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.