Australian Open 2012 - Day 3 Blog

I’m back now from the Australian Open, procrastinating about writing a blog entry because I’m feeling so crazy, and full of a wide range of emotions. I just got back from watching the five set thriller between David Nalbandian and John Isner. Drama overload. I feel like how Nalbandian must have felt when he threw his racquet in disgust after losing the match that got away from him. I could have thrown a racquet myself to relieve some frustration.

I’m going to do things backwards here today. Let’s just get it out of the way, and while the drink I have in my hand is still taking some effect. I thought that Nalbandian’s performance today was one of the most enjoyable I’ve seen live from him, for several reasons, despite the result. He appeared to be highly motivated the whole time, and his brain was switched on, in thinking mode the whole time. He played purposeful tennis. He cared about every point he was playing, but it didn’t seem manufactured like he was trying to put his opponent off, or convince himself that he was doing great, like what the WTA players tend to do. Just a whole lot of little things here and there like assertive hand gestures and/or silent fist pumps. I get a very good view of that, from where I’m sitting in the third row.

There was a special atmosphere to this match. They both seemed very eager to win. I guess it started with Nalbandian’s first loss of serve in the first set, where he hit the ball to the other side of the court in the direction of where Isner was standing. Isner glanced at him, not at all impressed. The battle was on.

Isner didn’t appear to be too confident from the baseline to start with though. He avoided backhands like the plague and managed to turn them into forehands relatively often. He was hesitant to enter any long exchanges and therefore ended up prematurely coming to the net, only to get passed all the time. This was playing right into Nalbandian’s hands, who has awesome passing shots, particularly the forehand angle crosscourt which he used quite frequently and the lob. It didn’t matter if Nalbandian was on the run, stretching and just bunting back a slice. If he got another shot at it afterwards, he’d win the point - somehow.

With live tennis, all court exchanges are particularly fun to watch, and these rallies often contained rapid fire exchanges, running all over the court and nice touch from Nalbandian. I should also mention that in this match, the players managed to make an impressive three under-the-leg shots, and zero failed under-the-leg shots. Nalbandian won a lot of points with dropshots and lobs, and the touch that he possesses is 100 times better than Isner’s, who was an embarrassment everytime he hit a dropshot. Still I had a bad feeling that these dropshots could harm Nalbandian towards the end, just because in my own experience playing tennis, dropshots are absolutely awful if you play them too often, and that’s what ended up happening. (I once made a comeback from 4-0 down to beat someone who hit dropshot after dropshot). There was more to this though, as Isner was cramping in the fifth set.

I really enjoyed the first set, but in the second set, Isner smartened up his game, staying back on the baseline more often, and using his big forehand instead, which would be how I’d recommend him to play if I was coaching him. The outcome of the next few sets was heavily dependent on second serves and how frequently they’d need to rely on them, both from Isner and Nalbandian. I don’t think either of them had much success on second serves, but I don’t really know as I don’t have the access to statistics. Isner didn’t really get much of an upper hand in the rallies but he crushed Nalbandian’s second serve, particularly off the forehand.

Nalbandian’s shot selection and accuracy was a pleasure to watch. It was such a contrast to watching Del Potro earlier in the day, where power is first, and accuracy is second (and not always necessary). I love it when every shot he hits is purposeful and deliberate, and it requires a certain mindset and mental attitude that is not always present that day in his matches. Sometimes he only showcases it on big points in matches, but hardly ever on regular points, but here he did on a more regular basis.

On the big points, he’d step it up even more to a whole new level. I don’t remember which set it was. I think it was the second or third set where Nalbandian had to save break points. On the big point, he made every intention of ensuring that every shot he hit was to a safe spot where Isner couldn’t hurt him, to his backhand. He’d give it extra air over the net, to make sure that he wouldn’t miss it, then once when he had the opening, he’d pull the trigger down-the-line or follow it into the net. I thought that was a very interesting lesson on how to play a big point, how to make a calculated risk. Anyone that tells you that it’s all about being brave on a big point is making it sound all too simple. No matter how well Nalbandian is hitting the ball, it looks completely deliberate and smart, rather than just trying to crush a groundstroke. Again, watching Del Potro play earlier made that a bit more obvious than it would have already been.

Nalbandian winning the third set was also due to a slight lapse in concentration from Isner, in the opening game. He missed quite a lot of first serves, and made some ugly errors. The third set was highly competitive, with many closely contested games despite it eventually going to a tie-break. Isner’s serve was amazing in the tie-break. He got a free point off it every single time. Even Nalbandian stepped up his serve in the tie-break as well, getting more first serves in than usual, but Isner had one opportunity and he took it by going after Nalbandian’s serve to take the fourth set.

Nalbandian bounced back well in the fifth set to play some awesome tennis, the best of the match from him I thought. Knocking groundstrokes into corners and coming into the net to finish it off. Pretty much winning every rally in emphatic fashion. Isner was struggling physically early on, before the adrenaline started kicking in, and Nalbandian should have taken advantage of it. He had played so well, but just couldn’t get that one extra point when he needed it to convert it into a break. Isner continued to pounce on Nalbandian’s second serve. There was one game at 4-3 where Isner had chances to break, due to all those first serves missed, and Nalbandian managed to dig back some very aggressive returns to turn the points into his favour. Some of those break points he saved would have been just as good as the match points he saved against Hewitt last year. That was the point where I thought – it’s the fifth set but Nalbandian is moving better than he ever did to start with. I think because it was an important point, and he didn’t need to conserve energy anymore.

