Gilles Simon Defeats Out of Form Davydenko in Marseille

It was supposed to be a nice contrast of styles, when Nikolay Davydenko and Gilles Simon drew each other in the first round in Marseille. The problem with this match-up is that the way Simon plays largely has to do with the way Davydenko plays, so when Davydenko seemed completely unsure of himself and lacking in confidence, it was a bad spectacle all-round. Simon only plays as well as he needs to, and he prefers to use the pace of his opponents.

Davydenko is definitely going through a rough patch at the moment. His game doesn’t even look the same as it did to his off days when he was in the top 5. When he makes large amounts of unforced errors, they’re different kinds of errors. He doesn’t have anywhere near the same amount of racquet acceleration. Short balls are usually the easiest shots for professional players, but it was painful the way Davydenko showed no confidence whenever he had a short forehand to put away for a winner. Instead it was more like, “Oh no, I should hit a winner off this” so he’d aim it near the line but not really try to hit a winner.

The match started strangely with four consecutive breaks. The first set was the battle of two very indecisive players that didn’t know what to do with the ball once they got into an extended rally. The execution of the shots felt half-hearted, which is what happens when you don’t fully believe in the shot you’re trying to hit.

Davydenko was making all kinds of uncharacteristic shot selections. It was the worst to begin with. Most of his shots landed in the middle of the court, the complete opposite from his trademark accurate game. He came into the net from approach shots that landed down the middle of the court, then predictably he’d lose the point up at the net. You know there’s something very wrong with Davydenko when he’s trying to come into the net before he’s even hit a good enough shot. Yet it’s also very strange. It’s more common to stick to a more typical game in poor form, but does he really think he has a better chance at shortening the points and using the net than playing his standard baseline game?

Still Davydenko being willing to extend the rallies and hit with wider margins from the lines than usual kept the match competitive in the first set. Both players returned serve well in the first half of the set. It was like everything was much easier for them when they didn’t have to think about actual rallies and point construction.

The match made a sudden turnaround after Simon became the first player to hold serve for 3-2. I would have thought that would have been the equivalent of a break of serve, but instead they both held serve from then onwards.

Despite the rather drastic change of holds/breaks, the match still had a similar feel to me. I never know what Simon is actually trying to do with the ball while playing. He plays with such a reactive mindset. Even if his tennis isn't defensive all the time, his shot selection is based so much on what his opponent feeds him. Davydenko fed him plenty of errors so he happily took advantage of it.

The first set tie-break was perhaps of the best quality in the match, with more of the typical rallies that I expected from the match. Davydenko had a set point but missed a routine forehand, a pattern which repeated itself many times in the match. Then Simon won the set with a return winner.

In the second set, Davydenko sprayed errors everywhere to go down a double break that by then, I had lost all interest. He tried to play something closer to his usual game, but the more aggressive play didn’t pay off. He was actually close to levelling the set again and recovering the break, but in the end, Simon was able to hold off Davydenko and finish the match later on.

Australian Open 2011 - Day 1 Blog

Sometimes the first day of Grand Slams can be underwhelming and routine, but today was a good day for me. It was a day filled with competitive matches, a variety of styles, and good tennis for the most part. Conditions were cold and windy with the occasional spitting of rain, which is better than the heat I suppose. However, one recurring problem seemed to present itself throughout the day, and I fear it will throughout the rest of the tournament.  From what I gathered today, there seems to be an increase in the crowd turnouts this year on the outside courts.  Either that or poor scheduling.

There were many formerly good players playing today, that the tournament organisers took very little notice of. Nikolay Davydenko, Gilles Simon (however he just won Sydney last week) and Richard Gasquet were all playing on courts where it was difficult to get a seat. The problem was that even if you did end up getting a seat, chances are it would be a horribly obstructed view, with not only the umpire’s chair in the way, but also with plenty of shade covers over the players’ chairs.

Before my seating troubles started, I headed over to Show Court 2 to watch Sam Querrey in action against Lukasz Kubot. I arrived quite early and took the second row from the front. It’s a great view, without any obstructions. Better than watching on a tiny, intimate court in my opinion.

Querrey arrived about 8 minutes late, much later than Kubot and that is very rare in a Grand Slam, I think. I couldn’t hear what he was saying but I saw a rather large amount of gesturing with his hands, once he got onto the court, as if to suggest he was misguided somehow into not finding his way to the correct place.

Play got underway soon afterwards, and it didn’t take long for the Polish fans to make their presence known. They were very frequent with their chanting and support, especially to start with, using any minor pauses in between points to make some noise. I kept trying to take photos of them while they were standing up but those pauses were really short, so I kept missing, and ended up giving up.

When Querrey started serving in the first game, I couldn’t believe the difference between his first and second serve. His first serve was hard and flat, and makes the kind of sound that comes from big servers. In comparison, his second serve seemed to float there forever after its bounce with plenty of time for players to take their racquet back and do whatever they want. He did improve it later on though, as it started to become a softer version of the first serve, but it still seemed to land mainly in the middle of the court.

In the early stages, Querrey’s forehand was nowhere near as potent as I thought it would be. He played mostly a counterpunching role to start with, hitting loopy shots with plenty of margin over the net, but he was okay when he was forced to go for it, like having to hit a passing shot. It’s amazing how many players seem to find it difficult hitting winners, but when presented with a “do-or-die” situation, they can do it pretty easily.  Of course that is also because it is more difficult for the net player to run it down once it goes past them. Some players probably wished their opponents would run to the net all the time.

I’m not sure Querrey is one of them though. He just has better passing shots than expected. Especially on the backhand side, and his ability to hit down-the-line on that side is better than I thought too. He keeps his racquet very still and low while hitting it, and it’s more reliable than the forehand which is more prone to shanking or late timing.

