Florian Mayer gives the fans in Hamburg something to cheer about

I don’t think I’ve seen Florian Mayer lie on the ground like this.  This is one of the high points of his career, and this image is symbolic of many things.  Inspired tennis, a hard-fought match, and an epic home country win. 

Mayer is into the semi-finals now, defeating Juan Carlos Ferrero, who

played a tough match but started to run out of gas towards the end.

Mayer can be a frustratingly low key character sometimes, looking as if nothing could excite him.  When he’s not playing well, you wish he would just fire up a little bit.  Like yesterday, in the first set against Maximo Gonzalez, where he seemed to constantly walk little circles in between return of serves.  A sign of nerves, or confusion?  After taking an injury time-out late in the first set, he was a changed man and went on a roll.  It’s like he’s always walking a fine line between being the likeable vulnerable underdog, and the guy that doesn’t really know or believe in what he’s doing.

However it seemed like this time around, the slightly excitable Mayer turned up right from the start.  Because from an outsider’s point of view, I can’t really see why he can be so unfazed by his own play sometimes.  He plays a bit like a showman, but he doesn’t act much like one.  I watched him play in Wimbledon this year, and it came to my mind that I don’t think I’ve ever seen another player on the tour enjoy bamboozling their opponents as much as he does. 

It’s one thing to put disguise on your shots, and another to constantly try to make your opponents believe that you’re going to hit a different shot than you actually are.  I think, the main reason is that it’s incredibly difficult to pull off, and it seems easier to just try to hit winners instead.  For me, whenever I change my mind halfway through a stroke, it almost ends up with an error, or either it doesn’t really have anywhere near the effect I was hoping for.

Mayer is quite a talent on the backhand side.  Early on, he sets up for a backhand by jumping on it, then sets up to hit a dropshot and pushes a slice deep in the last minute.  That’s not one false backswing but two mindgames in the one shot, completely unheard of outside of exhibitions.  And that was good enough to get the job done.  It didn’t even matter that the slice backhand practically went mid-court deep, it forced an error from Ferrero because he had no idea where to set himself up.

Mayer can change the pace on the backhand crosscourt, create spectacular angles on it, hit cunning slice backhands, change directions down-the-line and hit jumping dropshots.  It really is one of the most difficult to read shots in the game.  Today, he seemed to be in a good mood.  Because he was jumping on a lot of backhands.  Definitely a good sign that plenty of energy was in reserves for today, and he really needed it.

This match wasn’t only about the high quality and varied play of Mayer today.  It was a great match all-round.  What makes the match even more spectacular is the physical ability that both players showed, in having to constantly chase wide balls and when you consider that means digging your feet into the ground and stretching wide all the time, that’s tough on the muscles.  This was a match full of long rallies, utilizing many angles, dropshots and changes of pace.  It was 3-1 in the first set, and even during those points, there were images of Mayer huffing and puffing, which in the end cost him his break of serve.

Ferrero was hitting the ball well, playing traditionally effective claycourt tennis which generally consists of a lot of side-to-side action and well-constructed points.  I’d say he is the epitome of a professional player, and I’m sure his experience has much to do with that.  His shots are consistently strong and he doesn’t give his opponents much to work with, when he’s hitting on the run.  They just don’t decrease in quality that easily. 

It was a battle on who would come out on top – whether Ferrero could keep Mayer on the run enough, or whether Mayer would throw just enough surprises to change the course of a rally.  In the first set, both players had their fair share of success in this area, but I did think that Ferrero would come through, mainly because Mayer was playing a little above himself while Ferrero looked like he could keep it up forever.

I wouldn’t have thought that as the match wore on that Mayer’s forehand would become more of a prominent feature than Ferrero’s.  I find it hard to believe that Mayer was having anything other than a spectacular day on this side, the way he cracked all these flat winners from up high in the second and third sets, often down-the-line. At first, he was lacking somewhat defensively on this side.  Often his elbow would lift up a little too much, and he’d float it into the middle of the court, and he’d have to work hard to turn the rally back around.  That was the exact weakness that he ironed out in the second and third sets, to manufacture a dramatic turnaround. 

He didn’t only improve his defensive forehand.  He tried to do more with it as soon as he had the chance to try to keep rallies more in his favour. I have to say I haven’t seen Mayer play this aggressively from the baseline before.  Usually he uses his strong shots to follow into the net, but this is clay, and perhaps he just can’t make it into the net as much.  At times, he surprised himself just as much.  By the third set, he was occasionally smiling at some of his big shots.  Let’s hope that he can carry this form into the semi-finals, because he knows it’ll be a good opportunity, playing against Andrey Golubev.  If he can play anywhere near as well as he played today.

