usually focus most of my attention on the accuracy of his groundstrokes and his relentless aggression. But I found myself mostly looking at the technique and movement that Davydenko has on his groundstrokes. It’s hypnotising in a way, though I thought maybe I should actually take a step back and focus more on the tennis. I also think that his backhand looks so much better than his forehand live, whereas I normally think of them as being more even. And how about Davydenko's service motion where he seems to lean his back in a perfectly straight slanted motion?

Monaco doesn’t appear to be doing anything remotely interesting. Basically, Davydenko is playing at a fast pace and Monaco is playing at a medium pace, and being far less adventurous. His low winner count says it all. In the first set, he was making the simplest of errors, but in the second and third sets, he picked up his consistency.

The first set was Davydenko playing close to his best tennis, but his game dropped off to something more mediocre for his standards in the second and third sets, at least in the part that I watched. The match was a demonstration to me of both, why I like Davydenko play, but also why I don’t. As soon as his game dropped off, the funny thing was that his shots and movement still looked almost exactly the same. Except that it was less admirable given that he was making far more errors. I guess that’s because he relies so much on timing.

I wonder if Davydenko only reserves his all-court game for the higher ranked players, when he thinks he needs it, because he mostly stuck to the baseline and didn’t hit that many volleys.

Before the match ended, I decided to take off and watch Novak Djokovic’s match against Denis Istomin. As I sat down to watch this match, I started to gain a new appreciation of Davydenko’s match against Monaco, due to its one-sidedness. At least Monaco managed to extend many of the rallies, though it also put into perspective that even though Davydenko plays very aggressively, he doesn’t finish points in a couple of strokes that often.

It seems like the rest of the crowd were restless and bored as well, with someone behind commenting me that this was like watching an exhibition. It was a seriously underwhelming day all around, not only with the matches I watched but also with Koubek’s retirement against Verdasco, and one-sided victories for Azarenka and Serena Williams.

Djokovic had already won the first set 6-1 when I started watching it, and he seems incredibly relaxed. How can I judge a performance like this, with no pressure? Djokovic’s stroke production is so different from Davydenko’s by the way, so much looser and less precise especially on the forehand.

He seemed very keen on coming to the net today, maybe experimenting with his game, I’m not sure. And he hit more slice backhands than I can normally remember. He had a lot of success with it, and Istomin struggled with it all match long. The rallies and the pace of this match was so quick that sometimes it was difficult to see what Istomin was doing wrong, aside from being a weak, inconsistent player all-round. His defensive skills were particularly poor as he would often drop balls short anytime he had stretched out wide, and quickly Djokovic was able to dominate points easily.

Djokovic was up 5-0 in the third set, but had a slight concentration lapse towards the end. He tried to hit a shot behind his back to entertain the crowd but failed miserably in its execution. In the end, he served it out on second attempt, and that was the end of the horror of the day session.

I came back for the night session between Lleyton Hewitt and Marcos Baghdatis hoping to watch a closely competitive match played in a emotionally charged atmosphere. After some early excitement with Hewitt gaining an early lead, it became obvious early that something was wrong with Baghdatis. Though I was not sure whether it was fatigue, or something more permanent.

He couldn’t seem to generate any racquet head speed on any of his shots, and I was wondering whether he had a slight problem with this in his match against Ferrer because the pace of shot did noticeably decrease towards the end.

It was the first time I experienced sitting near the Aussie supporters dressed in the yellow shirts, and the support group was nowhere near as big as I thought they would be. Where are the Fanatics? In any case, I really liked the variety and creativity of their chants, compared to the majority of support groups that generally chant the same thing over and over again.

The atmosphere died down quickly, when everyone realized that Baghdatis was struggling badly. It hadn’t been a satisfying day of tennis, and this match unfortunately didn’t live up to hopes of making up for the rest of the day’s tennis.

I walked over to Hisense Arena hoping that maybe this would be the match to do that, between Tommy Haas and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, and fortunately it was an entertaining affair. Surprisingly the atmosphere in here was much more electric than it was in Rod Laver Arena, and later, it was easy to see why with the quality of play the fans were witnessing.

This was an entertaining display of all-court tennis from both players, and I loved the fast pace of the match, with both players barely taking much of a break in between points. This was a battle between Tsonga’s forehand and Haas’ backhand to see which shot would be more dominating.

Everything about Haas’ game is so clean and aesthetically pleasing. Haas’ backhand down-the-line is great to watch, and so are his dropshots though he overplayed it at times. I was looking at his shot selection, and he seemed very focused on playing beautiful tennis. I am not sure if this is a good thing.

Haas is a clean hitter of the ball, and he doesn’t seem to have much weight on his shots compared to a lot of the other players, especially on the forehand. Whenever he missed shots, he’d usually miss them by overhitting, often hitting it too long or trying to be accurate. I am not sure how much his defensive game was affected by the back injury that he had, where he called the trainer for at the end of the second set.

Tsonga was more explosive on the court and he had more power on his groundstrokes than Haas did. His serving was especially good, while the rest of his play was more up and down. The match was so fast paced though, that if ever there was a bad error in a point, it was easy to move onto the next point. Haas served for the fourth set, but Tsonga suddenly raised his game to a new level, making more of an effort to turn everything into a forehand and bludgeon his way into the match.

After spending so much time previously looking at Haas’ backhand and all-court game, it was like Tsonga suddenly made his presence loud and clear, raising the level of his shotmaking and athleticism, and hitting more spectacular forehands to take the match in four sets.

Australian Open Day 5 Blog

This time last year, Jelena Jankovic was ranked world number 1, but this year she’s seeded 8 and flying under the radar. She was scheduled against Alona Bondarenko on Hisense Arena, in what promised to be a good test for where Jankovic’s form is at.

The match had barely started and Jankovic had already hit plenty of shots close to the lines. She seems to particularly like the crosscourt corners and her backhand down the line. It’s almost like she’s constantly picking these very small areas in the court and has her mind set on targeting them.

On first glance, her groundstrokes look very good, but she is already down on the scoreboard, so why is that? I think the athleticism on her groundstrokes really comes through well live particularly how she slides into her forehand on the run, similar in a way to how Rafael Nadal plants his foot on his double-handed backhand out wide.