The match was an entertaining contrast of styles, a battle between an aggressive all-court player Kubot and the counterpuncher Querrey.

Kubot is a strong player, hits the ball hard from both sides, seemingly throwing his weight around the court. By that, I mean, using it to generate penetrating groundstrokes and to move athletically. Kubot doesn’t have the best side-to-side movement, but he makes the transition from the net to the baseline extremely well. Today, he was often up there before I even noticed. He also rarely seemed to need to hit a low volley. Though I did find it odd that he was either passed or had an easy volley to hit every time he made it to the net. Perhaps Querrey didn’t even think about making Kubot hit that many shoelace volleys.

I watched the first two and a half sets of this match, and it was quite a streaky match, but mostly at a good standard. Querrey was still finding his timing and too passive in the first set, but after the first couple of games, his serving improved so much that it gave him an edge and Kubot’s high risk game abandoned him in the crucial stages when he needed it.

In the second set, Kubot started swinging away and making shots right from the beginning, as if the pressure from the first set had been suddenly relieved. I have been interested lately to see how players handle low and high pressure moments, letdowns in the beginning of sets, and how they play when they are down on the scoreboard.

In this case, being down on the scoreboard really helped Kubot kick off the second set impressively. He carried on this sudden wave of confidence to hit through Querrey with countless forehand winners, though also Querrey’s serving quality had decreased allowing him more opportunity to. By then, Querrey had also improved his baseline play so this became a better spectacle. Querrey’s backhand did more damage in this match than the forehand, presumably because the match-up with Kubot’s backhand is better.

Returning first in the third game, at first I thought Kubot would continue his practically flawless display when he got off to a 0-30 start in the first game. But it didn’t eventuate and both players ended up struggling on many of their service games. When I left the match, Kubot had broken back Querrey to return to level terms.

Nikolay Davydenko’s match against Florian Mayer had just started, not that I knew. The only scoreboard updates I get are the changing scorelines each changeover in the stadium courts, except that it would never cover all the matches, and often skipped on Court 7, where these two played.

The match was in its early stages, 2-1 in the first set when I joined and I immediately started to regret my decision after noticing that the stands were completely full. Eventually I found a spot where I could peek through the blue sheet covering the side of the stands, though this is obviously not the ideal way to watch a tennis match. I simply wanted to find out what this match was like so far. I most definitely wasn’t going to watch the whole match looking through the blue sheet.

But the match looked good. Plenty of long competitive rallies, where you couldn’t guess who would get the better of it. Of course, there were also plenty of rallies with the trademark variety of Florian Mayer. Mayer broke serve with some great shotmaking. He digs so many balls back when he’s playing, and he always looks like he’s trying to catch up when he’s playing against the top players, but he often hangs in better than it looks like he will. That is, if he is dealing with a player, that uses a lot of pace. He likes the pace.

Meanwhile, the lack of pace was really making it difficult for Davydenko to finish off points. Even if he could handle it, he wasn’t able to push Mayer around the same way he pushes his other opponents around. Especially not when Mayer was buying himself additional time by not giving Davydenko much pace.

After the initial break of serve, I found that there were many people leaving all the time in the changeovers. Many people walked up the stairs not knowing if they’d find a seat, so I followed and ended up sitting on the stairs for a while. They don’t have any security for monitoring this on the smaller courts. It was an extremely cramped position on the stairs. I hoped that I would make it to the actual seats soon, but it was a little difficult because whoever closest to that empty seat would usually get it. It wasn’t on a first come, first serve basis.

After going through three or four changeovers, I was finally able to grab myself a real seat, and I was rewarded for my patience. The kind of patience that I don’t necessarily always have, but what I saw in this match kept me hanging around long enough.

The first set contained many entertaining rallies, with a wide array of shots from Mayer. Davydenko didn’t play that poorly, but couldn’t seem to finish Mayer off. A change of tactics allowed Davydenko to convincingly win the second set, choosing to sneak up to the net whenever he had Mayer stretching out wide often finishing it with his favourite angled touch volleys. Suddenly the amount of extended rallies had drastically decreased.

It seemed like Davydenko had found the formula, and I thought he was on his way to winning the match. But the third set turned out to be a very inconsistent set from both players, with many losses of concentration. It was almost like both players were trying to conserve energy for the battle ahead. Mayer needed to fight through a service game early on, so it came completely out of the blue when he broke Davydenko’s serve to lead the match yet again. Mayer took a more aggressive approach this set, and he wasn’t always successful. But he needed to do so, as a weapon against Davydenko’s increasingly aggressive approach.

Mayer held onto his serve all the way through that set until he tried to serve for the set. At Deuce 5-3, Mayer dropped his racquet after his service motion then picked it up again to play a competitive, long rally. He ended up firing an impressive forehand crosscourt winner, but the umpire awarded the point to Davydenko. Mayer then smashed his racquet in frustration after losing the next ad point with a forehand error. Actually it was very much at the level of a Gonzalez racquet smash. I don't know why the umpire didn't stop the point earlier. One of the guys behind me repeated this story about the racquet drop and smash whenever his mates would walk past, so it happened a couple of times. It was obviously a dramatic moment.

That racquet smash really heightened the tension of the match, as it was drawing into the closing stages of the third set. Mayer was in a mentally fragile state, but also in an extremely fiery mood. Despite losing that break of serve, the energy and adrenaline going through him in the third set tie-break helped him raise his level, and ultimately win the set. Davydenko’s subdued body language and attitude surely didn’t help his chances, though the other reason is that he leaked a few key errors.

The fourth set was a continuation of the third set tie-break for Mayer, while Davydenko’s error count started to pile up immensely. At times, when he missed a shot, he’d have a dejected expression on his face, which is more rare than you would think in professional tennis. He looked sad and disappointed, not angry.