The fifth set started to really stress me out, because despite Nalbandian playing at such a high level early on, all it meant was that the set was building up to be a potential lost opportunity. Not converting on Isner’s physical problems at the start of the fifth set. After the first few games, the adrenaline started kicking in and Isner started moving better, and more importantly serving better. Then he got cramps after Nalbandian’s bathroom break (which I briefly wondered whether it was strategic or not). More evidence there that Nalbandian should be winning, but he wasn’t. Some people in the crowd were cheering for Marcos Baghdatis, during the break, who was meant to be playing afterwards. The longer the match went on, the noisier the crowd got, with shouting out comments and getting involved (the match was already a full house to start with).

After the cramping, Nalbandian started to win most baseline rallies, but as the point got more important, the more effort Isner summoned from within himself to manage to serve an ace. That’s the dangerous thing about cramping opponents. They can appear to be so wounded, but whenever it gets more important, they put in more effort, they get themselves through the pain barrier and run anyway. Isner served the aces when he needed to, and he ran enough when he needed to. He anticipated Nalbandian’s dropshots to break serve to win the match, and he ran far more than he did on a less important point. Those dropshots and lobs might have won Nalbandian the first set, but it was his undoing in the final set.

Nalbandian played all the big points well, but there was one which he choked away at 8-8 on break point. If there was one point I’d look back on, it’d be that one where he set up the point completely in his control, probably thought he would win it about 5 shots in before he even hit the final backhand. He had a crosscourt backhand to get Isner out of position and hit it long by several metres. He eventually got to break point after that, and that was where the drama began of the umpire overruling the service fault and then Nalbandian taking too long, and eventually not being able to challenge it. Regardless of whether that was a poor decision or not, perhaps Nalbandian had it coming to him, with the way he has been treating challenges over the years. Throughout the match, I saw him putting up his finger several times and glancing around, only for it not to end up being a challenge. It’s very confusing. I don’t think it was even necessarily a factor in his loss of serve in the next game. He didn’t play it that horribly – just not strategically well, with those dropshots.

So that was the end of the match, and there was no way I was staying to watch Marcos Baghdatis without taking a single break or getting out of my seat. Going to the Australian Open by yourself sucks, in that you can’t leave at all for certain matches, otherwise you’ll lose your seat. I already stayed there without leaving for 5 hours or so, so it was definitely time to go home.

Before that, I watched some of Francesca Schiavone’s match against Romini Oprandi, the battle of the Italians. It was nice to see women’s players hitting with topspin, rather than everything so flat and one-dimensional. It is easier to generate angles when hitting with topspin. This could have been better than it was, but Schiavone was shanking her backhand all over the place. She does have a massive windup on the shot, and it looked like it was causing her problems. She hit three shanks to lose the match in the second set.

The first proper match of the day I watched was between Juan Martin Del Potro and Blaz Kavcic. This is the second time now that I’ve watched Del Potro where he’s started off the match by shanking forehands. It seems like it takes him a while to properly warm up on the shot, before finding some form, because of his huge preparation. Del Potro is such a heavyweight. His groundstrokes are so impressive. He thumps every shot, but is it really as impressive as it looks? It’s true that the average groundstroke of Del Potro is better than the average groundstroke of Kavcic, but Del Potro really wasn’t making the best of his ground game here. Instead, he relied on his raw, natural ability to hit the ball hard, and that because his average shot was better than Kavcic’s, he was more likely to win a baseline rally.

The match in the first set had a familiar feeling to it, the same feeling that I get watching Del Potro on TV, thinking, ‘wow, that was a great shot’, only for the rally to extend so many more shots with more of the same thing. So why is it that Del Potro hits all these great shots, but his opponents get them back, and he has to keep repeating the same thing over and over? It’s a nice display of patience, but he’s not following it up well. Surely he could make use of the net at some stage. I don’t think he made it there at all during the match. Kavcic would have done better if he didn’t double fault so much.

Also, Del Potro’s accuracy seemed to get worse as the match went on. It could be because he made a few too many errors to start with, and became discouraged that his accuracy was very poor in the second set. Kavcic had an early break on Del Potro, but leaked too many errors towards the end of the set. He picked up his game in the second set. I really liked Kavcic’s attitude. He appeared to be completely determined to chase after every shot, and to hang with Del Potro (whereas Nalbandian and Isner were being much more selective about which shots to chase after). In the second set, Kavcic started grunting louder which got many people imitating him and finding it all amusing. It really wasn’t a good match from Del Potro at all. I left after Del Potro took a two sets to love lead, as I really needed to get a break from the heat at some point during the day.

Australian Open 2012 - Day 1 Blog

I swear I’m going to make better match selections. When I look back on what matches I chose to watch today, I’ll probably never understand myself. But they were spontaneous decisions based on a number of factors, such as timing and which matches were in their best stage to start following. For example, I avoided matches where match had gone underway and the first set was very one-sided. I’ll come up with a different formula, based more on what players I want to watch, and forget about the rest.

It was a relatively underwhelming day in Melbourne Park. I guess this is the result of watching one-sided tennis, patchy play and not a whole lot of top players. I started off with Lukasz Kubot and Nicolas Almagro, from early in the third set. Well, I was originally going to watch Mardy Fish, but walked in and saw that Daniela Hantuchova was playing. She just shouted ‘Come on’ about six times in two games, which I thought was horrible, then I headed off.

