Monday, January 31, 2011

Andy Murray Isn't The Player You Want Him To Be

For the last three years or so, Andy Murray established himself within the elite of the tennis game. He first caught the attention of the tennis world with his ability to match it against the top players. Someone to look to, who could break the Federer/Nadal stranglehold.

It’s a different perspective in the early stages of a player’s career. You look at their potential, what different things they bring to the table, and how they can progress in their career once they have ironed out those weaknesses. Then he made it into the top 5, defeated some top players, and became a Grand Slam contender. Everyone started to expect more from him.

After every loss, critics and tennis fans wrote about how Andy Murray needs to be more aggressive. After more Grand Slam disappointments following impressive Masters events results, it was changed to "Murray needs to be more aggressive to win a Grand Slam." This happens before and after every Slam, in particular at Wimbledon, often making big headlines. But this article isn’t about whether he should or not, but rather about this gap between what he wants to be, the way he wants to approach the game, compared to how everyone else wants him to approach the game.

This is a fair criticism if you’re not a fan of his tennis. But I’ve noticed that even plenty of his fans find it difficult to enjoy even his most straightforward wins, frustrated about why he is playing the way he is. Even if it's clear that he will breeze through a victory here. Many people are far more interested in the Andy Murray that shows up 10% of the time, with maybe half of that being his wins against Nadal, the one player that he can really admit to not being able to outlast or break down.

Can you really call yourself a fan if you don’t enjoy his normal style of playing? Or is that just being a fan of the player you wish he was? This is not a criticism, but something to ponder. I can see the dilemma here. There isn’t anyone else that plays like him.

The way I see it, Murray has had far too much success to figure out that he should do things differently, and he thinks tennis is too complicated and strategic to simply focus on whether he was passive or aggressive. He wants to figure out what shots his opponents hate playing, and hit as many of those as possible. He studies videos of his rivals playing. People often call him a true tennis strategist, because he bases his game around his opponent’s weaknesses, rather than his own strengths, like what the majority of players do. Though it doesn’t have to be a weakness, just whatever shot matches up well to his. Personally I’m not so sure that is the smartest thing to do, and sometimes he doesn't find anything. Using more of his strengths would greatly help his game, and make life easier.

Each year that passes, I am convinced he has decided on his own way to improving his game, and it’s not what people want from him. Before he made his rise up the rankings, he was inconsistent over the course of the year then he radically improved his fitness. He beefed up his serve, and went about improving as many gaping holes in his game.

The more he improved his fitness, the more it became a staple of his game. He also became more complete, to the point that it was always more likely he would break down your weakness, before you could get to his. Unless if he was having a bad serving day. He’s broken down Djokovic’s forehand before, Federer’s backhand and he’s outlasted Del Potro before. His return of serve ensured that he could engage in rallies far more often than players below him. Beating lower ranked players started to become a piece of cake, and with his quick, seemingly lazy movement, it was like he was on autopilot most of the time. He’d throw in a couple of flashes of brilliance, but importantly he knew he didn’t have to.

So if Andy Murray isn’t going to be more aggressive in the traditional sense, what could he do? He could start with his favourite backhand, the side he’s more confident with. Rip some more big backhands flat and hard crosscourt, and change it up down-the-line more often. He could serve-and-volley a bit. That’s smart tennis after all, isn’t it, just like how he likes to be seen?

Andy Murray loses another Grand Slam Final, this time to Novak Djokovic

So the Australian Open is over for 2011, and Novak Djokovic has been crowned champion after defeating Andy Murray tonight 6-4 6-2 6-3.

For a couple of years, there has been a never-ending debate about who the better player is between Murray and Djokovic, and who the better player will be. Before the final, Murray had the opportunity to level the Grand Slam tally up with a win tonight, but now with Djokovic coming out on top, Murray will have an awful lot of catching up to do in this career rivalry.

He’ll have a lot of catching up, not only because of the result, but the increasing scars that have been left behind with each finals loss. Though in this match, the scars from the two Slam losses were evident enough. Murray has now failed to win a single set in three finals, raising huge question marks over his ability to play Slam finals.

He’ll need to do much better, if he wants to get over the final hurdle. Opinions of this match will probably be summarised by most people with two main points, that Murray was too passive, and also that his defeatist and negative attitude cost him the match. I find that people fall back on the overly simplistic statement of calling Murray’s play passive too often where it generally becomes the standard reason for any of his losses. This is forgetting or discrediting that he wins plenty of matches with the same kind of mindset, and has based his entire career around it, aside from a couple of wins over top players (but not all of the wins) where he has raised his level. In this case, it was a poor performance, not only a passive performance.

When Murray plays aggressively, it’s not like he hits a big shot off everything. That makes it difficult for him to hit through the nerves not to mention that he has to be playing quite confidently to be hitting his forehand well. It’s pretty hard to generate pace when you’re nervous and unsure of yourself, and as a result, his shots landed shorter than they usually do. The other point is that he doesn’t fire himself up, or play with the same intensity that Djokovic does, who has always come across to me as having the right big match mentality.

The whole first set was a nervy affair from both. Djokovic had opportunities to break in the second game of the match, then ended up losing it in a long back-and-forth game. Even though Djokovic was dictating the points, there was no clear advantage. Djokovic showed impatience in his shot selection, while Murray showed a lack of purpose and an overly reactive state of mind. The match started with a couple of awful dropshots from Djokovic, and he seemed to feel threatened by Murray’s defensive skills trying to finish points too quickly.

Both Djokovic and Murray can be quite good tactically, but I thought that tonight, it was all about handling the occasion. It was more about trying to play the next point as well as possible mentally, and finding the right energy for it, which is why this match didn’t remind me at all of any of their previous meetings. This is an area where Djokovic is a much better player. Though he also has more offensive options on the forehand, and uses his athleticism in a wider variety of ways.

There was a lot of jaw-dropping retrieving from Djokovic tonight, one of the main highlights of the match. Let’s not forget despite his acrobatic movement, it’s equally amazing the amount of feel he has once he gets to the ball. He basically put his body under all kinds of different positions and was still able to hit returns of serve, retrievals and defensive lobs close to the baseline. Whenever Murray built up a point in his advantage, Djokovic would somehow put the rally back in his favour often starting with a shot that he was barely able to reach.

As noted in his match against Federer, Djokovic has the ability to take his game up another notch to a whole new intensity and this is what won him the crucial first set. From then onwards, it was relatively one-sided, more than it should have been due to Murray spraying errors left and right. He had been wanting a racquet with a different tension the entire first set, then his game dropped a couple of levels as soon as he finally got to change it in the second set. Djokovic was now able to rally with Murray without feeling the pressure like he did in the first set. With all of the tension out of the match, this was Djokovic’s title now that he had built himself up a two sets to love lead.

The third set was more of a struggle, due to Djokovic’s groundstrokes becoming more inconsistent especially when trying to make things happen. I would put this down to nerves. Fortunately for Djokovic he could rely on his defensive skills for Plan B, and he was still able to win many points in that fashion. Murray battled through some tough games, they both did, but Djokovic was slightly the better player and there was a feeling he would play the big points better just like he had all match. Neither player managed to build on their leads in this set, and there were so many service breaks, but in the end, Djokovic proved yet again that he was the better player this match. He was the one in form, and the best player all tournament.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Novak Djokovic Outhits Roger Federer to Reach Consecutive Slam Finals

So far, the big guns hadn’t really been tested. Rafael Nadal bowed out last night, but tamely with injury, and without much of a fight. To be honest, I didn’t watch, but this Australian Open match between Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer promised good things. I had good memories about this match-up. Their US Open semi-final was by far my favourite match of last year, so there was a lot to live up to.

It felt like I wasn’t the only one with that epic match in the back of their minds. Djokovic and Federer came out with a certain respect against each other. They brought all their weapons out, their intensity, everything to the table. It was like tennis being played at a lightning speed, though it wasn’t exactly consistent to start with. It was more about sending the right message across. Federer tried to show that he’d be aggressive on return while Djokovic brought out the big forehand and they both traded blows.

I wasn’t really sure whether it was the best idea for either of them to be playing everything at such a rapid pace, since hitting it harder isn’t necessarily better and variety can be quite useful sometimes. The difference between these two hitting it harder, and other players is that their athleticism is quite spectacular. Both were so eager to take control of the points, and also perhaps wary that anything less wouldn’t be good enough. It reminds me of the post-match interview Djokovic did at the US Open last year when he was asked about what was going through his mind down match points. He replied by saying, he just tried to hit every forehand as hard as possible. That memory had obviously stuck with him, bringing out the big forehand here right from the start.