Mayer had break point chances in all of Davydenko’s service games in this set, and he really should have secured a second break to make it much easier for himself. After failing to convert in two separate games, Mayer lost his serve, then broke back again.

Despite Davydenko playing poorly for the most part in this set, there were a couple of games where he played some great tennis. The contrast between those two standards was really obvious, and I couldn’t believe how he could change from one extreme to another just like that.

The final game where Mayer served for the match was one of his great games, but not enough for him to fight back. That game had a controversial overrule, changing Mayer’s shot from an ‘out’ to ‘in’ call. Davydenko seemed to have a whole new intensity that game, nothing like what I saw from him in the last two sets. He threw everything he had at Mayer, and Mayer showed more determination than normal to get it back, and eventually he’d finally find the right time to pull the trigger himself.

Realizing how tough some of those last games were, Mayer was thoroughly happy with his win, celebrating by lying on the ground for a short while.

After this match, I quickly browsed the outside courts to see what was going on, then made an impulsive decision to watch the end of Philipp Kohlschreiber’s match against Tobias Kamke. Kamke had won the first two sets, Kohlschreiber had taken the third and was up a break in the fourth.

This was a relatively inconsistent match from the point where I started watching, where it became quite difficult to sink my teeth into it. Rather than trying to win in an outright way, it looked like it was more a matter of both players trying to manage their own games and fight through the match. Kohlschreiber was much more consistent in the fourth set, and that was the big difference. He was mixing it up more than I usually see from him on the backhand, hitting just as many slice backhands as drive backhands. Kamke was making plenty of errors, but seeing his play in the fifth set, might suggest that he was not exactly fully focused on the task in the fourth. Or either he was not as fired up anyway.

I’ve seen it often, players being less motivated to finish off a match in a fourth set (if struggling with tiredness, or poor play, or something else), but have a completely different mindset when it comes to the fifth. I suppose, it comes with knowing that the match will be over soon either way.

Kamke was down an early break in the fifth set but broke back. His consistency and execution of his aggressive shots improved greatly in this set. He really likes to step in and go for the backhand, but too much is going on before he hits the stroke, and he is prone to make errors on that side. Later, Kamke’s inconsistency came back to haunt him, losing the crucial break of serve.

One of the spectators sitting near me was constantly complaining about why the match wasn’t over yet, and wishing that it was, which was rather puzzling since there were plenty of other choices. Not to mention that leaving the grounds is another option. It was already around 5pm anyway. Eventually, after 15 minutes of complaining (or possibly more), they did leave.

After this, I thought about watching Gasquet’s match against Dancevic but the stands were already full, and on this court, there are only stands on one side. In my experience, that court is always overcrowded. So I referred back to my order of play sheet, and headed over to the court where Gilles Simon was playing to see if it had started yet. It had.

Simon was playing against Yen-Hsun Lu, who traditionally receives a lot of support from the Taiwanese fans. The same was true today, and the left side of the stands looked like it was filled with red, or at least bits of red everywhere. In between points, they would swing their flags around, but again I was not quick enough with the camera to capture it well. Sometimes they would do their chants which sounded a bit like "Aussie, Aussie, Oi Oi Oi" in another language, but whether it really was exactly the same, I'm not sure.

The stands were full, but on the right stand, people would leave often and there would be vacated seats. As soon as I sat down on one, I could see why. The view was terrible. This court seems to have a few additional shade covers on where the players are sitting compared to the court that Davydenko and Mayer played on. I can’t understand the need for all these “view blockages”. Make them sit in the changeovers in the sun for our benefit, or hold an umbrella themselves if they really want to. I quickly got up out of my spot and decided to stand up instead on the corner where I had a better view.  From this view, whenever Lu comes over to the side where I'm standing, I can hear him loudly exhaling.

This was the battle of the consistent baseliners. The kind of match where it doesn’t take long to have a look, and think, they’re going to take all night. Despite a couple of 6-2 sets thrown in there, it did take a long time. The match also rarely changed from the original model that the match started with. In the beginning, Lu was like a slightly better version of Simon. Hitting the ball harder and taking more chances, going closer to the lines. On the other hand, it felt like Simon’s tactic was to make every rally as long as possible. This means not taking any chances. I wonder if this is how he played before he showed sudden improvements in 2008. The kind of tennis that earned him the tag of being known as a pusher.

The other thing that can be frustrating about Simon, is that sometimes it doesn’t look like he is giving it 100%. Because of that, it also looked like he could run all day, and play all day while running around just as effectively as before. After all he was barely breaking a sweat, as in everything seemed to come very easily to him. Gilles Simon makes tennis look very easy. Or more accurately, Gilles Simon’s B-grade standard is tennis made to look easy.

Today he was hitting every groundstroke at about 70% pace, compared to his full pace, and rarely changing it up. Hitting so many balls into the court, I often found myself wondering why he doesn’t try to do things differently. Again, he mostly stuck with going crosscourt, and they exchanged a ridiculous amount of backhand crosscourts with each other.

It was a real battle, but after the first set, Simon’s consistency began to improve, with the gap in unforced errors widening significantly between Simon and Lu. Lu had about 60 unforced errors, while Simon had around 30.

Sometimes when Lu was down in a match, he’d try to go for more, thinking that he would need to do more, and it would cost him an additional break in a set.

In the end, Simon’s continuing consistency was too much of a problem for Lu to overcome. The match ended with a really nice handshake, and I can see why, given how much both players battled in this match.

Australian Open Day 6 Blog

It’s the first day of the weekend at Melbourne Park, and it shows in the crowd attendance. It’s hard to walk around anywhere, and it seems like there are big crowds wherever you go, too many people standing around doing other things than watching tennis matches because the stadiums are too full. The first couple of days of the tournament seemed fine with a greater spread of matches, but the last few days have been more problematic.

