Australian Open Day 3 Blog

It's early in the morning, and I'm not really bothered about whether I watch Tomas Berdych, Fernando Gonzalez or Andy Roddick. I have to admit that when blogging, I like to take into consideration, that I might actually want to write about someone that I haven’t already written about… only if I’m stumped as to what I would like to choose.

I chose Andy Roddick and he’s facing Thomaz Bellucci, a potentially promising young player with competent looking groundstrokes. I don’t know if I’d go as far as to say that they are stylish, but it is getting there. He has the type of groundstrokes filled with full, circular motions, and fluid motions like that are definitely more pleasant to watch than the abrupt. In the past, I had thought of him as a strong baseliner, who has the ability to hit forcing shots.

Sadly I had overrated his chances in this particular match, and about three games into the match, Roddick already appeared a heavy favourite winning far more points on Bellucci’s serve than the other way around. I remember those days when Roddick was thought of as unlikely to win baseline rallies against any player that thrives in that area, but that has changed now.

It was an inhibited performance from Roddick though, mostly staying within his comfort zone, disappointing from a spectator point of view because he can be more adventurous than that. There was not much of an attempt to hit baseline winners, it was more about forcing shots, finding depth and limiting his opponent’s options. Roddick had incredibly low unforced error statistics, which was impossible for Bellucci to keep up with, and it only increased the pressure on the Brazilian to come up with more spectacular points.

I just wonder, despite the one-sided victory, whether this is the correct way for Roddick to play because every time he reaches the latter stages of tournaments, we inevitably see him trying to play a more all-court game, and perhaps it would be best for him to use some extra practice on the approach shots.

It was interesting to see the development of Bellucci over the course of the match, and his attempt to play an all-court game, to break up the rhythm of Roddick. He was definitely the more aggressive player, but he never looked reliable enough, or even entirely certain on what he was trying to achieve. I am not sure whether Bellucci even pulled it off well enough to be considered an all-court player. He gets marks for trying, but maybe a little more practice in this area is required.

As the second set concluded, I decided that was enough for me so I made my way back to the main section of outside courts to see Philipp Kohlschreiber play against Wayne Odesnik. Only to find out that there are barely any seats there. Still, the alternatives I had in my mind were too far away for me to walk, so I stayed for a while. Just long enough to have a look at their groundstrokes.

This view I have directly facing the baseline, is one that looks a lot like the video camera shots you get in warm-ups of matches where you get an extremely close look at the players and their technique. Kohlschreiber’s groundstrokes look great from here, with the very noticeable shotmaking ability he has, but many of his shots aren’t even landing in the court. It doesn’t seem to matter from here, whether he misses or not.

His backhand obviously is the big strength, and at first glance it looks as aesthetically pleasing as Justine Henin’s. But again, not with the same effect. I think a common trait of all great single-handed backhands is that backhand crosscourts can be exceptionally potent in shots that look like rallying shots, not hit too far away from the opponent. Shots that just happen to spin further and further away from the opponent on landing.

Kohlschreiber’s shots tend to do that on both sides though because he does hit with a lot of spin without compromising pace or penetration. He has big grip changes on both sides, and he is literally uncoiling his shots, the way he will use his whole body. I suppose his forehand works in the same way that a discus is thrown in athletics although to a much lesser extent clearly. Again, you get the sense that all of this is great when it works, not so much when it isn’t.

Odesnik does a good job of keeping up with Kohlschreiber’s groundstrokes showing some very good side to side movement. He seems very light on his feet and capable of offering up shots that aren’t significantly weaker on the run. The problem is that all of his forehands are loopy and high over the net. To win rallies, he needs to play long points every point moving his forehand around using claycourt point construction.

In the first set, Odesnik had numerous opportunities and couldn’t convert, while Kohlschreiber converted his one chance. The match was mostly a matter of how well Kohlschreiber could play, with the match clearly in his hands.

There’s only so much tennis I can watch standing up so I decided to watch Feliciano Lopez’s match against Rainer Schuettler instead.

It was one set all, and they were midway into the third set. As I walk into the stadium, I see Lopez gesturing to his box, making a lot of arm signals about how bad his play is. When they get to exchanging rallies, the first thing that I notice is just how much Lopez steals the show, making Schuettler seem totally irrelevant. I think it’s all about that grunt. It doesn’t seem to matter whether Lopez is hitting a big shot or not, he puts in an effort grunt which says, look how hard I’m working out here.

But apart from that, Lopez seems very bouncy on the court, as he returns serve and it always looks like he’s constantly using his knees, bouncing them around in a very subtle manner. Watching him play live, I’m very surprised by how reliable his groundstrokes look and how well he moves. He’s comfortably exchanging long rallies with Schuettler, without looking like the worse player. I always thought of him more as a serve/forehand/volley player but his other attributes are not that terrible. Still, it was the forehand that made the rallies competitive between him and Schuettler, the main difference I think which allowed him to win.

Schuettler on both sides seemed lacking in potency, like a weaker and more one-dimensional version of the tennis Andy Roddick was playing this morning. He doesn't seem to have the ability to seize control of rallies without giving big chances to his opponent to balance it out again with a big shot. It’s interesting that more than a year ago, I wrote about Schuettler being the complete opposite of an effortless player, the way he would deliberately use a lot of his arms and legs in the creation of a forceful groundstroke. But to balance that, I think he is actually very efficient. He has textbook defensive skills, great at cutting across diagonally to retrieve wide balls.  He meets the ball before it drops too far and he often seems to be in contact with the ball in the best position.

Unfortunately he doesn’t seem anywhere near as effective when he’s not counterpunching and trying to create something, and that’s where a lot of the mistakes come from. This is the difference between Schuettler playing well and playing poorly, whether he can pull off more aggressive, non-counterpunching shots where he can't just use the pace that he was given with. As the fourth set went on, the errors seemed to pile up for Schuettler and it became a more one-sided affair for Lopez.

For a player that is labelled as a serve-and-volleyer, Lopez didn’t really do that in spades today. I noticed that he really likes to use his forehand and the midcourt ball, and prefer to come in on the next shot instead.

After a decent chunk of waiting time and scoreboard monitoring during matches, the match between Florian Mayer and Viktor Troicki had finally arrived. I don’t like to leave matches abruptly, so they were midway in the first set when I first joined. They have scoreboards this year that have updated scores in the changeovers which is a great improvement from last year saving me from walking back to the IBM scoreboard on the grounds out of panic. Though this ends up taking my attention away from the players sitting at the changeover, and now I never have any clue what they are doing in those breaks.

As I take my seat, Troicki has just taken the first service break of the match and clenches his fist. It was only a matter of time, I pessimistically thought. Well, this is the match-up of the unorthodox techniques, so it seems appropriate that I should analyse that. Troicki’s serve consists of a ball toss that is thrown ridiculously far forward, and his legs are spaced so far apart at first, before moving them both together at front to create that universally slanted/forward-moving action. But it obviously works well. He generates a lot of pace on it, and it was a good serving day for him. Something around 20 aces.

With unorthodox technique usually comes technically liable shots and that’s what happened in the first set with the set being focused on both players’ flailing forehands. Both Troicki and Mayer are definitely more solid on their backhands. Troicki has more of an ability to get on top of forehands and hit it big though. For the first set, that’s what the difference between the two was.