Juan Carlos Ferrero's mini-resurgence

Video clips: 50+ shot rally | Second set tie-break

Sometimes it's nice to see a change of pace. These days, the tennis ball seems to move back and forth at lightning pace, to the point where if you're not paying close enough attention, it can be easy to lose track of what's happening. I don't know if this happens for anyone else, but I sometimes feel that way watching Roger Federer's early round matches, as good of a shotmaker he is. And that's what yesterday's second round match in Montreal between Juan Carlos Ferrero and Gael Monfils ended up being, a welcome change of pace, as well as offering a hard-fought battle.

On Ferrero's end, it was an excellent display of point construction as well, which is something that becomes easier to appreciate in a match-up like this when there are no easy ways of winning points. He knew exactly how he wanted to play this match and that's what I really liked about it, from a spectator point of view.

Ferrero started off the match in fine form, so confident in his ability to maintain the aggression on extended rallies. His forehand was really on song, using it to open up the court with a variety of spins, and finding some good angles on it. It seemed like he had such a control on his shots from the back of the court that he was rarely going to miss, and only by small margins if so. That's a sign of a very accurate player.

It's just that he lacks the ability to inject additional pace when he requires it compared to his peers, and I don't think he counterpunches in a way that uses his opponent's shots against them either. He does make up for that lack in power with excellent shot selection though. The longer a point is, the more you get a feel for how players like to construct points and when Ferrero's confident, it's one of his strengths.

It takes two to throw up an entertaining match, and the match-up here is what made it most fascinating. To see how Ferrero could slowly outmaneuver Monfils out of court but without giving Monfils too much to work with to counterpunch off. So that's maintaining an aggressive game, but without going overboard and staying within the comfort zone.

It was about Ferrero not allowing Monfils to play the way he likes, though Monfils made things harder for himself by choosing not to take the initiative on most occasions. Ferrero wouldn't allow Monfils to hit these spectacular shots on the run, either consistently keeping him on the move and trying to restrict the amount of times Monfils could make those crowd-pleasing violent bursts of athleticism, or by surprising him with sudden changes of pace and direction. It doesn't matter as much how quick a player is, if he can't read the shot at all.

I'm starting to find that Monfils is a habitually slow starter on the tennis court. He really needs a trigger, something to excite him, whether it's celebrating his own shots or finding his back against the wall in order to produce something special to stay in the match. Often when he's trying to make a run, firing himself up to find that quick burst of adrenaline, you'll see him suddenly move more energetically even in his return stance, dancing his feet up and down. There's a certain cockiness to it, like now he's decided that he's going to play better in this match, so that's exactly what he will do.

He played the opening set of this match, casual and lacksadaisical like he wasn't ready for the occasion. It was like his brain wasn't even switched on, just reacting to what Ferrero was doing. I couldn't see what he was trying to achieve at all, and I imagine that when you're playing a predictable and one-dimensional same-pace game, not a whole lot of thought goes into it. Just how much more imposing would he be, if he decided to change the pace like we know he can do, especially given that's the one big advantage he has over Ferrero and he's not using it.

I'd also like to see him run around his backhand more often. His off-forehand is one of his best attacking shots, and definitely much better than his backhand which seems to be often lacking in penetration when he's not timing it perfectly. Because Monfils hits the ball closer to his body hitting inside-out, he seems to move better and more athletically to the ball to generate that extra pace, and he can find good angles on it too. If other players that don't move as well can manage to do it on a regular basis, there's no reason why he shouldn't be able to do more frequently.

In a way, it was strange the match seemed to move away from Ferrero's dominance into a very competitive second set of tennis. What happened was that what triggered Monfils to make a slight adjustment in his game was actually out of sheer frustration, rather than any intended change of tactics.

In his first service game, it looked like he was lashing out at balls, carelessly hitting them, flat shots with pace. It wasn't that Monfils was frustrated with his own play, more so because he wasn't enjoying the match and the rallies he was consistently been drawn into. It really was not as much of a hopeless situation as Monfils thought at the time. If he doesn't want to be stuck in those rallies, then he doesn't have to be. In fact, he lost that service game straight away and given how dominant Ferrero was in his own service games, I thought it was going to be the end of it.

But once Monfils had composed himself again, it seemed like that quick spurt of frustration did him a favour in terms of his shot selection. Finally more changes of pace and more variation in his baseline position. I think he started to return serve much better too, getting more balls into play. Ferrero helped him out by playing one loose service game that he seemed to lose in a flash. But by now, the baseline rallies had turned into a much more even contest, hard-fought battles that could go either way.

