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 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.

Australian Open Day 3 Blog

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

Last year at the Australian Open there were press reports of tension between Serbian and Croatian fan bases, so the first round encounter between Janko Tipsarevic and Marin Cilic was interesting from that point of view, to see the rivalling between fanbases. As soon as the players started to warm up on the court, the support from both sides was already loud and clear and both groups were trying to outdo each other which made for an entertaining atmosphere in Margaret Court Arena. At times, Carlos Ramos, the chair umpire had to advise the crowd to be quiet during play stating that these are “two very nice guys.”

As I started watching the match, it was getting clear that Cilic was the man that was more in control of the match. The more aggressive player, capable of changing directions and going down-the-line off both sides with ease. One of the things that stood out the most about Cilic’s game was the consistent depth of his groundstrokes. It felt like his strokes were naturally penetrating and that it was much easier for him to hit an aggressive shot, rather than Tipsarevic who needed to specifically try to force the play and generate the racquet head speed especially off the forehand side.

It was a relatively comfortable first set for Cilic but the second set was more of a contest. Tipsarevic seems to be a guy that needs to put in a lot of mental energy and determination to bring the best out of his game, so that extra bit of determination to not want to give away cheap errors brought him more success than before. This is made even more obvious by his grunts which only appear every now and then during particular stages of the match. But eventually after numerous hard fought games, Cilic converted the crucial break of serve towards the end of the second set to win it.

The third set was more of a temporary blip for Cilic rather than Tipsarevic playing good tennis, now starting to shank some shots on the forehand and dump shots into the net on the backhand. It’s interesting that players can look so technically sound to the point where it looks to me, that they would be able to repeat it at least to the extent of their game looking reasonably solid almost every single time. This kind of thinking usually seems to apply to the more relaxed, effortless players, but this is a misleading thought as Cilic proved by losing the range on his groundstrokes and making some awful errors at times.

I noticed that when Cilic is at his most consistent is when he looks to get his body weight moving forward into the ball, which doesn’t happen as much when he’s less confident. In turn, this led him to adopt a slightly more passive way of playing which allowed Tipsarevic to take control. My opinion was that it was Cilic’s play in this set that allowed Tipsarevic himself to play better for the most part. It was a scrappy third set that featured hard-fought rallies but numerous errors as well, so I decided to leave the action to take a walk to Hisense Arena to see the current World No. 1 Jelena Jankovic.



It was most likely going to be my only opportunity to see Jankovic over the course of my six day visit given that I had not purchased any Rod Laver Arena tickets. She was up against Kirsten Flipkens of Belgium, who to me was mainly known as the player that filled in for Belgium in Fed Cup whenever Clijsters or Henin were unavailable. Not that I had ever seen her play before.

What I most wanted to see from Jankovic was her superb athleticism and ability to maneuver her opponents out of position, to the point of wearing them out. But Jankovic is only just returning from illness. She stated herself that she hadn’t played a competitive match in about two months so not much was to be expected from her.

It was not an impressive performance, and if I looked too closely at what Jankovic was doing, then I found myself often disappointed. At no point did Jankovic look like she was actually in control of any point, in that she often gave Flipkens the opportunity to take the initiative in the rallies herself.

However she did hit some good counterpunching shots at times, with the passing shots and I got to see a glimpse of her backhand down-the-line. But for a shot to look impressive, it has to be implemented with success on a regular enough basis, with which Jankovic did not.

What made the match most interesting to watch was the play coming from the Flipkens racquet and her general style of play. Her game reminds me very much of some of the female doubles specialists, for example if Rennae Stubbs played singles, I think it would bear some resemblance to this. She doesn’t have the solid base of strong groundstrokes that the majority of women’s players have. Instead she plays an all-court game that mostly revolves around taking the ball early on the forehand side, and following it into the net. Flipkens seems to run around her backhand more often than any other female player I’ve seen, opting to sometimes hit forehands off shots that were about one meter away from the sideline. Flipkens implemented some of that net-rushing game to success in the second set but in the end, Jankovic made just enough passing shots to be able to finish off the match.

So the next match I watched was between David Nalbandian and Lu Yen-Hsun, which occupied most of my viewing day lasting almost four hours long. Coming off a tournament win in Sydney, some experts predicted a potential semifinal showing for Nalbandian given the form that he showed in that event. But Nalbandian in almost three years has failed to achieve anything in any Grand Slam event, not even reach the last eight which is shockingly awful for a man of his calibre rivalling Ivan Ljubicic’s career Grand Slam record in terms of unimpressiveness. And so his poor Grand Slam record continued bowing out to Lu, who had previously never advanced past the second round of a Slam.