Mayer was generally spending most of his time behind the baseline chopping and slicing shots in defense. His forehand was proving to be a big liability too, and Troicki went up an early break in the second set. But where Troicki should have capitalised and ran away with it, his game suffered too and started leaking errors. This gave the chance for Mayer to start working his way back into the match and solidifying his game.

It seems like lately, Mayer is a very slow starter as his game gradually turned from solid to assured and confident over the course of the match. What a difference it makes when Mayer is playing well and confident about his game. Sometimes he seems like a bit of a low key type of person and in between points, it shows but from late in the second set onwards, Mayer was transformed into a much better player. He was doing everything quicker now, and suddenly it seemed like he had much more offensive options.

The turning point was that forehand crosscourt. A shot that I didn’t even know was a weapon. The shot that he had been missing turned out to be one of his greatest strengths, the way he’d consistently find a great angle with it and use it to build and construct all his points with. Once he had that shot working, his whole game started to come together, that full-flowing unorthodox game in all its glory. Dropshots, serving-and-volleying, awesome double-handed slice backhands that barely skidded over the net, strong double-handed backhand drives and occasional forehand slices and just really fun all-round play.

There was no way I was going to leave this match, while it was this entertaining. And the intimate atmosphere is great too, not feeling distanced compared to other larger showcourts, and sitting near numerous German and Serbian supporters. I like how whether I decide to clap softly or loudly seems to make a noticeable difference to the atmosphere I am feeling around me.

I could barely believe it that Mayer would be controlling the match as much as this. This had to be a result of Troicki’s decision to play in a more restrained way on the forehand, because of the errors he was making. But by the time he had readjusted his aggression again, Mayer had built up all the confidence he needed. I think his decision to return Troicki’s serve much earlier and closer to the baseline made a big difference in the outcome.

Throughout this match, Troicki was animated and fiery. It seems to be a given almost these days that every match without Hawkeye will have some disagreement about a line call in it, and this was no exception. Except that Troicki went far enough to suggest that there is a problem with females umpiring men’s matches, which ended up causing a very charged atmosphere that had crowd members shouting comments at Troicki, but Troicki continued to direct all of his complaints to the chair umpire.

Troicki picked up his level of play in the third set which ended up being the best part of the match, featuring excellent all-court play from both players. Mayer seems to have a unique knack of being able to hit almost every passing shot low over the net by the way. The highlight of the match would have to be the third set tie-break, where Mayer broke open the tie-break and his lead, by hitting a spectacular dive volley where his racquet fell from his hands after contact, quite awesome under the circumstances.

After such an intense and high quality third set, Mayer took advantage of a loss in concentration to achieve the early break. Troicki had his chances to break back, but he didn't convert, and then he decided that he had enough. This was not a dejected performance. This was an immature release of frustration, almost as if he was making a statement. He made a specific effort to make no effort. Serving to stay in the match, he didn’t even plant his feet properly before serving and he hit every serve, first or second as big as possible and served and volleyed. This really is the kind of behaviour that can break your reputation, and he should have at least tried to keep it professional.

Nevertheless I was in a hurry to watch Andy Murray anyway in his first round match against Marc Gicquel, so I saw the good side of it. But even though Troicki tried to make the end of the match as quick as possible, so did Murray in the beginning of his. As expected, the stadium was fully packed though at what stage that happened I’m not sure. Fortunately I ended up occupying the media seats at the top row and end caught just over a set of this match.

At first it’s difficult adjusting to the view being significantly farther from the players. There’s definitely no connection here. Actually you can’t really see topspin that well from up here, instead you can just see the balls bouncing relatively high.

One of the first things I noticed is that it didn’t seem like one of Murray’s sluggish or behind-the-baseline days. He was very quick to move forward into the ball and on the rise. Most people hit their backhands by driving right through it, but Murray’s backhand looks like more of a reflective shot, which makes him great at redirecting shots on that side. In comparison to other players’ games, one thing that stands out is how Murray can play an all-court game more effortlessly and fluidly. He doesn’t need to charge into the net, and his way of showing urgency is to have his feet and racquet set up early.

Gicquel seemed to be on the right track tactically, but he didn’t have the game to back it up. He took his forehand early wherever possible, and took charge wherever possible. From this view, Gicquel’s movement onto his forehand and arm action reminds me of Stepanek’s, the way he moves forward to hit his racquet down onto the ball especially when it’s close to his body. The problem with it though, is that he is inconsistent with it and his game was not really technically sound enough for it to execute on the regular basis that was required.

Australian Open Day 2 Blog

Tomas Berdych has been in good form recently, or at least in patches. He's commonly known for his smooth ballstriking, and I’ve recently come to appreciate that more after some high quality performances in Brisbane a couple of weeks ago.

When he’s on, it looks like he has more feel for the ball than the majority of players with the way he’ll casually just put every ball into the corner, because why not when it’s this easy?

Berdych was pitted up against Robin Haase and he picked up right where he left off in Brisbane. Although he really didn’t, because in between, he had a strange loss to Peter Luczak in Sydney.

When Berdych plays like this, it looks rhythmic like he has gotten himself into a nice groove in the same way that a dancer would be moving to the beat of music. I can see why commentators mention that Berdych only does things one way, and that’s making everything look pretty, not dirty. Even when he lunges out to reach a ball, he doesn’t look fully extended. It’s like his long limbs are doing the job for him, though that obviously isn’t the case.

But Grand Slams are made of best of five set matches, so it was never likely that he’d be able to put in a consistently perfect performance. I tried to enjoy it while it lasted, the first set of the match. Haase tried to keep up, but it never looked like he could get to the ball quickly enough to hit an effective defensive shot.

He seemed intimidated at first by Berdych’s quick start but he settled down early in the second set, helped by a very loose service game from Berdych. That service game didn't eventuate in a break, but it changed the course of the match. This was always in the cards for Berdych, who generally plays significantly worse even at a 5% lower level. The second and third sets showed Berdych playing at a more neutral level until picking it up again late in the third, where he started to put Haase back on a string again.

That’s what Berdych generally likes to do, make his opponents cover large distances. Not much else comes into consideration such as whether making that risk would be necessary. Tennis is an instinctive game for Berdych, and it looks like he’d like to keep it that way. The first set was somewhat exhibition-like in its execution, not that I had a problem with that.

I have to give credit to Haase though, who tried his best to turn the tables around. He’d put in a special effort to take the ball earlier and control the match with his forehand. This was a difficult task in itself, because Haase's forehand has a significantly greater margin over the net than Berdych’s, so it's easier to retrieve.

Comparing effort levels, it was like Berdych barely broke a sweat while Haase needed to give his full undivided attention and intensity in order to play tennis like this. Therefore it was no surprise whenever he’d throw in a disappointing error, he’d shout at himself in frustration. It’s a lot he has to manage out there, not only his game. He kept it together today, but not well enough. Not well enough for a top class player like Berdych.

