Career Adjustments (and Miami)

Usually on the first day of a Masters event, I tend to focus on the lower profile players, before they make their exit out of a tournament. Sometimes I make that choice just for the sake of watching a more competitive match, with more emotional ups and downs.

For a change, I took a glimpse at the early rounds of Roger Federer, Andy Roddick and Rafael Nadal, though for different reasons in each of these matches. I was already aware of Roddick losing, so I approached the match with a different perspective than I would have otherwise.

When you watch a top ranked player play, there are more clear expectations. It's also easier to observe because as soon as anything happens outside of what is expected, you can more easily compliment the underdog, or criticise the top player. This, you see on message boards frequently. Whereas with a player with a broader range of performances, almost anything can go under the expected category, though some people use this word in hindsight as a form of implying how great their tennis knowledge is.

In the early stages of Federer's match against Radek Stepanek, I was curious as to what kind of tricks Stepanek would have up his sleeve against Federer. The word 'tricks' is an appropriate term here because whatever he tried was obviously something he couldn't maintain. It was more like a show. In the second rally of the match, Stepanek half-volleyed a return of serve, charged to the net then showed off his excellent anticipation and volleying skills by somehow staying in the exchange with three more volleys. Then he ran back to retrieve a lob and dumped it into the net.

It's not often you see volleys go beyond a couple of strokes, and there's good reason for that. Because it rarely has a high winning percentage for the volleyer. Stepanek lost many points at the net, but there were some entertaining exchanges. Stepanek tried to bluff his way through the match, and naturally it didn't work. As if he would be able to throw off Federer's rhythm without having anything substantial to back it up.

Whenever he returned a couple of volleys, it was impressive, but he was rarely going to win them. From the baseline, he tried to half-volley and finesse shots into accurate positions but he never had enough power. His forehand was often mistimed and dumped into the net. I'm looking up photos of Stepanek to match my article, and almost every photo is of him stretching out to return a shot which seems indicative of this match. He is quite athletic.

Both players won many cheap points. In between some entertaining exchanges, there were a lot of short points and free points. That's exactly the way Federer likes it these days. Even when they exchanged longer rallies, they were half-volleying so often that the point finished in the blink of an eye. It was such a contrast to the Roddick vs Cuevas match, where both players comfortably waited until the ball would reach its peak height.

Federer only required a couple of shots to force Stepanek into a defensive position, and to finish it off. Apparently he hits the ball harder these days, according to a statistic that I heard from a commentator a while ago. Watching this match, and then moving onto the Roddick match, it did make me wonder what kind of adjustments Roddick will make as his career reaches its latter stages. He's reaching the age of 28 now, turning 29 this year and he might even be engaging in longer rallies than he used to. He also hit a famous diving winner on match point in Memphis, which revealed just as much his age as well as his fitness.

In his match against Pablo Cuevas, what I could see was Roddick trying to play incredibly smart tennis. It wasn't like he was hitting the ball into the middle of the court at all. With the slow pace of the match, sometimes I felt like I could get a glimpse into his thought process. I don't actually think he was playing smart tennis. It occurred every now and then rather than on a consistent basis. He was thinking too much.

In the first game, he ran around his backhand to hit a series of heavy forehands which would have been effective if he had his weight going the right way. That was a good reference point for later in the match, because he stopped doing that relatively quickly and ended up trading backhands. Much of that was due to illness though. Roddick really started to struggle in the second set, putting in a lacklustre performance and taking an injury time-out.

Cuevas was hitting his backhand well, but his forehand was quite inconsistent. I wasn't fully convinced of his performance, but one thing he did better than Roddick in particular was using the full width of the court. It didn't seem like a big difference until three shots later, when Roddick would end up having too much court to cover to have any chance of changing defense to offense.

Cuevas' crosscourt backhand is clearly one of his strengths. It's difficult to return the top spin when it bounces up high and deep, and he can also generate good angles. The kick serve on the ad court also works a lot better than it does on the deuce court. He's just naturally better on the backhand side.

Robin Soderling Smashes Through The Draw to Win Brisbane

Last time Robin Soderling arrived in Brisbane, he was a top 20 player with a relatively low profile due to his less-than-impressive Grand Slam achievements. This year he returned as the #1 seed, and top 5 player, commanding the majority of the media attention in the tournament here. In fact, a couple of days ago, he featured in a video clip where one of the interviewers who barely knows how to play tennis tried to play against him, and he switched to playing left-handed.

Soderling is clearly a player to be feared now, rather intimidating and scary to play against. It’s hard to write about Soderling’s tennis abilities compared to the rest of the field. Is it less complimentary to write about a player’s ability to generate pace? He does hit quite a heavy ball too though. Is it mostly due to his big and strong stature, or the crazy big wind-up on the forehand? A couple of years ago, he was often criticised for the unreliability on the forehand side, but now it seems like that unorthodox style isn’t so bad after all. In fact, it’s his “money shot”.

The other big shot of his would be the serve, which seems to zip through the court before you’ve even seen it coming. During the commentary yesterday, I heard one of the most fascinating observations about Soderling. They said his serve is quite flat, and he can’t swing it out away from his opponents that well. So if there’s a big point, he always hits his favourite flat serve down the T on the deuce court, and out wide on the ad court.

Soderling defeated Andy Roddick in the final today, rather convincingly. It was similar to his win over Radek Stepanek in the previous round, where both players tried to throw Soderling off his rhythm (though in different ways), but found that their off-pace shots had very little effect.

As with many of Roddick’s matches (with opponents trying to target his backhand), there were many rallies on the backhand crosscourt side of the court, and Soderling seemed like far more of a dangerous player in this match-up. Able to run around and hit more forehands, penetrating and with surprisingly good angle.

With so many opportunities to hit off-forehands, it was easy to see how Soderling has much improved his footwork running around his backhand to hit forehands. Before he sets up to hit the shot, he throws his entire body into the shot, and this requires a lot of work, to make sure that everything is set up facing the right angle and on time. It’s always hard work on Soderling’s end, but it looks like he’s physically and mentally up to the task. It sure helped that he knew Roddick didn’t have much to hurt him with. He doesn’t seem to be using the backhand down-the-line as much as he used to during the best moments of his career.

I’d like to know what vision Larry Stefanki has for this period of Roddick’s career. Our commentators here in Australia have now painted him as a junkballer, beating his opponents by throwing off their game with off-pace shots. I wonder if this is what he thinks of himself. He has been using the slice backhand a lot, which seems to be one of Larry Stefanki’s favourite shots, when you look at how he handled Fernando Gonzalez’s game, and probably some others, not that I paid attention to his previous coaching roles. Is he developing his game in a direction of producing moderately high performances, but underwhelming results?

