Soderling Shows Good Form in Rotterdam, Defeating Youzhny

Robin Soderling isn’t anywhere near as much of an indoor specialist as he used to be, but in any case, he’s doing well this week in Rotterdam, bouncing back from a poor performance at the Australian Open in his loss against Alexandr Dolgopolov. Mikhail Youzhny also had a subpar Australian Open, losing to Milos Raonic in the 3rd round, but both players showed good form in this match. In a rematch of last year's final, Soderling defeated Youzhny 6-4 7-6(5).

They traded big shots against each other, but it wasn’t easy to hit winners, and most rallies ended up being long, drawn out, and competitive. It was a surprisingly complete display of tennis, complete in the sense that neither player showed an obvious weak side that leaked errors. Soderling also wasn’t as overly reliant on his forehand as usual, with his backhand sharing the workload, and winning just as many points with it.

Sometimes matches like this can be a little mind-numbing, and easy to take for granted. Especially since Soderling and Youzhny are top 10 players. There weren’t that many momentum swings in the match, instead it was hard-fought the whole match. Tactically they were playing aggressive but controlled tennis. It was very much, spot on.

Youzhny’s ability to control rallies was better than I thought. He was the player changing directions more often in this match, particularly when they traded backhands where Soderling would usually hit it back crosscourt but with good pace, while Youzhny had the additional option of nailing it down-the-line more often. His backhand was the best aspect of the match.

Soderling wasn’t as dominant as usual. By that, I mean the match wasn’t played on his terms as much as usual, and probably in the past, he would have been easily frustrated. But now, Soderling is pretty good at playing patient tennis too, so he hung in there and showed some respect towards Youzhny’s shots by waiting until the right moment to pull the trigger. There wasn’t much difference between the two, apart from a couple of points. This was a good display of top 10 level tennis.

It was one of those matches that bring forth the argument that the players these days have fewer obvious weaknesses. They have shots that can break down on their bad days, yes, but opponents can no longer relying on peppering one side knowing that they can’t be punished.

Is the modern era of tennis actually more exciting this way? I think what makes a tennis match exciting is once you get involved in it, then it reaches another level to simply appreciating it. Like holding your breath or showing a seed of doubt whenever a ball goes to a player’s weaker side, or getting excited whenever it goes to their stronger side. Or watching momentum swings, and seeing how a player stringing a couple of points together can suddenly turn into great form for the rest of the match (or the opposite could be said for poor play). I guess that’s why many people like the flashy players. It’s not only about the winners.

Momentum swings and drama are also make for great viewing, and there wasn’t that much of it in this match. It was a good quality match, but sometimes a little bit of imperfection can actually make a match better. Maybe a combination of more awful shots followed by great shots, would be good. I really am turning into a fussy tennis watcher. Oh well, I’m sure there will be plenty of Robin Soderling matches in the future that have them.

By the way, I am definitely covering up for my decreasing attention span these days by going more off-topic than ever. I hope it is not too obvious.

Robin Soderling Smashes Through The Draw to Win Brisbane

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Big hitting and big serving: Soderling and Federer advance to the finals in similar style

Is there some kind of significance of yesterday’s French Open men’s semi-finals? The line-up consisted of Robin Soderling, Fernando Gonzalez, Juan Martin Del Potro and Roger Federer. Players that all have the ability to generate their own pace, and create winners from the back of the court combined with a lot of cheap points on serve.

Clay has always been thought of as a surface that neutralises the serve the most, but it’s turned out to be more of a factor than it has in previous years. It’s no wonder that Davydenko felt completely hopeless in his blowout loss to Soderling, whereas Gonzalez was able to hold onto his serve and take his opportunities late in the third and fourth sets, waiting for Soderling to briefly flinch to take the sets.