I don't think I've ever seen anything more hard-fought than the amazing extended rally that went over 50 strokes at 5-4 in the second set. It actually ended in a spectacular winner, by the way. Both players battled nerves late in the second set, making their fair share of uncharacteristic errors but Ferrero stepped it up in the most crucial stage, 5-5 in the second set tie-break with two aggressive baseline points, just like how he had typically played the first set with such success.

Will Ferrero capture the title in Casablanca?

This week, we have a couple of lower-tier events in Casablanca and Houston, kind of like a breather of a week before the Masters Series events begin, starting in Monte Carlo on Sunday.

Most notably on the players' list in Casablanca, is former world number 1 and French Open champion, Juan Carlos Ferrero making his comeback from injury in Buenos Aires. Before that he had an injury-riddled year or so as well, being relatively light on match practice and subsequently his ranking has dropped outside of the top 100. He hasn't won a title since 2003 and his form looks good to break that drought so far, although I'd give Igor Andreev a good chance of winning the title as well.

It was quarter-finals day yesterday, where Ferrero faced Victor Hanescu in the third match of the day. It was a nice contrast of styles, a contrast of spins to admire and different methods of controlling baseline rallies. Hanescu with his more upright, cleanly struck groundstrokes as opposed to the more topspin oriented game of Ferrero's.

I like the way Ferrero whips across his forehand in a vicious manner, how he rotates his whole body across to generate excellent racquet head speed. On a claycourt, he can get that extra bit of reward off his forehand which moves further out of court after its bounce, making that combination of an off-forehand followed by a down-the-line forehand incredibly lethal.

It was a gradually improving performance from Ferrero, one that initially seemed controlled yet effective. It was a display of good claycourt tennis, with Ferrero effectively spreading the court and making Hanescu move all over the court, but doing so without taking any unnecessary risks.

The initial stages of the match were more a result of Hanescu appearing a bit sluggish, not yet finding the range of his groundstrokes. The way Hanescu moves to the ball, it's like he makes horizontal strides to the ball rather than the light, quick steps from Ferrero whose feet never seem to stop moving. Hanescu shanked a few shots off the forehand in the first game, and couldn't seem to get into the rhythm to exchange long rallies. Being a flatter hitter of the ball, Hanescu relies more on needing to find the timing to be able to hit accurate, sweetly struck groundstrokes otherwise they just don't have the penetration (or accuracy) needed to hurt Ferrero.

I was surprised at how quickly it took for Ferrero to find his confidence, and three games into the match he started striking his forehand with full confidence, stepping up the pace and unleashing more winners on that side. It was an impressive display of variety of spin, placement and pace.

I had my headphones on with the volume turned up moderately loud and I got the full experience of hearing all of the sound effects coming from Ferrero, all of the energy that he puts in to get the best out of his game. And from what I heard, it does sound like he plays a fast-paced, energetic game in terms of his movements, one that not only requires energy, but good confidence as well. That's only in reference to Ferrero playing at the top of his game though, because he can still play a good, consistent and smart match without that.

But on another note, the other impression I got listening to the match was that I thought Ferrero looked like he was really enjoying himself, maybe more so than usual given his injury layoff. Whenever a shot didn't hit its targets, he reacted off it like he was riding the emotion of whatever was happening in the match, a sign that he was fully focused. I loved the replay they showed of him moving to one of the dropshots, of him sliding forward and cutting underneath the ball just before it hits the ground. There were some sublime drop volleys as well, how difficult it must be to maintain control on those drop volleys on the full stretch with your feet inevitably sliding further apart on the stretch.

Hanescu picked up his game midway in the first set onwards, which made for some entertaining exchanges but Ferrero always seemed like the better player the whole way through. The one more capable of turning rallies around, coming up with something special towards the end.

Recounting Tuesday at the Brisbane International

I arrived at the Brisbane International just in time to see the start of play, which opened up with Tomas Berdych taking on the Australian wildcard, Brydan Klein. Klein had somewhat been controversially awarded the wildcard over the more proven Chris Guccione, and Klein didn't do much to show that he was the better choice. I wasn't at all pleased that I had to start off my live tennis experience by watching a player ranked nowhere near the cut-off rankings. How then was I supposed to be able to accurately judge that performance without comparing it to others?

To make matters worse, I was situated too close to the front where there was a bit of a blind spot on the far outside line on the right-hand side. Berdych had a small group of very loud and vocal Czech supporters, with which I was surprised later when I briefly saw them in my quick visit to see Berdych and Stepanek play doubles, that there seemed to really only be about three of them in total given how vocal they were, although I think there could have been marginally more at the singles match.