Roddick must not be using enough forward momentum on his groundstrokes. I had a look at his forehand, and he’d throw himself into it trying to get as much racquet head speed as possible on the forehand but by the time it reached the other side of the net it always looked underwhelming. So much effort to generate power, such little reward. I don’t think this is normally the case but he was being outplayed here, so he tried harder to penetrate through the court, and still ended up with 0 forehand winners by the end of the match.

There must be something technically wrong there, or either he is intentionally trying to hit these loopy, safe shots. At least his accuracy and consistency is quite good, and this will always ensure he can beat the majority of players ranked below him.

Frustrated with not having any control over proceedings in this final, Roddick used the entire rain delay to rant to the umpire Fergus Murphy about his way of checking whether the court was suitable for play or not. I thought the rant was rather rude and self-centered, and also annoyingly repetitive. In any case, Soderling continued in a business-like manner unfazed by all the distractions and broke serve soon afterwards giving him the crucial break to finish off the match.

Brisbane International - Wednesday Blog

It’s the start of play on Wednesday, and Florian Mayer and Richard Berankis have just walked out on court, along with the officials.  Mayer towers all over them, while Berankis fits in with the crowd of officials.  Berankis looks like a cute little junior, while Mayer looks mature.  Berankis had some headphones on in one ear, then I started to wonder which other players do the same thing.

Seeing his age, I thought to myself, maybe this would be a more difficult match than I originally thought.  After all, young players can make quick strides in the rankings.

I quickly tried to acquaint myself with Berankis’ game.  His groundstrokes look very technically sound, and he moves reasonably well, but not spectacularly.  He’s a good ball-striker, and his double-handed backhand is the standout shot.  Good ball strikers are always dangerous.

Mayer started off the match in aggressive fashion, not resorting to as many slow-paced shots as he did against Tomic.  Even without the obvious slow slice backhands, he was still able to change the pace and keep Berankis off-guard, and Berankis made too many errors to start with.  The biggest difference between the two though, was Mayer’s return of serve, which is definitely one of his biggest strengths when playing well.  He’s very good at using the opponent’s pace against them, by taking the return early and reflexing it back.

The other factor that made Mayer clearly the better player in the first set and a half was his superior counterpunching ability.  About midway into the first set, Berankis started to clean up his game, and Mayer couldn’t hit through him anymore.

The vast majority of winners must have been on the run from defensive positions.  It really made me think about how Mayer relies on his movement so much, to be able to hit those great angled crosscourt backhands and forehands on the run.  He has quite an aggressive way of moving his feet when he is hitting the shot.  It’s not a smooth way of moving, but rather a very abrupt way of suddenly planting his feet firmly into the right position.

The point of the tournament came on 5-4 in the first set, 0-15, where both players exchanged fast-paced, high quality groundstrokes for 20 strokes or so, which ended in a forehand approach shot into the open court that looked like it could have won the point, then a great passing shot from Berankis that looked like it could have won the point, and finally a dive volley winner from Mayer to get to 0-30 and eventually break for the set.  That entire game at 5-4 was high quality.  Mayer finished it off with a backhand return winner down-the-line.

This was a match of two halves.  The first set and a half, from where Mayer was up a set and 3-1, and then the rest of the match.  I noticed today from the crowd, that there seems to be an annoying trend of the underdog player on the outside courts getting more claps from the crowd.  It’s not really accurate, but I call it sympathy cheering.  It was the same in Marion Bartoli’s match, how the player expected to win can hit a great shot and the crowd will be silent, then the other player might win a point through an opponent’s error and then they get an encouraging round of applause.  But it doesn’t stop even when the underdog is winning.  The seeded player will still get no additional encouragement!  Of course, it doesn’t apply to the stars, and maybe also it had something to do with Berankis being young and decent looking.

Mayer had this match under control, up a set and 3-1, with his superior returning skills.  At 15-30 on his serve, there was a ball that dropped on the baseline that I thought he just left because he thought it was landing out.  But then on 15-40, he did it again, and this time it was not so close to the baseline.  He definitely had to be injured, and soon enough his body language completely changed.

It’s quite frustrating when you’re watching a match, and even though one player is winning, it looks likely that they won’t win.  Mayer had been relying on his movement the whole match, so I couldn’t see how he could finish this off.  Unless if his condition improved, or he served extremely well, or relied on his returns.  He sure hadn’t been able to smack that many winners, without doing some running beforehand.  Berankis didn’t really need to play any better.  Before this, every shot Mayer missed was close to the line, but now he was shanking it and hitting in the middle of the net.

This was frustrating for me to watch too, so I started snacking to distract myself.  So how did Mayer end up winning it in the end?  The third set was incredibly strange.  Mayer was visibly frustrated with himself, smacking a ball into the fence after holding serve in the first game, then later on in the set hitting his knee and holding it (when he started to make more of an effort to move for shots).  Maybe he started to move better, knowing that he was near the end of the match, and only had to keep it up for a short while.  Or either he felt a little better.  In any case, he was in a hurry to walk straight off the court when the match finished.

Berankis definitely had a part to play in this.  He pretty much gave away the final game, with one bad error and a double fault.  His game seemed to crumble in the key moments.  I guess some more experience is required for him in this area.

While this long and fluctuating match was going on, it seems like the people inside Pat Rafter Arena were getting short-changed.  I waited outside expecting to see some of Jelena Dokic’s match, but she had just lost 6-0 6-1, and they were already just about to start the 3rd match on the schedule - Andy Roddick’s match against Alexandr Dolgopolov.  This was a highly disappointing match.  I expected much more after seeing Dolgopolov’s match against Andreev.

Dolgopolov started off brightly, matching Roddick in the serving department and hitting superior groundstrokes.  He can hit the ball with astounding pace at times.  I suppose it looks spectacular when it works.  But it turns out he’s just a flashy ball-basher.  After that initial break of serve, Roddick’s service games became much simpler, while most of Dolgopolov’s shot selections seemed silly and over-the-top.  He made many wild errors, and so this became a simple match for Roddick, just for being the more sensible player. 

Roddick played solidly, but I really didn’t like the look of that slice backhand at times.  Then again I was sitting so far back in the stadium, I couldn’t really see properly how high it typically went over the net, but it seemed to float too much for me.