The problem is that Bondarenko appears to be capable of hitting it at another pace above what Jankovic is capable of, regardless of how much Jankovic will exaggerate her forehand swing or put it further over her shoulder to try to generate more pace. Bondarenko just happens to have that pace, and it seems much easier for her to hit winners too. Part of the reason is that Bondarenko is more accurate, but also that she seems to hit much better shots on the run which enable her to keep her opponent on the move for more than one or two shots.

I don’t think this is normally the case though. There is a reason why Jankovic has such a dominant head-to-head over her. And Jankovic is known for her defensive skills which I thought were lacking today. After making too many errors to start with, Jankovic started to bring the percentages down, sticking more with crosscourt shots on the run. This helped bring the match closer, but not close enough.

It ended up being a bit of a Catch 22 situation because Jankovic’s aggressive game simply wasn’t working. New sets tend to be opportunities for players to try new tactics, and after reining it in, Jankovic tried that aggressive game again. She tried all her strengths: more backhand down the lines, more off backhands, and she also tried to maintain more depth again. Bondarenko was playing well enough, that Jankovic was probably on the right track in terms of ideas that she needed to play better to change the course of the match.

What was fascinating though was how quickly Jankovic ran out of ideas and looked unsure of herself. The majority of her play in the second set could probably be described as reckless experimentation, maybe hoping that she could accidentally stumble across some answers. The thing is, she never believed in what she was doing so she wasn’t close to pulling it off.

There was a moment late in the second set where it looked like Bondarenko was getting tight as she lost her serve, and that maybe Jankovic should have changed her tactics to allow it to happen more. But it ended up only being a temporary blip, and the way Bondarenko closed out the match on the return game with some impressive groundstrokes proved that it wouldn’t have been a good idea after all.

It’s interesting to watch two women’s matches in a row, because that allowed me to compare the two, and I really like comparing things. Actually the only thing that I really wanted to compare was the serves of the four women, and the fact that Alisa Kleybanova has a significantly better serve than the rest of them. It’s one of the more powerful serves on the women’s tour, and like the rest of her shots, the weight of shot on it is impressive. It’s not just a flat, hard serve.

Kleybanova was up against Justine Henin today. Given Kleybanova’s stature and her reputation, it’s not at all surprising that she has tremendous power on both sides, but what is impressive is the work that she gets on the ball which looks somewhat unique in women’s tennis.

I am not actually sure how to describe it, but I think by rolling her wrist over the ball on both sides, she has the ability to generate more spin than most players after the ball bounces, or at least in a way that many players are not used to dealing with. For example, in the third set, Kleybanova hit a forehand down the line winner that looked like it was going to fall out, but dropped in at the last minute, and it was no shank or poorly timed shot.

Henin couldn’t seem to deal with any of it at first, and maybe as a result of that, I might have been overestimating the effectiveness of Kleybanova’s shots. But early on, Kleybanova would consistently win points by hitting hard straight down the middle. Actually it was frustrating to watch seeing Kleybanova achieve so much success without maintaining much accuracy. I couldn’t understand the lack of rallies, why Henin couldn’t manage to extend them. Usually if you’re going to hit a winner against Henin, you need to make her cover large amounts of court because she’s that quick.

From a shot selection point of view, Henin was frustrating in her own way too. For some reason, she tried to hit winners in a couple of shots herself too. Why was she trying to play the same way as Kleybanova? Why was she not making Kleybanova move when it’s the Russian’s weakness, and why was she not being more patient when it would give her a clear advantage in the rallies? Yes, these were the old problems from a couple of weeks ago coming back to haunt Henin again. Her unforced error stats in the first set were terrible, and whenever she reached some sort of consistency, she’d appear much closer to evening up the match

At least in the second set, despite her continual struggles, she started to resort to a more consistent game. It looks like she has figured out that she can still make Kleybanova move around the court just by hitting crosscourt forehands and backhands the majority of the time, and maybe throwing in some slices as well. I suppose this is related to the story I heard about the crosscourt and down the line drill, that if one person hits crosscourt and one person hits down the line, the person retrieving the crosscourt shots will have to cover so much more ground. Of course Kleybanova didn’t hit all her shots down the line or crosscourt, but Henin should have no trouble covering that ground, should there have been a one-on-one battle in this.

As the rallies started getting longer, the more Henin appeared to be in control of them. Though the fact that the unforced error statistics were in Kleybanova’s favour for such a long time showed just how poorly Henin was playing when you consider what a risky game Kleybanova plays. But in the end, Henin wore her down, and I think she started to become more used to the types of shots she was getting from Kleybanova’s racquet too.

At one stage, Henin was a set and a break down, but she managed to come through in the end.

Following her match on Hisense Arena was Andy Murray and Florent Serra who I seem to somehow always end up watching live due to timing and luck of the draw.

During the warm-up, some Murray supporters in the crowd provided some light entertainment by surely distracting the players in the warm-up especially Murray, by calling out forehand, backhand or volley depending on what shot he was hitting at contact.

This time around I was situated in a much better position to see Murray than in my brief little encounter a couple of days ago on Margaret Court Arena about six rows back and behind the players. I think, given that Murray tends to have an understated game, it was difficult to know what to expect before this week. The lack of pace is not as evident live, definitely not in the same way as Fabrice Santoro anyway. And he doesn’t come across as being that lazy around the court either.

But I was pleased to learn that I liked what I saw. It’s nice to see a player that comes across as obviously being very good, while not overly relying on the shotmaking department. I like the fact that Murray builds up points with shots that are connected to one another, a series of shots that lead to the final winner. I also like that he doesn’t have to be playing incredibly well for it to be entertaining. Either that or I am taking for granted his quality of play.

Obviously Murray is incredibly good at spotting openings. He can generate some good angles on both sides, often short angles too, and as soon as he has his opponent leaving a gap in the court, he’ll throw in the down the line shot if he’s feeling confident enough.

Actually, it’s interesting to note the difference between Murray playing assertively as opposed to playing reactively. Obviously his shot selection will be different, with not as many down the line shots, but even the threat of his defensive abilities significantly changes. On an assertive day, Murray will seem to leave no gaps open for his opponents, neutralise everything and make it even better. But maybe after a short high forehand or a casually chipped shot, he’ll find himself blocking everything back and being almost on the permanent defensive.

This is important given that if Serra is given anything that resembles a short ball, he’ll pounce on it. Serra played a decent first set, though he faded away in the second. He is definitely a player that plays well in patches.