It’s not like we’re seeing an exhibition of aces, but one thing that an effective serve does is put the point firmly in favour of the server. Setting up the point with a big forehand, and on clay, once you get pinned back on the defense, it’s harder to instantly counterattack, it requires a lot of hard work. But when you come up against big hitters that can do more with one shot than most like Soderling, Del Potro, Federer and Gonzalez have recently shown, it becomes almost impossible.

In the case of Soderling and Del Potro, interestingly their defensive skills come up short when compared to some of their peers but they make up for it in other ways. It’s not as impressive as the athleticism of a Djokovic or Davydenko, but they seem to have this ability to give the ball a good slap on the stretch making use of their great reach and ability to generate power. Restricting the ability of their opponents to yank them around the court too much, and if all else fails, then they’d look for a way out of the point, with a low percentage shot. Reinforcing that they’re the one in control of points, not their opponents.

It was an interesting match-up, Soderling having the clear advantage on the backhand wing, dangerous off both sides, but Gonzalez being the significantly better athlete, often winning points through sheer determination, sometimes just looking to get one ball back on a point that seemed already lost – but finally drawing the error on the final shot. And that’s something to admire, when you consider how Gonzalez normally wins his matches, through outright attacking. When he first stepped out on court, that’s how he expected to win. But he found the balls coming back too quickly, and shanking and mistiming balls trying to create big swings off shots where he had no right to. So he adjusted his game and started to dig more balls out, prolong points any way he could and throw in as much variety as he could.

Despite Gonzalez’s reputation as a big hitter, I think of him as being a good thinker on the court as well at times, at least at this stage in his career, and I’ve seen him in the past expose many players with short wide balls, slices and dropshots. But I think based on this match and Del Potro’s match, slice backhands don’t penetrate as much through the court, creating this higher bounce that doesn’t bother their opponents as much. And I guess Gonzalez needs to have that additional variety on his backhand, kind of like how Andy Roddick has developed his to a lesser extent to make up for his lack of shotmaking ability on that side.

Soderling had been winning the majority of his matches on the back of his strong forehand, the initial shot that takes his opponents off-balance but he was equally as lethal on the backhand yesterday. His crosscourt backhand is like a smothering shot, so penetrating and deep that he doesn’t need to achieve any exceptional accuracy on it to cause damage on it. It’s particularly useful coming up against Gonzalez, who could not find his way around to a forehand, and is nowhere near as threatening when restricted to a backhand. But the shot that I was most surprised with was the effectiveness of Soderling’s down-the-line backhand. How he managed to on so many occasions, on the return of serve with Gonzalez’s serve breaking away wide on the ad court, step in and change directions with ease for a winner.

In the end, what it came down to was that when both players were trading blows with each other, toe-to-toe, that Soderling was the better player. It looked like Gonzalez was on his way for getting rewarded for his efforts, as Soderling started to leak more errors and lack the sting on his groundstrokes that he had maintained earlier allowing Gonzalez to control more points with his forehand. Soderling couldn’t maintain the hitting from the first two sets, so what he did instead was save his final reserves for a final couple of launched attacks at Gonzalez.

The first one was in the first game of the fourth set, but Gonzalez rose to the challenge, and that seemed to knock the belief out of Soderling. He went through frustration and despair at the thought of the match slipping out of his hands, then finally he started to feel some kind of freedom again after being down a break in the fifth set. He started going for his shots again at full throttle, and pulled them off. Then once he achieved that initial break back, it was like he was revitalised again, rediscovering the same devastating pace that he had on his groundstrokes in the first two sets to convincingly win the decisive fifth set.

It was an exciting, and entertaining semi-finals day in Roland Garros, two high quality five-set matches that were underlined with incredible fighting spirit from all four players. Juan Martin Del Potro in the past hasn’t had much success against Roger Federer, having failed to take a set, making this five-set performance all the more impressive. There is no doubt that Del Potro is becoming one of the fastest improvers on the tour, seemingly addressing every criticism coming his way.