Today I decided to join the battle of trying to occupy good seats, although it was initially not my decision to do so. I had prepared to watch Mikhail Youzhny play then heard of his withdrawal so I walked into Margaret Court Arena to watch Vera Zvonareva play against Gisela Dulko.

The weather seemed continually threatening but in the end, it was simply a minor nuisance. What was probably more of a nuisance was the quality of the matches. By the end of the day, I felt like I just watched a first round day of coverage on TV where they pick the top players beating a poor hapless opponent for three tedious sets. For the first time, I left the grounds in the afternoon at 4:30pm, that’s how one-sided the matches were.

The match between Zvonareva and Dulko was fascinating to watch, just because it was refreshingly different to the other women’s matches I watched. Everything seemed at a pace slower, reminiscent of what 90s women’s tennis looked like, and at first this was exciting. This was tennis that was easy to watch, filled with rallies where players cared much more about accuracy than power.

Zvonareva can hit the ball significantly harder than Dulko, but at the same time it was obvious that she could hit it much harder if she wanted to. Instead, she chose to hit the ball side-to-side most of the time at about a medium pace.

In the first ten minutes or so, I found Dulko incredibly fascinating to watch. The way she hits the ball, she finesses it, she doesn’t drive through it. As a result, Zvonareva dominated the majority of points, and I thought it was an incredibly difficult way of playing because if she doesn’t find perfect accuracy then her shots end up being punished. Given Dulko’s stature, I am not sure why she can’t generate any more pace or whether she just chooses to play like this.

Dulko started poorly struggling with her serve and making far too many simple errors. But whenever they engaged in a rally, Zvonareva seemed to have the upper hand quite clearly, which made it difficult to shake off this preconceived feeling in the second set when things started to become more even.

I constantly wondered what it would look like, Dulko playing on a good day. She seemed too much of a crafty player to be overly reliant on her opponent’s errors. In the second set, I found out the answer to my question. She still swings at the ball just as timidly, and she doesn’t seem to find much racquet head speed at all. She finds that extra pace mostly through better timing. And with better timing came better depth and accuracy, and she ended up putting Zvonareva on the move more often than it would initially seem possible.

Still Zvonareva’s groundstrokes seemed too good overall, and it was more a case of her managing her own game. It was far more difficult for the Russian in the second set, but in the end she prevailed.

I hadn’t seen Nikolay Davydenko play yet this week, so it was my final opportunity to do so. He was scheduled to play against Juan Monaco, in what would end up being a one-sided victory for Davydenko.

From first glance, Davydenko has one of the more eye-catching games on the tour. I’m not sure why he has a reputation of not standing out when he clearly does. Compared to the majority of other players, Davydenko has an incredibly efficient game, and everything he does is so neat and perfect.

He has shorter backswings than the majority of players, and he takes everything so early that it looks like he’s catching it while the ball is still high. Every time he hits a backhand, it looks like a high backhand. I can see why they call him a ball machine, in a different sense. Because he manages to prepare early enough to be able to hit every shot almost exactly the same way, and this looks ridiculously good. Surely it has to be tiring to be so quick and early to every single shot. Everything he does, he does at a fast pace, whereas the majority of players are more selective.

When I watch Davydenko on TV, I usually focus most of my attention on the accuracy of his groundstrokes and his relentless aggression. But I found myself mostly looking at the technique and movement that Davydenko has on his groundstrokes. It’s hypnotising in a way, though I thought maybe I should actually take a step back and focus more on the tennis. I also think that his backhand looks so much better than his forehand live, whereas I normally think of them as being more even. And how about Davydenko's service motion where he seems to lean his back in a perfectly straight slanted motion?

Monaco doesn’t appear to be doing anything remotely interesting. Basically, Davydenko is playing at a fast pace and Monaco is playing at a medium pace, and being far less adventurous. His low winner count says it all. In the first set, he was making the simplest of errors, but in the second and third sets, he picked up his consistency.

The first set was Davydenko playing close to his best tennis, but his game dropped off to something more mediocre for his standards in the second and third sets, at least in the part that I watched. The match was a demonstration to me of both, why I like Davydenko play, but also why I don’t. As soon as his game dropped off, the funny thing was that his shots and movement still looked almost exactly the same. Except that it was less admirable given that he was making far more errors. I guess that’s because he relies so much on timing.

I wonder if Davydenko only reserves his all-court game for the higher ranked players, when he thinks he needs it, because he mostly stuck to the baseline and didn’t hit that many volleys.

Before the match ended, I decided to take off and watch Novak Djokovic’s match against Denis Istomin. As I sat down to watch this match, I started to gain a new appreciation of Davydenko’s match against Monaco, due to its one-sidedness. At least Monaco managed to extend many of the rallies, though it also put into perspective that even though Davydenko plays very aggressively, he doesn’t finish points in a couple of strokes that often.

It seems like the rest of the crowd were restless and bored as well, with someone behind commenting me that this was like watching an exhibition. It was a seriously underwhelming day all around, not only with the matches I watched but also with Koubek’s retirement against Verdasco, and one-sided victories for Azarenka and Serena Williams.

Djokovic had already won the first set 6-1 when I started watching it, and he seems incredibly relaxed. How can I judge a performance like this, with no pressure? Djokovic’s stroke production is so different from Davydenko’s by the way, so much looser and less precise especially on the forehand.

He seemed very keen on coming to the net today, maybe experimenting with his game, I’m not sure. And he hit more slice backhands than I can normally remember. He had a lot of success with it, and Istomin struggled with it all match long. The rallies and the pace of this match was so quick that sometimes it was difficult to see what Istomin was doing wrong, aside from being a weak, inconsistent player all-round. His defensive skills were particularly poor as he would often drop balls short anytime he had stretched out wide, and quickly Djokovic was able to dominate points easily.