This is what happened here in the first set. Murray was confident to start with then he backed off midway through. So it is very possible that I was admiring the exact same thing that would end up being a weakness later in a match. Murray was in complete control of that first set and should have finished it off well before he ended up doing so 7-5 in the first set. He played a shocking service game serving for the set at 5-3 broken to love on the back of his own errors. It seems that whenever Murray returns serve well, with deep returns, he sets up all the rallies for himself but if he doesn’t block it back well enough then he’s in trouble.

In the second set was a more relaxed Murray, as if the match was now firmly in his control. This set marked the introduction of the trademark behind the baseline passing shot winners, which was what we all came to see. By now, he had also added some additional variety to his game, in terms of shot selection. It was good, but also very relaxed at the same time, partially due to the fact that Serra couldn’t seem to keep up a consistent standard in his own play.

Given that Murray was already up two sets to love, I thought I should head over to Rod Laver Arena to watch Florian Mayer against Juan Martin Del Potro, a rematch of last year’s second round match here in Melbourne. I didn’t want to be joining the match to watch with it nearing its conclusion so I left Murray’s match early, though it turned out as I made my way there, that Mayer had just taken a break to go up 3-0 in the second set.

As I sat down to take my place on the seat, Del Potro would hit a couple of scorching winners to suggest that this match was played fully in his hands. Del Potro seems to have the intimidating ability to hit huge return winners when he perfectly connects with a shot. Despite pace being the main attribute of those spectacular winners, I’m pretty sure he does it mainly through timing.

A couple of minutes later, and all of these spectacular winners started to make more sense. Del Potro has been swinging away on everything, because he’s only interested in keeping rallies short. I started to think that maybe he is injured, because only injured players play with recklessness like that, aside from Richard Gasquet’s play late last year. Now that I have hindsight, I can say that he merely tanked the rest of the set away to save energy, and maybe to protect that minor injury he has too.

Del Potro’s energy levels were up and down the whole set. It was one of Del Potro’s slow walking and shoulder slumping days, and his movement didn’t seem that active in the actual rallies themselves either. It was very deceptive movement because he didn’t move that energetically if he didn’t have to run far. He’d only move as much as required. But whenever he had to reach a shot on the stretch, suddenly he’d speed up and make his way there.

In any case, it was great to see Mayer showing the same form as he did against Troicki the other day, still striking that crosscourt forehand well, and throwing in just as much variety as he did back then. Except this time, Mayer probably has even a few more tricks up his sleeve, or at least he is using more of it today anyway. He’s throwing in more slice forehands especially on the run and using the angles even more than usual. But his biggest strength by far would have to be how well he’s sneaking up to the net.

One would think that in a baseline rally, Del Potro would have the clear advantage but Mayer has been doing an unexpectedly good job of closing that gap. And that’s because of how well he’s been sneaking up to the net, and sensing whenever he has Del Potro out wide, and out of position. He has been serving and volleying a lot on his own serve too.

Where Del Potro did end up getting the clear advantage over Mayer was on serve, how he’d be able to rely on it for so many more cheap points which made him much less prone to losing serve. Mayer had his chances to break back when Del Potro was serving for the match, missing a drop volley into the net that didn’t even need to be good to be a winner, not to mention that these kinds of shots are Mayer’s specialty.

Due to the match finishing close to 7pm, there was a half hour delay in the night matches. What I wanted to see was Rafael Nadal against Philipp Kohlschreiber, and it ended up being a decent match despite the poor start.

I think I had a fear on what I would comment on, given that Nadal’s strengths and weaknesses have already been extensively covered. And should I make the obvious comment on Nadal’s topspin? The most fascinating part of the match for me was going outside for a break and having a look at the TV screen to see the difference of what the match looked like from there. The context of all of this is that I watched the match from a very diagonal perspective which tends to distort what everything looks like, aside from being able to see everything closer.

I think, during the match, I had not realized that the players were using the whole court so much and having to cover so much of it. But aside from that, the other difference was that, you could barely see any spin on the television. In this particular match, both Nadal and Kohlschreiber were hitting with a lot of spin, though not in a similar way. Looking at all these rallies, almost all of these angles that the players are continuously generating is related to the spin that they are imparting on it to make it break away from the court so much, so it was strange not being able to see it. Though I think it was easier to admire the movement on TV view than live actually.

It was a very slow start indeed for Nadal, and he opened up the first game with a couple of shanked shots. Kohlschreiber was in good form early on in free hitting mode, and he must have been loving those high forehands which surely suit his exaggerated grip. Kohlschreiber looked as if he had plenty of time to hit the ball to wind up for his shots, and he was easily the aggressor early on in the match.

It’s a sign that Nadal isn’t playing well early on when the flow of play is so one-sided like this, with it depending so heavily on what Kohlschreiber does. Of course, early on I was curious about Nadal’s spin so I paid specific attention to the height he was getting over the net. It’s no surprise that it was a little higher than other players, but it seemed to be different every single time, and it was especially higher if he was running out wide.

He doesn’t hit a shot with a very clean sound on his racquet so it’s sometimes difficult to tell just how well he is hitting the ball, and how if he hits a ball higher over the net, whether it is intentional or not. Though it’s not like everything looks the same. There is a difference. It’s just less obvious.

In the first set, Nadal is still playing it safe. He’s picking a lot on Kohlschreiber’s forehand and willing to trade backhand crosscourts for a long time. But he starts to time the ball better and become more consistent, which makes it increasingly difficult for Kohlschreiber to execute his shots. Though I do think that Kohlschreiber lost sense of what he was trying to achieve in his shotmaking, and didn’t target Nadal’s forehand often enough at that stage.

Nadal’s forehand is nowhere near as mechanical live, by the way I think. I put it down to the movement that he has on that side, which just makes it more beautiful to watch how he will sometimes be off the ground for a short period of time when making contact with the ball. It’s very athletic.

In terms of Nadal’s movement, as expected, his feet are moving quickly all the time. The result of it is that unlike some other players I’ve seen, whether he gets to a shot or not is nowhere near as surprising because his first steps, middle steps and last steps are all as quick as each other seemingly. The longer the match went on, the more he started to hit that trademark running forehand passing shot which I find to be ridiculously accurate.

The first set was like the trial period for both players, and in the second set they started to figure out more of what worked. I don’t really know why they needed that period given that they’ve played against each other numerous times before, but nevertheless it was there. Kohlschreiber in the second set, despite being less consistent had discovered the type of all-court game that he needed to play which would give him more chance to be successful on a long term basis.