Klein started off the match tentatively in the worst manner possible losing his serve by making three or four tame errors almost all off second shots, straight after the serve. Immediately he was frustrated by his performance bouncing racquets and slumping his shoulders, both of which he did with relative frequency. All this did was add to the overall impression of Klein, the feeling that you're watching a juniors player that starts complaining as soon as things don't go his way. With which then, the match could be described as the professional giving the junior a tennis lesson. To be fair, I didn't really know what to expect of Klein, what he was capable of, but it was only later in the match that I found that he was capable of much more.

At least he wasn't overplaying and self-destructing, I thought, just so I can focus on Berdych and admire his performance instead, even if he was being made to look good. Klein was relatively consistent off both wings after the initial blip, but was easily getting overpowered by Berdych and many of his weak shots were sufficiently punished, especially his serve. But really, all of his groundstrokes looked like they were sitting up there, floating with no penetration at all begging to be hit. With which Berdych obliged and hit some very nice winners.

Berdych looked really focused today to me, at least for a set and a half, which he most certainly didn't need to be if he didn't feel like it, like everything was measured and controlled. That is, excluding his attempt at serving out the set where he threw in two careless double faults, but he rebounded to bagel Klein in the first set. I think one of the most amazing things about many of the professional players watching them live is the amount of control that they can still have on their groundstrokes when on the run, the ability to still hit an aggressive shot that is well-placed and this is one area where Berdych had a big advantage over Klein. I like Berdych's body language and overall presence, and quietly confident posture which makes him look like an intimidating figure to play against at times.

The second set was like a completely different match, with Klein taking more of an aggressive mindset starting to hit through the ball now. Consequently the number of winning shots coming off the Berdych racquet declined significantly. As what usually happens in matches like this, Klein got a massive sympathy cheer from the crowd when he finally got his first game at 6-0 3-0 down. The obvious question here is why it took Klein so long to attempt to execute this kind of game. It didn't need to be risky tennis, just more penetrating. Berdych seemed to take his foot off the accelerator a bit towards the end, once he got the initial break playing a more relaxed brand of tennis, but he managed to overcome difficulty serving out the match, by saving that one break point and avoiding a more even contest.



Then I headed over to the outside courts to see Juan Carlos Ferrero take on Florent Serra. I had arrived just as the doubles match scheduled beforehand had concluded and I was highly amused later on, that this pattern of each match conveniently finishing at a time to allow me to watch all matches in full was repeated several times, until it finally failed me towards the end. Obviously what I wanted to see the most was the famous Ferrero forehand in action, so I took a closer look at that to start with. Up close, you can see the work that he gets on the ball and its general heaviness which seems to be a tad more than most other players. Ferrero started off the match trying to dictate proceedings, and it brought him mixed results. I remember most of all, him digging out of a 0-40 situation in the first set with three winners or near-winners, only to eventually lose serve for the first time in the match. He hit a couple of particularly nice forehand winners and cleanly struck backhand down-the-lines early on, but then it went downhill from there.

Serra on the other hand was absolutely stingy with the amount of errors he was coughing up and would rarely play a string of bad points. I initially felt like his game was the epitome of simple, effective tennis and he often took the straightforward route, attacking when given the opportunity to do so. Whenever he needed to defend, he'd situate himself about a metre or so behind the baseline and it felt like he barely made any errors off a defensive shot, like the majority of them came from when he was trying to step up the pace. But he proved me wrong by stepping up the pace and accuracy of his groundstrokes as he grew in confidence as the match went on, particularly on the forehand side where he would sometimes change the pace off the same backswing.

Ferrero's game went off the boil more and more as the first set went on making more strange errors, and as the match wore on, it no longer looked like he was the one trying to dictate the play. Serra maintained his level until serving for the match where he made a couple of poor errors, but Ferrero returned the favour in the tie-break by losing it fairly comfortably, and subsequently the match.



This is when I took a short break and returned to watch Novak Djokovic, who was clearly the biggest drawcard for the event. There was a bit of a buzz around the stadium, and not surprisingly he was given the biggest cheer as he walked onto court. I remember, in particular, the first point of the match where both Djokovic and Ernests Gulbis exchanged big groundstrokes before Djokovic pulled the trigger down-the-line on the forehand, one of his trademark shots. The man that was sitting next to me was laughing in awe of that shot, to which I was thinking, it's a little bit early to start applauding those kind of shots.