So my $60 ticket for Pat Rafter Arena was basically spent on that disappointing match.  It was back to the intimate and outside courts, where the only problem is that it can be unbearably hot, like it was on the second and third sets of the Mayer vs Berankis match.  By now, it had significantly cooled down though.

Marion Bartoli had just started her match against Iveta Benesova in steamrolling fashion.  I like to watch her relentless determination and killer instinct.  She has a deadly look about her, and takes a very serious approach to her tennis.  She also has entertaining routines in between points, sometimes practicing service motions in between points on her serve.

It’s a good thing that she plays in this way too, because she doesn’t look anywhere near as effective when she’s pulled out wide, like she was in the second set.  From what I saw today and yesterday, maybe she runs out of steam after the first set, not being able to play at the same relentless pace point after point.  But she picked it up again in the third set.

Benesova looked like she couldn’t quite understand how the match turned around against her so much in the third set.  She spent the second half of the set being grumpy, and seemed to get annoyed at the umpire for not being able to hear one of her overrules, and rambled on about something else.  Then the umpire replied with something like, “what else would I be commenting on?”  But I’m really not sure whether I imagined that conversation in my head, because I couldn’t hear it properly or whether it really happened.

This was not a very clean match, with plenty of errors mixed with some good shots.  Particularly I could not understand in this match, the same underdog mentality of the crowd that I mentioned earlier.  Especially since Bartoli’s winners were often more impressive and better-looking than Benesova’s.  I decided to make a point of clapping Bartoli’s winners, and I don’t think I could hear anyone else clapping while I was doing it (which is why this was very noticeable for me).

Feliciano Lopez walked onto the court wearing stylish big headphones and mouthing (or singing) the words to a song, only to head straight to the toilet then before coming back to the court.  I managed to take one photo just before he took it off.  That was probably the only positive memory I had of him, during his match against Kevin Anderson.

Both players started the match with dominant serving, and winning the first couple of service games easily.  But soon afterwards, it turned into a real match with groundstrokes and rallies in it.  And that’s when it started to look like, the only thing Lopez had today was his serve.  I’ve noticed in these couple of days, that not many players are getting cheap points on their serve, like there haven’t been many serve-oriented matches.  At least less than I thought there would be.

Anderson completely outplayed Lopez in this match, and Lopez struggled to win any baseline points.  One was solid and consistent, and the other missed everything.  Anderson’s groundstrokes looked good, but perhaps they’d look very different against a different opponent.  I’d like to be more insightful, but this match was quite simple.  The rain started in the final game of the match, which was good timing because that was the end of the singles matches on the outside courts.

Australian Open Day 3 Blog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 6 Brisbane International Blog

It’s difficult to recall all the emotions and sensations that went with the larger portion of a match that was so lopsided. In this case, it was Radek Stepanek’s surprising win over Gael Monfils, despite his currently superior ranking.

Match reports like this tend to focus on the first couple of games, when everything still seems important, the difference between a player winning and a player losing. Midway through the first set, the match fell flat quickly and before it was even over, it felt like it was over.

Fortunately I can still recall the events of the match. How much promise the match began with, only to quickly fade into disappointment. This was an exciting match-up between two contrasting players, and in your face personalities.

Monfils likes long rallies. Stepanek likes to shorten them. Monfils prefers to stay far behind the baseline, and Stepanek loves dropshots. The difference between Stepanek’s dropshots and everyone else who can hit them well, is that he can follow them up at the net. He gets away with it far more often than it looks like he should and he’s always bordering on being obsessed with the shot.

Both players opened the match with comfortable service games, as the players were still on their way to settling down in the match. There were a few too many unforced errors, but the rallies were promising. Stepanek, whenever he had a slightly shorter ball would take it on the rise and swiftly move into the net, especially on the forehand side. Stepanek seems to have this wonderful ability to be able to make the slightest differentiation between a shot he should be rallying on an even keel with, and when he should step it up.

It’s a different challenge against Monfils, however and he loves to hit passing shots on the run. For some reason, he actually appears to have more precise footwork hitting on the run, than from down the middle. I think it’s because of the way he plants his foot on the ground so he can recover to make it to the other side of the court if he needs to.

After the first couple of games, the players settled in, and the way the rallies unfolded, it was the perfect showcase of the athleticism of both players. Especially with all of those dropshots and lobs from Stepanek. No one really talks about Stepanek’s movement or athleticism much, but he is exceptionally quick and athletic. There was a lot of squeaking of the shoes around the court, and it was coming from both sides. It appears that Stepanek can also slide all over the court, although nowhere near as well of course. There was one rally where he did it three times amazingly.

Midway through the set, it actually looked like Monfils started to get the upper hand on Stepanek, as the rallies started to turn more and more into long, drawn out rallies. By now, Monfils had found his depth and consistency of shot. Given the reputation that Monfils has as a super athletic, amazing defensive player, I always seem to put the high expectation on Monfils to rarely throw in any unforced errors. I mean, doesn’t he only lose because he’s passive?

Surprisingly over the course of a match, his level can dip drastically, and it did so here quite suddenly at 2-3 down in the first set. It’s hard to explain why when he appears so secure sometimes. It took me a while to put a finger on it, but I started to notice the types of errors he was making. Usually setup big forehands, shots that are either putaway shots, or setups for winners. The shots that are supposed to be easiest for the players, but Monfils doesn’t like playing purposefully. He likes to play whatever he feels like in the moment.

Equally as disappointing as Monfils’ poor performance, was what happened as a direct result of it. Stepanek’s decision to play more direct, simple tennis. He earned his first break of serve with early, deep returns down the middle, but the longer the match went on, the more he sensed that he didn’t really need to do anything spectacular. I’m sure he wouldn’t have believed in the beginning that engaging in regular rallies would have done the job. But that’s the path he ended up taking as Monfils would throw in these strange errors.

Instead of trying to put in a big effort to focus and play out some tough points, Monfils had resigned himself to a loss. He’d laugh at himself, and he appeared sluggish all the time. Stepanek would throw in a couple of fist pumps and positive displays of emotion just to make the situation more clear. And he aimed it directly towards his camp, at his coach, Petr Pala. You had to love the precision of the raised little twirl of the finger he did in his camp’s direction at the end of the first set, straight after hitting a smash winner, and with his back turned away from them.

 

In little over an hour, Stepanek had made it into his second Brisbane final, and he’ll face Andy Roddick in the final. The day was in danger of becoming a big disappointment, and it seemed headed in that direction at the end of the first set between Roddick and Tomas Berdych, which Berdych won 6-1.