Djokovic was up 5-0 in the third set, but had a slight concentration lapse towards the end. He tried to hit a shot behind his back to entertain the crowd but failed miserably in its execution. In the end, he served it out on second attempt, and that was the end of the horror of the day session.

I came back for the night session between Lleyton Hewitt and Marcos Baghdatis hoping to watch a closely competitive match played in a emotionally charged atmosphere. After some early excitement with Hewitt gaining an early lead, it became obvious early that something was wrong with Baghdatis. Though I was not sure whether it was fatigue, or something more permanent.

He couldn’t seem to generate any racquet head speed on any of his shots, and I was wondering whether he had a slight problem with this in his match against Ferrer because the pace of shot did noticeably decrease towards the end.

It was the first time I experienced sitting near the Aussie supporters dressed in the yellow shirts, and the support group was nowhere near as big as I thought they would be. Where are the Fanatics? In any case, I really liked the variety and creativity of their chants, compared to the majority of support groups that generally chant the same thing over and over again.

The atmosphere died down quickly, when everyone realized that Baghdatis was struggling badly. It hadn’t been a satisfying day of tennis, and this match unfortunately didn’t live up to hopes of making up for the rest of the day’s tennis.

I walked over to Hisense Arena hoping that maybe this would be the match to do that, between Tommy Haas and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, and fortunately it was an entertaining affair. Surprisingly the atmosphere in here was much more electric than it was in Rod Laver Arena, and later, it was easy to see why with the quality of play the fans were witnessing.

This was an entertaining display of all-court tennis from both players, and I loved the fast pace of the match, with both players barely taking much of a break in between points. This was a battle between Tsonga’s forehand and Haas’ backhand to see which shot would be more dominating.

Everything about Haas’ game is so clean and aesthetically pleasing. Haas’ backhand down-the-line is great to watch, and so are his dropshots though he overplayed it at times. I was looking at his shot selection, and he seemed very focused on playing beautiful tennis. I am not sure if this is a good thing.

Haas is a clean hitter of the ball, and he doesn’t seem to have much weight on his shots compared to a lot of the other players, especially on the forehand. Whenever he missed shots, he’d usually miss them by overhitting, often hitting it too long or trying to be accurate. I am not sure how much his defensive game was affected by the back injury that he had, where he called the trainer for at the end of the second set.

Tsonga was more explosive on the court and he had more power on his groundstrokes than Haas did. His serving was especially good, while the rest of his play was more up and down. The match was so fast paced though, that if ever there was a bad error in a point, it was easy to move onto the next point. Haas served for the fourth set, but Tsonga suddenly raised his game to a new level, making more of an effort to turn everything into a forehand and bludgeon his way into the match.

After spending so much time previously looking at Haas’ backhand and all-court game, it was like Tsonga suddenly made his presence loud and clear, raising the level of his shotmaking and athleticism, and hitting more spectacular forehands to take the match in four sets.

London World Tour Finals Wrap-Up

It just occurred to me that this blog will soon be the only avenue I have for tennis writing. Since I haven’t done much in the last couple of months to try to keep it alive, I felt like I should.

It's not the first time I've realized this, but it started to sink in on the day that I heard about Tennis Week closing down (and Most Valuable Network which hosts Tennis Diary will also do so at the end of the year).

In a completely unprepared and spontaneous decision, I have decided to do a wrap-up of the London World Tour Finals. What I can remember the most out of it was closely paying attention to sets and games more than I ever did in previous years because that's what it came down to, more often than not. Juan Martin Del Potro edged out a semi-final place over Andy Murray by one single game, and almost all of the matches were decided in three sets.

In a way it was an accurate representation of men’s tennis as it is today. It is fair to say that the top 10 as a whole looks stronger than it has in a while. On the bottom of the top 10, we have more dangerous players that might not be considered as legitimate contenders for big tournaments but perfectly capable of competing well against the top players, ie. Fernando Verdasco and Robin Soderling. Though it must be said that Verdasco was quoted to having a record against the top ten along the lines of 1-12 for the year, which was what prompted me to suggest that he lost some of his flashiness in my description of him a while back.

I can’t understand what goes inside Verdasco’s head sometimes. I suspect he’s just as confused himself. His game is smooth and effortless, and he has this nonchalant attitude about him as if he doesn’t care much about what’s going on, though it’s hard to tell whether this is actually the case. Part of it is surely a mental holiday, but part of it is also a side effect of the more mature and calm Verdasco. Or at least I found him to be strangely lacking in fire at times at the US Open. The way he’s been playing in the last couple of tournaments seems to be suggesting the same thing, quick to pull the trigger out of impatience after focusing so strongly on playing disciplined tennis this year.

Steve Tignor made an interesting point on his blog, that Verdasco’s problem seemed to be that he wasn’t able to control points without hitting shots that were close to being winners. Del Potro is an obvious example of someone that can do this easily, and the same could be said of Davydenko. Verdasco, on the other hand needs to rely on his go-to shots. The down-the-line forehand is a big point-finisher and Verdasco is a much better player when it works, but at the same time, it’s a high risk shot. I’d also add the wide serves to the list, particularly on the ad court, and when he serves well and accurately, it tends to make the rest of his game look more accurate too having more angles and gaps to work with.

I’ve started to warm to Del Potro more lately because of his eye-catching ability to hit winners out of shots that didn’t look like they could be winners. He also has this ability to suddenly change gears at the drop of a hat, and I would go even further to suggest that he can change moods in the drop of a hat also. Turning negative body language into positive body language.