Near the end of the match, in what was the best point of the match, Berdych had sent Haase running side-to-side all over the court almost in a Davydenko-like manner, doing everything but missing the delicate drop volley into the open court. As amusing and meaningless it all was in the context of the match, is this a typical Berdych point from a more general perspective?

In what seemed like relatively good timing, I was able to watch the conclusion of the Fabrice Santoro vs Marin Cilic match, which I thought might have been finished last night. Things picked up right where they left off stylistically anyway. Both Santoro and Cilic must have been quite pleased that far more people were watching them this time around, and in a much more enthusiastic manner too.

There’s not much to mention about Cilic in this match-up. He approached this the same way as many of the other top players have done in the past against Santoro, and that’s to play with patience. The point was not how many unforced errors he made, but whether he could keep a calm head and avoid overplaying, then he'd fancy his chances to win the match.

This is where Santoro looks a bit lightweight. Maybe in a dream world, it would be really cool if Santoro could hit chip shots like he currently does now, while being able to drive through the ball with more pace too, to drive opponents crazy with changes of pace. But I guess anyone that wants to see that will have to stick with Andy Murray for now. Then again that would probably take away all the admiration and amazement that tennis fans have for Santoro, how he has managed to make it this far in the tennis world with not only such an unorthodox game, but with such a lack of pace.

The problem with Santoro’s drive shots was mainly the depth, not the pace. It would land short too often and Cilic would take advantage of that with more net approaches than we usually see from him.

Still, he managed to show a nice mixture of play to keep the match interesting with net charges, slow probing slices and some lobs. One thing that I forgot to mention, or failed to notice yesterday in my report about Santoro, is how difficult must it surely be to bend down as low as that to hit low volleys with two hands. I wonder why he doesn't switch to a one-hander on the stretch but he never does unless he absolutely needs to.

The way the scheduling and timing worked out, this allowed me to watch the match between Jurgen Melzer and Florent Serra, right from 0-0. This match was played on Court 11, right in the middle of numerous outside courts. It’s basically the most distracting court in Melbourne Park, though I still think this is a fair deal considering that it’s not like players have to deal with any music or outside entertainment.

In my line of sight, I had the additional light entertainment of being able to see Tommy Robredo and Santiago Giraldo swing through their groundstrokes without having a clue where their shots were landing.

Melzer didn’t seem to like the atmosphere much though. I was amazed that every noticeable distraction, such as the umpire reading the score from a nearby court, a sudden cheer or someone walking into the stands mid-match, he’d notice it to the point of even stopping play because of it. It’s just that you would think that if everything was noisy and chaotic, that little things like people walking across the stands would mean little in comparison.

The way the stands on Court 11 are built, one side doesn't even have an entrance meaning you can just walk past and sit down straight away. Yet on the other side of the court, we’re practicing normal tennis rules here. I did think it was incredibly amusing though whenever the chair umpire would remind people to not come in until changeovers, as if the people sitting down were the same people who had not yet arrived.

As for the match itself, it was a bit of a grower. Early on, this definitely seemed like a lower standard of tennis than what I had been watching before. Whenever they were a little off their timing, the ball would fly on them. At least Serra was cracking his forehand though, so that made a big difference in dictating the match. The first set was more like a sub-plot in itself, separated from the rest because Melzer picked up his play after that.

The second and third sets were played at a whole new intensity, with rallies that were physically challenging and difficult to keep up with. Suddenly everything seemed to be moving at a faster pace, and sometimes I became fixated with watching the ball move back and forth, the ball being hit with such skill, noticing little angles here and there and down the line shots. Things like that are generally more interesting at this close side-on view. Melzer has a better ability to include subtle variety in his game, throwing in a double-handed slice backhand and a decent transition game which he used more sparingly than he normally does.

I really liked Melzer’s fighting spirit here, how he went from being dominated in the first set, to being able to dig deep enough to hold his own ground in the baseline rallies and slowly outmaneuvering Serra. Watching the match unfold, I could feel as if Melzer was increasingly starting to take over more control in the match. The third set was the critical stage, the one where he continually had more chances to break serve, only to lose his serve in the final game which was outlined by a potentially bad line call.

I took a short break after the end of the third set to prepare for the rest of the match, and this helped emphasise how the last two sets were so much different from the second and third. It must have been all that intensity from the earlier sets being so hard to keep up, that it became very patchy towards the end.

Somehow after all of that effort, Melzer snatched the fourth set rather tamely. By now, Serra had decided to hit the ball harder, though it seemed clear that Melzer was no longer chasing down balls as quickly as he was earlier. He has a reputation of this, of slowing down and becoming fatigued in the fifth set, and this is what happened here. Just like how he had resigned to the loss, I had too. It was a long match to follow, but I did it.

After watching an intense competitive match, it was refreshing to watch a more straightforward match storyline-wise, as I diverted my attention to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga’s match against Sergiy Stakhovsky. I thought for a moment with Stakhovsky going up a break in the second, that maybe it would be competitive. But as soon as I sat down in the arena after Tsonga broke back immediately, he never looked threatened.

It’s been a year now since I had seen Tsonga live, and straight away he reminded me again why he’s one of the most fun players to watch. Sometimes tennis can have a tendency of looking overly technical live but not for Tsonga. Tsonga’s game just stands out. He hits a couple of forehands, leans right into them, then he comes in to knock it off for a volley. Or at least that’s how he would like to play, by having as few in-between shots as possible.

He was able to do that at first, but after a while, he started to engage in more rallies with Stakhovsky and that’s when you start to see his range of higher looping balls too. I don’t think they’re a strength of his, but at least he covers the court well.

Stakhovsky’s game isn’t too dissimilar from Tsonga’s actually. He likes coming into the net and playing an all-court game, and he doesn’t hang around too long at the baseline. That’s why this match was being played at an extremely quick pace. He plays aggressively from the back of the court too, sometimes to his detriment because of his inconsistency.

Aesthetically it doesn't share many similarities to Tsonga though and his moves from the baseline to the net are nowhere near as smooth. His mannerisms especially when returning serve reminded me so much of Philipp Kohlschreiber, and his backhand is a little similar too, maybe more so just because I have already linked them together in my head.

It should be interesting to see over the coming years what Stakhovsky can add to his game, because it looked promising but rough to me. Like he seemed to be developing a good idea of how he should be playing but without pulling it off well enough. In the end, he was comfortably outplayed by Tsonga, who showed positive signs but will need to tighten up the screws over the coming days to avoid any potential difficulties.

In any case, that match was a nice short break from drama because I was in for another hotly contested match, this time between Richard Gasquet and Mikhail Youzhny. This was my first experience watching a late night match that ended up being extended late into the night, and I had a lot of trouble with it, clock-watching all the time to make sure I wouldn’t be back too late, whatever that meant.

This was a high quality match though, definitely the best match I’d seen so far. What I liked about it the most was not only the variety of both players, but the variety of shot selections from point to point. I think the best way of analysing whether a match has long lasting appeal, whether it will continue to be entertaining three hours onwards, is whether the pattern of play is predictable or not. Whether each point is played out a different way, involving different strategies, and not seeing similar contrasts again and again.