I like to watch Djokovic’s forehand because it’s such a free-swinging shot, not as restrained from precise technique and movement as most other players. Actually, his movement and athleticism is a lot like that too, and one of the main reasons why I enjoy watching him. Watching a guy slide around and stretching out wide from side-to-side is great entertainment, if it’s used with the right amount of aggression. And I really needed to include that last point to find a way to exclude Monfils out of that list. But it’s also a big advantage in a tennis sense, a strength which allows Djokovic to play with patience, and makes him more likely to win extended rallies.

The match was relatively even until the first set tie-break, where Djokovic proved himself to be the steadier player. Federer shanked too many shots, as he did during the entire match. Did he make too many errors because he tried to hit everything at a fast pace, instead of mixing it up?

Djokovic went up an early break in the second set, then Federer employed a change of tactics. I’d say he started to play a style more suited to his abilities on the backhand side, using a slower pace and hitting more slice backhands. This drew some errors from Djokovic, who had also dropped his intensity, then Federer was back on serve.

As the match was going on, the commentators had been wondering whether Federer had been feeding Djokovic too much pace. After all, there have been a couple of matches in the past where Andy Murray took apart Djokovic by feeding as many off-pace slices to his forehand as possible. I think Federer could have explored that more, or at least stuck with a clear idea.

For a while, Federer went on a tear, going from an early break down to serving for the second set, but he couldn’t serve it out. Djokovic had put him under too much pressure, and Federer was not up to the challenge today. On important points, Djokovic can play these long, intense rallies, the kind of points that have made some of his encounters with Rafael Nadal highly entertaining over the years. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s a brilliant combination of aggressive and defensive play, and Federer’s not going to win many points in these kind of rallies. Djokovic broke back, and the match started to look much like it did at the start. I don’t really know where Federer’s brief change of tactics went. But I’m not sure whether 10 minutes of it is enough evidence to suggest that it could have worked.

By the third set, the match started to play out in a way that heavily favoured Djokovic’s strengths, though the rallies were still competitive and quite good at times. Federer continued to try to drive through the backhand, and shanked too many. By the third set, he had run out of ideas and played a more reactive style, particularly not doing much on the backhand side apart from driving it back crosscourt, opening up the down-the-line for Djokovic.

Djokovic lost his break of serve at 4-3, and I wasn’t sure what happened there. It was against the overall direction of the match, but it didn’t take long for Djokovic to bounce back, and show exactly why he was leading this match. He threw in another one of those good games filled with intense baseline play, where he does just about everything he can to win a point. It’s a combination of amazing determination, eye-catching athleticism and a rush of adrenaline. Federer lost that game with errors, but it would have been awfully hard not to make one against Djokovic in this mentality. Djokovic showed his first sign of nerves serving it out making two bad errors on the surprisingly reliable forehand (for the night) but he got it together and finished it off 7-6(3) 7-5 6-4.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Murray Ends Dolgopolov's Breakthrough Australian Open Run

Quickly browsing around the internet, it seems like everyone agrees that Alexandr Dolgopolov is unique and a breath of fresh air. Straight after Andy Murray's four set win over the Ukrainian, 7-5 6-3 6-7(3) 6-3, Murray had similar things to say. "No one plays like him".

Murray was likely to be the winner for most of the match, due to Dolgopolov making too many unforced errors, but it was also a good demonstration of Dolgopolov's range of shots, his potential, and his flaws.

Here's some information I gathered on him:
  • Forehand: He can generate a lot of spin on the forehand, by brushing around the ball instead of driving through it, but it's not like a high-bouncing kind of top spin.  He can create good angles crosscourt, or hook it down-the-line where it curves back into the sideline. 

  • Backhand: The forehand is the more aggressive shot, while the backhand he uses more as variety.  He has a very relaxed backswing on the double-handed backhand, and can change the pace with the same backswing.  He likes to use his slice backhand to construct points, with accurate crosscourt and down-the-line slices but sometimes tries to hit it better than he is capable of.

  • Serve: He has a surprising ability to hit flat and hard serves sometimes, considering his height.  Because of his quick action, it probably feels like it arrives to his opponent even quicker.

  • Mentality: He can make plenty of errors, but carry on the rest of the match without slumping the shoulders, and he'll still go for his shots.

  • Consistency: He is a streaky player, can string together some great points, then lose just as quickly, or even more quickly.  There were phases in this match where he struggled to win a point.

  • Fitness: It looks like he doesn't ever get tired or sluggish ever.  He does have plenty of concentration lapses though, and his shot selection could use some work.  I get the sense he gets carried away sometimes, and sometimes he tries to hit shots that are better than required.

  • Movement: He has spectacular movement, as already mentioned before in a previous entry.
Compared to Dolgopolov's relaxed, fluctuating and varying performance throughout the match, Murray was a model of professionalism. Something that Dolgopolov will need to aspire to, to take his game to another level. He understands a little better the importance of putting your opponent under pressure.

Murray's return of serve was also a highlight, and gave him plenty of opportunity to compete well in the return games. His second serve could cause him problems from here onwards though, with a potential match-up against Rafael Nadal coming up next.

Personally for me, it's good to see a new and interesting player, but I'd prefer a player that doesn't make as many wild unforced errors. It amuses me that commentators and writers like to call wildly inconsistent players "an enigma" and "mercurial" like they're really fascinating and exciting characters. We'll see in the near future as to whether he can improve that area.

Monday, January 24, 2011

How Does Channel 7's Australian Open coverage get worse every year?

Today was my first day back at work, so I had to rely on watching my recording of the Australian Open on TV. Every year, I am amazed at how Channel 7 manage to make their coverage even worse, just when you think it couldn't get any worse.  Aside from that, it also sounds like they don't listen to any complaints, because they sure get plenty of those every year too (like here and here).

I've already got my remote control out, so being free from ads, I would have thought the experience would have at least been bearable. But it seems like every year, they are showing less and less tennis.

If I was watching it live, I would have already moved on to my slightly blurry live stream by now.
  • Every time I skip through an ad break (after a changeover), they manage to miss the first point every single time.  Don't commentators always say it is important for the player to win the first point?

    They've been doing this for several years now for the day sessions, but now they have added some additional ads in between games (without changeovers) where they also end up missing the first point.
  • Whenever a set is finished, they always do their best to intentionally come back to the match once the entire first game is over.  Meanwhile, audiences are hoping they didn't miss anything important by hoping that player held serve.
  • I have just paused my video recording to come here, because yet again, they have shrunk the screen to one-third size, to show a match on the left and an interview on the right.  This time, it's Francesca Schiavone's interview.  I have to admit that her glowing review of Australian people was very nice and endearing, but perhaps that could be shown another time.
  • Ever since their Australian Open series coverage, starting in Brisbane this year, they've had a sudden obsession with constantly showing the scores on screen.  This isn't just words coming across the screen, but they shrink the entire match, and show the score down the bottom.  It's really annoying on the eyes.  I remember, in Brisbane, they would show results of anything.  Sydney qualifying, men's doubles, results from Chennai, results from Doha.  Today they just put up scores of yesterday's results, maybe later there will be more of yesterday's results since there isn't much going on today.  Probably there will be juniors and legends results up there soon too.  Any excuse to shrink the bloody screen, and distract us from the match.
  • Sometimes when a player serves an ace, a commentator (usually Sandy Roberts) will remark that an "ANZ ace" was just served. What will happen next? Will forehands and backhands be sponsored next year?
  • When Soderling took an injury time-out for a blister on his foot, immediately an advertisement on the screen for Panadol (painkillers) came up. How cheesy is that?

    Though I have to admit that Home and Away ad, with the three shirtless guys coming out of the tennis court is also really horrible (but I can also see how it might appeal to some people).
  • Then finally, of course there are the matches being delayed in states that aren't on the same time zone as Melbourne.  That's the same every year though. Last year they finally started to take advantage of digital television with different shows on different channels, so it really should be live at least on there. There's no excuse not to.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Dolgopolov Outlasts Tsonga in a Topsy Turvy Match

This was a match that looked to be in the grasp of Jo-Wilfried Tsonga’s hands up a set and a break against Alexandr Dolgopolov. Every time it looked like he had done enough to pull away from the match, a rash of unforced errors would creep in. By the time the fifth set came around, his fitness levels weren’t good enough to turn it around, and he ended up losing quite convincingly 3-6 6-3 3-6 6-1 6-1.

