Tommy Robredo Cruises in Santiago, defeating Maximo Gonzalez

I’m not quite sure how Tommy Robredo has slipped down to a ranking of 40 over the past year, apart from stating the obvious that he isn’t playing as well as he used to. That’s what the ranking suggests. A closer look at his rankings breakdown suggests that he’s not doing as well in the optional events as he used to.

2011 is a new year though, and he has gotten off to a good start with a 4th round result at the Australian Open (losing to Roger Federer) and now reaching the semi-finals of Santiago.

He will fancy his chances of going further in this draw with the remaining players in the draw having never won a title before. He faces Fabio Fognini in the semi-finals, then potentially the winner of Potito Starace and Santiago Giraldo. Though I think it would make a nice headline if Santiago Giraldo won in Santiago.

In today’s match, he defeated Maximo Gonzalez quite comfortably 6-3 6-1. This was the first time I had seen Gonzalez play before, so I had my eyes firmly focused on him rather than Robredo, out of curiosity. I like to scout players too. The signs were promising to start with. Gonzalez has nice heavy groundstrokes, and when he matches up with Robredo, he appears to be the stronger of the two. Stronger, not better. More penetrating in his groundstrokes. If we just looked at groundstrokes while they were warming up, and not accuracy or the ability to be aggressive with it, then Gonzalez would be more impressive. The heaviness of his groundstrokes reminds me a little bit of Jose Acasuso, but with nowhere near as much pace.

The match was even for the first half of the set, and I kept expecting Robredo to make more inroads into the return of serve. Mostly because Gonzalez’s serve is quite awful. I think even I have more a fluid motion than that (but mine is jerky in general too). It comes from the same school of serving that Juan Ignacio Chela graduated from, before he changed it into something much better midway into his career. He has his racquet back and his service motion halfway complete before he even tosses the ball up, then he briefly pauses as the ball goes up and finishes off the motion. The serve often lands in the middle of the box. Robredo generally returns serve quite far behind the baseline though, so it didn’t get punished that much. Except somewhere in the second set, when Robredo hit a backhand down-the-line return winner that he surely didn’t mean to hit.

While I’m currently into making player comparisons with myself, I was also amused to see that Gonzalez sometimes lifts his left leg up a little bit while hitting a forehand, just like I do but to a lesser extent. He does it particularly when hitting it aggressively. But he’s better than me. He can plant his left leg when he’s in a more defensive stance, which is good otherwise he wouldn’t have made it into this (clay) event.

In any case, I thought Gonzalez was playing better than his ranking of 140, until his game went downhill quickly after he missed many break points in one game. Suddenly he began to make plenty of awful errors, trying to play overly aggressively above his ability, and not digging very deep. His movement isn’t as good as Robredo’s. If he’s further behind the baseline then it needs to be more defensive. If he has more time, then he can go for it. Wow, I can relate to these points. Trying to hit a winner while going backwards is never going to work. I constantly mumble that to myself while playing.

I thought Robredo served quite well, for his standards. He has an accurate serve, and can get good angles on the wide serve on the ad court. He’s a good server for his height. Though I should also point out that Gonzalez’s return of serve is a weakness. He needs more time to hit good shots.

They tried to motivate the players before the match started by playing Eye of the Tiger, which I seem to remember was Hewitt’s favourite song to listen to before matches. Or was it Nadal? They liked to play rock music in the changeovers, even while players were walking out from their chairs. I think they only stopped it once they got closer to the baseline. Most tournaments playing music these days go with pop music, so this was a little different from the usual. I liked hearing Faith No More’s Epic.

Australian Open Day 5 Blog

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

It was the start of the third round matches and I already was no longer spoiled for choice, which meant in turn watching some matches that I wasn’t interested in.

At the start of play, I headed into Hisense Arena to watch Juan Martin Del Potro play against Gilles Muller, which featured a nice contrast of styles. The brutal baseline play of Del Potro pitted against the tricky variety of Gilles Muller. Muller reminds me in some ways of Radek Stepanek, not because of their styles of play, but because Stepanek is the kind of player that doesn’t look like he’d be able to match it from the back of the court with anyone, but somehow manages to hang in rallies and keep his opponents off balance just enough to avoid them from taking control of them.