Youzhny opened up the match looking shaky and lost his opening service game. Gasquet seemed much more calm and controlled in comparison, an indication of all the tennis he’s played leading up to this event. From the view I’m looking at, at first it’s difficult to adjust to seeing the spins so clearly from the players, almost to the point where it looks like every shot is a safe shot because of the margin over the net.

Gasquet started to impose himself on the match quickly already with his trademark backhand, opening the match with some smart tennis while Youzhny was still finding his range. Soon enough though, Youzhny regained his consistency and they were back on serve in the first set.

There wasn't much separating the two quality-wise. Youzhny is great at creating clever rallies and opening up the court, while Gasquet is better at utilising his transition game and playing a more outright attacking, but straightforward game. This was always an entertaining match-up on paper because despite both players having great backhands, they were never going to be overly reliant on one shot or tactic.

I had the feeling initially that Gasquet had the upper hand because he had the ability to be more attacking and finish rallies in fewer strokes with his net ability. Yet Gasquet never really pulled away from the match that much, even though he threatened to several times. He snatched the first set on the back of a nervy tie-breaker from both players that was full of poor errors and double faults towards the end. It was great drama though, and the crowd reacting and making sounds during good points definitely added to that.

In the second set, Gasquet started to play more of a baseline oriented game. He appeared to be carrying a niggling injury in the beginning of the third set, then twitched his face to show he was in some pain, then switched his tactics back to play more aggressively again as a result. This was definitely the right way to go, and it helped him take the second set without the need of a tie-breaker.

The longer the match went on, the more enthusiastically I started to cheer for Gasquet hoping that it wouldn’t go too late in the night. But he continually refused to finish off the match. More accurately, he couldn’t finish off the match. I could tell Youzhny was getting stronger and stronger as the match went on. His forehand started to become much more of a weapon, whereas before he was guiding it to its spots. Then he also took some advice from Gasquet, and started shortening the points and coming into the net with far more frequency.

I think mostly, it just seemed that Youzhny had been re-energised. He started to look much more alert controlling the points more too. It all started from the third set tie-break, which also contained good serving from him. But his form continued to fluctuate in the fourth set, down an early break and down a match point in the fourth set, but Gasquet let Youzhny off the hook by playing far too passively.. Though when Youzhny played well in that set, he was brilliant.

Just as I happened to be mentally preparing for my exit, the fourth set finished in the best possible way I could have imagined. With both players running all over the court and Youzhny ending it with a backhand down-the-line winner that looked like a backhand crosscourt winner, based on how far Youzhny was out of court.

That was the shot that ignited the stadium, not that they weren’t already into it and Youzhny celebrated it in a way that a shot and point like that deserved to be celebrated. Gasquet realized the job that was ahead of him now and hit a ball out of the stands of Margaret Court Arena. At first I thought this was a terrible way to leave a match, but no, it was perfect and it provided some closure in the same way that a TV show cliffhanger does.

Australian Open Day 1 Blog

It’s a difficult and frustrating day of tennis. Every 5 minutes or so, the weather changes from gloomy to drizzly to sunny, and from cold to hot in a matter of minutes. As I walk around the outside courts, there’s a distinct lack of atmosphere. Maybe it’s the puddles everywhere that have drawn people away from the courts, for the moment at least.

I’ve decided that I’m going to head where the large majority of people seem to be going according to where all the noise is coming from anyway, where the Chilean supporters are. They’ve taken up a massive block in the middle of the stadium right behind the umpire’s seat. Sometimes to show how patriotic they are, they'll collectively raise a big Chilean flag right above their head but this confuses me, because doesn’t this interfere with their sight? Either that, or they are looking for the TV camera to be heading into their direction in between points.

It's Fernando Gonzalez on court playing against Olivier Rochus. On first opinion, Gonzalez doesn’t look like a player that wears his heart on his sleeve. He is volatile, and he has shown it in the past enough times before, but he looks too tightly strung to be fully taking in the experience. He’s an intense character and almost singularly focused on his tennis. I prefer the more relaxed demeanour of Rochus, who comes off as being extremely genuine, with his own self-directed hand gestures and reactions to events in a way that is not too dissimilar to how Gilles Simon carries himself.

I hadn’t seen Gonzalez play live before, and in hindsight maybe my expectations were unrealistic. Taking into the match all these preconceived ideas of Gonzalez’s forehand being an explosive, intimidating shot, I was expecting Gonzalez’s forehand to be a sudden burst of excitement. The fact that Gonzalez has opened up the match with numerous forehand winners, without having that effect on me seems to suggest that this is probably not going to happen.

Actually Gonzalez’s forehand looks surprisingly contained, more skilful and less wild. I guess it’s like that for most players though, how everything looks so technically sound. It’s a very good shot though, and it’s obvious he can dominate matches with it. It’s only when he goes to huge lengths to run around to it where it starts to look more like a risky shot.

However, it didn't take me long to adjust my eyes to it and this was when I started to focus more on the match being of a high quality. These guys were playing extremely clean tennis. Gonzalez’s winner count kept piling up, without throwing in too many errors. This was definitely the highest quality match of the day that I saw.

It was a good match from a tactical point of view too. Rochus, in particular was fun to watch because he seemed to have a good idea of how to finish off points, despite not really having the power to do it in one sudden change of pace. It’s a massive disadvantage having to do so much when Gonzalez can sometimes just slap a winner that isn’t even far away from Rochus, without him getting anywhere near reaching it.

I’ve seen Rochus try to play a moderately aggressive game in the past before in an attempt to keep up with his opponents, but often hurting himself more than his opponent in the process. But today was different. Today, he was great at taking any midcourt ball early and closing it off at the net. I think the backhand crosscourt really helped too. That was the one safe place Rochus could go to at least for a while without getting burnt. Maybe with other opponents he doesn’t have that.

Still, it seemed that for the majority of the match that Gonzalez was one step ahead of Rochus the whole time while Rochus was desperately clinging on. Gonzalez kept threatening to break serve with many break point opportunities, but the games were too extensive to call this a simple, one-sided match. It’s just a good thing that Gonzalez’s winners to unforced error ratio was so high.

Strangely the trend of the match never seemed to fluctuate much, with both players knowing their own games well enough and playing well enough to try to execute them the same way the whole match through. Even in Gonzalez’s third set loss, the difference was just a little bit of sluggishness and concentration loss, before normal service resumed in the fourth set.

I left the match at around 4-0 in the fourth set due to a more extensive rain delay. Then I turned my attention onto a more low key match, to see the all-German battle between Philipp Petzschner and Florian Mayer. Mayer was on his way to making a comeback, leading in the 4th set, making me feel like a conditional supporter, now that Mayer was obviously playing well enough to be “worth watching”.

I billed this as the battle of the slice backhands, though it didn’t end up being 100% correct. Mayer likes his two-handed backhand, and hits through it most of the time, though he does possess the variety to throw in enough slice backhands for it to be a decent description of the match. You would think from the one-sidedness of the scoreline that it could have been a self-destructive match.

It looked that way when I first headed there. I was in the corner of the stands waiting for a changeover and Petzschner was looking around outside the court so much that it often looked like he was looking at me. I was obviously not the right person to ask for support because I was firmly on Mayer’s side.