Kubot is probably one of the most aggressive players you’ll see on the tour. He’s tall and strong, and takes advantage of it as much as possible by leaning in, and putting all of his body weight into his shots, which also allows for easy transitions into the net within a few steps. His volleys are excellent. Because of his massive reach, he can finish a lot of points up there that many other people wouldn’t be able to.

The key difference was Almagro’s serve, because he was winning a lot of cheap points on his first serve, whereas Kubot’s was much more unreliable. It’s a very simple, fluid service action. It’s amazing how much he gets off it.

Due to Kubot’s aggressive play, he frequently dominated what would happen in this match either winning or losing points. He was going for broke almost all the time when returning serve. In the end, Kubot had something like 55 errors while Almagro had 11. It’s very rare that an unforced error count is that lopsided while the match is still relatively close. It was fitting that Kubot’s errors would cost him the match. One thing I’ve noticed is that Almagro tends to shout ‘Vamos’ quite passionately. It makes me feel his emotion… for a brief while.

Not really sure what to do next, I ended up going to see Stanislas Wawrinka play against Benoit Paire, or in other words to watch Benoit Paire self-destruct and make huge amounts of errors. Maybe he was injured though, as he did take an injury time-out in the second set. When I first started watching, I thought it was funny seeing Paire trying to slide around the court, probably completely ruining his shoes in the process. I don’t know how much he does that normally. I don’t know whether I stopped paying attention, or that he didn’t do it anymore afterwards. It obviously became less appealing once he was losing by huge amounts.

The other thing about Paire was that he was running around his forehand to hit backhands frequently. There was one shot which was clearly on the forehand side where he elected to hit a backhand! His backhand’s not even that great, just reliable. The way he was hitting the ball and his movement was very, very upright like he didn’t want to bend down at all. Maybe it was related to his injury.

The court was surprisingly quite full for this match. People were probably just waiting for Baghdatis. Wawrinka was hitting the ball quite hard and striking the ball well, but the whole time I was watching this match, I was thinking of leaving, and so I did after watching a set and a half. Sometimes I want to watch just enough so I can blog about it – what an idiot.

I went on to watch Bernard Tomic’s comeback against Fernando Verdasco on the big screen, which was awesome. All those down-the-line winners in the fourth set and clever slice backhands. In the fifth set, Verdasco started to open up the court better moving the ball around from side-to-side and not getting caught up with Tomic’s slice backhand all the time. But I really loved that match point where Tomic slowly rallied with Verdasco then hit that slice backhand down-the-line only to open up the obvious forehand winner down-the-line. It totally captured how Tomic had made his comeback in the match, by creating those little openings for those down-the-line shots then nailing them.

I just went randomly walking after that, caught a very short player in the corner of my eye, then realized that it was Olivier Rochus. Took a look closer then noticed two short players! The other one was Bjorn Phau. I stood there for a while evaluating whether I should watch the match. These guys have very aesthetically pleasing one-handed backhands, so that was a positive point. They also have great point construction and movement, though Rochus would definitely be better at point construction. His accuracy is great to watch. Rochus was grunting very loudly as if to make a strong point that he was trying very hard here.

This match really could have been a very entertaining match, had the match been like the first few games that I watched. But the rest were awful, just because Phau was awful. He was making a large amount of inexplicable errors of trying to hit the ball hard down the middle then missing. He shouldn’t be trying to play aggressively when he isn’t even doing anything with the ball. Maybe he had an injury, because I did see him bend over one point feeling out his leg muscles. I kept watching for longer than I should have, wishing that it would get better.

But after Rochus went up a break in the third set, I had a look at the fifth set of Donald Young’s match against Peter Gojowczyk. Switching over from Rochus’ match to this, it all seemed so unprofessional technically and mentally, but then again they were in the fifth set and probably spent. I think all that happened was that Young was serving terribly, so Gojowczyk took advantage of it by going up a service break and making a few backhand down-the-line winners. But being up a break was too much for him and he surrendered it straight away with some terrible errors, then Young picked up his serving and won comfortably after that, while Gojowczyk self-destructed. I would have never guessed that Gojowczyk was German, couldn’t really understand why he was getting an ‘Auf gehts’ in there by a supporter.

After a long day of having to deal with the annoying hot weather, it was good to finally get to the night session where David Nalbandian played against Jarkko Nieminen. Based on the quality of players, this match really should have been better than the other ones, and so it was at least in terms of consistency. I really enjoyed watching the players battle it out, as it seemed like there was no easy or reliable way to win points here.

I enjoyed watching Nalbandian’s awesome angles, dangerous enough to guarantee winning the point and being able to open up the court on the next shot, whereas many other players could hit a backhand crosscourt yet not really get anywhere near a point-ending shot. It just goes to show how a little difference makes a big difference, though that is also because Nalbandian is quite good at following up his most effective shots into the net.

Apart from that, it also surprised me how sometimes Nalbandian could come up with these spectacular shots from a losing position in a point, which would allow him to turn a rally that he looked almost certain to lose back into his favour. He can create those same trademark angles even from the defensive. Nalbandian was down break points on his serve at 3-3, then he saved them with some good play, then somehow that elevated level continued on to Nieminen’s service game where he broke serve and served it out.