This was the match-up of two of the most energetic players on tour, though energetic in two different ways. Tsonga moves well going forward, and that’s how he gets his power by throwing his whole body into the ball. Dolgopolov on the other hand, moves well side-to-side. The first time I saw him play, I thought he was so confident with how well he was moving to the ball, with his feet constantly moving all the time. I think he would make quite a good dancer, though maybe not in the ballroom area. Now I’m convinced his feet are always moving regardless of whether he is playing well or not.

The only other player I’ve seen that does the same thing with his feet is Rafael Nadal, but he does it with a different intensity. Dolgopolov doesn’t have the same attention-to-detail. He’s quick, and sometimes he forgets to slow down when he arrives to the ball, so he can still make plenty of errors, even though tennis is a game that highly depends on movement. He’s quick in between points, and has a quick service action also.

Dolgopolov still has a lot to learn, but sometimes raw skill and athleticism is more fun to watch. He strikes me as a player that hasn’t had much training in the mental department. He could probably cut back on the errors if he would just slow down sometimes, like when he has a short ball and can put it away without having to cover large amounts of court.

It was one-sided to begin with. Dolgopolov was nervous and making plenty of simple errors, while Tsonga was explosive and powerful. I wanted to watch the match from Dolgopolov’s perspective, but it was quite hard to, because the fluctuating scores in this match were pretty much all to do with Tsonga, whether he played brilliantly or shockingly. I really thought Dolgopolov would have approached this match more aggressively just because that’s how he plays, and also because it’s useful to bring some weapons to the table, when your opponent has plenty to hurt you with. In any case, it was a good enough tactic for today.

Tsonga was in great form to start with, executing his very aggressive brand of tennis. The two and three shot combos were reliably winning him many points and it looked like he had the winning formula going. Big serve, flat forehand and then a volley to finish it off. Dolgopolov could barely pull off a passing shot, and his movement seemed like a useless weapon against Tsonga’s power and efficiency.

But it turned out to be a rollercoaster of a match for Tsonga with plenty of highs and lows, with too many of the lows coming straight after he had built himself a crucial lead in a set. Many of the games where he lost serve, he practically threw them away with three or so errors. After Tsonga broke serve at 3-2 in the second set, every game he played in that set onwards was filled with errors.

Just as soon as he appeared to be in trouble down a break in the third set, and his tennis going down the drain, he picked it up again and his all-court play was in full flow again. Tsonga was in a good mood again, smiling and joking with someone on the back of the court, a ballkid or linesman, I don’t know. Life was good again. But it didn’t last long. Another rash of unforced errors creeped into his game, losing serve to love with three bad errors, followed a great backhand crosscourt passing shot from Dolgopolov several metres behind the baseline. This was one of his few passing shots in the first three sets of the match, though this would later improve for him.

Fortunately for Tsonga, Dolgopolov can be loose and careless too, handing back the lead to Tsonga with some bad errors of his own. This time, Tsonga served it out comfortably.

The fourth set marked a more aggressive approach from Dolgopolov, finally making more use of his shotmaking ability. Like what happens with many other players, it was probably a sign of relaxation knowing that he was no longer in a position to win the match. First he had to level the match before he could even think about winning. He held serve in the opening game with his best game of the match hitting numerous winners, and generating racquet speed that I hadn’t seen from him the entire match. This earned him a break the following game. But soon afterwards, it became clear that Tsonga’s game had disappeared again.

Actually, not only had his game disappeared, but so had his concentration. After he went down a double break, his mind started to focus on other things and he was stretching often in changeovers, not only struggling with some physical problems but also thinking a lot about them too. It became a one-sided affair after that, and by the end of the match, Tsonga didn’t really have the capabilities to make a comeback. His legs were gone, and he tried to thump them with his hands but it didn’t work. Dolgopolov was relaxed by now, with Tsonga no longer being able to put pressure on him, and closed it out easily.

Friday, January 21, 2011

Australian Open 2011 - Day 4 Blog

Today was a mixed bag of matches. With it being my last day in Melbourne, the intention was to watch as many matches as possible, and to stay as late as possible, but I didn’t end up being able to do that.

Of the early morning matches, I picked Michael Llodra’s match against Milos Raonic. Both are aggressive players in their own way, with Raonic being aggressive from the baseline and Llodra sneaking up into the net. This was a very efficient kind of tennis, a practical way of playing, to make it easier on the body. Short rallies, and consequently lots of breaks in between points. Less playing time, more walking time. Though I shouldn’t underestimate how tiring it is to serve-and-volley. Probably even more so, than baseline play.

In any case, the rallies were short here, and there were not many probing rallies. They liked to keep the ball away from the middle of the court, though Llodra would move around the ball with his slice and with less pace, whereas Raonic was much more explosive. I don’t know what to think of Raonic’s game. I can’t tell what level he is at either. He hits the ball hard, and if it works, it’s good. His winners count was significantly greater than Llodra’s, and I guess that’s what won him the match in the end. His movement is not that great, which is not that unusual since he’s a big guy.

I have seen Llodra play various matches, and I have to say I never find him all that successful with the serve-and-volley. Is it because he does it all the time and his percentages are lower, that it looks worse than someone who does it sometimes? I know his volleys are great, the record speaks for itself, but it doesn’t feel athletic to me. It’s more like he has good technique, good reach and consistently soft hands. Maybe his tennis works for others, but for me, I find it overly reliant on the serve. To win matches, he pretty much needs to serve well, to be able to hit easy volleys the majority of the time. I also found this match overly reliant on serve, so after one set, I headed off elsewhere.


The weather today was much more like summer weather, with it being hot instead of cold. I had a look at Mikhail Youzhny’s match against Blaz Kavcic which ended up being easily the highlight of the day. I wrote about not many probing rallies in the previous match, but there were plenty of them here. These were good rallies, not long rallies for the sake of being able to do more running, because running is fun. And it also wasn’t about making the opponent crumble.

The match started off with both players still trying to figure each other out. Moving the ball around the court, but not going for it fully, and also trying to keep up with each other. This made for riveting viewing, not knowing who would get the better of each other. Youzhny has a very smooth game, and it seems like he needs to rely on shot selection quite a lot because it’s not as easy for him to finish points. Compared to other top players, he needs to work harder, I think. The other reason would be because he doesn’t get that many cheap points on serve.

Youzhny did seem like the slightly more competent player though. In particular off the backhand side, where he could open up the court well, with a crosscourt, then followed by a down-the-line whether sliced or driven through. Kavcic seemed a bit like a workhorse in comparison, playing disciplined tennis. At the professional level, there are many players that play the game based on their own particular talents or strengths, but Kavcic plays tennis the way it should be played, not taking into account strengths and weaknesses. Perhaps I should call it textbook tennis. Anyway, textbook tennis is smart tennis, just lacking in flash.

He didn’t really do enough to dent Youzhny’s game to start with though. The first half of the set was close with many competitive rallies, but then Youzhny pulled away after he got out of the “figuring his opponent out” mode and started to play with a clearer frame of mind and implementing an all-court game. I noted down that after the second set, Youzhny was leading in the winners department 24 to 8.

In the second set, Kavcic started to pile on the unforced errors, just when I thought he was quite consistent in the first set. His body language completely changed, as he started to become dejected with his own play talking to himself and slumping the shoulders. At this stage, Youzhny had the match completely under control, and I thought this match was a good demonstration of how body language and attitude can impact on a player’s game. Had Youzhny not handed Kavcic an early break in the third set, Kavcic could have ended up being completely dejected in the third. That break of serve on Youzhny’s serve was all his own doing, filled with very sloppy errors and it continued for about three games or so. Youzhny was threatened to go down two breaks, until he finally picked up his play again on the break points and from then onwards.

The third set was the start of a more all-court approach from Kavcic, hitting more shots with purpose. The same guy that looked completely lost in the previous set, had just raised his game to a new level, and was now very energetic and pumped up. There were two guys sitting a couple of rows in front of me who had been shouting support for Kavcic the whole match. The first time they did it, Kavcic had a look at where it was coming from, but by now, he had started directing all of his clenched fists over there. And it just happened to be in the exact same direction to where I was sitting, so suddenly my involvement in the match had been taken up another level. Whenever Kavcic hit a poor shot and was disappointed, he’d look in my direction for encouragement too.

But in the third, fourth and fifth sets, Kavcic was extremely pumped. His body language and intensity was so much greater than Youzhny’s and I felt he had some kind of presence because of it. When watching matches on court in a live atmosphere, I would think that one person coming across very energetically would be an intimidating factor. Especially if the other guy is subdued. It was weird to think that Kavcic would win this match, just by looking at his body language. I had to keep reminding myself that the tennis was relatively even.