Nadal stopped hitting as many backhand crosscourt rallies and started making Kohlschreiber move side to side more. This is what he needed to do, to take further control of the match, and make it more about him. After a while, it ended up being a nice all-court battle to watch. Though in the end, Nadal’s ability to hit on the run would continually improve, and Kohlschreiber was bound to make a few too many errors under that much pressure. It was a long match though, and rather competitive.

Australian Open Day 4 Blog

I don’t know whether I am more of a follower this year than last, but it feels like the stands are more packed than they were back then. I get a little tired of watching matches in Hisense Arena sometimes, because it’s lacking in involvement. Isn’t that the reason why we turn up to tennis matches to experience it in a way that the relationship between the TV and your sofa seat cannot offer you?

But as much as I wandered around the grounds, I always found myself going back to Hisense Arena today because of the limited options available. Though I had always planned to watch the match between David Ferrer and Marcos Baghdatis, which was surely the most promising match on paper.

In the past, I never really had much of an interest in Baghdatis because any media on him was always overly focused on his personality and big smile, and I didn’t find him to stand out in terms of shotmaking either, at least not like Jo-Wilfried Tsonga so clearly does.

But I am slowly starting to see it more in his game, although only when he is playing well like he did for most of the first set. Baghdatis was clearly the better player out of the two, manufacturing five break point opportunities for himself but without being able to convert.

The majority of good tennis players are great at changing directions and moving the ball from side to side. But what I like about Baghdatis is that he doesn’t follow this side to side rule as strictly, and he doesn’t stick to crosscourt shots either. He’s one of the few players that can consistently construct points that are completely unexpected, and maybe aside from the tactical side of things, he has great disguise too especially on the backhand. There aren’t that many people that wrong foot their opponents as often as he does. He can also hold his shots longer and create subtle changes of pace.

As I was watching the first set, I was wondering whether this is how Ferrer’s forehand looks typically live. Because it looks underwhelming and fails to stands out, regardless of how hard I look at it. Baghdatis doesn’t look like he has any problem with it, and it’s almost as if he has three or four more options than Ferrer does whenever he hits a shot from the baseline. But despite showing the more promising tennis, Ferrer puts together a consistent return game filled with deep shots and conjures up an unexpected break to take the set.

It turns out I was wrong about Ferrer’s forehand because he has now started hitting it much better in the second set. Flatter, harder and deeper now and it is easy to see the impact that it has on Baghdatis’ game, now unable to implement as many changes of directions.

On TV, you get a better sense of the athleticism and rotation that Ferrer throws into his forehand, but live from this far away it doesn’t look as powerful. What I could see was that he was starting to dictate the points more and hitting with great accuracy. Ferrer was also surprisingly adventurous often coming into finish points off at the net.

Ferrer’s speed around the court was particularly impressive, and maybe it was more noticeable because of the overly excessive dropshots and drop volleys that Baghdatis threw in. Most of the dropshot retrievals weren’t unexpected, but there were a couple which surprised everyone. I can’t recall the crowd clapping so many times expecting that a point was over only to find Ferrer scampering to it and hitting a winning shot from it.

Ferrer had a break in the third set and it looked to be nearly over. This is when Ferrer started to play his worst tennis of the match, throwing away so many unforced errors, it was difficult to believe.

The second half of the match from the third set onwards, however, marked a slight change in the patterns of play. Baghdatis had now decided to hang in longer in the rallies and raise the percentages of his shot selection. It wasn’t as exciting to watch, it must be said. Instead, it turned into an intense affair of difficult rallies every point, with long competitive games becoming more regular. It was a brave move indeed trying to beat Ferrer at his own game (to some extent) but of course, Baghdatis could still call on one of his extra tricks if he needed them, but he’d use them more sparingly.

Actually it was impressive for me to see Baghdatis grind away like this, given that he was down two sets to love and there was surely less immediate reward in doing so. I thought physically, he held on well so it seemed out of the blue to me when he started cramping in the final game. Ferrer seemed to back off somewhat towards the end with not as many net approaches and too many errors crept into the fifth set for him to stand any chance.

There was not much of note on the outside courts, so it’s no wonder that the Tommy Haas vs Janko Tipsarevic match completely filled up the stadiums. I initially attempted to try to watch the match from the top of the stands, but then decided it wasn’t worth it. For some reason, in the media seats, no one claps as if they’re journalists, not fans. Why should I be feeling weird when I’m doing what everyone else in the crowd does?

So after a while, I walked back to Hisense Arena to watch Serena Williams play against Petra Kvitova. They had both Williams sisters scheduled one after the other, which I think is too much of the same thing, not that they play similarly but a similar feeling is involved with the anticipation of watching them.

If I was to make a choice between the two, I’d choose Serena, and that’s what I did. I thought Serena was impressive in an all-round way, though there wasn’t really anything that made me watch and admire in amazement. Her serve was good, but that was to be expected. The sisters were known back in the day for their amazing power and athleticism, but Kvitova is just as much of a power player, though a very one-dimensional and limited one at that. Serena’s accuracy compared to Kvitova seemed so much better in comparison, like at a completely different level.

Kvitova’s left-handed and hits the ball incredibly flat, way too flat. Seeing her play in the first five minutes, it was obvious she was going to be hit-and-miss. She was quite adventurous on serve too, and sometimes went for big second serves, at least early on. Because of the game style she was up against, I don’t really feel Serena’s athleticism was showcased or tested, and so it became unknown what the extent of her injury was.

Anyway, it was a routine victory for Serena, so I didn’t have to wait that long to see the match between Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Taylor Dent.

I had never seen Taylor Dent live before, and what I ended up seeing was not what I expected. It’s the first service game of the match and he’s hammering down serves at 210-230km/h. He’s the first player that makes you look at the radar gun consistently with interest. Even Andy Roddick only sticks to about 200km/h these days, opting for variety instead. In that first game, he missed almost all of his first serves, and missed one second serve as well.

But it added to the impression that Dent plays an overly high risk game, and not at all a classical style despite the serve-and-volley and occasional chip and charge. When he’s on the baseline, he’s always looking to hit big shots off the forehand which is especially risky because it’s not really that great of a shot. I guess where he is in the mould of players in a previous era is that he doesn’t hit with much spin at all. It’s fascinating, you would think that considering that he likes to hit slice backhands that it’s not possible for him to play a completely fast paced game, but his slice isn’t really that slow. It moves quickly through the court.