Speaking of consistency, Roddick is another one of those players that I expect to rarely make any unforced errors. To be fair, he didn’t make an excessive amount and it wasn’t shockingly bad. But it was bad for his standards.

To be honest, I had mixed feelings with how the match was going. I think on most occasions, if I’ve decided to root for a player that I have clear preferences for, I’ll find it hard to make that step of wishing it was a better match. Because that would be like completely switching sides and loyalties. It’s different if you’re confident of that player winning anyway, such as the first round of the Australian Open and you’re hoping that the low-ranked underdog will play a little more inspired than he currently is. But this is Roddick against Berdych, and he’ll be dangerous or maybe even favoured once he starts playing better.

In the end, I was pleased that Roddick did pick up his level though because it turned out to be a much better match to watch. Still, Berdych’s performance in the first set should be acknowledged, because it was impressive in the same way that his one-sided win over Marcos Baghdatis was.

This was Berdych hitting the lines with remarkable consistency. When Berdych is on form, it’s impossible to not be on the back foot spending all your time lunging around and scrambling his shots back. It looks great when it works, but generally the longer the rally goes, the less likely he’ll be able to keep it up.

I am not sure how much was forced or unforced, but Roddick couldn’t find his range on his aggressive forehand early on, and his transition game. Whenever he tried to hit a forehand to come in on, he’d miss it almost every single time. Then he’d start to miss these slower floating balls on his forehand side as well, much to his frustration.

Roddick casually threw around his racquet, hit a ball into the roof, then to end the set, dropped his racquet and quickly walked to take a bathroom break almost as if he wanted to get off court as soon as possible. Yet in spite of all of this, he always seemed committed to what he was doing, what he wanted to achieve tactically. After Monfils' earlier lack of fighting spirit, it was great to see Roddick competing well and digging deep, not that we would expect anything less. Though putting it into perspective, Roddick's antics were almost like a sideshow, not a display of serious frustration.

He continued to try to hit his forehand with purpose and slowly it came together. His forehand is effective in more subtle ways than Berdych’s is. It's accurate and heavy, effective enough to keep Berdych moving side to side, and he has the additional option of coming into the net, something that Berdych rarely does. When Berdych does it, he looks hesitant.

I also found a weakness in the Berdych smash. Apparently he doesn’t appear to know how to hit a slice smash or a three-quarter paced smash, or either he doesn’t want to. He seemed stubbornly committed to trying to hit a winner off whatever lob was thrown at him, if it was high enough for him to smash. Regardless of whether it was close to the roof or too close to the baseline.

What Roddick is exceptionally good at doing is piling the pressure on, and as soon as he started playing better, the consistency of good quality rallies started to significantly increase. Now they were having tough points almost every single point, and it was really only a matter of execution. By now, Roddick’s forehand was working much better, so his well-known serve/forehand combo allowed him to hold serve more easily.

Berdych continued to try to push the boundaries and his ball-striking abilities, hitting close to the lines with frequency. His level had dropped a little from the first set, but he was still capable of being accurate often enough. Accurate enough to be a potential threat, although the match was starting to turn in Roddick’s favour. I started to hold my breath whenever Berdych hit a shot, and when he hit a great shot, I would often gasp. Because he would often save break points and other important situations with high risk, difficult shots. Berdych doesn't hit with safe margins over the net either. He really needs to add a transition game to make it easier on himself.

There was hope of Berdych suddenly putting together a glorious game, but in the end, it followed the same trend that the match had been heading. Berdych finding himself undone by his own errors, as a direct result of all the consistent pressure that Roddick put him in. And Roddick hitting a couple of aggressive returns in the decisive game.

It was strange to hear in the on-court interview, Roddick putting all the credit on Berdych for the loss of the first set, despite all of his on-court antics. This only adds to my impression that part of his reactions were more for the show, than anything else.

The strengths and weaknesses of the ATP top 10

This is the article I wrote for Sportingo in an attempt to win the £50 prize, but was unfortunately unsuccessful.

Roger Federer

Known for having one of the most complete, all-round games, Federer has the unique knack of being able to combine sheer pace with finesse. The best shotmaker in the game, capable of winning matches with the most dazzling display of winners.

Defensively he is very light on his feet and has excellent reflexes which allows him to half-volley shots on the defensive, to be able to quickly turn defense into offense.

His forehand is a creative shot which allows him to create bigger openings than most other players can, due to his superior racquet control and improvisation skills. His backhand is a solid shot, but his backhand slice especially short in the court is the great strength, for putting opponents in uncomfortable positions and making it difficult for them to take complete control of rallies.

Federer can be prone to shanking balls because of his quick racquet head speed, though he does this surprisingly rarely as his strong record over the years shows. He is most prone to succumbing to the players that are most difficult to break down, such as Nadal, Murray and Djokovic, that force him into long, competitive rallies.

Rafael Nadal

One of the great competitors of the game, Nadal is famous for his intense approach to the game, and attention-to-detail. Undoubtedly one of his biggest strengths is his willingness to improve his game, his gradual transition to becoming more of a shotmaker and more adaptable to all surfaces.

Nadal's game revolves around his forehand, similar to Federer's, how he can force his opponent to cover large amounts of court with the angles he can create on it due to the topspin.

Nadal never succumbs to impatience, and is an expert at pounding at his opponent’s weakness relentlessly, particularly if that weakness is a right-hander’s backhand. He has a knack of hitting superb passing shots on the run. His backhand crosscourt is an improving shot and he can generate impressive pace on it, usually to his opponent’s surprise. Fitness-wise, he can outlast anyone in the game, which can make it a painful experience for his opponents trying to compete with him.

The best chance for opponents to attack him is through his second serve, which has the tendency to land short on occasions. His forehand defensively can also be a problem on hardcourts, because of his big swings which may force him to catch it late. Nadal’s confidence levels tend to fluctuate over the course of the season, which can make him beatable by the very best players or players playing well on their day.

Novak Djokovic

Djokovic is one of the most complete baseliners in the game. He made a name for himself in 2008 with his superb down-the-line shots and impressive athletic ability, the extra effort he puts in to ensure a deep, effective defensive shot on the full stretch. These days, he possesses a relatively complete baseline game, difficult to outrally or break down. He is capable of grinding out matches when he isn’t playing his best tennis, and his backhand is a technically sound shot.

His second serve is becoming more of a liability these days landing shorter than it used to, and his forehand is not an efficient enough shot which can lead to having its bad days. His forehand seems to struggle particularly when not given pace or height to work with. Djokovic has a tendency of turning difficult matches into dramatic spectacles, which can be his own undoing in bad matches.