Nieminen had some injury issues in the second set. It probably affected his serve more than the rest of his game. The rallies were still competitive, though Nalbandian’s consistency had gone down in the second set, which was probably what contributed to the close scoreline. It was such a shame that it ended in a retirement since I didn’t want the match to end. It was a good matchup which allowed me to see plenty of rallies, since neither of them had dominant serves.

Australian Open 2011 - Day 4 Blog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Australian Open Day 3 Blog

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

Last year at the Australian Open there were press reports of tension between Serbian and Croatian fan bases, so the first round encounter between Janko Tipsarevic and Marin Cilic was interesting from that point of view, to see the rivalling between fanbases. As soon as the players started to warm up on the court, the support from both sides was already loud and clear and both groups were trying to outdo each other which made for an entertaining atmosphere in Margaret Court Arena. At times, Carlos Ramos, the chair umpire had to advise the crowd to be quiet during play stating that these are “two very nice guys.”

As I started watching the match, it was getting clear that Cilic was the man that was more in control of the match. The more aggressive player, capable of changing directions and going down-the-line off both sides with ease. One of the things that stood out the most about Cilic’s game was the consistent depth of his groundstrokes. It felt like his strokes were naturally penetrating and that it was much easier for him to hit an aggressive shot, rather than Tipsarevic who needed to specifically try to force the play and generate the racquet head speed especially off the forehand side.

It was a relatively comfortable first set for Cilic but the second set was more of a contest. Tipsarevic seems to be a guy that needs to put in a lot of mental energy and determination to bring the best out of his game, so that extra bit of determination to not want to give away cheap errors brought him more success than before. This is made even more obvious by his grunts which only appear every now and then during particular stages of the match. But eventually after numerous hard fought games, Cilic converted the crucial break of serve towards the end of the second set to win it.

The third set was more of a temporary blip for Cilic rather than Tipsarevic playing good tennis, now starting to shank some shots on the forehand and dump shots into the net on the backhand. It’s interesting that players can look so technically sound to the point where it looks to me, that they would be able to repeat it at least to the extent of their game looking reasonably solid almost every single time. This kind of thinking usually seems to apply to the more relaxed, effortless players, but this is a misleading thought as Cilic proved by losing the range on his groundstrokes and making some awful errors at times.

I noticed that when Cilic is at his most consistent is when he looks to get his body weight moving forward into the ball, which doesn’t happen as much when he’s less confident. In turn, this led him to adopt a slightly more passive way of playing which allowed Tipsarevic to take control. My opinion was that it was Cilic’s play in this set that allowed Tipsarevic himself to play better for the most part. It was a scrappy third set that featured hard-fought rallies but numerous errors as well, so I decided to leave the action to take a walk to Hisense Arena to see the current World No. 1 Jelena Jankovic.



It was most likely going to be my only opportunity to see Jankovic over the course of my six day visit given that I had not purchased any Rod Laver Arena tickets. She was up against Kirsten Flipkens of Belgium, who to me was mainly known as the player that filled in for Belgium in Fed Cup whenever Clijsters or Henin were unavailable. Not that I had ever seen her play before.

What I most wanted to see from Jankovic was her superb athleticism and ability to maneuver her opponents out of position, to the point of wearing them out. But Jankovic is only just returning from illness. She stated herself that she hadn’t played a competitive match in about two months so not much was to be expected from her.

It was not an impressive performance, and if I looked too closely at what Jankovic was doing, then I found myself often disappointed. At no point did Jankovic look like she was actually in control of any point, in that she often gave Flipkens the opportunity to take the initiative in the rallies herself.

However she did hit some good counterpunching shots at times, with the passing shots and I got to see a glimpse of her backhand down-the-line. But for a shot to look impressive, it has to be implemented with success on a regular enough basis, with which Jankovic did not.

What made the match most interesting to watch was the play coming from the Flipkens racquet and her general style of play. Her game reminds me very much of some of the female doubles specialists, for example if Rennae Stubbs played singles, I think it would bear some resemblance to this. She doesn’t have the solid base of strong groundstrokes that the majority of women’s players have. Instead she plays an all-court game that mostly revolves around taking the ball early on the forehand side, and following it into the net. Flipkens seems to run around her backhand more often than any other female player I’ve seen, opting to sometimes hit forehands off shots that were about one meter away from the sideline. Flipkens implemented some of that net-rushing game to success in the second set but in the end, Jankovic made just enough passing shots to be able to finish off the match.

So the next match I watched was between David Nalbandian and Lu Yen-Hsun, which occupied most of my viewing day lasting almost four hours long. Coming off a tournament win in Sydney, some experts predicted a potential semifinal showing for Nalbandian given the form that he showed in that event. But Nalbandian in almost three years has failed to achieve anything in any Grand Slam event, not even reach the last eight which is shockingly awful for a man of his calibre rivalling Ivan Ljubicic’s career Grand Slam record in terms of unimpressiveness. And so his poor Grand Slam record continued bowing out to Lu, who had previously never advanced past the second round of a Slam.

In this particular match, Nalbandian picked up where he left off from his first round match, struggling with his game yet again and particularly the serve. In recent years, it has been observed by some that for Nalbandian, if he serves poorly, then he plays poorly and that is what happened yet again. On a bad day, Nalbandian’s serve can be incredibly weak especially on the second delivery where it can be continually punished by almost any player on tour as evidenced by players like Gicquel and Lu jumping on it time and time again. I don’t know whether he slowed down his first serve, in an attempt to increase his first serve percentage, but that looked weak at times as well.