Dent’s always doing everything at such a fast pace, that I’m always wondering how he can manage to sneak into the net quick enough. Maybe it was too fast for me to even notice where he would be positioning himself at the net. But one thing was obvious, which was that he wasn’t having that much success volleying.

Tsonga hit so many winning passing shots today, that it made me almost comment on how surprisingly good his passing shots are. But then I remembered, that didn’t he often struggle in the past with hitting backhand passing shots? So what was the difference here that gave him so much success? I think, for one, that Tsonga really likes to use the pace especially on the backhand.

Tsonga must be a particularly good player reacting to quick, flatter shots. His unforced error count was incredibly good today. Normally hitting a moderate amount of unforced errors is good for him, considering how high risk his game is, but he had statistics that would have been great for anyone. Even if you took away the winners count, and only looked at unforced errors. Dent’s was rather horrid unsurprisingly.

After writing a couple of days ago about how unique Tsonga’s game is, I thought Dent’s game looked similar in terms of overall style of play, but not strengths and weaknesses. Like Tsonga, he was also looking to take forehands early and come in on it, though his movement to the net was nowhere near as good.

It was a comfortable victory for Tsonga in the end, and he always looked like the better player. Dent had good patches where he managed to keep up with Tsonga but he never threatened on serve, aside from the break of serve midway in the third set. But it always looked like Dent’s next bad service game was never far away, and his error count was consistently worse than Tsonga’s.

Australian Open Day 3 Blog

It's early in the morning, and I'm not really bothered about whether I watch Tomas Berdych, Fernando Gonzalez or Andy Roddick. I have to admit that when blogging, I like to take into consideration, that I might actually want to write about someone that I haven’t already written about… only if I’m stumped as to what I would like to choose.

I chose Andy Roddick and he’s facing Thomaz Bellucci, a potentially promising young player with competent looking groundstrokes. I don’t know if I’d go as far as to say that they are stylish, but it is getting there. He has the type of groundstrokes filled with full, circular motions, and fluid motions like that are definitely more pleasant to watch than the abrupt. In the past, I had thought of him as a strong baseliner, who has the ability to hit forcing shots.

Sadly I had overrated his chances in this particular match, and about three games into the match, Roddick already appeared a heavy favourite winning far more points on Bellucci’s serve than the other way around. I remember those days when Roddick was thought of as unlikely to win baseline rallies against any player that thrives in that area, but that has changed now.

It was an inhibited performance from Roddick though, mostly staying within his comfort zone, disappointing from a spectator point of view because he can be more adventurous than that. There was not much of an attempt to hit baseline winners, it was more about forcing shots, finding depth and limiting his opponent’s options. Roddick had incredibly low unforced error statistics, which was impossible for Bellucci to keep up with, and it only increased the pressure on the Brazilian to come up with more spectacular points.

I just wonder, despite the one-sided victory, whether this is the correct way for Roddick to play because every time he reaches the latter stages of tournaments, we inevitably see him trying to play a more all-court game, and perhaps it would be best for him to use some extra practice on the approach shots.

It was interesting to see the development of Bellucci over the course of the match, and his attempt to play an all-court game, to break up the rhythm of Roddick. He was definitely the more aggressive player, but he never looked reliable enough, or even entirely certain on what he was trying to achieve. I am not sure whether Bellucci even pulled it off well enough to be considered an all-court player. He gets marks for trying, but maybe a little more practice in this area is required.

As the second set concluded, I decided that was enough for me so I made my way back to the main section of outside courts to see Philipp Kohlschreiber play against Wayne Odesnik. Only to find out that there are barely any seats there. Still, the alternatives I had in my mind were too far away for me to walk, so I stayed for a while. Just long enough to have a look at their groundstrokes.

This view I have directly facing the baseline, is one that looks a lot like the video camera shots you get in warm-ups of matches where you get an extremely close look at the players and their technique. Kohlschreiber’s groundstrokes look great from here, with the very noticeable shotmaking ability he has, but many of his shots aren’t even landing in the court. It doesn’t seem to matter from here, whether he misses or not.

His backhand obviously is the big strength, and at first glance it looks as aesthetically pleasing as Justine Henin’s. But again, not with the same effect. I think a common trait of all great single-handed backhands is that backhand crosscourts can be exceptionally potent in shots that look like rallying shots, not hit too far away from the opponent. Shots that just happen to spin further and further away from the opponent on landing.

Kohlschreiber’s shots tend to do that on both sides though because he does hit with a lot of spin without compromising pace or penetration. He has big grip changes on both sides, and he is literally uncoiling his shots, the way he will use his whole body. I suppose his forehand works in the same way that a discus is thrown in athletics although to a much lesser extent clearly. Again, you get the sense that all of this is great when it works, not so much when it isn’t.

Odesnik does a good job of keeping up with Kohlschreiber’s groundstrokes showing some very good side to side movement. He seems very light on his feet and capable of offering up shots that aren’t significantly weaker on the run. The problem is that all of his forehands are loopy and high over the net. To win rallies, he needs to play long points every point moving his forehand around using claycourt point construction.

In the first set, Odesnik had numerous opportunities and couldn’t convert, while Kohlschreiber converted his one chance. The match was mostly a matter of how well Kohlschreiber could play, with the match clearly in his hands.

There’s only so much tennis I can watch standing up so I decided to watch Feliciano Lopez’s match against Rainer Schuettler instead.

It was one set all, and they were midway into the third set. As I walk into the stadium, I see Lopez gesturing to his box, making a lot of arm signals about how bad his play is. When they get to exchanging rallies, the first thing that I notice is just how much Lopez steals the show, making Schuettler seem totally irrelevant. I think it’s all about that grunt. It doesn’t seem to matter whether Lopez is hitting a big shot or not, he puts in an effort grunt which says, look how hard I’m working out here.

But apart from that, Lopez seems very bouncy on the court, as he returns serve and it always looks like he’s constantly using his knees, bouncing them around in a very subtle manner. Watching him play live, I’m very surprised by how reliable his groundstrokes look and how well he moves. He’s comfortably exchanging long rallies with Schuettler, without looking like the worse player. I always thought of him more as a serve/forehand/volley player but his other attributes are not that terrible. Still, it was the forehand that made the rallies competitive between him and Schuettler, the main difference I think which allowed him to win.