Andy Murray

Known for his unique, crafty approach to the game, Murray is one of the few players that utilise the full area of the court, famous for finding his way around his opponents rather than through them. Most of this is through to the creative slice backhand he possesses, inside-out curving outwards or short angled wide, and he is also capable of creating short angles on the forehand side.

His game is a strange combination of low-paced and fast-paced shots, taking his opponents by surprise more often than not. Like Nadal, he has an excellent ability of hitting superb shots on the run, and he has great passing shots. His backhand is his biggest strength, and almost never breaks down. He is extremely consistent and loves long rallies.

Murray is capable of finishing points off at the net, but often prefers not to, moving his opponents around instead. In today’s stronger and more powerful generation, Murray’s lack of power on typical shots can prove to be a problem if not executed perfectly. He can also be overly conservative on return of serve, which works against him on some occasions. His second serve and first serve percentage has also been commonly mentioned as a weakness.

Juan Martin Del Potro

The reason for Del Potro’s success is his lethal combination of power and consistency, the ability to maintain long rallies while remaining aggressive and in control of rallies. He’s accurate, but doesn’t need to hit close to the lines because he’s so powerful. Backed up by a strong serve, Del Potro excels at the simple quick shot combos to kill off short balls, and any weaknesses thrown by his opponents.

He shows good point construction, and is able to sense when he needs to play more aggressively to turn around a match. He’s mentally strong, and becoming increasingly difficult to break down.

His weakness is his foot speed, and his ability to change from defense to offense is not as good as the players ranked above him. He operates best when given a rhythm to work with, and he doesn’t like bending down too often. He is excellent at covering up his weaknesses however, and he doesn’t often relinquish a point he has under his control.

Andy Roddick

The man with the fastest serve in men’s tennis history, Roddick is difficult to break because of his strong first serve percentages and variation on serve – a mixture of pace, kick and slice. The rest of his game is solid and smart, varied enough to make it difficult for his opponents to attack his obvious weakness on the backhand. His strength over the course of his career has been his adventurous approach to his game, the willingness to tinker with various aspects of his game to keep it fresh and relevant.

Roddick can be outrallied by strong baseliners, so it’s always a battle for him to break out of other players’ patterns of play. His backhand, especially as a passing shot is the great weakness as it showed against Isner in the US Open. If serving well and playing confidently, Roddick can be a threat to many players, but the difference between him and the players ranked above him is that he can also lose to moderately ranked players more often, though he rarely loses to low ranked players.

Nikolay Davydenko

For better or worse, Davydenko has a one-size-fits-all approach to the game. Aggressive, early ball-striking based on the idea that if you attack your opponent first, they can’t attack you. Thankfully he is a superb ball-striker and has a great combination of foot speed and footwork.

He can create excellent angles, and is one of the best at changing directions. The key to breaking down Davydenko’s game is to generally throw him out of his rhythm, though it can be a difficult task, but on some days, Davydenko has the capabilities to break down his own game with a rash of errors. Another weakness is that Davydenko doesn’t really possess a change of pace. Fortunately Davydenko is a shot-focused player and will rarely be bothered about his own errors, hopeful that his game might come together quickly.

Fernando Verdasco

Verdasco always had the weapons to become a top player, but didn’t know how to harness those strengths. His strength is clearly his forehand, which he can use to control proceedings, and because of the spin he generates on the ball, he is capable of hitting forceful shots without hitting anywhere near full pace, though he can flatten it out also.

The variety on his forehand is excellent, and tactically he is improving, especially in terms of killing off points under his control, realizing that it doesn’t need to be done in one shot. Given the explosive nature of his forehand, he has a tendency to try to win matches cheaply with his forehand, especially pulling the trigger on the high-risk high-reward forehand down-the-line too much. He has an excellent sliding serve especially on the backhand court, and often serves high first serve percentages.

By tactically playing better, he has removed some of the flashy shotmaking that made him dangerous. His return of serve is solid and consistent, but not that great offensively. He doesn’t utilise an all-court game as much as he should, and sometimes he can be lacking in fire and motivation in matches, though that has also improved.

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga

Tsonga is one of the best short point players in the game at the moment, which allows him to maintain good consistency despite not being as solid of a player as many of his peers. He can create so much damage with the one shot, due to his big forehand as well as his follow-up ability at the net. He has a great transition game, because of his impressive athleticism. Because of his attacking style of play, he is capable of covering his weakness on the backhand, difficult to drag into long rallies.

The weakness for Tsonga is that he doesn’t seem completely sure of what style of play he wants to play, and sometimes doesn’t commit fully to being aggressive, and putting pressure on his opponents. He can also rely too much on his shotmaking, and doesn’t yet know how to grind out matches. His return of serve can be a weakness, especially against better servers.

Robin Soderling

Soderling has been a surprisingly consistent player after his breakthrough run at the French Open, despite not having the characteristics that would suggest he would be one. His game is strongly based on a powerful serve, and he backs it up with a big forehand and solid backhand. Pace of shot and shotmaking are Soderling’s greatest strengths. He can overpower most of his opponents, and has the ability to string together a great return game to break serve.

He's likely the most one-dimensional player in the top 10, not really capable of much subtlety and he can appear to be lunging around the court when moving. The movement to his forehand out wide can be exploited, especially if he has to bend down low, and he has problems moving forward as well. With Soderling, it’s very much a case of sticking to his strengths and he has shown good form and confidence recently which is the key to his success. He is also stronger mentally than he used to be, thanks to the help of his current coach Magnus Norman.

Roddick fights his way past Hewitt in a five set thriller

Before Andy Roddick and Lleyton Hewitt stepped on court for their quarter-final showdown, they showed an interview from Roddick describing what it feels like to play against Hewitt.

"It's a fight. Everything is a fight. Lleyton's not going to give you anything. A lot of guys you can get on top of, you can get on top of their game, you can look for holes in it. Lleyton doesn't really have a lot of holes. He's pretty solid off both sides. He volleys well. You're definitely not going to get on top of him mentally."

That's what the match turned out to be, a battle between two seasoned professionals on the tour, two guys that know exactly how to play the big points pushing each other to find their best tennis when they needed it most. Hewitt hasn't enjoyed as much success as he would have liked the last couple of years, but mentally and subsequently strategically his game yesterday brought back memories of what it was like when he was near the top of the game.