It was an interesting adjustment to make in this match though. I’ve noticed recently that a large part of my observations tend to come from comparing the most recent match to the last couple that I watched live. And my first impression was that Mayer does not look like a professional player.

That is probably part of his charm. He has awkward looking groundstrokes and he seems to dig the ball back, rather than athletically drive it back like most players do. Still, the more I watch his backhand, the more it’s obvious that it’s a very solid shot and he hits it crosscourt especially well. In terms of constructing points, he has a special ability of being able to sneak into the net, and because he’s often hitting low slices anyway, it doesn’t look like that much of a transition for him to hit low volleys.

In this match, he was picking on Petzschner’s backhand which seemed to have completely broken down. Almost every error that he made was off the slice backhand, and I’m not sure if he can even hit a drive backhand, that's how little he utilised it.

It looked to be turning into a very one-sided match, until from about 4-0 down in the fifth set when Petzschner started to play more freely and show some good shotmaking of his own. I really liked the variety in this match, but unfortunately for Petzschner, when he couldn’t convert break points to get back even on serve in the fifth set, his game dropped back a level yet again.

Two breaks down and Mayer serving for the match, neither player seemed to be bothered much about the rain falling yet again. Until it started pouring down at match point, then Petzschner waited and shrugged his shoulders, before briefly pausing thinking it was too much to continue. This is where it’s probably not useful for countrymen to play each other, as Mayer friendly urged Petzschner to finish off the point, which he did by intentionally hitting a forehand return long.

It had been threatening to rain numerous times in the morning, but it never eventuated long enough to interrupt play until now. Unfortunately this is where the fun of following simultaneous matches ended, with the matches now being limited to Rod Laver Arena and Hisense Arena.

For me, I am not sure whether I can objectively report on Juan Martin Del Potro’s match against Michael Russell because I definitely wished I could have been somewhere else. It’s not like I lost interest in it immediately, but as soon as I did, it was always going to be difficult for the players to win me over again.

It was midway in the first set when I arrived there, and there were hardly any rallies going on. Del Potro was dominant on serve, and Russell seemed incredibly nervous that on one point he seemed to have tangled himself up, trying to move for a particular shot. I just don’t think that Russell, being a counterpuncher, should be making this many errors. The first thing I noticed when I was first able to observe a rally, was how Del Potro moves so much better now than the last time I saw him. Note that this was an initial reaction, not the final one, because I think he got more sluggish as the match went on.

His legs seemed to be doing a ridiculous amount of work, constantly moving to get himself into the best position possible. I’m not sure if it’s his long limbs that make it look like he does it more than other players. He was especially quick moving out wide to his forehand side though and moving side-to-side as well. I would think that on a good day that this has definitely improved. His running forehand is his trademark shot after all. Early on, it seemed almost like he was moving too quickly, his feet, that when he got to the ball, he wasn’t static enough. That’s how I explained the errors he was making anyway.

Still, he was controlling the match, hitting big shots and making enough of them to have a comfortable lead. Though the way the match started to turn made me wonder whether it was Russell making the errors or Del Potro being too strong. Regardless, it was a poor match to start with. So in the second set, my wish for there to be more long rallies came true, and amazingly it turned into a completely different match.

This was exciting for a while, being able to marvel at the athleticism of both players and being able to watch competitive rallies. This was more of how I expected Russell to play, consistent and steady. He doesn’t seem to have much of an ability to finish off points though, mostly only through being able to force his opponents out of position.

The longer it went on, the more clear it became that Del Potro had taken it down a gear. Del Potro in more average form will generally hit large amounts of crosscourt shots, and I was reminded of that yet again today. Despite Russell’s crowd-pleasing effort, the match was largely tedious and also littered with errors as the statistics board would show. Still, some people in the crowd managed to enjoy it based on the numerous positive comments I heard as I would constantly wander in and out of the match hoping that play had resumed on the outside courts.

I suppose it's because it had all the attributes of what you would describe as a professional tennis match – power, athleticism, consistency, technique, competition. So if you came along to the tennis and decided you wanted to watch a match so you could admire the pros and how skilled they are, then this would be it. While mentioning athleticism, I should add that even I joined in on the collective gasp when Russell did the splits running to a dropshot.

Del Potro can obviously play better than this, and in a more entertaining way. This is merely a description of the match itself. He did, though attempt to play more aggressively in the fourth set, but his form wasn’t good enough for it to be called a vintage performance.

Seemingly numerous hours later, it was Justine Henin’s return to the court, and for some reason, Hisense Arena suddenly looks significantly more empty than when Roddick and Del Potro were playing. The on-court announcer put in a rather pathetic effort at trying to pronounce her name too.

In the warm up, I am taken by surprise as Henin hits her first two serves with an abbreviated service motion. Has she changed her service motion yet again? But no, it looks like maybe she has forgotten that she has a different one now, as she started to move into a slower, overall longer service action, one that simply requires more thinking.

Since her comeback, Henin’s serve is something she’s been struggling with, and this was the case yet again today in terms of first serve percentage. It definitely caused her more trouble in the match than there needed to be, but fortunately I never pay much attention to service percentages in matches anyway until breaks of serve and double faults happen.

This was a very stylish performance from Henin, and you could tell from the beginning that she was keen on mixing up the play. Four points into the match, and she’s already hit a slice backhand on each one of those points. What a difference it makes too, because Henin’s slice sets up whole rallies. It helps her construct points. I think it’s when she throws in the slice that she starts to earn her tag of being the “female Federer”, otherwise she’s missing some much-needed finesse.

Overall it was a great backhand day for Henin, definitely much better than when I saw her in Brisbane. Her backhand pretty much dominated the match, in the first set at least, then her volleys also ended up being a big part of that as she spent the large majority of the second set at the net barely hitting more than three consecutive baseline shots in one rally. The thing is, Henin didn’t need to be at the net that often. But she chose to be, because she wanted to, and that’s not really her natural game. 40-0 serve-and-volleys seemed to be common for her in this match too.

She was playing in such an aesthetically pleasing way that it didn’t really matter that she was hitting so many unforced errors. Mostly from the forehand, by the way. But she always contained it well enough for it to not leak quickly in rapid succession. I remember one game in particular where she lost serve due to three forehand errors, only to win the next game with four winning forehands. That was impressive.

Somehow it seemed, whenever Henin played a poor game, she’d bounce back right away with an even more aggressive than usual return game. This usually means standing incredibly close to return serve, and that was the manner in which she finished off the match.

So after such a long period of being restricted to Hisense Arena, I took the risk of heading back outside to watch one of my anticipated matches between Fabrice Santoro and Marin Cilic. Rain ended up wrecking havoc in this match not long after, so I didn’t end up catching much of this. By now, the majority of spectators had already gone home anyway, and the match felt like it was played at midnight, when it was really only about 9:30pm.

Normally I wouldn’t write about such a small portion of the match, but in some way I’d like to make a tribute to Santoro, to his unique brand of tennis. Whenever he’s hitting the ball, it looks like he’s gently floating it across. But somehow how he manages to finesse it deep on the baseline time and time again without putting any noticeable power into it.