If he wasn’t such a good shotmaker and able to pull it off, I’d call him an idiot for trying to hit the cover off the ball on a big point, and trying to hit a forehand winner two steps away from where his opponent was standing. Jason Goodall has coined a new term for Del Potro’s ferocious forehands, “vapourising the ball” and “forehands hit at the speed of the light”. I think the big crosscourt forehand returns stand out the most.

For me, I’m just as much impressed by the less flashy but equally as effective double-handed backhand of Del Potro’s. He can do exactly the same thing on that side, trade crosscourt backhands and suddenly rip a backhand winner in the same direction, only slightly wider and deeper and have that come off as a clear winner. Actually Murray can do that too which puzzles me because I would have thought you'd have to hit it ridiculously hard to do that, but he just flattens it out and hits it deep into the corner having it skid through the court.

Del Potro started off slow in the tournament, but this is the week he got out of his post-Slam win hangover, just in time for the start of the new season. It marked the time when his competitive instincts took over, his obvious love for competing and he has the confidence to back it up. Strangely he looked subdued in the final match against Davydenko, and for the first time aside from his first set loss to Andy Murray, never looked like getting going. Though perhaps it could be said, that Davydenko just happened to be one step in front of him at all times, playing at a pace faster and forcing Del Potro to play catch-up all the time.

Federer strangely lost two consecutive matches in similar fashion against Del Potro and Davydenko, on the brink of victory to only have the tables turned on him the following game. Federer had break points in the all-important 7th game in the third set (or something along those lines) in both matches. I’d roughly estimate that in two thirds of those points, Del Potro and Davydenko saved them with courageous play.

The way Davydenko grunted on some of his groundstrokes towards the end serving for the match, it was like the audio equivalent of trying to assert his authority against all of his inner demons. Davydenko’s wide serve on the deuce court is deceptively good, moving out further wide than what it would initially seem. It looks like it’d sit up high once it hits the court, but instead it continues to swing away and skid low. It's hard to get a clean hit on it unless if you can read it early enough, and he can generate good angles on that side because of the good body rotation he has on serve. Federer certainly had a hard time dealing with it.

What does Davydenko’s title win mean for his career? As far as I’m concerned, Davydenko has always been one of the best players, as his consistent top 5 ranking over the years would show. He’s capable of giving Nadal, Djokovic, Murray and Del Potro a run for their money, and I think aside from winning this title, he can be just as much encouraged by the increasingly open state of the tour and the decreasing aura surrounding the top players.

Davydenko doesn’t strike me as a player that seems to use momentum to build on form, however over long periods, he tends to generally have a lot of good days. He’s more up and down the charts over the course of a season and more so in a best-of-five set match against the top players, but he has proven he can string it together in a tournament. The question is whether he can convert those into wins.

The strengths and weaknesses of the ATP top 10

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

Roger Federer

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

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

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

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

Rafael Nadal

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

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

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

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

Novak Djokovic

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

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

Andy Murray

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

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

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

Juan Martin Del Potro

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

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

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

Andy Roddick

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

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

Nikolay Davydenko

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

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

Fernando Verdasco

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

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

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

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga

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

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

Robin Soderling

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

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

Tournament Wrap-Up: The Winners in Umag, Gstaad and Los Angeles

Note: I've now added Youtube links to videos I've uploaded myself...

Umag

Winner: Nikolay Davydenko (d. Juan Carlos Ferrero)

What a tournament and what a performance it has been for Nikolay Davydenko this week in Umag, particularly in his two closing matches against Jurgen Melzer and Juan Carlos Ferrero. The Russian will surely take a huge confidence boost from his performances, but will he be able to translate a good run of form on clay to good form on the hardcourts? Maybe not initially, but he has plenty of time to gear up for the US Open.

Watching Davydenko play, I felt the same kind of helplessness that both Melzer and Ferrero felt, that’s how dominant he was. Out of all the players on tour, I’d have to rank Davydenko up there as quite possibly one of the most frustrating to play against, due to the sheer rapid pace of his game. He doesn’t give his opponents room to breathe, to play the shots that they’d like to play. So what you often see instead is silly shot selection, doing anything to stay one step ahead of Davydenko rather than reacting to what he does. And I sympathise completely with them, because when Davydenko’s playing like this, he’s close to unbeatable.

There is virtually no way of winning points against him, he dominates the baseline rallies and his return of serve is one of the best. He doesn’t really care what you throw at him, he’s going to be up for the task and return it with interest. He’s relentless. I think what made it great was that he didn’t allow his opponents to do anything. They weren’t even allowed to have a great day, to play out of their skins. Melzer won 2 games against Davydenko, and Ferrero lost 9 games in a row to lose the match.

Davydenko didn’t start off in imperious form. He was erratic but you could tell he was searching for his form. Being ambitious in his shot selections trying to pull off the same kind of shots as he did against Melzer the previous day. It was obvious that he had a lot of belief in his game. Initially it seemed like Ferrero would be able to put up a better fight, given that he is better equipped to deal with a fast paced game than Melzer was. Better at counterpunching and redirecting shots, being able to create opportunities for himself. But the more Davydenko started to clean up his game, the more Ferrero started to be fighting an uphill battle.

Gstaad

Video Clips: First set | Second set tie-break / Presentation

Winner: Thomaz Bellucci (d. Andreas Beck)

We were guaranteed a first time ATP title winner in the final, and it ended up being Thomaz Bellucci who had taken the more impressive scalps during the week, including a win over top seed and home favourite, Stanislas Wawrinka as well as Igor Andreev in the semi-final. It was a rare match between two left-handers, and one which featured two players with similar strengths, serve and forehand.