It turned out that Djokovic put in an erratic performance, not really showing much of the qualities that we see from him on a good day. I did notice though that he gets a lot of kick on his serve, really jumping up high although his second serve landed a bit short and ended up being attacked by Gulbis. Djokovic was particularly unimpressive defensively, often not being able to stay in points long enough and he was generally inconsistent overall, much to the disappointment of the man sitting next to me who only clapped when Djokovic won a point, but not when Gulbis did. The woman sitting in front of me got strangely excited everytime there was a dropshot in the rally, as if it was a brilliant shot, even if the dropshot itself was terrible and begging to be punished.

I started to divert more of my attention to Gulbis, whose shots seemed pacier and more effective, and his serve was winning him a lot of points. It seemed that both players were a bit erratic throughout the match, except that Gulbis was far more impressive in his shotmaking. His forehand really is a big shot, and his racquet acceleration looks impressive to the point that you could easily imagine him mistiming a shot and shanking it if he starts his swing just a bit too early.

The early part of the second set was easily the worst part of the match, with Gulbis' game going off the boil, and both players exchanging breaks in the first four games or so, the first break notably conceded by Djokovic with a dropshot. Of which I wrote down on my notebook as if it was a potentially crucial moment, but it turns out that more breaks of serve were to occur. Bad passage of play overall from both players, but Gulbis picked it back up at the end. The manner in which he broke serve to serve for the match was particularly memorable which featured the best rally of the match, where Gulbis managed to return a short drop volley, digging it right underneath his racquet narrowly before the double bounce and then followed it up with a nicely anticipated volley. So there it was, Djokovic out of the tournament, although I can't say I was disappointed about it.



So I headed back outside the stadium to the outside courts, and Mathieu had just won his match against Gabashvili, so I had yet again arrived for the start of a match. During the anticipation for the match, there were a couple of vocal people sitting behind me that were convinced that Kei Nishikori was a girl, as they had put it and were really confused as Bobby Reynolds walked onto the court. Nishikori made his way onto court far later than Reynolds. The stands were not that well populated for this match, with the majority of people deciding to watch the match between Ancic and Delic which was closely contested.

The match started off slowly with both players making a number of errors. Reynolds looks like a fairly limited player to me, incapable of being consistent and not looking particularly dangerous either. As long as Nishikori could turn in a solid performance, the match was going to be his. Nishikori quickly went up an early break, then handed it straight back notably with three backhand errors and a double fault. I noticed straight away that his forehand looks different from most players, that he gets a lot of arm on it, with more of a bent elbow than others. At this point of the match, Nishikori mainly kept it solid, but unspectacular.

As the match wore on, he started to show more of his shotmaking abilities seemingly growing in confidence. He seemed to have a knack of hitting unexpected winners, creating shots out of nowhere, showing that he must have great hands and feel to be able to pull off shots like that. Towards the end, Nishikori's forehand really caught fire, hitting a string of winners off that side, and flashy winners they were. It was like an exhibition of forehand winners, and it was definitely the highlight of my day. Nishikori seemed to be strangely unexcited by them (compared to me), in terms of body language, although it was clear that he was feeling good confidence-wise. The level of Reynolds' play didn't change that much throughout the match, and he was thoroughly outplayed by the end.

So having watched a series of matches, I took a short break to start wandering around the grounds, except to realize that there isn't much to wander to. I noticed, by the way, that the players here seem to be able to wander around wherever they like, or come off the court from practice without anyone bothering or approaching them. Which I found to be fascinating, because my only previous experience (that I can remember) was back in the Gold Coast where the players had a separate section on the opposite side where they walked around, that was restricted to the general public.



Given that there was not much else to do, I took a seat to watch the second and third sets of the match between Michael Llodra and Joseph Sirianni, who surprisingly reached the Adelaide semi-finals last year. So there were a lot of points at stake for him. When I first sat down to watch, I was constantly thinking that there was no way that Sirianni normally plays like that. I remember him having a flashy backhand from Adelaide last year and he was hitting a number of cleanly struck winners off that side. He was also able to stay relatively consistent on both sides, although I think his forehand looks like a dodgy shot technically. Although I don't mean to suggest that he was playing exceptional tennis, more that he was for his standards.

Llodra made a fair amount of errors, particularly if the rallies went on longer, maybe unsurprisingly since he is somewhat of a short point player. But as the match went on, it started to turn more in Llodra's favour, who started to mix things up much better and dictate play. More changes of pace, approach shots and better placed shots. Sirianni's game started to look more average as the match wore on, and after losing the second set in a tie-break, his game fell off considerably making many errors, dropping his level just as I had expected him to.

Then that was it for me, given that the other match that I had wanted to watch between Gasquet and Dent was significantly delayed and due on court relatively late.