Now everyone knows that Del Potro has improved his serve leaps and bounds ever since the beginning of that well-documented four title run. But when did it become such a big weapon, the ability to win all those cheap points? It used to be more of a consistently powerful stroke, very good but not brilliant the way it was against Federer.

Then there’s the development of Del Potro’s forward movement, taking advantage of his shots at the net. And maybe the claycourt season has been perfect for him to develop this kind of extra layer to his game, given that it can sometimes be incredibly difficult to completely finish off shots from the back of the court on this surface. But also incredibly tiring if you choose to do so. It has always been thought that Del Potro didn’t need to possess great volleys to finish off some of his shots, but simply that he needed to make his way up there. Though it must be said that he is very reliable and solid up there, and seems to know where to position his racquet in order to make his volleys as simple as possible.

But aside from that monster serving performance, what really put Del Potro in a winning position was through the strength of his groundstrokes, which seemed heavier and consistently more penetrating than Federer’s. Federer didn’t seem to do anything wrong specifically, and he didn’t crumble on the big points like he did against Haas a couple of rounds earlier. He was simply not given much opportunity to do as much with the ball as he’d like to. Though at times, it was rather incredible what Federer could come up with on the half-volley.

Just like in the Soderling vs Gonzalez semi-final, it was interesting how much of an impact that the extra bit of pace that Del Potro was able to generate on his groundstrokes, had on the match. Tennis is a game of cause and effect, how hitting a shot slightly harder or deeper prevents your opponent from attacking. Or how missing one or more first serves can get you into trouble, and that’s what happened here. To be fair, it was a rather steep decline on Del Potro’s end though, as he started to wear out physically from the start of the fourth set onwards. But it was interesting how the options started to open up for Federer with that additional time to set up, able to implement more touch shots, more variety and control the points better.

This sets up for what could potentially be an entertaining, hard-fought battle, but there are no guarantees. We’ve seen what Del Potro did to Federer, and Soderling has the ability to implement the same game, except with even more force than what Del Potro did.

The best of the French Open: The top 3 matches of the week

The not-so-definitive list of the best matches of the first week...

[1] 3rd round: Robin Soderling def. David Ferrer 6-7(5) 7-5 6-2 7-6(5)

Robin Soderling has never been much of a factor in the Grand Slams, and prior to this match had never advanced past the 3rd round in any Slam, which is rather awful for a player of his standard, one I consider to be consistently top 30 calibre and for someone that possesses such big weapons. It was over three and a half hours of absorbing tennis, and a match which featured around 60 winners from Soderling. And that's 60 winners against Ferrer on clay.

It reminded me of the brief experience I had watching Soderling at the Brisbane International, leaning over a fence, so close to the action that I could pretty much feel and hear the shots coming off Soderling's racquet. Clean, big hitting with Soderling pounding the ball into submission on a frighteningly regular basis, though his consistency was not as prevalent as it was in this match. Against Ferrer, I was reminded of the same kind of thing. It was an ongoing onslaught of weaponry, with Ferrer tried to fend off as much as he could.

It didn't initially seem like it was going to be one of those days for Soderling. It was a slightly patchy match at first, a combination of impressive shotmaking and errors, from both players, and not only from the more volatile Soderling. For Ferrer, they were uncharacteristic errors, but for Soderling, he was pretty much living up to expectation. The rallies were surely too lengthy for Soderling to keep up that kind of flat ball-striking, and so it was slightly up and down, but good enough for it to be entertaining. This made for a wonderfully dramatic and unpredictable match, and there were numerous service breaks which added to the feeling that anything could happen.

But that was where the slight inconsistencies started to disintegrate, making for a high quality affair from the second set onwards. Consistently entertaining rallies, hard-fought games and high emotions as you would expect, when it comes to Soderling and Ferrer. You could literally see Soderling gradually gaining in confidence as the match went on to the point of being able to replicate it on the big points, a skill that usually eludes him. But today, there was full commitment on his shots particularly on the sometimes troublesome forehand, seemingly able to reel off large amounts of forehand winners at will.

