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.

Fernando Gonzalez and His Forehand

A couple of years ago, Fernando Gonzalez was known to be a loose cannon, a risk-taker and a big shotmaker. When you possess as much power and weaponry as Gonzalez does, it can be incredibly tempting to rely overly on it. But there's a time and place for big shots and if you wait around long enough for the right shot, you can actually increase the number of times of hitting that spectacular winner. By taking a mindset like that, he essentially took the possibility of using variety in his game, and all the shots in between.

Fortunately times have changed and now he's not afraid to use a wider range of shots, recognising that it's about doing what's required for the situation, nothing more, nothing less. Today's match against Tommy Haas in Washington showcased Gonzalez at his controlled best, aside from a couple of wobbles towards the end of the second set. When he blasts his forehand, it can be difficult to remember that there is actually a lot more to the shot than the sheer pace that he can create. It's actually an amazing shot all-round.

I spent the majority of the first set watching how he somehow makes the low percentage look high percentage by consistently hitting close to the lines over and over again on the forehand side. But that's not the impressive part. It was how he consistently hit his forehand close to the lines, breaking away further outside of the court after its bounce making the court look far bigger than it is. It's like he somehow curls outside the ball, so it's not like it creates a high bounce, but it moves away from the court. I think out of the other players, only Roger Federer can do the same although Nadal can create the same effect with additional topspin.

Gonzalez doesn't need a whole lot to work with to start dominating a rally with his forehand. That's why he's so difficult to break on his service games if he keeps it together concentration-wise. Gonzalez does have a great serve especially in terms of accuracy and the additional slice he adds to it to open up the court, but how he backs it up makes it look like an even better shot than it is. It's not really good enough to simply block back a return or hit a decent return that lands in three-quarter court.

He didn't receive anywhere near as many cheap points as Haas on first serve on the outright first stroke, but it had essentially the same effect, with Gonzalez usually winning it on his second or third shot. He didn't go for the outright flat scorching winner that much, this time favouring accuracy and spin over power with the intent of making Haas cover as much ground as possible. If Haas was to have any success on the Gonzalez serve, he needed to do something drastic. He needed to break the pattern, and with urgency.

Haas has the ability to do that, to chip and charge on the return of serve with which he tried at times but more so to mix up the play, rather than employing it as a consistent tactic. Unfortunately sometimes Haas lacks the depth on his returns, possibly because he stands so far behind the baseline to return. His strength is more in the consistency of his returns, and to hope that he can slowly turn around the point in his favour. That's why when he did come in to chip and charge, Gonzalez usually found an answer for it hitting passing shot winners seemingly at will.

Gonzalez can hit some beautiful dipping forehand passing shots, that by the time it reaches the other side of the net, it's well and truly past the area where Haas is standing to cover the net. Haas needs to target Gonzalez's backhand if he wants to approach the net, and he did it with more success on his own service games coming in on his own terms. It's a different situation on Gonzalez's backhand, where he really has a problem maintaining enough control to find a target if he's rushed trying to half-volley a shot.

It was a good tactical match from both sides, and in the end it came down more to execution and concentration, though Gonzalez's greater shotmaking ability also played a part in it. It was a combination of both because he needed Haas to play a couple of loose points on serve, and whenever the opportunity presented itself, Gonzalez was quick to take advantage of it and find his best shots, such as the backhand down-the-line winner at set point in the first set.

One poor service game from Haas, and the match had turned completely in Gonzalez's favour. What initially seemed like a small blip from Haas turned into a giant hole that he dug for himself, still recovering from the disappointment of the first set. Sometimes Haas reads too much into his own play, punishing himself unnecessarily for simply playing a couple of poor points. Forgetting that he had played a good match for the most part. He dropped his next service game with three or so cheap errors. Mentally he had checked out of the match.

It seemed like smooth sailing for Gonzalez, until Gonzalez's own moment of dropping his focus nearly cost him. Haas had one chance on a baseline rally that could have gone either way. He shanked a forehand wide by several metres. Then to make things worse, he played yet another service game reminiscent of the first game of the second set. Clearly Haas doesn't have much of a selective memory. Gonzalez dropped his next service game, but he was always in control given that he had a two break cushion and served it out the second time around to move into the semi-finals.