Schuettler on both sides seemed lacking in potency, like a weaker and more one-dimensional version of the tennis Andy Roddick was playing this morning. He doesn't seem to have the ability to seize control of rallies without giving big chances to his opponent to balance it out again with a big shot. It’s interesting that more than a year ago, I wrote about Schuettler being the complete opposite of an effortless player, the way he would deliberately use a lot of his arms and legs in the creation of a forceful groundstroke. But to balance that, I think he is actually very efficient. He has textbook defensive skills, great at cutting across diagonally to retrieve wide balls.  He meets the ball before it drops too far and he often seems to be in contact with the ball in the best position.

Unfortunately he doesn’t seem anywhere near as effective when he’s not counterpunching and trying to create something, and that’s where a lot of the mistakes come from. This is the difference between Schuettler playing well and playing poorly, whether he can pull off more aggressive, non-counterpunching shots where he can't just use the pace that he was given with. As the fourth set went on, the errors seemed to pile up for Schuettler and it became a more one-sided affair for Lopez.

For a player that is labelled as a serve-and-volleyer, Lopez didn’t really do that in spades today. I noticed that he really likes to use his forehand and the midcourt ball, and prefer to come in on the next shot instead.

After a decent chunk of waiting time and scoreboard monitoring during matches, the match between Florian Mayer and Viktor Troicki had finally arrived. I don’t like to leave matches abruptly, so they were midway in the first set when I first joined. They have scoreboards this year that have updated scores in the changeovers which is a great improvement from last year saving me from walking back to the IBM scoreboard on the grounds out of panic. Though this ends up taking my attention away from the players sitting at the changeover, and now I never have any clue what they are doing in those breaks.

As I take my seat, Troicki has just taken the first service break of the match and clenches his fist. It was only a matter of time, I pessimistically thought. Well, this is the match-up of the unorthodox techniques, so it seems appropriate that I should analyse that. Troicki’s serve consists of a ball toss that is thrown ridiculously far forward, and his legs are spaced so far apart at first, before moving them both together at front to create that universally slanted/forward-moving action. But it obviously works well. He generates a lot of pace on it, and it was a good serving day for him. Something around 20 aces.

With unorthodox technique usually comes technically liable shots and that’s what happened in the first set with the set being focused on both players’ flailing forehands. Both Troicki and Mayer are definitely more solid on their backhands. Troicki has more of an ability to get on top of forehands and hit it big though. For the first set, that’s what the difference between the two was.

Mayer was generally spending most of his time behind the baseline chopping and slicing shots in defense. His forehand was proving to be a big liability too, and Troicki went up an early break in the second set. But where Troicki should have capitalised and ran away with it, his game suffered too and started leaking errors. This gave the chance for Mayer to start working his way back into the match and solidifying his game.

It seems like lately, Mayer is a very slow starter as his game gradually turned from solid to assured and confident over the course of the match. What a difference it makes when Mayer is playing well and confident about his game. Sometimes he seems like a bit of a low key type of person and in between points, it shows but from late in the second set onwards, Mayer was transformed into a much better player. He was doing everything quicker now, and suddenly it seemed like he had much more offensive options.

The turning point was that forehand crosscourt. A shot that I didn’t even know was a weapon. The shot that he had been missing turned out to be one of his greatest strengths, the way he’d consistently find a great angle with it and use it to build and construct all his points with. Once he had that shot working, his whole game started to come together, that full-flowing unorthodox game in all its glory. Dropshots, serving-and-volleying, awesome double-handed slice backhands that barely skidded over the net, strong double-handed backhand drives and occasional forehand slices and just really fun all-round play.

There was no way I was going to leave this match, while it was this entertaining. And the intimate atmosphere is great too, not feeling distanced compared to other larger showcourts, and sitting near numerous German and Serbian supporters. I like how whether I decide to clap softly or loudly seems to make a noticeable difference to the atmosphere I am feeling around me.

I could barely believe it that Mayer would be controlling the match as much as this. This had to be a result of Troicki’s decision to play in a more restrained way on the forehand, because of the errors he was making. But by the time he had readjusted his aggression again, Mayer had built up all the confidence he needed. I think his decision to return Troicki’s serve much earlier and closer to the baseline made a big difference in the outcome.

Throughout this match, Troicki was animated and fiery. It seems to be a given almost these days that every match without Hawkeye will have some disagreement about a line call in it, and this was no exception. Except that Troicki went far enough to suggest that there is a problem with females umpiring men’s matches, which ended up causing a very charged atmosphere that had crowd members shouting comments at Troicki, but Troicki continued to direct all of his complaints to the chair umpire.

Troicki picked up his level of play in the third set which ended up being the best part of the match, featuring excellent all-court play from both players. Mayer seems to have a unique knack of being able to hit almost every passing shot low over the net by the way. The highlight of the match would have to be the third set tie-break, where Mayer broke open the tie-break and his lead, by hitting a spectacular dive volley where his racquet fell from his hands after contact, quite awesome under the circumstances.

After such an intense and high quality third set, Mayer took advantage of a loss in concentration to achieve the early break. Troicki had his chances to break back, but he didn't convert, and then he decided that he had enough. This was not a dejected performance. This was an immature release of frustration, almost as if he was making a statement. He made a specific effort to make no effort. Serving to stay in the match, he didn’t even plant his feet properly before serving and he hit every serve, first or second as big as possible and served and volleyed. This really is the kind of behaviour that can break your reputation, and he should have at least tried to keep it professional.

Nevertheless I was in a hurry to watch Andy Murray anyway in his first round match against Marc Gicquel, so I saw the good side of it. But even though Troicki tried to make the end of the match as quick as possible, so did Murray in the beginning of his. As expected, the stadium was fully packed though at what stage that happened I’m not sure. Fortunately I ended up occupying the media seats at the top row and end caught just over a set of this match.

At first it’s difficult adjusting to the view being significantly farther from the players. There’s definitely no connection here. Actually you can’t really see topspin that well from up here, instead you can just see the balls bouncing relatively high.

One of the first things I noticed is that it didn’t seem like one of Murray’s sluggish or behind-the-baseline days. He was very quick to move forward into the ball and on the rise. Most people hit their backhands by driving right through it, but Murray’s backhand looks like more of a reflective shot, which makes him great at redirecting shots on that side. In comparison to other players’ games, one thing that stands out is how Murray can play an all-court game more effortlessly and fluidly. He doesn’t need to charge into the net, and his way of showing urgency is to have his feet and racquet set up early.