In the recent couple of years, Hewitt had reverted to a slightly more defensive game, a product of the hesitancy which often affected his game. More than anything, I felt watching Hewitt playing well, suddenly his game looked far more simple than it had in recent times, more assured of himself and punishing short balls with more authority, quick to spot openings in the court as if it was obvious that he should hit it there.

Because of his amazingly consistent return of serve, his ability to dip returns at his opponent's feet and his excellent counterpunching abilities, he's able to create more opportunities for himself than most, as well as put his opponents under immense pressure. Players know when they play Hewitt that they have to attack against him, yet they know that if they don't put him away that he has them exactly where he wants them - in position to hit his targets, using pace and angle to redirect it with accuracy.

What Hewitt wants to do is to crush his opponents mentally, to have them feel like they've done everything they can in a point then to run it all down and turn it into a counterpunching winner right at the end. It's clear it's the kind of point he enjoys the most and he celebrated one of these with his loudest 'Come on' of the match.

But Roddick is mentally strong as well, and he was fully prepared for the battle. Roddick played almost a perfect match tactically, looking to keep Hewitt off-balance in a variety of ways. First there was the much-improved slice backhand, which worked great as an approach shot deep and skidding low after its bounce, but also to mix up the play in the baseline rallies.

When he hit through his backhand, he hit it as confidently as I'd ever seen with great accuracy, quick to go down-the-line whenever he sensed the opportunity to avoid getting pinned on the backhand corner. I feel like the slice backhand has made a major resurgence this tournament with Roddick, Haas, Murray now alongside Federer making the shot a very effective weapon on its own. In fact, that makes it all four semi-finalists that have utilised the slice backhand.

When Roddick was with Connors, it looked like Roddick was rushing the net, more with the intent of pouring pressure on his opponents but these days it's like he naturally finds himself up there, building up the point and thinking of a point as a whole rather than simply taking an aggressive mindset. It's as if he has earned the right to make it up there, rather than trying to bluff his way up there.

Roddick was in front almost the entire match long, and Hewitt looked down and out at the start of the fourth set but it went right down to the wire in the fifth set. In a way the match became somewhat aligned to their well-known reputations, Roddick as being an excellent front-runner and Hewitt being one of the best fighters on the tour.

What I liked most about the match were some of the amazing shots that both players came up with under pressure, Roddick in particular. Half-volleys that landed on the line and amazing depth on his groundstrokes, most surprisingly on the backhand side. Hewitt isn't as good as he used to be on the big points but he still has the heart.

It wasn't at all like a typical Roddick match, where you would expect one service break to seal the deal and that added the element of unpredictability to the match, and in turn it forced both Roddick and Hewitt to fight their way out of difficult situations. There was no room for cheap errors here. Hewitt started off hesitantly in his first service game costing him the first set, then it turned into an epic battle after that. As the match progressed, Hewitt started to read Roddick's serve better winning more than half the points on Roddick's second serve and sometimes even being able to connect with the first serve on the middle of his racquet.

I was certain when the match was prolonged to a fifth set that it was going to turn into another Hewitt classic, one of those great comebacks that we were used to seeing purely because of his five-set record. But Roddick didn't allow himself to be deterred by the loss of the fourth set after the initial break of serve. Maybe his utmost respect for Hewitt's competitive abilities allowed him to remain positive in the fifth set, and in the end he was the deserving winner for playing the better tennis overall, for showing more creativity in his shot selection as well as executing his shots better and more consistently.

Australian Open Day 5 Blog

(This Australian Open blog was posted on Tennis Week here.)

It was the start of the third round matches and I already was no longer spoiled for choice, which meant in turn watching some matches that I wasn’t interested in.

At the start of play, I headed into Hisense Arena to watch Juan Martin Del Potro play against Gilles Muller, which featured a nice contrast of styles. The brutal baseline play of Del Potro pitted against the tricky variety of Gilles Muller. Muller reminds me in some ways of Radek Stepanek, not because of their styles of play, but because Stepanek is the kind of player that doesn’t look like he’d be able to match it from the back of the court with anyone, but somehow manages to hang in rallies and keep his opponents off balance just enough to avoid them from taking control of them.

Given the strong backcourt abilities of Del Potro, I would have thought that Muller would have been facing an uphill battle. He started off slowly thoroughly outplayed in the baseline rallies, and having to stave off break points in the opening few games. It was looking like maybe it would be a one-sided affair. Even when Muller started to hold serve more reliably later in the set, the statistics that flashed on the board consistently showed a big difference in points won between Muller and Del Potro, showing that Del Potro was definitely playing the better tennis despite not scoring a break.

After the first couple of games, Muller started to hold onto serve much better, mainly on the back of better serving from him, and not only did this win him cheap points but it allowed him to start off the rallies in his favour. Often this meant returning a midcourt ball as an approach shot and following it up at net.

I’ve started to notice that Muller is the kind of player that actually mostly relies on finesse, despite being a big server. His game relies on a combination of slice backhands and chipped shots to neutralise the play or move around his opponents, then throwing in the change of pace on the forehand which isn’t hit at such a fast pace, but there is enough of a speed difference to take his opponents off-guard. It also requires good touch to possess excellent volleys like he does. I don’t think he necessarily punches away his volleys that well, but well enough for the ball not to sit up and he gets excellent placement on them and rarely seems to miss a routine one.

As you can tell, my viewing of this match was from a very one-sided perspective. I did watch Del Potro, but given the kind of opponent he was up against, it was almost impossible to tell which errors were forced, and which were unforced. Especially when you consider that Del Potro has been known to struggle dealing with low slice backhands on occasion. It did seem like, however, that he was doing most of the controlling of the extended baseline rallies in the first set, before the trend changed in the second to something more neutral.

The first set tie-break was a strange one. It started off routinely, mostly going on serve, until Muller served a double fault to give Del Potro the clear advantage. But soon later, Del Potro handed it back with a double fault from himself, and subsequently Muller took the first set. Which led to a rather passionate racquet throw from Del Potro, who stands out to me as being more of a fiery character than I initially thought, given that sometimes he is branded as being a “gentle giant.”

The first half of the second set was clearly the best passage of play from Muller, now even having success in the longer rallies, and not only on serve. One particular shot that I really like from him is the short slice backhand, and short angled shots that he seems to be able to employ to make his opponents move up and down the court. But towards the end of the set is when his game started to drop off, making far more simple forehand errors off midcourt balls just when I was observing how solid his groundstrokes had been this match despite the fact that they don’t look technically reliable.