When he’s running out wide, he can hit this slow, probing slice backhand that keeps curving back into the court like a paper aeroplane. He also seems to have two slice backhands, the slow annoying floating shot, and the one that he carves across to skid low. It’s quite amazing how much finesse he has. His whole game is made up of it.

Courtside Coverage of the Australian Open

It's that time of the year again, and I will be writing Australian Open blogs for the first six days, from Melbourne, covering matches from the first round to the third round.

This year, the blogs will be posted on Tennis Brain, taking the very indie route. It's a lot of work writing recreationally on so many consecutive days when I'm already busy with following matches day and night. Sure I like writing, but not as much when I know I'm going to wake up next morning feeling incredibly tired. I hope to see comments, viewers and feedback, and I look forward to sharing my experiences/observations with everyone.

If you like the reports/blogs, feel free to share them, in the form of a link. The more people reading them, the better! (and the more motivated I will feel)

Day 6 Brisbane International Blog

It’s difficult to recall all the emotions and sensations that went with the larger portion of a match that was so lopsided. In this case, it was Radek Stepanek’s surprising win over Gael Monfils, despite his currently superior ranking.

Match reports like this tend to focus on the first couple of games, when everything still seems important, the difference between a player winning and a player losing. Midway through the first set, the match fell flat quickly and before it was even over, it felt like it was over.

Fortunately I can still recall the events of the match. How much promise the match began with, only to quickly fade into disappointment. This was an exciting match-up between two contrasting players, and in your face personalities.

Monfils likes long rallies. Stepanek likes to shorten them. Monfils prefers to stay far behind the baseline, and Stepanek loves dropshots. The difference between Stepanek’s dropshots and everyone else who can hit them well, is that he can follow them up at the net. He gets away with it far more often than it looks like he should and he’s always bordering on being obsessed with the shot.

Both players opened the match with comfortable service games, as the players were still on their way to settling down in the match. There were a few too many unforced errors, but the rallies were promising. Stepanek, whenever he had a slightly shorter ball would take it on the rise and swiftly move into the net, especially on the forehand side. Stepanek seems to have this wonderful ability to be able to make the slightest differentiation between a shot he should be rallying on an even keel with, and when he should step it up.

It’s a different challenge against Monfils, however and he loves to hit passing shots on the run. For some reason, he actually appears to have more precise footwork hitting on the run, than from down the middle. I think it’s because of the way he plants his foot on the ground so he can recover to make it to the other side of the court if he needs to.

After the first couple of games, the players settled in, and the way the rallies unfolded, it was the perfect showcase of the athleticism of both players. Especially with all of those dropshots and lobs from Stepanek. No one really talks about Stepanek’s movement or athleticism much, but he is exceptionally quick and athletic. There was a lot of squeaking of the shoes around the court, and it was coming from both sides. It appears that Stepanek can also slide all over the court, although nowhere near as well of course. There was one rally where he did it three times amazingly.

Midway through the set, it actually looked like Monfils started to get the upper hand on Stepanek, as the rallies started to turn more and more into long, drawn out rallies. By now, Monfils had found his depth and consistency of shot. Given the reputation that Monfils has as a super athletic, amazing defensive player, I always seem to put the high expectation on Monfils to rarely throw in any unforced errors. I mean, doesn’t he only lose because he’s passive?

Surprisingly over the course of a match, his level can dip drastically, and it did so here quite suddenly at 2-3 down in the first set. It’s hard to explain why when he appears so secure sometimes. It took me a while to put a finger on it, but I started to notice the types of errors he was making. Usually setup big forehands, shots that are either putaway shots, or setups for winners. The shots that are supposed to be easiest for the players, but Monfils doesn’t like playing purposefully. He likes to play whatever he feels like in the moment.

Equally as disappointing as Monfils’ poor performance, was what happened as a direct result of it. Stepanek’s decision to play more direct, simple tennis. He earned his first break of serve with early, deep returns down the middle, but the longer the match went on, the more he sensed that he didn’t really need to do anything spectacular. I’m sure he wouldn’t have believed in the beginning that engaging in regular rallies would have done the job. But that’s the path he ended up taking as Monfils would throw in these strange errors.

Instead of trying to put in a big effort to focus and play out some tough points, Monfils had resigned himself to a loss. He’d laugh at himself, and he appeared sluggish all the time. Stepanek would throw in a couple of fist pumps and positive displays of emotion just to make the situation more clear. And he aimed it directly towards his camp, at his coach, Petr Pala. You had to love the precision of the raised little twirl of the finger he did in his camp’s direction at the end of the first set, straight after hitting a smash winner, and with his back turned away from them.

 

In little over an hour, Stepanek had made it into his second Brisbane final, and he’ll face Andy Roddick in the final. The day was in danger of becoming a big disappointment, and it seemed headed in that direction at the end of the first set between Roddick and Tomas Berdych, which Berdych won 6-1.

Speaking of consistency, Roddick is another one of those players that I expect to rarely make any unforced errors. To be fair, he didn’t make an excessive amount and it wasn’t shockingly bad. But it was bad for his standards.

To be honest, I had mixed feelings with how the match was going. I think on most occasions, if I’ve decided to root for a player that I have clear preferences for, I’ll find it hard to make that step of wishing it was a better match. Because that would be like completely switching sides and loyalties. It’s different if you’re confident of that player winning anyway, such as the first round of the Australian Open and you’re hoping that the low-ranked underdog will play a little more inspired than he currently is. But this is Roddick against Berdych, and he’ll be dangerous or maybe even favoured once he starts playing better.

In the end, I was pleased that Roddick did pick up his level though because it turned out to be a much better match to watch. Still, Berdych’s performance in the first set should be acknowledged, because it was impressive in the same way that his one-sided win over Marcos Baghdatis was.

This was Berdych hitting the lines with remarkable consistency. When Berdych is on form, it’s impossible to not be on the back foot spending all your time lunging around and scrambling his shots back. It looks great when it works, but generally the longer the rally goes, the less likely he’ll be able to keep it up.

I am not sure how much was forced or unforced, but Roddick couldn’t find his range on his aggressive forehand early on, and his transition game. Whenever he tried to hit a forehand to come in on, he’d miss it almost every single time. Then he’d start to miss these slower floating balls on his forehand side as well, much to his frustration.

Roddick casually threw around his racquet, hit a ball into the roof, then to end the set, dropped his racquet and quickly walked to take a bathroom break almost as if he wanted to get off court as soon as possible. Yet in spite of all of this, he always seemed committed to what he was doing, what he wanted to achieve tactically. After Monfils' earlier lack of fighting spirit, it was great to see Roddick competing well and digging deep, not that we would expect anything less. Though putting it into perspective, Roddick's antics were almost like a sideshow, not a display of serious frustration.

He continued to try to hit his forehand with purpose and slowly it came together. His forehand is effective in more subtle ways than Berdych’s is. It's accurate and heavy, effective enough to keep Berdych moving side to side, and he has the additional option of coming into the net, something that Berdych rarely does. When Berdych does it, he looks hesitant.

I also found a weakness in the Berdych smash. Apparently he doesn’t appear to know how to hit a slice smash or a three-quarter paced smash, or either he doesn’t want to. He seemed stubbornly committed to trying to hit a winner off whatever lob was thrown at him, if it was high enough for him to smash. Regardless of whether it was close to the roof or too close to the baseline.