Gicquel seemed to be on the right track tactically, but he didn’t have the game to back it up. He took his forehand early wherever possible, and took charge wherever possible. From this view, Gicquel’s movement onto his forehand and arm action reminds me of Stepanek’s, the way he moves forward to hit his racquet down onto the ball especially when it’s close to his body. The problem with it though, is that he is inconsistent with it and his game was not really technically sound enough for it to execute on the regular basis that was required.

Australian Open Day 2 Blog

Tomas Berdych has been in good form recently, or at least in patches. He's commonly known for his smooth ballstriking, and I’ve recently come to appreciate that more after some high quality performances in Brisbane a couple of weeks ago.

When he’s on, it looks like he has more feel for the ball than the majority of players with the way he’ll casually just put every ball into the corner, because why not when it’s this easy?

Berdych was pitted up against Robin Haase and he picked up right where he left off in Brisbane. Although he really didn’t, because in between, he had a strange loss to Peter Luczak in Sydney.

When Berdych plays like this, it looks rhythmic like he has gotten himself into a nice groove in the same way that a dancer would be moving to the beat of music. I can see why commentators mention that Berdych only does things one way, and that’s making everything look pretty, not dirty. Even when he lunges out to reach a ball, he doesn’t look fully extended. It’s like his long limbs are doing the job for him, though that obviously isn’t the case.

But Grand Slams are made of best of five set matches, so it was never likely that he’d be able to put in a consistently perfect performance. I tried to enjoy it while it lasted, the first set of the match. Haase tried to keep up, but it never looked like he could get to the ball quickly enough to hit an effective defensive shot.

He seemed intimidated at first by Berdych’s quick start but he settled down early in the second set, helped by a very loose service game from Berdych. That service game didn't eventuate in a break, but it changed the course of the match. This was always in the cards for Berdych, who generally plays significantly worse even at a 5% lower level. The second and third sets showed Berdych playing at a more neutral level until picking it up again late in the third, where he started to put Haase back on a string again.

That’s what Berdych generally likes to do, make his opponents cover large distances. Not much else comes into consideration such as whether making that risk would be necessary. Tennis is an instinctive game for Berdych, and it looks like he’d like to keep it that way. The first set was somewhat exhibition-like in its execution, not that I had a problem with that.

I have to give credit to Haase though, who tried his best to turn the tables around. He’d put in a special effort to take the ball earlier and control the match with his forehand. This was a difficult task in itself, because Haase's forehand has a significantly greater margin over the net than Berdych’s, so it's easier to retrieve.

Comparing effort levels, it was like Berdych barely broke a sweat while Haase needed to give his full undivided attention and intensity in order to play tennis like this. Therefore it was no surprise whenever he’d throw in a disappointing error, he’d shout at himself in frustration. It’s a lot he has to manage out there, not only his game. He kept it together today, but not well enough. Not well enough for a top class player like Berdych.

Near the end of the match, in what was the best point of the match, Berdych had sent Haase running side-to-side all over the court almost in a Davydenko-like manner, doing everything but missing the delicate drop volley into the open court. As amusing and meaningless it all was in the context of the match, is this a typical Berdych point from a more general perspective?

In what seemed like relatively good timing, I was able to watch the conclusion of the Fabrice Santoro vs Marin Cilic match, which I thought might have been finished last night. Things picked up right where they left off stylistically anyway. Both Santoro and Cilic must have been quite pleased that far more people were watching them this time around, and in a much more enthusiastic manner too.

There’s not much to mention about Cilic in this match-up. He approached this the same way as many of the other top players have done in the past against Santoro, and that’s to play with patience. The point was not how many unforced errors he made, but whether he could keep a calm head and avoid overplaying, then he'd fancy his chances to win the match.

This is where Santoro looks a bit lightweight. Maybe in a dream world, it would be really cool if Santoro could hit chip shots like he currently does now, while being able to drive through the ball with more pace too, to drive opponents crazy with changes of pace. But I guess anyone that wants to see that will have to stick with Andy Murray for now. Then again that would probably take away all the admiration and amazement that tennis fans have for Santoro, how he has managed to make it this far in the tennis world with not only such an unorthodox game, but with such a lack of pace.

The problem with Santoro’s drive shots was mainly the depth, not the pace. It would land short too often and Cilic would take advantage of that with more net approaches than we usually see from him.

Still, he managed to show a nice mixture of play to keep the match interesting with net charges, slow probing slices and some lobs. One thing that I forgot to mention, or failed to notice yesterday in my report about Santoro, is how difficult must it surely be to bend down as low as that to hit low volleys with two hands. I wonder why he doesn't switch to a one-hander on the stretch but he never does unless he absolutely needs to.

The way the scheduling and timing worked out, this allowed me to watch the match between Jurgen Melzer and Florent Serra, right from 0-0. This match was played on Court 11, right in the middle of numerous outside courts. It’s basically the most distracting court in Melbourne Park, though I still think this is a fair deal considering that it’s not like players have to deal with any music or outside entertainment.

In my line of sight, I had the additional light entertainment of being able to see Tommy Robredo and Santiago Giraldo swing through their groundstrokes without having a clue where their shots were landing.

Melzer didn’t seem to like the atmosphere much though. I was amazed that every noticeable distraction, such as the umpire reading the score from a nearby court, a sudden cheer or someone walking into the stands mid-match, he’d notice it to the point of even stopping play because of it. It’s just that you would think that if everything was noisy and chaotic, that little things like people walking across the stands would mean little in comparison.

The way the stands on Court 11 are built, one side doesn't even have an entrance meaning you can just walk past and sit down straight away. Yet on the other side of the court, we’re practicing normal tennis rules here. I did think it was incredibly amusing though whenever the chair umpire would remind people to not come in until changeovers, as if the people sitting down were the same people who had not yet arrived.

As for the match itself, it was a bit of a grower. Early on, this definitely seemed like a lower standard of tennis than what I had been watching before. Whenever they were a little off their timing, the ball would fly on them. At least Serra was cracking his forehand though, so that made a big difference in dictating the match. The first set was more like a sub-plot in itself, separated from the rest because Melzer picked up his play after that.

The second and third sets were played at a whole new intensity, with rallies that were physically challenging and difficult to keep up with. Suddenly everything seemed to be moving at a faster pace, and sometimes I became fixated with watching the ball move back and forth, the ball being hit with such skill, noticing little angles here and there and down the line shots. Things like that are generally more interesting at this close side-on view. Melzer has a better ability to include subtle variety in his game, throwing in a double-handed slice backhand and a decent transition game which he used more sparingly than he normally does.