They were good sets of tennis, marked by a good fighting spirit by both players. Both players seemed quite determined almost each and every point. Kavcic had an early break in the fourth set and wasn’t troubled on serve until Youzhny had break points late in the set. It was at this stage when Youzhny couldn’t convert that he unleashed a sudden burst of anger, yelling intensely to Boris Sobkin. Since he was speaking in Russian, it could have easily looked like he was angrily yelling at the crowd. But my guess says he wasn’t. That seemed to help endear him to the crowd though, as they started cheering more loudly for Youzhny, sensing that he needed their support.

Now that Youzhny had let that out, it felt like a really intense match from then onwards. Both of these guys really wanted to win it. And it also seemed like Youzhny had finally matched Kavcic in intensity, though he was still more reserved on a regular basis. But when it came to the rallies, you got the sense that these points were treated importantly. Every cheap error was frustrating for them, so I didn’t want to judge them on it. There weren’t that many errors though. It was a good match.

In the fifth set, Youzhny broke serve with some good shotmaking, stepping into the ball a bit more than usual. From then on, Kavcic’s game had fallen to pieces, and he showed signs of frustration, with his legs not working as well anymore. This guy sure doesn’t keep his emotions and thoughts to himself. It’s a special experience to watch from this close, and the more the match went on, the more I started to root for him. Though I didn’t mind it when Youzhny came back to win it either, because he played nice tennis too.

I should also add that Youzhny pulled off an under-the-legs winner, one of the very few times that I’ve seen this shot go in. The percentage is usually extremely low. That was a good crowd pleaser.


Because of that long match, many of the matches I thought about seeing were either nearly over or over anyway. I took a break mentally, then I found out that David Nalbandian’s match against Richard Berankis was moved to court 2, so everyone tried to run up there quickly. I scored myself a good seat without the running anyway, as that stadium is considerably bigger than court 6.

I dreaded to write about this match, because there really is very little to write about. When the match started, I was surprised with how aggressively Berankis was playing, certainly not the same Berankis I saw in Brisbane, swinging away with all those forehand winners.

At first I hoped it was just a slow start from Nalbandian, but then I started to think that he was completely drained from the Hewitt match. It’s not a good sign for him to recover so badly. One would expect some tiredness, but not a complete inability to play. In any case, it didn’t take long for me to accept the fate of this match, and I think as the match went on, Berankis didn’t feel the need to go for his shots as much either. Pretty much nothing worked for Nalbandian, so there’s no point with picking out strengths and weaknesses here. It sure was disappointing given the long wait, though I didn't mind waiting when I was watching Youzhny's match.

I really didn’t want to end the day on that match, but unfortunately I had to, because Andy Murray’s match was full and filled with long queues, before it had started. If only I had a media pass this year. I remember getting into a fully occupied Andy Murray match on Margaret Court Arena with it last year. I thought at the completion of the women’s match, that some people would get out, but no one did. I didn’t think anyone would want to leave so early into the match, so I gave up and took an early night. The stadium being full probably had just as much to do with the fact that there were no other matches going on in the outside courts, so anyone in the grounds without a Rod Laver Arena ticket would have had to watch that.

By the way, I have now put up all my photos from the four days of play.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Australian Open 2011 - Day 3 Blog

Due to last night's late finish and having to blog afterwards, today felt like a strange continuation of yesterday. I ended up watching fewer matches because I started to doze off after a while.

I really needed to be punctual for the 11am start, because Florian Mayer was scheduled against Kei Nishikori. When I arrived, Mayer and Nishikori had just walked onto Court 6, and I noticed there were plenty of empty seats so I tried to find myself the perfect seat. This ended up being a far more difficult task than I originally thought.

I already ranted about there being far too many shade covers on this court in the Simon vs Lu match, more so than on Court 7. But it turns out on the other side, if you sit too close to the middle opposite to the umpire chair side, you’ll be looking through blue sheets on one third of the court. Probably around 70% of the seats on that court have a restricted view. As Mayer and Nishikori were warming up, I switched seats about three times until I finally found a seat I liked. Thank goodness there was at least one good spot.

Unfortunately after all of that internal drama to start with, the spectacle was sorely lacking from Mayer. It was a very subdued performance from him, with everything slower paced than usual, and far too many errors creeping into his game. It was such a letdown from his fantastic win over Davydenko, and I think perhaps he was also a little tired, as he would sometimes bang his legs to try to get them moving more quickly.

To start with, it was mostly a defensive performance from Mayer, not going for his shots, but also not able to prolong rallies due to all those simple errors. Perhaps also, Nishikori didn’t give him that much pace to work with. It was a very controlled and disciplined performance, different to what I saw from him in the past where he’d try to be more flashy with the forehand. I saw Brad Gilbert in the stands a couple of rows ahead of me, and it seems like he is improving his tactical game as a result of that coaching change. I thought he played some very smart and patient tennis in this match. Could you believe it took him until the fourth set until he hit his first jumping forehand?

He played a different game today. Not focused on hitting outright winners, but on moving the ball around the court, using the full width of it. I’m typically a fan of this kind of play, going around your opponents instead of through them. Looking at Nishikori’s groundstrokes, they look so technically sound, much more so than the majority of players I have seen before. Playing like this, I could not notice any weaknesses in his game, aside from perhaps the serve which could get attacked. That was probably the main thing keeping Mayer’s chances alive in the match, his return of Nishikori’s serve.

I thought Nishikori was playing at around a top 20 standard today, but then again, I later saw Stanislas Wawrinka today, and maybe that was a level above. In any case, if he keeps playing like this, he will quickly rise up the rankings this year.

Today was the first time I had seen Mayer show such poor touch in a match. He missed practically every drop volley in the first two sets, or so it felt like. He definitely missed plenty of easy ones for his standards. Obviously the creative side of Mayer was missing in action today, but he did try to play better. It was just that every time he would string together a couple of good points, he’d ruin it with another error. On the defensive, he’d generally hit those low slices and slow shots, so those shouldn’t have ended up being errors because he didn’t even go for them. So I guess it was mostly to do with poor movement and energy.

Mayer’s level did improve each set though until the fourth set, but generally in a subtle manner. The second set had more of a mixture of good and bad play, instead of being just outright bad. The third set, he had better touch and a more aggressive strategy, but then in the fourth he was too inconsistent again. The third set was nowhere near as one-sided as the 6-0 scoreline suggests. All of the first three games were long and difficult games, but once Nishikori went down a double-break, he conceded the whole set.

From the fourth set onwards, Nishikori started to play more aggressively but I’m not sure whether that was due to increased confidence or a drop in fitness levels. He started to hit those bigger forehands that I’m more accustomed to seeing from him, and as mentioned earlier, more jumping forehands.


On the completion of that match, I made my way into Hisense Arena where I had tickets for throughout the week (so far) but preferred to stay on the outside courts. I think I was encouraged by the pleasantly decent view on my back row seats last night, that I thought the tickets I bought here would be fine.

I went into the stadium, as Janko Tipsarevic was serving for the second set against Fernando Verdasco. I took a quick look up the stadium, to notice a few people reading books, and another with a newspaper in their hands. The memories all came back to me now. How it’s just a completely different mindset in that stadium. It’s filled with plenty of people that are not actually fully concentrated on the tennis. They’re here just to relax.

My seat was slightly frustrating with the handrailing blocking my view. Just one more row up, and I would have been fine. Aside from that, everything seemed so far away in here, and it took me a while to find my concentration. Tipsarevic had just taken a two sets to love advantage, and generally third sets tend to be lacking in tension for the most part in this scenario. I don’t know about other people, but I generally don’t care for watching third sets, whenever the player favoured to win leads two sets to love. But in this case, Tipsarevic was the underdog.

Verdasco hadn’t begun the season in good form though. He lost in the first round of Brisbane to Benjamin Becker. One quick look up into the screen in the stadium shows that so far in this match, he had hit a ridiculously large amount of unforced errors. It would have been something like double the amount of Tipsarevic. I had already started to draw my conclusions before even watching it.

I saw the error count and had all the potential explanations for this match in place. But halfway into the set, I started to realize that Verdasco must have cleaned up his game a whole lot here, because he was moving the ball around nicely. In the first couple of games in the third set, I noticed some bad shanks and errors where it didn’t look like Verdasco had any feel on the ball.