Bellucci is a more complete player, and also more consistent. I like how he constructs his service games with purpose, going after his serve but also using it to create gaps in the court and finishing off points in an efficient manner. It was a different match to the semi-final match against Andreev, with Bellucci not finding himself being pushed behind the baseline as much and therefore having more opportunities to attack and hit those faster-paced groundstrokes. He really has a nicely balanced game. It looks high percentage and aggressive at the same time.

Beck on the other hand is rarely consistent, not even in his match wins. You can pretty much expect that his standard of play will wildly fluctuate, but maybe that his serve will hold it all together which is what happened here and in his semi-final match. Against Daniel, he had brief moments of the match where he’d unleash a couple of big, forceful shots and that’s what won him the match. But in the final, Bellucci was equally as dominant on serve, creating a lot of problems for Beck with the lefty swinging serve and being more consistent in other areas.

Beck had a poor start to the match, broken on his opening game and wasn’t able to capitalise on a loss of concentration from Bellucci straight after the rain delay midway in the second set. Bellucci entered this event as a qualifier and after this week’s great run makes a big ranking jump from 119 to 66 which should allow him main entry into far more events.

Los Angeles

Video Clips : First set | Second set | Third set | Ending / Trophy presentation

Winner: Sam Querrey (d. Carsten Ball)

Querrey played a great match in the semi-finals against Haas, showing some of the most impressive retrieving abilities that I'd seen from him. He was fired up, and surely his Samurai supporters (pictured above) helped with that. There was one point late in the second set with Querrey scampering all over the court, hitting this really nice one-handed backhand flick from behind to stay in the point, then sprinting to the other side to recover and hit a great crosscourt forehand. It's in the video here.

The pressure was on Querrey to back up that performance against Haas, but more importantly to finally win one of those finals he was strongly favoured to win. I think if he had lost this one, we would have safely pegged him as a finals midget but after two close sets, Querrey ran away with the match when Ball ended up being too fatigued to put up anything resembling a fight. It was a strange match. Despite both players possessing great serves, they exchanged numerous breaks of serve throughout the first two sets and had terrible second serve winning percentages.

Querrey really struggles with his serve when he’s tight. It’s amazing that his big weapon, the serve just looks like a loopy shot that seems to sit up for ages, like the worst kind of second serves. I think because it’s based so much on his loose arm action to get that racquet head speed, whereas if it was a dynamic service action, like a natural way of leaning into the shot then the power would take care of itself. It was difficult to assess the rest of his game, given that Ball is such a streaky player that it can’t really be compared to playing against Haas. He’s not going to let Querrey put together great points, more or less ending it on his own terms.

Ball is as much of an outright aggressive player as you’ll see. He doesn’t hit the ball completely flat but generates massive amounts of power, I guess because of his size. You can tell why he’s ranked where he is, because he can be really careless with the simple shots, putting away midcourt balls that were practically set up for him by his big serve. And his volleying technique is suspect as well, not being clinical with the high volleys like he should be.

But it must be said that his serve is an amazing stroke, not to mention that I also find it one of the most aesthetically pleasing serves on tour. It’s a big lefty serve. It has power, kick and sidespin, swinging increasingly further out of reach after its initial bounce. It’s like Chris Guccione’s serve with more spin, but less variety since it’s more of the same thing with each delivery. Perhaps it’s better to simply watch the video itself.

I really believed that Ball would be favourite in the third set, given the strength of his own serving, and how he often punished Querrey’s serve late in the second set. But Ball surrendered his first break of serve with some of the most horrendous shots I’d seen. Soon afterwards he didn’t even make an attempt to hide the tiredness in his body language, seemingly laboured even in his walking in between points. It was no longer about winning points, but trying to end them in any way possible, and I don’t think he was even attempting to hit winners.

I guess he had decided that he’d had a good week and that he’d happily accept the outcome of this match. And it has been a great week for Ball, coming into this event ranked in the 200s, and having never even won a single ATP main draw match prior to this week.

Profiling Simone Bolelli's Claycourt Game (and Performance) in Umag

On the back of last week's title win in Hamburg, Nikolay Davydenko heads into the Umag semi-finals as the clear favourite to take the title. But what has his form been like this week? He's not really on top of his game, nor is he fading badly. But like all good players, Davydenko is surely making the most out of the fact that he can do so much with the ball, that he has so many attacking options from the baseline.

Yesterday's match against Italian Simone Bolelli was a difficult match, as unpredictable as a match could be in the first set and not as one-sided in the second set as the scoreline suggested, resulting in a Davydenko win 7-6(10) 6-1. It was really only when Davydenko achieved his second break of serve that the outcome seemed finally set in stone, given that so many of the games prior to that were closely contested.

It wasn't one of Davydenko's rhythmic ball-striking days, he had to rely more on his speed instead, and he didn't exactly get to play the match on his terms given Bolelli's highly aggressive game. Bolelli is one of those players that have been mentioned from time-to-time as one of those dangerous claycourt players, as one of those steadily rising players, and he definitely captured some attention with his rather flashy game. At the top of his game, he looks like a stylish player, capable of hitting clean winners on both sides, not to mention that he has a very aesthetically pleasing single-handed backhand.

Though I have come to learn that he also has the tendencies of a power hitter, and the tactical side of the game is certainly something that he can work on. He takes big cuts at the ball particularly on the forehand side, and can be prone to shanking shots especially when returning fast-paced serves, or in other words first serves. Whereas on the backhand side, he can make the adjustment and shorten his backswing on return.

Just like in the first couple of games of the Hamburg final, Davydenko went down an early break lead, and the manner in which it happened seemed similar as well. Davydenko missed a couple of first serves, and Bolelli hit some unlikely winners. Unlikely because when he wins a point against Davydenko, he doesn't really wrest control of a point. Instead he pulls out spectacular shots in the middle of a competitive rally, overwhelming Davydenko with pace to the point where he either can't reach it or has to hit a defensive shot off a ball that's only one metre away from him. I think it's not only power, but also the heaviness of Bolelli's shots that makes it difficult to deal with.