At first when Muller’s play started to decline, he would consistently put himself under a giant hole on serve, but would dig out a big first serve on almost all of the break points and follow it up if necessary. It was a display of very good clutch play, and one that understandably frustrated Del Potro, and almost drove him insane. But sooner or later, this loose play was going to cost him, and so it did at 5-5. But Muller did have one very brief opportunity the game earlier where he dumped a makeable backhand volley into the net. In the third and fourth sets, Muller’s game dropped off even more, showing far more inconsistency and errors on makeable shots which allowed Del Potro to take control of the match.



At the conclusion of the match, I headed over to Court 2 to watch Tommy Robredo play against Lu Yen-Hsun, who I have no idea why his name seems to be referred to in full on the scoreboard when everyone else has their first name abbreviated. I was disappointed to learn that Nadia Petrova’s opponent had retired after the completion of one set which meant that the match between Ferrer and Cilic, which I had planned to watch had fully completed already.

It was the first time I had watched Robredo play in person before, and my first impressions were that when he plays against an opponent lacking in firepower like Lu, he looks like a high quality player. The one thing that I like about Robredo is how he tries to stick to his strengths and implement his favorite patterns of play. What he likes to do the most is trade off-forehands to open up the court before taking it down-the-line, a pattern of play that won him large amounts of points against Lu. This was a particularly favourable pattern of play given that Lu’s attacking capabilities on the backhand side are nowhere near as good compared to the forehand.

Whenever Robredo had to chase a ball down on his forehand side, he looped it back up with more topspin to enable him to get back into the point, to try to find his way back into that backhand corner he likes so much. In short, Robredo is a very good tactical player in making use of the shots he possesses to achieve the desired result. In this particular match, he was the more aggressive player yet he didn’t go for outright winners when he was on the dead run if he could get himself back into the point.

Lu tried to change the pattern of play in the second and third sets by taking a leaf out of the Robredo book and deciding to take those backhands as forehands by running around them. This is when he started to look slightly more dangerous, but Robredo still looked like the superior player, with a stronger forehand and better defensive skills. The other big strength of Robredo was his ability to get almost all of his returns into play, even if the depth on them was not necessarily good, there was always the possibility of him turning it around by throwing in one of his more heavily topspun shots. Lu tends to struggle with trying to handle the higher bouncing ball. In the end, Lu started overplaying as a sign that he had run out of options and he was thoroughly outplayed in the end. Given the one-sided nature of the match, I was impressed with the loyal support of the Taiwanese fans, who continued to cheer on Lu equally as vocally as they did at the start of the match.

That match ended in time for the start of the match between Andy Roddick and Fabrice Santoro. In general, Santoro is a player that struggles a lot with handling the top players given that his natural game is to throw off his opponents, when all of the best players seem to have large amounts of patience and reliability attached to that game, which those qualities apply just as well to Andy Roddick.

Personally I don’t find Fabrice Santoro to be as entertaining as some other people do, largely due to the fact that even though he possesses an unorthodox game, it is also relatively defensive. Maybe it’s the Martina Hingis effect that playing a top player has on him, not being able to use the creativity due to getting pushed back on the defensive all the time.

But it’s not that Roddick was hitting big shots past him, Roddick actually looked like he was playing within himself. Three quarter paced shots, placed well but with plenty of margin and patient enough to wait for the most suitable ball to strike on. It all looked far too easy for the American, and it always seemed to be a matter of time until Roddick would break Santoro’s serve during the set. I liked how whenever Roddick would hit an absolutely horrendous shot that he would immediately turn his back on it, as if to pretend that it never happened.

I didn’t find this match to be particularly engaging although I was fascinated that while I was waiting to head back into the stadium early in the third set, I noticed how the match looked more entertaining on the TV screen rather than inside the stadium. Maybe because the view on TV placed more of an emphasis on how well the full dimensions of the court were being used, the service box area and the baseline, where both players seemed to alternate from on a regular basis.

I managed to see some typical Santoro shots, trying to curve the ball in with his passing shots, short slices and approach shots but I didn’t get to see that many amazing lobs or volleys. The lack of effective lobs was particularly surprising given that Santoro can sometimes be known to throw them up on a very regular basis, in turn making himself cover large amounts of ground.

So at the end of that match, I didn’t really feel like I had yet gotten my fix of entertaining tennis. It was time for the night match between Tomas Berdych and Stanislas Wawrinka, which on paper was the most closely contested match-up of the day. Two big hitters that both look to dominate play from the back of the court in their own separate ways.

Berdych has shorter backswings and takes the ball earlier, and he tends to be able to create better placement and unexpected changes of directions. What he can do with the ball from deeply placed shots is extremely impressive showing that he has very good reflexes. Wawrinka is a heavier hitter of the ball, and uses larger backswings so he needs to be given more time to set up although on the odd occasion he was able to generate enough pace to hit a forehand crosscourt winner while the pair were exchanging crosscourt forehand rallies.

Wawrinka started the match breaking Berdych’s serve with three winners and managed to hold onto that break for the rest of the set. It was interesting to note the winners count as the set moved on. Wawrinka at some point had 9 winners to Berdych’s 0, but Berdych almost caught up midway in the set, until Wawrinka started to gain somewhat of an advantage in this category. Which by the way, both players had similar amounts of unforced errors, which makes these statistics rather relevant. Whenever Wawrinka made an error, it felt like he usually missed by large distances and sometimes mistimed the ball whereas Berdych’s shots usually only missed by the barest of margins.

From the second set onwards, Berdych seemed to be able to consistently hit returns deep down at Wawrinka’s feet putting him under extreme pressure. In the fourth set, Wawrinka changed tactics to start utlising more of the backhand slice crosscourt to extend rallies and neutralise the Berdych attack to some extent, which helped make it more of a closely contested match. I was surprised how little Wawrinka made use of his backhand down-the-line which is normally one of his best shots. In the end, Berdych’s ability to consistently do more with the ball, and his better serving and returning was enough to take the four set win.

Monfils shows he still has a lot to learn while Roddick shows flashes of his old form

Gael Monfils had been long touted as one of the young guns, one of the upcoming stars of the men's tour but failed to live up to expectations for a number of years. He had been frequently disrupted by niggling injuries for most of his career, and when he was healthy enough to play, there was a distinct weakness in his tactical game and he was constantly criticised for his overly defensive game.

In the last few months, he has slowly finetuned his game with the help of new coach, Roger Rasheed, Lleyton Hewitt's former coach, who apart from adding some discipline into the Frenchman's training regime, has also helped Monfils slowly transform his game into a more well-rounded game that is a healthy mix of offense and defense.