Verdasco is definitely a player worth watching live, mainly to see the forehand, because live, you get even more of a sense that the shot looks very different to most other players. The spin that he puts on the ball is great to watch. It looks very skilful.

This was a relatively fast-paced match for the third and fourth sets (of course, I didn’t see the first two, so I don’t know). Aggressive tennis mixed with good athleticism from both players. I think Tipsarevic was better at absorbing the pace, and hitting higher quality shots on the defense though. Particularly off the backhand. I really like Tipsarevic’s jumping backhand. Okay, he hits it just as well, when he’s not jumping, but it looks good.

In the third set, Verdasco broke serve with some great forehands and aggressive play, aided I think by some first serves being missed by Tipsarevic. The way Tipsarevic failed to serve out the match the first time played out exactly the same way, as the end of the third set. Verdasco was allowed the opportunity to start off each point on the attack, and he took advantage of it.

The fourth set, though was where the match reached its epic climax. Tipsarevic had chances to go up a double break, then he served for the match, broke back, served for it again and had two match points. He was in firm control of the match, but he couldn’t seem to finish it off.

On his second attempt serving for the match, he showed a huge improvement to his first attempt. He played it much better, and on the first match point, he had full control over a rally, but was a little too safe with the putaway volleys, and Verdasco took advantage of it with a spectacular forehand winner. I thought it would have been good enough. But since it wasn’t, he really shouldn’t have been as passive as he was with those volleys. Tipsarevic played a great point too on the second match point. It was a long rally where he had started to up the tempo, and he had just hit a scorching backhand down-the-line. It was called out, and it must have been very close, but Tipsarevic had run out of challenges, making desperate and silly challenges earlier on. Who knows what the result would have been, if he had enough challenges left. Did they show the Hawkeye result of that on TV?

In the end, Tipsarevic didn’t manage to hold, so they went to a tie-break. Unfortunately, from then onwards, Tipsarevic was emotionally scarred from all the opportunities he had in the game before. While the tie-break was going on, he was on some other planet reminiscing about the past. The fifth set would continue in the same manner, with Tipsarevic not really giving his full effort, and looking forward to getting off the court instead.

I was looking forward to getting out of the stadium as well. During the Tipsarevic meltdown, the guy sitting two seats away from me, started rambling on about Tipsarevic. How he had played to lose the first break, how he was playing in the tie-break, how he wasn’t going to win a single game. For just about the entire fourth set tie-break and fifth set. There wasn’t really that much to say about it, so there was obviously a lot of repetition there.


After taking a break and nodding off to sleep in Marion Bartoli’s match (this really had nothing to do with her play), I tried to recover for Stanislas Wawrinka’s match against Grigor Dmitrov.

There has been a lot of hype about Dmitrov, and I had never seen him play before, nor even bothered to read much about how he plays. It seems like he is still very much a work in progress. At the moment, he only has the raw shotmaking ability, and a good serve, but he hasn’t quite figured out what to do with it yet. The way he plays, it all looks a bit random to me, apart from the fact, that his game does seem centred around the forehand, and the serve does help set it up.

His forehand looks impressive when he executes it correctly, but it mostly only looks good from an offensive point of view, not defensive. Whether he is trying to hit it as a winner, or whether he is retrieving it back deep into the centre of the court, he is still hitting it just as hard. It doesn’t look like good percentage tennis to me.

This was a match between two shotmakers, but one was much better in toughing out rallies, and that was Wawrinka. Both had similar amounts of winners, but Wawrinka had far fewer unforced errors. Both won plenty of cheap points on their serve, or followed it up with a winner after their serve, so that made the spectacle a bit dull at times.

Australian Open 2011 - Day 2 - Nalbandian Defeats Hewitt in Thriller

The Rod Laver Arena night match between David Nalbandian and Lleyton Hewitt, was a whole new experience in itself, completely separate from everything, and the most memorable match I’ve seen live.

To read Day 2 reports of the other matches, click here.

Having purchased night session tickets the night before, I wasn’t quite sure where I’d end up sitting in the stadium. It was a good thing I arrived slightly early instead of wanting to watch as much tennis as possible, because I made a mess out of trying to find my seats walking up and down the staircase several times.

I found out I was in the back row, but the view looked okay from there. Not as bad as I imagined. At least it was facing the long side of the court, so that I could distinguish it from TV view, and also without the umpire chair’s seat in the way. I could see the rallies quite easily from here, it was just hard to see the players’ faces though to be honest, it’s hard to see faces even from much closer. The players looked quite small though, and dropshots looked really weird from here like I have no idea where the ball is going when they’re hit.

Fortunately for me, this view is good for watching the rallies, the accuracy and the use of the court which suits what you would want to look out for when watching Nalbandian.

They built up this match on the big screen by showing highlights from the Nalbandian vs Hewitt showdown from the 2005 Australian Open quarter-final, not that I could actually see the rallies on the screen. Okay, it’s not like they made a big effort to show that. That video is already a part of their Australian Open flashback clips that they show in between matches on the stadium courts. But it was appropriate for tonight anyway.

The players hadn’t come out on court yet, so there was a lot of chanting going on from the Fanatics, who don’t look like a particularly big group. They were doing all these patriotic Australian chants and singing the national anthem. No real mentions of Hewitt yet. Feeling naturally patriotic towards my own country, I remembered feeling quite conflicted at the time, but when it comes to choice in players, there is no contest here. David Nalbandian is my favourite player, while Hewitt doesn’t rank anywhere on the list.

Hewitt won the toss and elected to receive, so it was Nalbandian who served first. He seems to have an annoying knack of starting off slowly with sloppy service games and this match was no different. Except that he managed to pull himself out of it and hold somehow.

As the rest of the first set began to unfold, Nalbandian was still making too many unforced errors to threaten Hewitt, in particular off the forehand. Pretty much, the ups and downs of the match were often highlighted by how well he was hitting his forehand. Not because his forehand was the dominating shot, but he needed to stay consistent on both sides, to be able to get the better of all those protracted rallies.

This match was an incredibly tense and dramatic affair all the way throughout, mostly because of these long rallies that neither player appeared to be able to dominate. Service games were often hard-fought, and points weren’t easily won.

Hewitt played good tennis in the first set, with high quality counterpunching. Whenever he moved from side-to-side, whether on the backhand side or forehand side, he’d often manage to hit a penetrating crosscourt shot. Nalbandian bases his game around controlling rallies and getting the upper hand, but he was really struggling to find that here with Hewitt going toe-to-toe with him. I thought, he looked to be in trouble, if rallies were to continue in the same pattern as the first set. It certainly wasn’t only the errors that were doing Nalbandian harm. He couldn’t find a reliable way of regularly winning points aside from the occasional change of pace or sneak into the net, but that wasn’t something he could do often enough.

Hewitt had chances to go up an early break in the second set and continue on the roll he was on, but squandered it with some sloppy errors. There were many break points and opportunities from both players in this match. Some were saved spectacularly, while some were squandered. That particular one was squandered.

Hewitt was playing with impressive consistency and depth at that stage, and he continued to appear to be the better player until Nalbandian out of nowhere struck a couple of unreturnable shots to go up a break, although aided by a couple of Hewitt errors before that. Nalbandian then continued on the momentum built by those two winners, bossing Hewitt around the court more than he did before. But it was no easy task. From then onwards, his backhand down-the-line seemed to fire much better too, more accurately and closer to the lines. That shot won him so many points.

The rallies were still competitive in the second set though. They were competitive in all the sets, and the more important the point was, the more epic it felt. What made the match most memorable were the constant momentum swings, the long games and of course the occasion of playing a night match with home support for Hewitt. Though from the second set onwards, was also the introduction of the two drunk guys in the crowd, constantly talking and yelling silly comments the entire match. Unfortunately they were sitting relatively close to me.

Nalbandian led a break in the third set but then threw it away with horrible errors. Unfortunately it wasn’t a brief concentration lapse, but a rather long passage of poor play which consisted of many forehand errors, often into the net. That break of serve he lost, was with some very sloppy play, that led me to believe that he went on mental walkabout unable to deal with his own level going down, and instead just slapping at the ball. Because that’s what those forehand errors looked like. A slap into the net.

But after a couple of bad games, at least he started making some more respectable errors and grinding away into the rallies. The match started to resemble more of the first set again. Hewitt was playing some good tennis I had to admit. The more stable of the two.

There were so many key points in this match, that my notes don’t seem to cover them and I can’t remember them all. Hewitt had picked up his consistency, while Nalbandian continued to churn out too many errors. Hewitt was up 3-1, and 0-40 on Nalbandian’s serve to go up a double break. I can’t remember how exactly those break points were saved, but I’m 100% sure that Nalbandian played those points much better than the ones he played to go down 0-40.