I would say that the level of play that Nalbandian displayed today was relatively similar to that he showed against Gicquel, except that Lu was able to match him in terms of being able to maintain consistency and was also better offensively. In short, for particular stretches of the match, it felt like Lu was the better player in all areas of the game: serving, returning, offense, defense. Because of that reason, it was difficult to find anything to admire in Nalbandian’s game today when you could see the other guy across the net doing the exact same thing better.

Lu is one of those incredibly solid players with good tactical awareness to play controlled aggressive tennis without trying to go outside of his abilities. He doesn’t really have the flair or the ability to create unexpectedly good shots like the top players do, but he makes his opponents play good tennis to beat him, and takes full advantage of any short balls and weaker offerings. I didn’t actually think his performance today was anything exceptional even for his own standards. It looked like something I had seen before from him.

One thing that Lu was particularly good at today was taking care of the midcourt short ball on the forehand side. The other area where he got a big advantage was on the return of serve. It wasn’t only the serve that was costing Nalbandian, but his return of serve was also a problem particularly whenever he had to block a serve back, he often sent it long or into the net on very makeable shots.

There were many breaks of serve featured in this match and closely contested games which added to the drama and nerve wracking nature of the match. I noticed that in the second and third sets which Nalbandian won, he seemed to be doing a better job of hanging in the rallies and extending them compared to the fourth and fifth sets which were relatively one-sided in Lu’s favour, given that he was up a double break in both of them. So what was it that went wrong that made the crucial difference?

I’ll admit that during the match, I was also looking up into the screen in between points to rewatch them to see if I could pick up anything different from a separate view. To see what Nalbandian’s footwork and movement looked like, to see how he was making those errors. But what stood out the most without even looking at the screen was that as the match reached the closing stages, Lu’s confidence grew more and more, and importantly his energy levels actually seemed to increase when it should be the opposite which allowed him to play a more aggressive brand of tennis. I guess you could say it was a sign of his adrenaline levels whereas Nalbandian’s energy levels went down instead.

It felt like within the stadium that Lu was somewhat of a sentimental favorite, maybe because of his quiet determination and his ability to keep his emotions in check, the sign of a good competitor. Not that it surprised me since I have seen him play before, but his body language and emotions seemed to rarely change over the course of the match, which fluctuated in fortunes for either player.

As for Nalbandian, while he may have often shown signs of disgust with himself, I still felt like it was a more composed performance for the main reason that it didn’t seem to affect his play in a negative manner. The final game of the match in particular was epic with numerous deuce points and Nalbandian squandering many break points unable to string anything together, allowing Lu to finally seal the match. So that was Nalbandian out of the tournament, which greatly disappointed me especially given the promise he showed leading up to the tournament and that I had yet to see him play a good match in this event.

So after witnessing a long and nerve wracking match that was mentally tiring for me, I wasn’t sure whether I’d be up to refocusing to watch another match. Initially I thought not, but I thought I should at least take a brief look at the match between Juan Martin Del Potro and Florian Mayer, to see if it was worth watching. It was a match that I had previously shown some interest in for the main reason of wanting to witness the play of the very creative and unusual Florian Mayer, a player that is just as unorthodox as Fabrice Santoro, but not acknowledged anywhere near as often for that fact.

Del Potro had just taken the first set 6-1 so this added to the feeling that maybe it wouldn’t be worth watching. The way Del Potro sets up his groundstrokes in making sure that he is in position at contact with the ball makes him appear very intimidating to play against. I like how incredibly low he bends down each time to hit his double-handed backhand.

The second set was where Mayer started to play some tennis that was highly entertaining. Mayer’s backhand in particular is a very entertaining shot. He seems to be able to generate this incredible angle crosscourt on an amazingly consistent basis, both off the topspin drive backhand and off the slice. He also hits a jumping double-handed backhand on a regular basis almost as if it were a showboating shot, which just adds to the appeal of his game. Then there was one point where he was running up to chase a dropshot and faked as if to hit a dropshot only to flick up a lob at the last minute. Although unfortunately that didn’t win him the point.

One thing that Mayer did well in this set was take the ball early on the short balls to follow up at net, and as you would expect, he has excellent feel up there. Mayer served for the second set at 5-4, but unfortunately it went downhill from there, losing that set 7-5 and convincingly losing the third 6-2.

Australian Open Day 1 Blog

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

In my first visit to the Australian Open, I noticed that I found the experience to be more overwhelming rather than any feeling of excitement. After all, a Grand Slam is like a festival of tennis, over twenty courts of simultaneous action played at the highest level of intensity, and basically the pinnacle of tennis. But instead I felt a lack of patience, like if a match wasn’t up to standards then I wanted to be somewhere else and I found myself often uncertain about which match I wanted to watch.



I arrived about 20 minutes late and quickly made my way over to Court 3 to watch Tomas Berdych play against Robby Ginepri. This match I picked more due to the potential difficulty of the match-up compared to a typical early round match rather than any interest I had in either player. I was particularly disgruntled when as soon as I sat down to watch, Ginepri lost his serve at 2-1 with three or four awful errors then to later witness Ginepri continue to play at that similar standard for a further one and a half sets. Which brings to the question, is it better to simply watch players you like or the most interesting matches?

