James Blake's return to court comes to a crashing halt

(This is an old post that I posted on The Daily Forehand)

It's not often that matches make me feel an inner rage inside of me, but I feel that James Blake brings out that kind of emotion out of me more so than other players. I don't know how many people caught his opening round match against Igor Kunitsyn, but it could really be described as nothing other than a trainwreck of a match. At first, I thought I should cut him some slack. He's been off the tour for a while, hasn't played a match since Wimbledon and has had a few niggling injuries. He obviously hasn't had a whole lot of match practice, so why should I be criticising his performance as if he should do well straight off the blocks?

The early signs were okay. He broke Kunitsyn's serve straight off the bat, with the kind of trademark second serve returns that we've come to expect from him. Kunitsyn looked like a lightweight, as I grumbled at the potential one-sidedness of the encounter to the extent, where Blake didn't really need to bring anything close to his A-game.

But then Kunitsyn broke back quickly with some decent returns and good play. Maybe he's not so bad after all. His serve looked weak and lacking in pace, but on the other hand, it's deceptive. It floats up high, but it's accurate and deep especially going out wide to the corners. Blake just seemed rusty to me initially, struggling on the return of serves and snatching at times on his groundstrokes, but nothing to get overly frustrated about.

You see, it's not the slight inconsistencies that bother me. His whole body language and attitude during most of this match drives me insane. I'm watching the errors he's making late in the first set, and he's got his feet wide apart, open stance and trying to hit all these big shots while barely even moving his feet. In between points, he's got his shoulders slumped and he's walking slow in between points.

I don't like to call it this, but it looks like he's moping. I can't explain this mentality in any other way, other than the fact that he didn't want to be out there. And maybe Blake is one of those players. He only likes it when he's playing well. He can't really be bothered on those other days, which is crazy sometimes when you look at what he can do when he just decides to use his speed. Take for example, the second set tie-break. Suddenly he's decided that he wants it more and is going to decide to cover all of the court. Why couldn't he have done that earlier? I can't say what happened in the third set because as much as I would have loved to report on the match, I could not watch it any longer but I've heard that it was played at a similar quality.

Kunitsyn played a part too in this "special" match. Not that you could hold it against him, not only because of his status as a player but because he competed well. He stayed calm and collected, and played with a workmanlike attitude which is all you can ask for. Though both players did their fair share of gifting each other points, which got a little ridiculous. Kunitsyn was up 0-40 on Blake's serve at 5-5 in the second set, but shanked and showed no control over his shots to blow that advantage. At least in the end, it was good that the better competitor prevailed.

Kunitsyn wins his maiden title in Moscow while Safin continues his title drought

On a week in, week out basis, Igor Kunitsyn rarely wins even consecutive matches on the ATP tour. But when he plays in his home country of Russia, he’s a different calibre of player, with all of his career highlights occurring in Russia. Kunitsyn had previously made two ATP semi-finals in the Kremlin Cup and one semi-final in St. Petersburg so it was appropriate that he lifted his maiden title in Moscow, where he defeated his countryman Marat Safin in three gruelling sets.

Safin himself hasn’t won a title since the Australian Open in 2005, and on paper, he was the clear favourite to win this, maybe more because of his experience rather than his form which was somewhat patchy. Safin was pushed to the limit in three sets in the first round against the 521st ranked Noam Okun, which incidentally was his 400th career win overall but later went on to defeat Nikolay Davydenko, the three-time Moscow champion.

For those who woke up in the morning and checked the score thinking it was a matter of Safin self-destructing, that was not the case. To put it briefly, Safin played solid tennis for the vast majority of the match, but was not able to elevate his game to the level necessary to beat a tenacious Kunitsyn, who was able to neutralise everything Safin was throwing at him and used it to move him around with accurate groundstrokes. Safin never looked in control during the baseline rallies and was not able to overpower the more inexperienced Russian.

I hadn’t seen Kunitsyn play much before until this week so it was hard to gauge what his game looks like on an average day but in his matches against Safin and Santoro, he took down his opponents by playing good controlled and accurate tennis. Kunitsyn, at first, doesn’t look like he would be much of a threat, after all, he’s nothing more than solid off both wings and he doesn’t hit with any more pace than the average player.

This initial impression turned out to be a hasty one on my part and had more to do with his nervous start against Safin, where in the first three or so games, he had already piled up ten unforced errors to a mere two from Safin. Kunitsyn also needed time to adjust to Safin’s pace of shot, which is very much the opposite of Fabrice Santoro’s, his opponent in the previous round. Often Kunitsyn found himself catching the ball late especially on the forehand side and whenever he had to resort to a second serve, he was being put on the back foot immediately.

Kunitsyn’s forehand technically looks almost like a mirror image of Marin Cilic’s, and like Cilic, he has the same tendency to sometimes not get enough racquet acceleration and dump it in the net. In fact, his game style and the way he produces his groundstrokes reminds me much of a less powerful version of Cilic, except his backhand has slightly more topspin than Cilic’s.

Kunitsyn had some trouble early on holding serve, while Safin was cruising through his games but Kunitsyn picked up his level from then on, and it became a real contest as the overall quality of the match improved. Safin wasn’t really able to impose himself in the manner that I thought he would. He was keeping consistent depth on his shots and content to play patiently and move the ball around for the most part. Whenever he stepped up the pace on particular shots, he found Kunitsyn right there to return it with interest, and Safin wasn’t really playing well enough to try to play consistently aggressively. For a brief moment in the first set, Safin experimented with moving forward and coming into the net, which brought him some success, but this only lasted about three or so games as Safin then retreated back into playing a typical baseline game.

The impressive part about Kunitsyn was that he was hanging with Safin, and doing a better job moving Safin around than vice versa. Kunitsyn would fit right in the category of a counterpuncher because he needed to either be given slight openings to hit effective shots or either set them up himself, using what his opponent feeds him rather than taking it out of his opponent’s hands.

The best point of the match was at 15-30, 4-4 in the first set when Safin threw everything he had at Kunitsyn hitting deep and hard to both sides of the court, including a massive forehand that skidded right off the back edge of the line, but Kunitsyn absorbed all of the pace and was able to get back into a neutral position trading deep crosscourt groundstrokes, then about four or five shots later fires a forehand down-the-line.

Sometimes counterpunchers are given a bad name, and people interpret that to mean the same as a purely defensive players but counterpunchers play their fair share of well-placed, forcing shots. Almost every rally in this match was long and extended with both players keeping relatively good consistency, depth and accuracy but it lacked a bit of spark at times, with a similar pattern in the baseline rallies emerging throughout the near-three hour long contest. Safin, surprisingly didn’t win that many free points on his serve aside from early on in the first set and on some big points, notably on the many of the break points which he saved with clutch serving.

The first set went the distance with Kunitsyn edging out Safin in the tie-break 8-6, coming from a 3-0 deficit. In the crucial set point which Kunitsyn won, Safin’s serve was initially called an ace but Kunitsyn challenged and was proven correct with the serve missing by a considerable distance. Then to win the set, Kunitsyn shanked a forehand that landed high and awkwardly deep onto the baseline forcing Safin into error. Kunitsyn led by a break at 4-2 in the second set, but played possibly his worst game of the match to hand it back straight away, and so the battle continued.

In the third set, Kunitsyn received treatment for cramps on at least two occasions, but did not show any noticeable signs of fatigue. By then, Safin’s game started to deteriorate and given how closely contested the whole match was, it was a rather tame ending for Safin as Kunitsyn closed out the match in a relatively comfortable fashion.