In this particular match, Nalbandian picked up where he left off from his first round match, struggling with his game yet again and particularly the serve. In recent years, it has been observed by some that for Nalbandian, if he serves poorly, then he plays poorly and that is what happened yet again. On a bad day, Nalbandian’s serve can be incredibly weak especially on the second delivery where it can be continually punished by almost any player on tour as evidenced by players like Gicquel and Lu jumping on it time and time again. I don’t know whether he slowed down his first serve, in an attempt to increase his first serve percentage, but that looked weak at times as well.

I would say that the level of play that Nalbandian displayed today was relatively similar to that he showed against Gicquel, except that Lu was able to match him in terms of being able to maintain consistency and was also better offensively. In short, for particular stretches of the match, it felt like Lu was the better player in all areas of the game: serving, returning, offense, defense. Because of that reason, it was difficult to find anything to admire in Nalbandian’s game today when you could see the other guy across the net doing the exact same thing better.

Lu is one of those incredibly solid players with good tactical awareness to play controlled aggressive tennis without trying to go outside of his abilities. He doesn’t really have the flair or the ability to create unexpectedly good shots like the top players do, but he makes his opponents play good tennis to beat him, and takes full advantage of any short balls and weaker offerings. I didn’t actually think his performance today was anything exceptional even for his own standards. It looked like something I had seen before from him.

One thing that Lu was particularly good at today was taking care of the midcourt short ball on the forehand side. The other area where he got a big advantage was on the return of serve. It wasn’t only the serve that was costing Nalbandian, but his return of serve was also a problem particularly whenever he had to block a serve back, he often sent it long or into the net on very makeable shots.

There were many breaks of serve featured in this match and closely contested games which added to the drama and nerve wracking nature of the match. I noticed that in the second and third sets which Nalbandian won, he seemed to be doing a better job of hanging in the rallies and extending them compared to the fourth and fifth sets which were relatively one-sided in Lu’s favour, given that he was up a double break in both of them. So what was it that went wrong that made the crucial difference?

I’ll admit that during the match, I was also looking up into the screen in between points to rewatch them to see if I could pick up anything different from a separate view. To see what Nalbandian’s footwork and movement looked like, to see how he was making those errors. But what stood out the most without even looking at the screen was that as the match reached the closing stages, Lu’s confidence grew more and more, and importantly his energy levels actually seemed to increase when it should be the opposite which allowed him to play a more aggressive brand of tennis. I guess you could say it was a sign of his adrenaline levels whereas Nalbandian’s energy levels went down instead.

It felt like within the stadium that Lu was somewhat of a sentimental favorite, maybe because of his quiet determination and his ability to keep his emotions in check, the sign of a good competitor. Not that it surprised me since I have seen him play before, but his body language and emotions seemed to rarely change over the course of the match, which fluctuated in fortunes for either player.

As for Nalbandian, while he may have often shown signs of disgust with himself, I still felt like it was a more composed performance for the main reason that it didn’t seem to affect his play in a negative manner. The final game of the match in particular was epic with numerous deuce points and Nalbandian squandering many break points unable to string anything together, allowing Lu to finally seal the match. So that was Nalbandian out of the tournament, which greatly disappointed me especially given the promise he showed leading up to the tournament and that I had yet to see him play a good match in this event.

So after witnessing a long and nerve wracking match that was mentally tiring for me, I wasn’t sure whether I’d be up to refocusing to watch another match. Initially I thought not, but I thought I should at least take a brief look at the match between Juan Martin Del Potro and Florian Mayer, to see if it was worth watching. It was a match that I had previously shown some interest in for the main reason of wanting to witness the play of the very creative and unusual Florian Mayer, a player that is just as unorthodox as Fabrice Santoro, but not acknowledged anywhere near as often for that fact.

Del Potro had just taken the first set 6-1 so this added to the feeling that maybe it wouldn’t be worth watching. The way Del Potro sets up his groundstrokes in making sure that he is in position at contact with the ball makes him appear very intimidating to play against. I like how incredibly low he bends down each time to hit his double-handed backhand.

The second set was where Mayer started to play some tennis that was highly entertaining. Mayer’s backhand in particular is a very entertaining shot. He seems to be able to generate this incredible angle crosscourt on an amazingly consistent basis, both off the topspin drive backhand and off the slice. He also hits a jumping double-handed backhand on a regular basis almost as if it were a showboating shot, which just adds to the appeal of his game. Then there was one point where he was running up to chase a dropshot and faked as if to hit a dropshot only to flick up a lob at the last minute. Although unfortunately that didn’t win him the point.

One thing that Mayer did well in this set was take the ball early on the short balls to follow up at net, and as you would expect, he has excellent feel up there. Mayer served for the second set at 5-4, but unfortunately it went downhill from there, losing that set 7-5 and convincingly losing the third 6-2.