For a powerful hitter, Bolelli can generate some excellent angles on his forehand, sometimes finding good angles on a crosscourt shot when it doesn't seem like he has much to work with. I guess it's because of that over-the-head swing that he uses on the forehand sometimes to find that extra angle, by applying additional spin.

But as well as Bolelli played to achieve that first break of serve, he returned it back with numerous tame errors in a way that looked familiar for him. I mean, based on that shot selection, surely he is always having to fight the ups and downs of his own play. He doesn't even react externally that much to what he does. I guess he's used to it.

So that's what the match ended up being like on both sides of the court. A match of uncompromising shotmaking, erratic on both sides but full of drama due to the sheer unpredictable nature of it. I would have thought that Davydenko would have been able to capitalise on his breaks of serve in the first set better, but strangely he had a hard time pulling away from the match. It was like whenever he had the opportunity to take a clear lead in the match, he had trouble stringing together points and kept letting Bolelli back in.

Bolelli remained in a neutral mindset the whole first set, sometimes hitting great shots and sometimes hitting awful shots but I never got a sense of momentum or a rise in confidence. When I watch him play, I feel his patterns of play are more based on instinct more than anything else, though he does like to hang in the backhand corner and run around to hit forehands. He doesn't strongly stick to that strategy in the same way that for example, Tommy Robredo does although for good reason because his backhand is a good shot as well.

The power that he can generate off both sides is particularly impressive. Looking at his physique, it reminds me somewhat of Nicolas Almagro, how they use a lot of their upper body strength to generate that pace, keeping their stance more upright than most other players. I can see why Bolelli sticks to playing a primarily attacking game, because when he's defending, it looks rather poor. Bolelli's mindset is to use attack as a form of defense. I think in a lot of cases, I actually see him hitting more aggressive shots when stretched further out wide, than when he's hitting a shot from the centre of the court.

In terms of court coverage, it's like there's a certain distance of the court he can cover across the court where he can still maintain his footwork and slide properly into the court. I'd say it's about the same distance as the width of the court between the two singles sidelines, and whenever he gets pulled outside of that, wider with angle then that's when he comes unstuck and tries to hit low percentage, unlikely shots. When he's still within that strike zone, it's amazing the amount of power he can generate on the run. But unfortunately when it comes to hitting low percentage, improbable down-the-line running shots, he's also very prone to doing that.

Davydenko captures his first title of the year in Hamburg

Video clips of this match: Start of First set | End of first set | End of match

Heading into yesterday’s Hamburg final, Nikolay Davydenko was a strong favourite to take the title in Hamburg over Frenchman Paul-Henri Mathieu. But for a moment there, it looked like it was going to be a close contest, a toe-to-toe baseline duel of big groundstrokes.

Mathieu came out firing perhaps knowing that anything less wouldn’t cut it against Davydenko, trying to push Davydenko around, to avoid the same being done to him. It was a clash of a similar brand of attacking tennis, rallies traded at lightning pace back and forth.

Mathieu went an early break up, and I was initially surprised that the Frenchman was able to play this brand of tennis and end up on the winning side of those rallies more often than not. He must have been playing right at the peak of his abilities. When I looked at the strengths and weaknesses of both players, it definitely looked like Davydenko was capable of doing everything a little better than Mathieu. Particularly in terms of movement and ability to change directions, not to mention that Davydenko loves to work with the pace he’s given with.

Mathieu’s run of form really only lasted about three or four games or so, and by then Davydenko had started to really find his form and timing. Because of his movement, it’s like Davydenko catches each ball at the top of the bounce, hitting it in the most favourable of positions even when being stretched out wide. But I also like how well he sets up for his strokes, how it seems like by the time he’s making contact with the ball, his feet are firmly planted in the ground, not still recovering from the sprint.

It’s no wonder that he can dash from side-to-side so quickly then when his feet are ready to move the other way as soon as he’s finished his stroke. Because he hits the ball at the top of the bounce, it also enables him better margin on the down-the-line shots that he likes so much, less chance of hitting the net.

It ended up being more of a showcase of Davydenko’s shotmaking from midway in the first set onwards which is where he really started to hit his straps. Consistently creating angles and accurate down-the-line shots to take Mathieu out of the court, and essentially out of the match, helpless to do anything but defend. As well as Mathieu can attack while being on the front foot in a rally, he’s nowhere near as good at turning defense into attack as Davydenko. If he’s stretched out wide, he’s not going to be hitting a down-the-line winner.

What he needed to do was try to keep Davydenko off-balance and limit his offensive options, but that’s a difficult task in itself if you consider how difficult it is to get Davydenko off balance. Davydenko doesn’t compromise as much as other players, he likes to take risks and he can because his movement and footwork is so good. He doesn’t block a whole lot of shots back preferring to take a full swing most times which I think is one reason why his return of serve is so good. He could be on the full stretch returning a serve that lands right on the line, down the T and he’ll still set himself up to take a full swing and return it with interest deep close to the baseline.

There was not a whole lot Mathieu could do, and it ended up being one-way traffic for Davydenko. Unfortunately for Mathieu, he started to run out of ideas after the end of the first set. He occasionally tried to make things happen but he was too far behind the baseline that instead, all he did was make things easier for Davydenko.

In the end, it was a relatively one-sided match for Davydenko after the first four games, which resulted in his first title of the year. His ranking took a hit earlier in the year after injury, meaning that he wasn’t able to defend some of his points, but I’d like to see him start to make a climb up the rankings again and edge closer towards the top 5, where he belongs.

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.