From then onwards, it seemed being down on the scoreboard really helped Nalbandian play better. He was still making errors every now and then, but his attitude was better, and he was more relaxed also enabling him to hit more winners. But the fact that he won that set without playing that cleanly does suggest that Hewitt’s level dropped considerably as well.

Despite the quality declining in some stages, the drama never really disappeared probably because it didn’t seem like either were secure on their serve. Though Hewitt won many more easy points on his serve than I thought he would. Not necessarily with outright winners, but with a two-shot combo. His serves out wide would often open up the court for him to hit a winner.

Nalbandian had the chance to serve out the set at 5-3 in the fourth set but failed. Once he was back to 5-5, he played a much better service game now that there was no pressure. He continued to improve on his good tie-break record from the last year or so, quite convincingly overcoming Hewitt 7 points to 1.

But I hoped that all matches would not go according to previous records, now that they had entered a fifth set and Hewitt is quite good at those. The early signs didn’t look good for him though. He was playing horribly, the worst tennis he had shown in the match making all kinds of simple unforced errors now. I thought he appeared to be quite tired, but a game or two before Nalbandian needed to serve out the match, Hewitt’s game improved significantly perhaps finding a sudden rush of adrenaline. Just like the fourth set, Nalbandian failed to serve it out, and now they were fully locked into a battle.

As Hewitt started to go down on the scoreboard, the level of noise from the crowd increased dramatically, with people sensing that he might need some help to edge out the win. There’s a certain level where it’s just background noise, then there’s another level of noise where it makes you shiver a little bit. The latter was what the second half of the fifth set was like. Personally I thought it would have started much earlier, but it was mainly only some supporters doing the loud cheering. Of course, I mean what it was like from my section, the back row. I was stuck with the two drunk guys yelling instead. By now, one of the drunk guys had decided to try to operate the Channel 7 camera which no one was using. In some horrible timing, during the late stages of the fifth set while all the craziness was happening, some other people in the crowd decided to start swearing at the drunk guys. I just really hoped that it wouldn’t distract the players, because it was during the rallies. I guess at least they were far away from the action.

Hewitt had match points at 15-40, and the first one I thought he had converted for a brief while before gasping that Nalbandian had hit a crazy half-volley winner, I think it was. Yeah, a half-volley that required very good reflexes and touch. The second one was a long, tough rally, ending up with an excellent volley at the net. He played many of the break points really well today (when saving them), often at a different level to the other points.

I don’t really know exactly when Nalbandian started cramping, but he started keeping his legs moving in between points around about here, which I guess was when it got worse. It obviously helped him though, because he hit many winners on his following service game after saving those break points then on the return game afterwards. I am not sure about the game where he was serving for the match because I was too busy hoping for the right result (for me).

Basically it was a great match, and I gave it the standing ovation it deserved. The final scoreline was 3-6 6-4 3-6 7-6(1) 9-7.

(It is likely there are minor inaccuracies with the report, as there were too many important points for me to keep track of)

Australian Open 2011 - Day 2 Blog

For the most part, whenever I make it to Melbourne Park, I try my hardest to spend as much time watching whatever match I want, rather than the match before the one I want to watch. But the usual plan isn’t working as well as it used to, yet I sometimes still feel stubborn about watching other matches beforehand.

In any case, Anna Chakvetadze was serving for the match at 5-2 in the second set, so there wasn’t that much to wait for, before Jurgen Melzer’s match against Vincent Millot would start. Ordinarily you would think there is not much to write about three games in a match, but it was highly amusing. Chakvetadze choked a bit, but ended up digging herself out of break points to finish it off 6-4 in the second set, and she sure made an internal drama out of it.

Chakvetadze basically threw away her first service game serving for it, with four horrible errors in a row. Her attempt at breaking was slightly better. At least she won some points in it. Almost every time she’d win a point, she’d pump her first, trying to prove to herself that she has determination and that she can fight through it. Usually fist pumps are a positive form of emotion, confident approval of whatever happened in the previous point. But every fist pump that came from Chakvetadze were off Govortsova’s errors, but Govortsova should have been pleased anyway that Chakvetadze seemed this insecure about herself.

It was only until Chakvetadze found herself down break points for the match to level up, that she started to play better. Playing better, because she felt like she was behind. Then finally, Chakvetadze earned herself a real point to celebrate, with a great down-the-line winner from what I could recall, and with the help of some errors from her opponent, she closed out the match.

That was a good little piece of drama and fortunately brief, because it can get depressing watching a trainwreck.


Jurgen Melzer’s match against Vincent Millot sure could have used some drama or intensity. Millot made it into the main draw from qualifying, and he was completely outplayed by Melzer in every department. He’s a short, left-handed player and reminds me a bit of Wayne Odesnik, especially on the forehand side where they both hit a relatively loopy shot with high margin over the net. The problem was that he was neither consistent or a good shotmaker, so he was often overpowered by Melzer, and he didn’t put him under much pressure either by making many errors.

Melzer seemed to be able to hit many winners, or unreturnable shots with ease, often coming out of nowhere. It wasn’t like he moved the ball around that much, before unleashing the winner. I guess that shows how much pace Melzer can hit the ball with, but he was also patient rallying.

This match was incredibly one-sided though, so I was feeling kind of bored watching it. Coming from court 7, there was a lot of cheering and noise, but coming from the surrounding courts instead rubbing in that feeling that there were better things going on elsewhere. Even in that 6-4 second set, Melzer was up a break, then lost it, then broke again. I left after the second set realizing it would probably reach its expected conclusion.

I tried to head down to watch David Ferrer against Jarkko Nieminen, until finding out that seats were full. I think many of them were part of the Greek contingent waiting for Baghdatis’ match afterwards.


So I went in to watch Juan Martin Del Potro’s match against Dudi Sela instead, starting right from the beginning. Players had not yet come onto court when I arrived, otherwise it would have been more difficult to find seats once the match had started.

Listening to the pre-match cheering, it looks like both players have their fair share of vocal supporters, but Sela has more. To begin with, this match featured an entertaining contrast of styles. The match-up between Del Potro’s power and shotmaking ability with Sela’s counterpunching ability and ability to move the ball around the court. One has a lot of power, while the other doesn’t.

In the early stages, Del Potro approached the match, by trying to play solid and consistently with changes of pace on the forehand. In my opinion, changes of pace is something that is much more obvious live, than on TV, and also one of my favourite things to watch live because of that reason. To see how players can catch their opponents off-guard and find winners much more easily by surprising their opponents with more pace than usual. It’s also good percentage tennis, to not hit everything at a fast pace though.

Del Potro played well to start with in the first half of the set leading 4-2, but then his game suddenly went downhill. The biggest problem by far since his comeback has been his forehand which he has been shanking and hitting all over the place at times. He pretty much threw away his service break with bad errors, but after that, the poor form continued with flashes of good shots.

Still, there were plenty of long rallies and the first set was quite entertaining. I really enjoy watching Sela’s accuracy and all-court game. He has a very smooth way of playing, but in this match, it was always evident from the start, that if Del Potro could keep his errors down, he could dominate the rallies.

The highlight and climax of the match, at least based on what I watched was the first set tie-break which Del Potro ended up winning 15-13. The tie-break had everything in it. Good shotmaking, missed opportunities, bad errors, big serving and many hard-fought points. When I saw Sela in Brisbane, I thought he played well for two sets except when it really mattered. The same ended up being true here. He had a forehand putaway off a short ball to win the set, and he shanked it. Then he followed it up with another bad error in the tie-break.

Del Potro had his own demons to battle as well, missing one easy shot on set point too, from what I could remember in that set. But Del Potro also came up with so many clutch serves throughout the set, that his play on big points also saved him many times. It’s hard to believe that Del Potro’s serve was often criticised as being poor when he first burst out onto the professional tour. A lot has changed since then, and it has easily been his best shot since his comeback from injury.

Long and dramatic sets seem to often end up in an emotional letdown, even if not from the players, but from the crowd. Or at least usually from me. Having watched that tie-break, everything early in the second set, immediately seemed much more boring. But it seemed like the momentum from the first set had carried on, and Del Potro started to play more confidently now, while Sela was nowhere near as consistent as he was in the first set. Definitely Del Potro was playing much better tennis from then onwards.

In the first set, Del Potro finished up with approximately double the amount of unforced errors as Sela. But the second and third set statistics must have surely been very different.