He still gets stuck behind the baseline on occasions, but he no longer appears to be pinned back with no options, instead being able to effectively neutralise shots before throwing in that change of pace or running passing shot that has been long known as one of his trademarks.

From a tactical point of view, yesterday's match up against the world number one, Rafael Nadal was a fascinating encounter because it would answer a lot of questions about Monfils' willingness to attack and how he would approach the match in general. The Spaniard is often known for wearing his opponents down and being relentless in his consistency, but more importantly because of his superior defensive skills, he forces each and every single player on the tour to play an aggressive game in order to threaten him.

Masters Series TV commentator, Robbie Koenig mentioned that Monfils had been practicing specific drills to upset Nadal's rhythm, including one that involved hitting a series of crosscourt forehands to open up the court to drill the forehand down-the-line into Nadal's forehand corner, which is the one clear weakness in the Spaniard's game. David Ferrer's two performances against Nadal at the US Open last year and at the Masters Cup specifically come to mind, where he exploited this tactic relentlessly and with little subtlety, as he frequently nailed his off forehand into Nadal's forehand side time after time.

Monfils started off the match doing exactly just that, showing excellent footwork and movement to consistently run around his backhand and hit big forehands. But unfortunately, that sort of aggressive tennis was short-lived as Monfils reverted back to the defensive game that he is known for, and what he is comfortable with. Monfils usually loves playing on the big stage, and with this being a centre court match in his home country against the world number 1, more fireworks were to be expected.

His entire performance in general reminded me much of the style of tennis that he exhibited when I first sat up and took notice of his game when he took out Marcos Baghdatis at the Australian Open in 2007, after Baghdatis had his magical run to the finals the previous year. Back then I noticed that he had one of the most unpredictable games, and that he often seemed confused as to how he should approach his matches. With most players, you get a feel for the patterns or combinations of shots that a player likes to implement. But while Monfils himself did have a general playing style, he would also often throw in awkward shots out of nowhere, but it didn't feel like it was brilliant, more that it was random.

Monfils's performance was not awkward yesterday against Nadal, but it was puzzling that he would achieve so much success with one particular tactic, but that he would completely abandon it for the vast majority of the match. One can only conclude that he found it too difficult to break out of his old habits and go out of his comfort zone, but in this particular match, he had nothing to lose. Nadal's performance himself left a lot to be desired, where a lot of his shots were sitting up high and looked very attackable.

Andy Roddick yesterday, in contrast was particularly impressive against Madrid finalist, Gilles Simon. Roddick hasn't really shown much form in recent times, despite having some moderate success at the lower level events. On occasions, Roddick can get caught into the trap of playing solid, consistent tennis, not making full use of the power that he is able to generate on his groundstrokes especially on the forehand side. Roddick tends to try and win service games by placing consistent pressure on his opponents and hoping to get one service break per set, which is all he needs to pocket a set on most occasions.

On a different note, Roddick also has a tendency to associate aggressive tennis with constant netrushing without acknowledging that he has to effectively set up a point to increase his chances of having success at the net. Often he only reserves his aggressive game for the top players, for example, against Novak Djokovic at the US Open where he had relative success going for his shots but crumbled on the big points. To be honest, because he does not attempt this sort of tennis often enough, it is still difficult to tell whether Roddick is actually able to implement this sort of strategy consistently with success.

However, yesterday against Simon, he was in particularly impressive form, where his groundstrokes looked dangerous and he had an extremely intimidating presence about him which isn't always the case. Simon, in contrast, with his energy-saving game, looked like a decidedly small and irrelevant figure although to be fair he has a knack of hanging around and generally beats his opponent in a much more subtle fashion.

Right from the outset, it looked like he wanted to send a clear message to Simon, and this was no clearer than when he stepped in and crushed Simon's weak second serve on numerous occasions. On the backhand side, he was stepping in and taking it early, making it difficult to Simon to extend the points as he would like to. The final game of the first set was the standout, where at one point, Roddick hammered three consecutive off forehands to take the set.

However, the second set had a slightly different tone to it as Roddick went down two break points, showing some overeagerness in his shotmaking, mishitting a couple of forehands and throwing in some double faults. But Roddick saved all of the break points, often opting for the high percentage well-placed kick serve, which caused Simon all sorts of problems. This pattern repeated numerous times later in the set, and whenever he needed a big point, he went for that same reliable and high percentage strategy.

The baseline rallies in this set were much more closely contested, as a result of Roddick stepping his foot off the accelerator as well as Simon playing more solid tennis and seemingly getting his teeth into the rallies more. I noted often that Roddick started off many of the points keen to get his opponent off the back foot by taking the ball early, but as soon as they engaged in longer rallies, Roddick started to hit those loopier, medium-paced shots again. However, in the final game of the match, Roddick went back to the successful strategy of attacking Simon's second serve, and despite some shakiness in the big points in that game, earned himself the crucial break to take the match.

Simon, for a brief moment, showed some of the fighting qualities that saw him reach the final of the Madrid Masters only just two weeks ago, but it wasn't enough for him to win the match. At one point, in the final game when moving out wide to retrieve a forehand, Simon slipped over and dropped his racquet in the process, but recovered quickly to hustle to the opposite side of the court, before Roddick made the error on the following point.

In the final match of the day, Nikolay Davydenko continued his dominance over Tomas Berdych extending his head-to-head record over the Czech to 8-0, barely dropping any games in a convincing 6-1 6-1 win. I remember watching one of their earlier matches from the Australian Open in 2005, which was closely contested, and featured some impressive ball striking from both players but since then Berdych has lost much of his belief against Davydenko, which adds up to the difficult match up problem that he faces.

Davydenko is one of the few players on the tour, who I feel are extremely difficult to overpower because he is able to use an opponent's pace against them to redirect the ball and move them around. Compared to Berdych, Davydenko takes the ball earlier than Berdych, is more accurate in his shotmaking and can generate better angles and is a better mover. I like the rotation that Davydenko gets on his groundstrokes which enables him to change directions on his groundstrokes effectively, and he was doing this frequently like he usually does, often going down-the-line on both sides.

In terms of game, Davydenko had the clear advantage, so Berdych needed to hope that Davydenko was slightly off his game, and that he himself was on good form. When that didn't turn out to be the case, the shoulders started slumping quickly for Berdych. As soon as Davydenko went up a double break in the first set, Berdych never looked like he was even going to make this a contest.