What Roddick is exceptionally good at doing is piling the pressure on, and as soon as he started playing better, the consistency of good quality rallies started to significantly increase. Now they were having tough points almost every single point, and it was really only a matter of execution. By now, Roddick’s forehand was working much better, so his well-known serve/forehand combo allowed him to hold serve more easily.

Berdych continued to try to push the boundaries and his ball-striking abilities, hitting close to the lines with frequency. His level had dropped a little from the first set, but he was still capable of being accurate often enough. Accurate enough to be a potential threat, although the match was starting to turn in Roddick’s favour. I started to hold my breath whenever Berdych hit a shot, and when he hit a great shot, I would often gasp. Because he would often save break points and other important situations with high risk, difficult shots. Berdych doesn't hit with safe margins over the net either. He really needs to add a transition game to make it easier on himself.

There was hope of Berdych suddenly putting together a glorious game, but in the end, it followed the same trend that the match had been heading. Berdych finding himself undone by his own errors, as a direct result of all the consistent pressure that Roddick put him in. And Roddick hitting a couple of aggressive returns in the decisive game.

It was strange to hear in the on-court interview, Roddick putting all the credit on Berdych for the loss of the first set, despite all of his on-court antics. This only adds to my impression that part of his reactions were more for the show, than anything else.

Day 4 Brisbane International Blog

It’s night time at around 5:20pm and Show Court 1 is absolutely packed. There are no matches currently going on in Pat Rafter Arena, and it’s obvious that everyone has migrated over to watch Gael Monfils play against Florent Serra. There are only stands on one side of the court, and it’s already full. Large amounts of people are standing around in the grassed area, and I’m wondering if it’s worth watching to peek through the gaps between everyone’s heads.

Fortunately one person in front of me leaves, and I’m at least now standing with no one else standing in front of me. The scoreboard isn’t visible from here, A group of people behind me are discussing and asking each other who it is that Gael Monfils is playing against. One woman takes out her order of play, then reads out the name. This is what it’s like standing amongst a crowd watching tennis where all of the “expert” commentary is coming from the people next to you.

It looks like I’ve come at an important stage of the match, the tie-break in the first set but I was still acquainting myself with the match and my surroundings. This kind of view and atmosphere is almost like a complete shift in focus. I can’t really see the lines that well but I can see the pace of shot and the types of movement. The sound effects are exceptionally loud from this close, then again the hard shaded cover that the players play on amplifies all the sounds. When I moved onto watch the matches in Pat Rafter Arena, it just occurred to me, that do we perceive the pace of the ball almost entirely on sound, and is this an inaccurate way of judging things?

It’s clear that Serra is hitting his forehand exceptionally well today. It reminded me of the couple of matches I covered of him playing in Brisbane last year. His forehand is definitely his strength, the one he has more options with, off-forehand or down the line. He seemed to use his forehand to move Monfils around side-to-side, and assert his authority on the match, though strangely there were much fewer very long rallies than I was expecting, although there were some medium length rallies.

Monfils seemed to be doing everything at a snail pace in between points, walking as slowly in between points as possible. Given that I watched Sunday’s matches from a bit of a birds-eye view, it had been a while since I had been able to observe facial expressions.  They really help fill in the gaps, such as why Monfils is taking so much time. Is he timewasting, being calculated and composed, dejected or whiny? Monfils is one of the most expressive characters on tour, and half this match ended up being about Monfils’ antics and the other about the tennis.

Maybe I caught Monfils on a bad day, but watching his facial expressions, I find it easy to believe that half the time he’s playing, he’s concentrating on something else other than the match. His mind looks like it’s completely elsewhere even when he’s not disagreeing with line calls and talking to the umpire. Though it must be said, there was a lot of that in between.

I don’t understand what was so serious that required a chat to the umpire almost every changeover, and one to the referee as well. It was clear that Monfils was unhappy with the line calls. I wasn’t in a position to comment, but I am certain that by the end, Monfils went ridiculously overboard in questioning almost every ball that landed close to the line. Somewhere in the second set, there was this really odd exchange between Serra and Monfils that had them both laughing about something to do with the line calls. This was after Serra hit a winner.

My impression of the section of the match I saw, only the second set really was that whenever Monfils picked up his consistency, he was the better player. I thought it was a good example, of how good consistency and defense can render an opponent almost completely ineffective. So it could be said that even though Serra played more aggressively, the match was more in Monfils’ hands. Monfils was the better player, but prone to concentration lapses. Serra had an excellent opportunity to break to serve for the match though, with 0-30 at 4-4 in the second set, but missed a makeable short ball, then mistakenly approached crosscourt off a dropshot instead of down the line and got passed easily with a shot that almost landed in the middle of the court.

It’s a unique experience getting to see the movement of Monfils up close, close enough to be able to hear it and watch him recover from those quick bursts of speed. I’ve heard a lot about how his choice to slide on the hardcourts strains his body and makes him injury prone. But you’ll notice also how when he moves, he quite often digs his feet into the ground and plants it. It’s a very aggressive way of moving around the court.

I didn’t watch the rest because I figured I wouldn’t have time to see it all anyway, and I needed to get some dinner. Besides I was primarily here to see Justine Henin, in her match against Sesil Karatantcheva. As Henin walked out, I expected to hear louder applause from the crowd, but it was a very mediocre volume of noise really. I’ll just interpret that to mean that plenty of people were interested in seeing her play, without being fans of her.

 

Immediately it was difficult making the adjustment to my seats in the stadium compared to before, and strangely the difference was more in the sound than the view. The TV coverage this week in Brisbane has been recording the ball-striking as being very lively on TV, and it’s odd to adjust to the fact that it’s actually softer from where I’m sitting. Because it's almost always louder in real life.

The other day I called her a ball basher based on TV and today it doesn’t look like she’s hitting the ball that hard to me. I’m pretty sure she’s hitting it at about the same pace today. Is it really all about the sound? Anyway, the first impressions of the match were that for such a high caliber player, Henin isn’t having an easy time winning points. She's having to engage in longer rallies and she's not looking all that reliable either.

Henin’s shotmaking was a little off to begin with. Sometimes she’d try really hard to pull the trigger straight away, and sometimes she’d rein it in too much not being accurate enough in her shotmaking. I guess you could say she looked distinctly average, unable to find that special shot to pull her opponent off the court and dictate it, and being too error prone too. Not being able to control points without trying to hit winners. Still, it was clear that her game was very different from all the other WTA players, in the manner she wins points.

Her backhand, as expected was very aesthetically pleasing to watch, especially from a side-on view, though she seemed to hit far more forehands in this match than backhands. I don’t think she hit that many winners on the backhand either. She definitely has much better disguise on this side compared to the forehand, but the forehand is a quick enough swing that opponents don’t really get much time to react.

Henin’s forehand really was shaky, and cost her dearly in the first half of the set. Credit must be given to Karatantcheva, however, who easily played a better match than I expected her to. She kept up the pace with Henin, strong groundstrokes on both sides and rarely looked like breaking down at first, even when stretched out wide. I cannot understand, however, why when the match was still even at 3-2 and Karatantcheva was playing a perfectly good match, she felt the need to call on her coach for advice.