It became quite one-sided, so I decided to leave the match to watch Radek Stepanek’s match against Denis Gremelmayr.

While the match was going on, there was some very loud cheering going on nearby, people chanting and cheering for Guillermo Garcia-Lopez, not exactly a player you’d expect to receive that kind of attention. It was loud enough that it sounded like it was coming from the same court, except often while the points were being played too. Still, being scheduled on a court like that usually comes with background noise.

The scoreboard on this court hadn’t been working for a while, so it was stuck on 0-0 for a set and a half all over the grounds which must have been highly confusing. I didn’t miss out on much though, and they were at 3-2 when I arrived. Even though this was a one-sided match, this was better than the other one-sided matches. It was Stepanek in full flow, the master tactician. His shot selection, accuracy and all-court game is great to watch. But I think none of that would have been possible without his excellent ability to change directions on the ball, often hitting effective down-the-line shots, sometimes with slice and sometimes with topspin.

The match was one-sided enough, that I didn’t really pay close attention or judge Stepanek harshly if he made a few too many errors. He was in full control of this anyway. I was more looking at the shots, rather than the story.

Strangely enough, I don’t think I’ve seen Gremelmayr play before. He has an odd lefty forehand with a very abrupt circular motion. Both his weapon and his weakness, I assume. He strung together a couple of good forehands to get back even on serve in the third set, but then Stepanek broke right back to take the match.


While this match was going on, Robin Soderling blasted through his opponent in quick time, so there was a half hour gap before Jo-Wilfried Tsonga’s match with Philipp Petzschner. During the break, spectators were amusing themselves by hitting beach balls around the stadium. At first I didn’t see it, and didn’t know what all the cheering and booing was about, but they started booing when the ball fell onto the court. Then the Mexican wave started, a key feature of every Margaret Court Arena night match.

In the end, I didn’t end up seeing much of this match due to Kim Clijsters’ double bagel of Dinara Safina, but also because they had an epic game at 1-1. Petzschner had 7 break points in that game, but wasn’t able to convert. Once it was 2-1 on the scoreboard, Clijsters had already rolled through the first set.

It was a shame though, because it was quite an entertaining match, but also slightly inconsistent. A battle of two flashy players with big forehands, where style comes before tactics and grinding. Basically Tsonga and Petzschner try to win matches the way they want to, and if it’s not working, then they try harder to play better while playing similarly. There were a lot of forehand to forehand rallies, with both players using the angles, not exactly your typical match. Matches seem to revolve more around backhands as the rallying stroke these days, while players are more likely to change directions on the forehand side after a while.

Petzschner nearly went down an early break in the first set, with his forehand badly misfiring but it didn’t take him long to pick it up on that side. From then on, it was a mixture of flashy shotmaking and errors, but it was fast-paced enough that it was entertaining anyway. It’s surprising that the match went five sets though, with Petzschner taking a two sets to love lead, then Tsonga coming back in five.

The Rod Laver Arena night match between David Nalbandian and Lleyton Hewitt, was a whole new experience in itself, completely separate from everything, and the most memorable match I’ve seen live. It was a match that deserves its own report, and you will find it here.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Australian Open 2011 - Day 1 Blog

Sometimes the first day of Grand Slams can be underwhelming and routine, but today was a good day for me. It was a day filled with competitive matches, a variety of styles, and good tennis for the most part. Conditions were cold and windy with the occasional spitting of rain, which is better than the heat I suppose. However, one recurring problem seemed to present itself throughout the day, and I fear it will throughout the rest of the tournament.  From what I gathered today, there seems to be an increase in the crowd turnouts this year on the outside courts.  Either that or poor scheduling.

There were many formerly good players playing today, that the tournament organisers took very little notice of. Nikolay Davydenko, Gilles Simon (however he just won Sydney last week) and Richard Gasquet were all playing on courts where it was difficult to get a seat. The problem was that even if you did end up getting a seat, chances are it would be a horribly obstructed view, with not only the umpire’s chair in the way, but also with plenty of shade covers over the players’ chairs.

Before my seating troubles started, I headed over to Show Court 2 to watch Sam Querrey in action against Lukasz Kubot. I arrived quite early and took the second row from the front. It’s a great view, without any obstructions. Better than watching on a tiny, intimate court in my opinion.

Querrey arrived about 8 minutes late, much later than Kubot and that is very rare in a Grand Slam, I think. I couldn’t hear what he was saying but I saw a rather large amount of gesturing with his hands, once he got onto the court, as if to suggest he was misguided somehow into not finding his way to the correct place.

Play got underway soon afterwards, and it didn’t take long for the Polish fans to make their presence known. They were very frequent with their chanting and support, especially to start with, using any minor pauses in between points to make some noise. I kept trying to take photos of them while they were standing up but those pauses were really short, so I kept missing, and ended up giving up.

When Querrey started serving in the first game, I couldn’t believe the difference between his first and second serve. His first serve was hard and flat, and makes the kind of sound that comes from big servers. In comparison, his second serve seemed to float there forever after its bounce with plenty of time for players to take their racquet back and do whatever they want. He did improve it later on though, as it started to become a softer version of the first serve, but it still seemed to land mainly in the middle of the court.

In the early stages, Querrey’s forehand was nowhere near as potent as I thought it would be. He played mostly a counterpunching role to start with, hitting loopy shots with plenty of margin over the net, but he was okay when he was forced to go for it, like having to hit a passing shot. It’s amazing how many players seem to find it difficult hitting winners, but when presented with a “do-or-die” situation, they can do it pretty easily.  Of course that is also because it is more difficult for the net player to run it down once it goes past them. Some players probably wished their opponents would run to the net all the time.

I’m not sure Querrey is one of them though. He just has better passing shots than expected. Especially on the backhand side, and his ability to hit down-the-line on that side is better than I thought too. He keeps his racquet very still and low while hitting it, and it’s more reliable than the forehand which is more prone to shanking or late timing.

The match was an entertaining contrast of styles, a battle between an aggressive all-court player Kubot and the counterpuncher Querrey.

Kubot is a strong player, hits the ball hard from both sides, seemingly throwing his weight around the court. By that, I mean, using it to generate penetrating groundstrokes and to move athletically. Kubot doesn’t have the best side-to-side movement, but he makes the transition from the net to the baseline extremely well. Today, he was often up there before I even noticed. He also rarely seemed to need to hit a low volley. Though I did find it odd that he was either passed or had an easy volley to hit every time he made it to the net. Perhaps Querrey didn’t even think about making Kubot hit that many shoelace volleys.

I watched the first two and a half sets of this match, and it was quite a streaky match, but mostly at a good standard. Querrey was still finding his timing and too passive in the first set, but after the first couple of games, his serving improved so much that it gave him an edge and Kubot’s high risk game abandoned him in the crucial stages when he needed it.

In the second set, Kubot started swinging away and making shots right from the beginning, as if the pressure from the first set had been suddenly relieved. I have been interested lately to see how players handle low and high pressure moments, letdowns in the beginning of sets, and how they play when they are down on the scoreboard.

In this case, being down on the scoreboard really helped Kubot kick off the second set impressively. He carried on this sudden wave of confidence to hit through Querrey with countless forehand winners, though also Querrey’s serving quality had decreased allowing him more opportunity to. By then, Querrey had also improved his baseline play so this became a better spectacle. Querrey’s backhand did more damage in this match than the forehand, presumably because the match-up with Kubot’s backhand is better.

Returning first in the third game, at first I thought Kubot would continue his practically flawless display when he got off to a 0-30 start in the first game. But it didn’t eventuate and both players ended up struggling on many of their service games. When I left the match, Kubot had broken back Querrey to return to level terms.


Nikolay Davydenko’s match against Florian Mayer had just started, not that I knew. The only scoreboard updates I get are the changing scorelines each changeover in the stadium courts, except that it would never cover all the matches, and often skipped on Court 7, where these two played.

The match was in its early stages, 2-1 in the first set when I joined and I immediately started to regret my decision after noticing that the stands were completely full. Eventually I found a spot where I could peek through the blue sheet covering the side of the stands, though this is obviously not the ideal way to watch a tennis match. I simply wanted to find out what this match was like so far. I most definitely wasn’t going to watch the whole match looking through the blue sheet.

But the match looked good. Plenty of long competitive rallies, where you couldn’t guess who would get the better of it. Of course, there were also plenty of rallies with the trademark variety of Florian Mayer. Mayer broke serve with some great shotmaking. He digs so many balls back when he’s playing, and he always looks like he’s trying to catch up when he’s playing against the top players, but he often hangs in better than it looks like he will. That is, if he is dealing with a player, that uses a lot of pace. He likes the pace.