The match in itself was characterised by Berdych comfortably moving around the ball keeping the rallies going, while peppering the Ginepri forehand more often than not. Ginepri in the first set and a half barely managed to win any rallies that went over four shots or so, especially not any consecutive points in that vein. Normally I find Ginepri’s game to be strangely interesting due to his somewhat unconventional technique, but I failed to see any of that today. He would take a short loopy swing, without really having the normal forehand backswing that most other players do and if he doesn’t time it correctly it just lands all over the place.

Berdych himself looked to be playing in a relatively comfortable rhythm without much trouble until when he went a double break up in the second set, where he surrendered one of them back, and since then continued to struggle to hold onto serve, nearly almost letting Ginepri get back onto level terms. To be fair, it wasn’t only Berdych’s inconsistency. Ginepri was no longer spraying balls anymore and I didn’t need to be so pessimistic about his chances during rallies.

The atmosphere in this match was particularly strange. I think watching the matches at home, what you notice are the certain groups of supporters that are there, and in this case, Berdych had his. But sitting in a different section of the stadium, I noticed that it was more of an unbalanced atmosphere, like the cheering was really only coming from one direction, however loud it was.

So this improving performance from Ginepri put me somewhat of a dilemma after initially deciding that two sets would be enough for me. But as it happened, I took off anyway to go watch Robin Soderling take on Robert Kendrick.

It felt like the stands were literally packed with Swedish fans and as the day unfolded, they proved themselves to definitely be the loudest group at the Open. In particular I liked the alternating chant they were doing, by having one group on the left chanting one line, and the other group on the other side doing the next, giving the impression of the fans being everywhere. Although that’s not to say that there were few of them, because there were plenty, and later on you could hear them from all the other outside courts when Sofia Arvidsson took to the court.

This in turn, immediately made this a more entertaining match, but the tennis was of a relatively good standard as well. A match between two aggressive players, but two different types of aggressive players. Soderling likes to dominate from the back of the court while Kendrick likes to throw in some more variety and changes of pace and charge the net when he has the opportunity. I like Kendrick’s style of play, but often he found himself being pushed around not being able to regularly control the points the way he would like, and he was generally less consistent than Soderling.

I think the biggest difference between the two, was the effectiveness of the second serve. Kendrick seemed to be far more affected negatively whenever he needed to resort to one, which either could have been due to his less effective groundstrokes (not being able to serve-and-volley like he would on a first serve) or worse serving in general. So it didn’t surprise me when Soderling eventually managed to break Kendrick’s serve in each set.

I also think that Soderling has the slightly better defensive capabilities, whereas Kendrick doesn’t seem to be able to do much with the ball on the stretch. Soderling is far from being a smooth mover, but he does a good job of lunging to the ball, mainly to keep the ball going, and deep if possible rather than anything else.

From my point of view, there seemed to be a lot of line calls of shots that looked in to me, that were called out on that close sideline, but considering the view that I had, I’d assume that it was more likely me that was incorrect rather than the linesmen. At 30-30 in the game where Kendrick got crucially broken in the final set, Kendrick thought he served an ace. This is the incident that prompted Pam Shriver to come onto the court when the match finished to interview Kendrick, which amused me given that players themselves surely do not want to be doing an interview at such a heated moment.

This is where I went to take a quick look at the match between Feliciano Lopez and Gilles Muller, the match that I found out later turned out to be an epic five-set match that extended to 16-14 in the fifth set, won by Muller. Not that I regretted walking away from it one bit. It was early in the third set when I started watching, where Lopez had just broken Muller’s serve with a couple of low slice backhands.

It’s interesting that both Lopez and Muller are considered to have relatively unique games being lefty serve-and-volleyers but playing against each other, it was a bit like watching a mirror image. Except Lopez has a one-handed backhand and Muller has a two-handed backhand but both resort to the slice more often than not so it’s barely noticeable. At first I thought watching slice backhands made a nice change, but about ten minutes later I realized I was mainly watching a match dominated by serve. It was very much a case of putting in the first strike, and not much shotmaking here to admire.

So at this point, I thought maybe I should take a look at Taylor Dent who was returning to action after injury problems for the last couple of years or so, up against Amer Delic. Then as I walked over to court 10, I noticed that there were really only one or two rows of seats on each side of the court to the point where if you sat down, you’d have to put up with seeing a fence. I don’t understand the scheduling decision to put a man who was once considered to be half-Australian, and had moderate amounts of success on one of the smallest capacity courts, considering that the majority of outside courts at least have around four rows of seats on each side. I later saw when the match was into a fifth set that it was packed with people standing everywhere wherever they could, with which I simply do not see how people can actually even see, then again I am relatively short.



I wasn’t that desperate to watch it, I decided and the heat was hard to deal with at times so I thought I’d go watch Jelena Dokic, another player on the comeback trail, up against Tamira Paszek. It was much like watching the opposite of the Lopez vs Muller match. Reasonably long rallies, played under a nice rhythm. I found it amusing that even Paszek and Dokic’s grunting which is characterised by a louder level of breathing than most people, seemed to be incredibly similar.

Having seen Dokic’s match against Mauresmo in Brisbane earlier this year, the one thing that I had feared the most was her ability to take advantage of leads she had built for herself, and her serve potentially failing her. After going up an initial early break at 2-0, Dokic quickly gifted it back with two double faults. But surprisingly, that was just about the end of it, and despite brief moments of shakiness, she managed to deal with the occasion relatively well, at least compared to that dreaded Mauresmo match.

