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.