I really liked Melzer’s fighting spirit here, how he went from being dominated in the first set, to being able to dig deep enough to hold his own ground in the baseline rallies and slowly outmaneuvering Serra. Watching the match unfold, I could feel as if Melzer was increasingly starting to take over more control in the match. The third set was the critical stage, the one where he continually had more chances to break serve, only to lose his serve in the final game which was outlined by a potentially bad line call.

I took a short break after the end of the third set to prepare for the rest of the match, and this helped emphasise how the last two sets were so much different from the second and third. It must have been all that intensity from the earlier sets being so hard to keep up, that it became very patchy towards the end.

Somehow after all of that effort, Melzer snatched the fourth set rather tamely. By now, Serra had decided to hit the ball harder, though it seemed clear that Melzer was no longer chasing down balls as quickly as he was earlier. He has a reputation of this, of slowing down and becoming fatigued in the fifth set, and this is what happened here. Just like how he had resigned to the loss, I had too. It was a long match to follow, but I did it.

After watching an intense competitive match, it was refreshing to watch a more straightforward match storyline-wise, as I diverted my attention to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga’s match against Sergiy Stakhovsky. I thought for a moment with Stakhovsky going up a break in the second, that maybe it would be competitive. But as soon as I sat down in the arena after Tsonga broke back immediately, he never looked threatened.

It’s been a year now since I had seen Tsonga live, and straight away he reminded me again why he’s one of the most fun players to watch. Sometimes tennis can have a tendency of looking overly technical live but not for Tsonga. Tsonga’s game just stands out. He hits a couple of forehands, leans right into them, then he comes in to knock it off for a volley. Or at least that’s how he would like to play, by having as few in-between shots as possible.

He was able to do that at first, but after a while, he started to engage in more rallies with Stakhovsky and that’s when you start to see his range of higher looping balls too. I don’t think they’re a strength of his, but at least he covers the court well.

Stakhovsky’s game isn’t too dissimilar from Tsonga’s actually. He likes coming into the net and playing an all-court game, and he doesn’t hang around too long at the baseline. That’s why this match was being played at an extremely quick pace. He plays aggressively from the back of the court too, sometimes to his detriment because of his inconsistency.

Aesthetically it doesn't share many similarities to Tsonga though and his moves from the baseline to the net are nowhere near as smooth. His mannerisms especially when returning serve reminded me so much of Philipp Kohlschreiber, and his backhand is a little similar too, maybe more so just because I have already linked them together in my head.

It should be interesting to see over the coming years what Stakhovsky can add to his game, because it looked promising but rough to me. Like he seemed to be developing a good idea of how he should be playing but without pulling it off well enough. In the end, he was comfortably outplayed by Tsonga, who showed positive signs but will need to tighten up the screws over the coming days to avoid any potential difficulties.

In any case, that match was a nice short break from drama because I was in for another hotly contested match, this time between Richard Gasquet and Mikhail Youzhny. This was my first experience watching a late night match that ended up being extended late into the night, and I had a lot of trouble with it, clock-watching all the time to make sure I wouldn’t be back too late, whatever that meant.

This was a high quality match though, definitely the best match I’d seen so far. What I liked about it the most was not only the variety of both players, but the variety of shot selections from point to point. I think the best way of analysing whether a match has long lasting appeal, whether it will continue to be entertaining three hours onwards, is whether the pattern of play is predictable or not. Whether each point is played out a different way, involving different strategies, and not seeing similar contrasts again and again.

Youzhny opened up the match looking shaky and lost his opening service game. Gasquet seemed much more calm and controlled in comparison, an indication of all the tennis he’s played leading up to this event. From the view I’m looking at, at first it’s difficult to adjust to seeing the spins so clearly from the players, almost to the point where it looks like every shot is a safe shot because of the margin over the net.

Gasquet started to impose himself on the match quickly already with his trademark backhand, opening the match with some smart tennis while Youzhny was still finding his range. Soon enough though, Youzhny regained his consistency and they were back on serve in the first set.

There wasn't much separating the two quality-wise. Youzhny is great at creating clever rallies and opening up the court, while Gasquet is better at utilising his transition game and playing a more outright attacking, but straightforward game. This was always an entertaining match-up on paper because despite both players having great backhands, they were never going to be overly reliant on one shot or tactic.

I had the feeling initially that Gasquet had the upper hand because he had the ability to be more attacking and finish rallies in fewer strokes with his net ability. Yet Gasquet never really pulled away from the match that much, even though he threatened to several times. He snatched the first set on the back of a nervy tie-breaker from both players that was full of poor errors and double faults towards the end. It was great drama though, and the crowd reacting and making sounds during good points definitely added to that.

In the second set, Gasquet started to play more of a baseline oriented game. He appeared to be carrying a niggling injury in the beginning of the third set, then twitched his face to show he was in some pain, then switched his tactics back to play more aggressively again as a result. This was definitely the right way to go, and it helped him take the second set without the need of a tie-breaker.

The longer the match went on, the more enthusiastically I started to cheer for Gasquet hoping that it wouldn’t go too late in the night. But he continually refused to finish off the match. More accurately, he couldn’t finish off the match. I could tell Youzhny was getting stronger and stronger as the match went on. His forehand started to become much more of a weapon, whereas before he was guiding it to its spots. Then he also took some advice from Gasquet, and started shortening the points and coming into the net with far more frequency.

I think mostly, it just seemed that Youzhny had been re-energised. He started to look much more alert controlling the points more too. It all started from the third set tie-break, which also contained good serving from him. But his form continued to fluctuate in the fourth set, down an early break and down a match point in the fourth set, but Gasquet let Youzhny off the hook by playing far too passively.. Though when Youzhny played well in that set, he was brilliant.

Just as I happened to be mentally preparing for my exit, the fourth set finished in the best possible way I could have imagined. With both players running all over the court and Youzhny ending it with a backhand down-the-line winner that looked like a backhand crosscourt winner, based on how far Youzhny was out of court.

That was the shot that ignited the stadium, not that they weren’t already into it and Youzhny celebrated it in a way that a shot and point like that deserved to be celebrated. Gasquet realized the job that was ahead of him now and hit a ball out of the stands of Margaret Court Arena. At first I thought this was a terrible way to leave a match, but no, it was perfect and it provided some closure in the same way that a TV show cliffhanger does.