Given the strong backcourt abilities of Del Potro, I would have thought that Muller would have been facing an uphill battle. He started off slowly thoroughly outplayed in the baseline rallies, and having to stave off break points in the opening few games. It was looking like maybe it would be a one-sided affair. Even when Muller started to hold serve more reliably later in the set, the statistics that flashed on the board consistently showed a big difference in points won between Muller and Del Potro, showing that Del Potro was definitely playing the better tennis despite not scoring a break.

After the first couple of games, Muller started to hold onto serve much better, mainly on the back of better serving from him, and not only did this win him cheap points but it allowed him to start off the rallies in his favour. Often this meant returning a midcourt ball as an approach shot and following it up at net.

I’ve started to notice that Muller is the kind of player that actually mostly relies on finesse, despite being a big server. His game relies on a combination of slice backhands and chipped shots to neutralise the play or move around his opponents, then throwing in the change of pace on the forehand which isn’t hit at such a fast pace, but there is enough of a speed difference to take his opponents off-guard. It also requires good touch to possess excellent volleys like he does. I don’t think he necessarily punches away his volleys that well, but well enough for the ball not to sit up and he gets excellent placement on them and rarely seems to miss a routine one.

As you can tell, my viewing of this match was from a very one-sided perspective. I did watch Del Potro, but given the kind of opponent he was up against, it was almost impossible to tell which errors were forced, and which were unforced. Especially when you consider that Del Potro has been known to struggle dealing with low slice backhands on occasion. It did seem like, however, that he was doing most of the controlling of the extended baseline rallies in the first set, before the trend changed in the second to something more neutral.

The first set tie-break was a strange one. It started off routinely, mostly going on serve, until Muller served a double fault to give Del Potro the clear advantage. But soon later, Del Potro handed it back with a double fault from himself, and subsequently Muller took the first set. Which led to a rather passionate racquet throw from Del Potro, who stands out to me as being more of a fiery character than I initially thought, given that sometimes he is branded as being a “gentle giant.”

The first half of the second set was clearly the best passage of play from Muller, now even having success in the longer rallies, and not only on serve. One particular shot that I really like from him is the short slice backhand, and short angled shots that he seems to be able to employ to make his opponents move up and down the court. But towards the end of the set is when his game started to drop off, making far more simple forehand errors off midcourt balls just when I was observing how solid his groundstrokes had been this match despite the fact that they don’t look technically reliable.

At first when Muller’s play started to decline, he would consistently put himself under a giant hole on serve, but would dig out a big first serve on almost all of the break points and follow it up if necessary. It was a display of very good clutch play, and one that understandably frustrated Del Potro, and almost drove him insane. But sooner or later, this loose play was going to cost him, and so it did at 5-5. But Muller did have one very brief opportunity the game earlier where he dumped a makeable backhand volley into the net. In the third and fourth sets, Muller’s game dropped off even more, showing far more inconsistency and errors on makeable shots which allowed Del Potro to take control of the match.



At the conclusion of the match, I headed over to Court 2 to watch Tommy Robredo play against Lu Yen-Hsun, who I have no idea why his name seems to be referred to in full on the scoreboard when everyone else has their first name abbreviated. I was disappointed to learn that Nadia Petrova’s opponent had retired after the completion of one set which meant that the match between Ferrer and Cilic, which I had planned to watch had fully completed already.

It was the first time I had watched Robredo play in person before, and my first impressions were that when he plays against an opponent lacking in firepower like Lu, he looks like a high quality player. The one thing that I like about Robredo is how he tries to stick to his strengths and implement his favorite patterns of play. What he likes to do the most is trade off-forehands to open up the court before taking it down-the-line, a pattern of play that won him large amounts of points against Lu. This was a particularly favourable pattern of play given that Lu’s attacking capabilities on the backhand side are nowhere near as good compared to the forehand.

Whenever Robredo had to chase a ball down on his forehand side, he looped it back up with more topspin to enable him to get back into the point, to try to find his way back into that backhand corner he likes so much. In short, Robredo is a very good tactical player in making use of the shots he possesses to achieve the desired result. In this particular match, he was the more aggressive player yet he didn’t go for outright winners when he was on the dead run if he could get himself back into the point.

