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.
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1 comment:
What a great resource!
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