Meanwhile, the lack of pace was really making it difficult for Davydenko to finish off points. Even if he could handle it, he wasn’t able to push Mayer around the same way he pushes his other opponents around. Especially not when Mayer was buying himself additional time by not giving Davydenko much pace.

After the initial break of serve, I found that there were many people leaving all the time in the changeovers. Many people walked up the stairs not knowing if they’d find a seat, so I followed and ended up sitting on the stairs for a while. They don’t have any security for monitoring this on the smaller courts. It was an extremely cramped position on the stairs. I hoped that I would make it to the actual seats soon, but it was a little difficult because whoever closest to that empty seat would usually get it. It wasn’t on a first come, first serve basis.

After going through three or four changeovers, I was finally able to grab myself a real seat, and I was rewarded for my patience. The kind of patience that I don’t necessarily always have, but what I saw in this match kept me hanging around long enough.

The first set contained many entertaining rallies, with a wide array of shots from Mayer. Davydenko didn’t play that poorly, but couldn’t seem to finish Mayer off. A change of tactics allowed Davydenko to convincingly win the second set, choosing to sneak up to the net whenever he had Mayer stretching out wide often finishing it with his favourite angled touch volleys. Suddenly the amount of extended rallies had drastically decreased.

It seemed like Davydenko had found the formula, and I thought he was on his way to winning the match. But the third set turned out to be a very inconsistent set from both players, with many losses of concentration. It was almost like both players were trying to conserve energy for the battle ahead. Mayer needed to fight through a service game early on, so it came completely out of the blue when he broke Davydenko’s serve to lead the match yet again. Mayer took a more aggressive approach this set, and he wasn’t always successful. But he needed to do so, as a weapon against Davydenko’s increasingly aggressive approach.

Mayer held onto his serve all the way through that set until he tried to serve for the set. At Deuce 5-3, Mayer dropped his racquet after his service motion then picked it up again to play a competitive, long rally. He ended up firing an impressive forehand crosscourt winner, but the umpire awarded the point to Davydenko. Mayer then smashed his racquet in frustration after losing the next ad point with a forehand error. Actually it was very much at the level of a Gonzalez racquet smash. I don't know why the umpire didn't stop the point earlier. One of the guys behind me repeated this story about the racquet drop and smash whenever his mates would walk past, so it happened a couple of times. It was obviously a dramatic moment.

That racquet smash really heightened the tension of the match, as it was drawing into the closing stages of the third set. Mayer was in a mentally fragile state, but also in an extremely fiery mood. Despite losing that break of serve, the energy and adrenaline going through him in the third set tie-break helped him raise his level, and ultimately win the set. Davydenko’s subdued body language and attitude surely didn’t help his chances, though the other reason is that he leaked a few key errors.

The fourth set was a continuation of the third set tie-break for Mayer, while Davydenko’s error count started to pile up immensely. At times, when he missed a shot, he’d have a dejected expression on his face, which is more rare than you would think in professional tennis. He looked sad and disappointed, not angry.

Mayer had break point chances in all of Davydenko’s service games in this set, and he really should have secured a second break to make it much easier for himself. After failing to convert in two separate games, Mayer lost his serve, then broke back again.

Despite Davydenko playing poorly for the most part in this set, there were a couple of games where he played some great tennis. The contrast between those two standards was really obvious, and I couldn’t believe how he could change from one extreme to another just like that.

The final game where Mayer served for the match was one of his great games, but not enough for him to fight back. That game had a controversial overrule, changing Mayer’s shot from an ‘out’ to ‘in’ call. Davydenko seemed to have a whole new intensity that game, nothing like what I saw from him in the last two sets. He threw everything he had at Mayer, and Mayer showed more determination than normal to get it back, and eventually he’d finally find the right time to pull the trigger himself.

Realizing how tough some of those last games were, Mayer was thoroughly happy with his win, celebrating by lying on the ground for a short while.


After this match, I quickly browsed the outside courts to see what was going on, then made an impulsive decision to watch the end of Philipp Kohlschreiber’s match against Tobias Kamke. Kamke had won the first two sets, Kohlschreiber had taken the third and was up a break in the fourth.

This was a relatively inconsistent match from the point where I started watching, where it became quite difficult to sink my teeth into it. Rather than trying to win in an outright way, it looked like it was more a matter of both players trying to manage their own games and fight through the match. Kohlschreiber was much more consistent in the fourth set, and that was the big difference. He was mixing it up more than I usually see from him on the backhand, hitting just as many slice backhands as drive backhands. Kamke was making plenty of errors, but seeing his play in the fifth set, might suggest that he was not exactly fully focused on the task in the fourth. Or either he was not as fired up anyway.

I’ve seen it often, players being less motivated to finish off a match in a fourth set (if struggling with tiredness, or poor play, or something else), but have a completely different mindset when it comes to the fifth. I suppose, it comes with knowing that the match will be over soon either way.

Kamke was down an early break in the fifth set but broke back. His consistency and execution of his aggressive shots improved greatly in this set. He really likes to step in and go for the backhand, but too much is going on before he hits the stroke, and he is prone to make errors on that side. Later, Kamke’s inconsistency came back to haunt him, losing the crucial break of serve.

One of the spectators sitting near me was constantly complaining about why the match wasn’t over yet, and wishing that it was, which was rather puzzling since there were plenty of other choices. Not to mention that leaving the grounds is another option. It was already around 5pm anyway. Eventually, after 15 minutes of complaining (or possibly more), they did leave.


After this, I thought about watching Gasquet’s match against Dancevic but the stands were already full, and on this court, there are only stands on one side. In my experience, that court is always overcrowded. So I referred back to my order of play sheet, and headed over to the court where Gilles Simon was playing to see if it had started yet. It had.

Simon was playing against Yen-Hsun Lu, who traditionally receives a lot of support from the Taiwanese fans. The same was true today, and the left side of the stands looked like it was filled with red, or at least bits of red everywhere. In between points, they would swing their flags around, but again I was not quick enough with the camera to capture it well. Sometimes they would do their chants which sounded a bit like "Aussie, Aussie, Oi Oi Oi" in another language, but whether it really was exactly the same, I'm not sure.

The stands were full, but on the right stand, people would leave often and there would be vacated seats. As soon as I sat down on one, I could see why. The view was terrible. This court seems to have a few additional shade covers on where the players are sitting compared to the court that Davydenko and Mayer played on. I can’t understand the need for all these “view blockages”. Make them sit in the changeovers in the sun for our benefit, or hold an umbrella themselves if they really want to. I quickly got up out of my spot and decided to stand up instead on the corner where I had a better view.  From this view, whenever Lu comes over to the side where I'm standing, I can hear him loudly exhaling.

This was the battle of the consistent baseliners. The kind of match where it doesn’t take long to have a look, and think, they’re going to take all night. Despite a couple of 6-2 sets thrown in there, it did take a long time. The match also rarely changed from the original model that the match started with. In the beginning, Lu was like a slightly better version of Simon. Hitting the ball harder and taking more chances, going closer to the lines. On the other hand, it felt like Simon’s tactic was to make every rally as long as possible. This means not taking any chances. I wonder if this is how he played before he showed sudden improvements in 2008. The kind of tennis that earned him the tag of being known as a pusher.

The other thing that can be frustrating about Simon, is that sometimes it doesn’t look like he is giving it 100%. Because of that, it also looked like he could run all day, and play all day while running around just as effectively as before. After all he was barely breaking a sweat, as in everything seemed to come very easily to him. Gilles Simon makes tennis look very easy. Or more accurately, Gilles Simon’s B-grade standard is tennis made to look easy.

Today he was hitting every groundstroke at about 70% pace, compared to his full pace, and rarely changing it up. Hitting so many balls into the court, I often found myself wondering why he doesn’t try to do things differently. Again, he mostly stuck with going crosscourt, and they exchanged a ridiculous amount of backhand crosscourts with each other.

It was a real battle, but after the first set, Simon’s consistency began to improve, with the gap in unforced errors widening significantly between Simon and Lu. Lu had about 60 unforced errors, while Simon had around 30.

Sometimes when Lu was down in a match, he’d try to go for more, thinking that he would need to do more, and it would cost him an additional break in a set.

In the end, Simon’s continuing consistency was too much of a problem for Lu to overcome. The match ended with a really nice handshake, and I can see why, given how much both players battled in this match.