From the third set onwards, Soderling had hit a purple match. On any normal day, Ferrer would have surely done enough to throw off Soderling's rhythm. So what we had then were these drawn out rallies that started to defy belief more and more as it went on. That Soderling could continually hammer the ball in the corners, with little hesitation and few mistakes and that Ferrer could keep chasing them down. One thing I like watching is how explosively Ferrer moves out to return serve, that he so often seems to be able to retrieve serves that land on the lines, and then recovering easily afterwards.

It wasn't like Ferrer played a defensive match, he went for his shots, maintaining good accuracy on his shots and moving the ball side-to-side. But what he needed to do was to explore the angles more, and have Soderling lunging out to reach for shots more often, because it seemed like the majority of shots somehow landed into Soderling's strike zone. He also needed to make more use of the dropshot, which was strangely lacking in Ferrer's repertoire that day.

[2] 2nd round: Roger Federer def. Jose Acasuso 7-6(8) 5-7 7-6(2) 6-2

There's something that I find incredibly exciting and entertaining about unexpectedly good performances. Acasuso, who is sometimes a good claycourter, and sometimes just completely out-of-form, had won just one claycourt match during the European season leading up to Roland Garros and struggled in the opening two sets of his first round match before turning it around. But in this match against Federer, Acasuso was on the verge of gaining a stranglehold on the match at 5-1 in the third set, and it looked fairly certain to be heading into a fifth set.

I was reminded yet again of how Acasuso is such a smooth, yet explosive shotmaker. Long, flowing groundstrokes and armed with a very dangerous forehand that consistently put Federer on the back foot. It was a simple game plan, a somewhat predictable one at that, but executed almost perfectly to keep Federer off-balance. In many instances, I've seen players simply trying to pound Federer's backhand relentlessly with little change-up, but with few results. Federer simply isn't that vulnerable to making errors if he can anticipate it every single time. But Acasuso was seemingly able to hit that off forehand time and time again practically in the same spot, close to the sideline and reaped the rewards. It wasn't like taking the high percentage way out though, and Acasuso would change it up to hit down-the-lines whenever he had found an opening, coming into the net as well when he sensed the opportunity.

What I liked the most was that he never backed off, and continued his aggressive game plan, even if he wasn't mentally strong enough to pull off his best shots when he needed them. Until the third set, from 5-1 that is, when unfortunately, instead of asking Federer some serious questions, Acasuso went back into his shell and started dropping balls short, with less pace. Still, it was a tension-filled match for three sets with the potential upset factor involved, and a high quality affair that featured plenty of variety and all-court tennis. Though if I was to measure a match in its parts, I think the fourth set of the Federer vs Mathieu match is worth a mention as well, which features both players playing at the top of their games.

[3] 1st round: Radek Stepanek def. Gaston Gaudio 6-3 6-4 6-1

It didn't have the drama, but it had the show. It wasn't Gaudio's best performance, and in the end it was all about Stepanek. It was like Stepanek pulling the strings in a puppet show yanking Gaudio wherever he wanted to side-to-side, front-to-back, and vice-versa. I don't think it's possible to see anyone use the entire court better, than Stepanek did in this match. Aside from Stepanek's variety which he is well-known for, it's also impressive how well Stepanek changes directions on both sides and that's how he's able to take his opponents out of their rhythm as often as he does.

I've seen the dropshot used in so many instances throughout the tournament, but no one follows up their dropshots better than Stepanek does, often frustrating the hell out of his opponents by making them cover large amounts of court, while feeling they have no control over what happens in the point, running for no reward. It wasn't an impressive performance from Gaudio, nothing more than solid, and we know he's capable of much better shotmaking. But his court coverage is impressive, and that adds to the entertainment factor of the match. It's a truly unique match, at least in the first two sets.

Australian Open Day 1 Blog

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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