In the first set, both players were playing relatively similar styles keeping the ball going crosscourt the majority of times, and only pulling the trigger down-the-line when they had an opening. The difference was that Dokic was the more aggressive player hitting the ball harder and at a lower trajectory which in the end got her a much bigger winners tally than Paszek did.

The first set was Dokic’s most consistent set, good ball-striking and a low amount of wild errors. The one thing I noticed about both players was that whenever they were pushed on the defensive, they were rarely able to turn defense into offense, meaning that both Dokic and Paszek were not very impressive defensively. It felt like to me from watching it that the majority of shots both players were hitting seemed to be well within their reach.

The second and third sets were a more inconsistent affair with numerous changes of momentum. Both Dokic and Paszek started to go for riskier shots, down-the-line shots except Dokic’s shots were far pacier. It no longer looked like Dokic was playing a relatively patient game, sometimes trying to do too much. In the end, it seemed like the one service break in the third set for Dokic was enough to put the momentum in her favour to snatch her a second service break. Dokic showed a brief sign of nerves after going up that lead but was able to remain composed enough to serve out the match successfully.

Then I headed back over to the outside courts to catch the first set between Paul-Henri Mathieu and Jarkko Nieminen. I noticed that recently Mathieu has been subjected to a couple of very one-sided losses early in the season to Verdasco and Djokovic, the former of which I watched live myself in Brisbane. So I was hoping that this time Mathieu would put in a better performance this time and showcase more of his skills. Immediately right off the bat he went down a couple of break points, but saved them all with good serving, then the match started to turn right in his favour. His groundstrokes were much better this time, opening up the court nicely with accurate groundstrokes and excellent angles.

The first set was one of the more entertaining sets that I watched that day, in terms of the quality of play from both players. Nieminen in the end got pushed back most of the time, forced to play from a defensive position due to Mathieu’s controlled aggression. I didn’t notice Nieminen to be struggling noticeably with his movement until when he took an injury time-out at 5-2 in the first set, then strangely served-and-volleyed on one of his weak second serves. Then later in the game, he served a meek double fault to lose the set 6-2. I noticed him take another injury time-out after that and that was when I left the match.

I then had a brief look at the closing stages of Dinara Safina’s match which seemed to feature many breaks of serve, until Safina won the match 7-5 in the second set.

So up next on court was David Nalbandian against Marc Gicquel, the first full men’s match that I watched that day. Nalbandian started off the match moving the ball around well, but struggling on his serve to the point where it looked like maybe he would prefer returning instead of serving. It was interesting to specifically pay attention to the consistent accuracy of Nalbandian’s groundstrokes which seemed more impressive compared to most players. In the early stages, he was able to stave off all of his break points which made for a not very representative first set scoreline of 6-1.

Gicquel himself has relatively flat groundstrokes and short backswings on both sides. But these short backswings seemed to be nullified by Gicquel’s relatively late preparation on both sides which limited his offensive capabilities to some extent. There seemed to be a noticeable difference between Gicquel hitting a rally shot and stepping it up to change the pace whereas with Nalbandian, it all seemed relatively similar in terms of energy. In the first set, Gicquel seemed to be rushed a number of times, but he started to maintain far more consistency in the second set.

The second set is when the match started to turn with most of the focus being on Nalbandian berating himself constantly, unhappy with the feel that he was getting on the ball and his poor first serve percentage. Watching it live, it was slightly uncomfortable to watch seeing Nalbandian frequently frustrated with his own play. There were some awful forehand errors, some short balls that were dumped and his volleys were particularly poor that day sitting up high most of the time for Gicquel to put away.

Gicquel started to hang in the rallies in the second set much better, and from here on in, the rallies going on seemed to be relatively neutral whereas earlier it looked like Nalbandian had the upper hand in controlling points even though he had hit fewer winners than Gicquel that set. Having shown signs of frustration for a fair amount of time, after a while, Nalbandian imploded smashing his racquet which drew several jeers from the crowd. But that wasn’t enough to release the tension, and did so again the following point although to a lesser extent.

That was when he went through a two game period of showing some very uninspired play before composing himself again to be able to play some more solid tennis in the final two sets. I didn’t really notice much of a difference between the third and fourth sets in terms of Nalbandian’s quality of play, with the difference being that Gicquel was simply more consistent in the fourth set compared to the third.

Trademark Shots: Which shots make a player stand out?

One interesting aspect of tennis is the varying techniques and shots that players can have in their repertoire.

Particularly at a higher level, players tend to have trademark shots, shots which that player is known for, and one that most other players don't even seem to attempt, let alone execute. A player's trademark shot is not necessarily their best shot or strength, and could be something that’s more unique or unorthodox rather than spectacular.

Below is a list of some of those trademark shots, while obviously there are still quite a few that I've missed out on.

Rafael Nadal

The unusually powerful double-handed backhand crosscourt passing shot, where he swings the racquet through in a straight line making the racquet seem more like a sword or cricket bat. He bends his knees down incredibly low and his racquet nearly hits the ground on the initial contact. Commentators refer to it as being like a double-handed forehand.