Lu tried to change the pattern of play in the second and third sets by taking a leaf out of the Robredo book and deciding to take those backhands as forehands by running around them. This is when he started to look slightly more dangerous, but Robredo still looked like the superior player, with a stronger forehand and better defensive skills. The other big strength of Robredo was his ability to get almost all of his returns into play, even if the depth on them was not necessarily good, there was always the possibility of him turning it around by throwing in one of his more heavily topspun shots. Lu tends to struggle with trying to handle the higher bouncing ball. In the end, Lu started overplaying as a sign that he had run out of options and he was thoroughly outplayed in the end. Given the one-sided nature of the match, I was impressed with the loyal support of the Taiwanese fans, who continued to cheer on Lu equally as vocally as they did at the start of the match.

That match ended in time for the start of the match between Andy Roddick and Fabrice Santoro. In general, Santoro is a player that struggles a lot with handling the top players given that his natural game is to throw off his opponents, when all of the best players seem to have large amounts of patience and reliability attached to that game, which those qualities apply just as well to Andy Roddick.

Personally I don’t find Fabrice Santoro to be as entertaining as some other people do, largely due to the fact that even though he possesses an unorthodox game, it is also relatively defensive. Maybe it’s the Martina Hingis effect that playing a top player has on him, not being able to use the creativity due to getting pushed back on the defensive all the time.

But it’s not that Roddick was hitting big shots past him, Roddick actually looked like he was playing within himself. Three quarter paced shots, placed well but with plenty of margin and patient enough to wait for the most suitable ball to strike on. It all looked far too easy for the American, and it always seemed to be a matter of time until Roddick would break Santoro’s serve during the set. I liked how whenever Roddick would hit an absolutely horrendous shot that he would immediately turn his back on it, as if to pretend that it never happened.

I didn’t find this match to be particularly engaging although I was fascinated that while I was waiting to head back into the stadium early in the third set, I noticed how the match looked more entertaining on the TV screen rather than inside the stadium. Maybe because the view on TV placed more of an emphasis on how well the full dimensions of the court were being used, the service box area and the baseline, where both players seemed to alternate from on a regular basis.

I managed to see some typical Santoro shots, trying to curve the ball in with his passing shots, short slices and approach shots but I didn’t get to see that many amazing lobs or volleys. The lack of effective lobs was particularly surprising given that Santoro can sometimes be known to throw them up on a very regular basis, in turn making himself cover large amounts of ground.

So at the end of that match, I didn’t really feel like I had yet gotten my fix of entertaining tennis. It was time for the night match between Tomas Berdych and Stanislas Wawrinka, which on paper was the most closely contested match-up of the day. Two big hitters that both look to dominate play from the back of the court in their own separate ways.

Berdych has shorter backswings and takes the ball earlier, and he tends to be able to create better placement and unexpected changes of directions. What he can do with the ball from deeply placed shots is extremely impressive showing that he has very good reflexes. Wawrinka is a heavier hitter of the ball, and uses larger backswings so he needs to be given more time to set up although on the odd occasion he was able to generate enough pace to hit a forehand crosscourt winner while the pair were exchanging crosscourt forehand rallies.

Wawrinka started the match breaking Berdych’s serve with three winners and managed to hold onto that break for the rest of the set. It was interesting to note the winners count as the set moved on. Wawrinka at some point had 9 winners to Berdych’s 0, but Berdych almost caught up midway in the set, until Wawrinka started to gain somewhat of an advantage in this category. Which by the way, both players had similar amounts of unforced errors, which makes these statistics rather relevant. Whenever Wawrinka made an error, it felt like he usually missed by large distances and sometimes mistimed the ball whereas Berdych’s shots usually only missed by the barest of margins.

From the second set onwards, Berdych seemed to be able to consistently hit returns deep down at Wawrinka’s feet putting him under extreme pressure. In the fourth set, Wawrinka changed tactics to start utlising more of the backhand slice crosscourt to extend rallies and neutralise the Berdych attack to some extent, which helped make it more of a closely contested match. I was surprised how little Wawrinka made use of his backhand down-the-line which is normally one of his best shots. In the end, Berdych’s ability to consistently do more with the ball, and his better serving and returning was enough to take the four set win.

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.