Roger Federer

The flick backhand half-volley passing shot. His opponent comes in on an approach shot right to his backhand side and Federer’s still on the forehand side of the court. He smoothly and casually strolls his way there, or so it looks and barely makes any backswing nor does he even look up, he just keeps his head still. He flicks the backhand right at the last second and directs it exactly where he wants to for a winning shot.

He's also got the short-slice backhand intended to make his opponents scoop it back up and force themselves into the net, after finding themselves in no-man’s land. Then Federer whips across an easy passing shot winner straight past them, while making his opponents feel silly and hopeless in the process.

Andy Murray

The high loopy forehand crosscourt that he throws in to completely take his opponent off-rhythm before throwing in the fast-paced flat forehand or backhand the next shot. Two of the most contrasting shots you could play consecutively, and Murray does it deliberately. Most players only hit change-up loopy forehands to give themselves more time to get back into the court, or either they usually hit with a fair amount of topspin as it is. But Murray uses it as a regular shot in his repertoire.

Nikolay Davydenko

I once read someone describe Davydenko on form as like “playing on skates”. The way he sprints from side-to-side, then sets himself in position right on top of the ball each time with perfect timing, makes movement and racquet control almost synchronous with each other at contact.

I also like the strangely nice feel he has on those double-handed volley dropshots. He can’t seem to hit any other kind of effective volleys but he bends down really low and opens his racquet face right out flat, instead of at an angle like most people would. He barely moves his racquet at all, keeping it in the same position to cut under the ball making it stop dead as it bounces over the net.

Andy Roddick

Roddick's serve reminds me somewhat of a rocket or missile launch, in how the motion is almost completely straight up and down and the way he literally launches into it. He gets his feet set close together, then extends his racquet all the way down and bends his knees really low to push forward and create a violent, powerful motion.

David Nalbandian

The backhand crosscourt angle shot, that he throws in the middle of a neutral rally catching his opponents completely by surprise. He flicks his racquet across, using almost entirely his left wrist, with his right hand as support. Most players need to either slow the pace down when attempting a short angle, roll over it with top spin or both but Nalbandian almost does it entirely with racquet control and feel.

David Ferrer and Tommy Robredo

The effort that they put in to make sure that they hit as many forehands as possible, even if that requires running all the way out of court, only to hit a three-quarter kind of shot, not even a near-winner or setup shot. You get the feeling that not much thought goes into whether any sort of reward will come out of doing it, but rather to follow the mindset of making everything into a forehand, as long as it's humanly possible.

Gael Monfils

He teases his opponent with a floating, mid-court ball, begging for it to be hit for as an approach shot. His opponents do exactly as they should, hitting a deep approach shot into the corner, then you can feel Monfils lighting up with excitement already anticipating the glorious running passing shot winner. He sprints over to the corner three or so metres behind the baseline, does a trademark slide and finds the down-the-line shot, just as he knew he would letting out a predictable “Allez!”.

Fernando Gonzalez

The go-for-broke inside-out forehand, where he takes a massive backswing and you know it’s going to be big before it's even hit. The backswing itself is intimidating itself, then he gets his footwork in position like he’s putting every ounce of energy into it knowing that he’s not going to be in position if it comes back. But that’s okay because he wants to hit an outright winner off it. I remember when Andy Roddick got back one of his “forehand bombs” in the US Open match, and Gonzalez got to it late and slapped a forehand two metres long afterwards, to essentially give up the point.

Igor Andreev

The sound that comes off his racquet after hitting a forehand. Andreev gets right under the ball, then whips right across it to send it spinning several rotations. Like the complete opposite of a cleanly struck shot.

Richard Gasquet

When he's on one of his hot streaks and you can tell how eager he is to hit his shots before he even hits them. Gasquet wants to hit glorious winners and he wants them to be spectacular. He puts in that extra hop on the backhand to make it a jumping backhand and gets right on top of that forehand. And just because he's in that kind of form, most of those winners actually come off. It even looks like he's walking quicker and more purposefully in between points than usual.

 

Then there are the more unique trademarks, those that aren't necessarily considered to even be close to a strength:

Andy Roddick’s drive backhand, how he grips his racquet with both hands together close to the middle of the handle, leaving a gap down the bottom, depriving himself of getting the full amount of power out of it.

Janko Tipsarevic, when he's wrong-footed, going back to retrieve a shot on the backhand side, hits the ball on the other side of the racquet strings. Like a very strange kind of forehand.

Tommy Robredo’s backhand, where he sets himself up with an exaggerated backswing then whips through his backhand, in a windmill sort of motion making almost a full circular rotation. His opponents predictably kick it up high to that side on serve, and he falls backwards three metres behind in the baseline just to be able to prepare for that stroke.

Fernando Gonzalez's backhand down-the-line, in that his racquet face is so flat on contact that after the ball bounces, that it kind of side-spins to the left. He sets up for his backhand in a manner that would seem to strongly favour the crosscourt backhand. Surprisingly he executes this shot, more often than would seem possible and it often catches his opponents by surprise because of the unlikelihood of the shot, as what happened to Federer in their Tennis Masters Cup 2007 match.

Mikhail Youzhny's service motion. He starts off his service motion with his front foot a fair distance from the baseline, to enable himself to move his front foot a couple of steps forward before making contact. As far as I know, he's the only active professional tennis player to do this, while everyone else starts with their front foot as close to the line as possible, while the back foot moves during contact, to get the body weight moving forward. Then, of course, Youzhny also has the one-handed backhand that starts off like a two-hander.