In the end, I think the one-sided second set had just as much to do with Karatantcheva’s game starting to show some cracks, and showing signs of tiredness, as it did with Henin playing better. Henin did definitely show signs of improvements. For me, it’s a sign of reliability when I no longer watch wondering at the point of contact whether a shot will make it or not. Yep, Henin struck it firmly into the court almost every time. Though it seems whenever she hits a forehand, she has to put in a big effort to make sure that her body is moving forward into the court, to make sure that the ball doesn’t fly on her, or lose accuracy or pace.

I noticed that whenever Henin didn’t move right into the ball like it was short, she wasn’t able to hit down-the-line on the forehand anywhere near as effectively. In the coming weeks, she will need to add some accuracy on the forehand, in making it less predictable. I thought her forehand was much better on the return of serve compared to the normal rally, but on the other hand, she had the luxury of dealing with some short serves from Karatantcheva.

The final match I watched was between Tomas Berdych and Marcos Baghdatis, a surprisingly quick match. I’d say the whole match could have been summed up in the first 10 minutes, because I formed my first impressions then they stayed the same the whole way through.

About 5 minutes into the match, Berdych was already on form. It was easy to see already that Berdych is a more aggressive player than Baghdatis is, or at least more consistently aggressive anyway, whereas Baghdatis is more capable of throwing in some surprise changes of pace and shotmaking. This is definitely Berdych on one of his good days, seemingly changing directions on almost every single shot and pulling it off, hitting near the lines.

Baghdatis just can’t seem to keep up to that pace, always one step behind Berdych and unable to find himself back into the match. If anything, it was thought that Berdych would let the Cypriot into the match, rather than Baghdatis finding his way into it. That was some high risk tennis that Berdych was playing. Baghdatis’ (perceived?) low first service percentage certainly didn’t make matters any better. I think it was like the match, that you kept expecting to change at some stage but it just never did. It never woke up from the dream, or at least it didn’t for Berdych.

It was a surprisingly decent match for its 6-0 6-1 scoreline. I didn’t feel like Baghdatis was terrible, more like too quickly overwhelmed to be able to find his range. I also find Baghdatis’ defensive forehand to be lacking sometimes, too prone to hitting it in the net especially when he is on the run and the ball has already started dropping.

Day 1 Brisbane International Blog

It was a muted start to proceedings at the Brisbane International, on a very rainy and windy day. At most venues, tennis would have been cancelled but in Brisbane, they have shaded covers on both Pat Rafter Arena, and on the two outside courts. But no covers for anyone watching on the outside courts, only for the players.

To make sure that as many qualifying matches were completed, all the ATP first round matches were cancelled which was disappointing. I hesitated buying a ticket and ended up on the back row. The whole stadium was almost sold out, which is quite amazing for such an early stage of the tournament.

First impressions of the view: Not bad at all. The positive part of the Pat Rafter Arena is that you feel very connected to the crowd, not completely distanced from everything if you don’t happen to sit close like in Hisense Arena at the Australian Open. If you’re going to sit near the back, it may as well be on the back row where you get the added view of being able to see Show Court 1, enough to be able to track what they’re up to, if you happen to be situated on the correct side like me. There you get just as much a feel of the atmosphere outside and you can hear anything loud that goes on instead of everything being confined.

At first it’s hard to concentrate but after a while, you get used to it. That is, until it starts raining. On any other day, these would have been great seats but the weather has kind of ruined it. First up, the qualifying match between Matheson Klein and Xavier Malisse, probably the only player I would want to watch from qualifying. Still, I was cynical of whether Klein would be able to turn this into a decent match. Fortunately, he put up a good fight and it turned out to be a good match.

A couple of minutes into the match, and it seems to be a very backhand-oriented match, both guys trading shots to that side continuously on a frequent basis. It was smooth and effortless. Klein hits two superb backhand down-the-lines and breaks serve early on. These guys seem to be both technically sound with nothing overly strange jumping out in terms of their shot production. Though Klein hooks his forehand above his head, which seems to look uglier the harder he hits it. It’s nothing like that smooth backhand of his.

Malisse is better at getting on top of the ball and creaming it. It’s the urgency with which he gets up there combined with his racquet preparation that makes it intimidating and it allows him to finish points with the earlier ball striking. Malisse has more variety on the backhand too, able to throw in slice backhands which really helps break out of those backhand crosscourt rallies that Klein really enjoyed in the first set.

Klein threw away his break of serve lead with a sloppy game at 3-3, but for the next ten minutes, Malisse raised his game and played his best tennis of the match. He started throwing himself more into forehands, and running around more backhands. He tried a few early on, but only had moderate success. For a moment, his forehand caught fire, and I became reminded again of what it looks like on Malisse’s good days. He tends to become more athletic in his stroke production almost jumping on top of everything, and hitting a lot of forehand winners. Because Malisse hits his forehand close to his body, he’s much better hitting the forehand from the left side of the court compared to crosscourt. Unfortunately it didn’t last long, and soon enough we were back to seeing Malisse casually trading groundstrokes. At least the good part of this match was that both players were relatively consistent.

With a series of deep returns of serve, Malisse breaks Klein’s serve to serve out the set. Klein hit back with one of his most inspired points at 5-6, a big approach shot followed by a superb reflex volley only to be beaten unexpectedly by a great lob from Malisse on the first point. That was enough to deject Klein and Malisse served it out without the loss of a point 7-5.

The second set was more of a grind, not as smooth and effortless, and more rough around the edges. More of a battle, particularly from Klein who had decided to switch his attack to revolve it around his forehand. Far more of those faster-paced hooky forehands. I’m surprised whenever he manages to successfully hit it down-the-line. It seems more like a guiding shot more than anything else. I think it was his way of trying to step up his game.

It was a battle the whole way in the second set, and Malisse didn’t seem to try to do anything in particular to create a lead for himself. He simply focused on being steady and being good in an all-round way as Klein’s game started to show more holes as the match went on as if he had to specifically put in a big effort just to keep up. Malisse started picking up his return game getting better depth, and often utilising the deep down-the-middle return. I think in a subtle way, Malisse’s movement improved as the match progressed. Klein recovered one break as a final effort suddenly increasing pace on his shots but Malisse broke back to take the match 7-5 6-3.

I think if Kim Clijsters wasn’t on the Sunday Order of Play, I might not have bought tickets. She might just have been the most impressive women’s player I’ve seen, though don’t read too much into that because I haven’t seen that much. Let’s wait until I get to see Henin, if I do at some point!

Clijsters got off to an error-prone start in the first couple of points but it was no big deal because she was clearly the “controller” of the match. What’s impressive about Clijsters is the fact that she seems to be able to bludgeon any ball she wants, as in suddenly increase the pace of the ball. I’ve never really noticed this before. Yes, she does hit her average shot hard, but she has the ability to hit it even harder anytime especially on the forehand. She also takes the ball earlier than I thought she did.

In the warm up, it’s clear that Clijsters not only has powerful shots, but she also hits a heavy ball. I love her movement around the court and the liveliness of her movement. She seems to be doing everything at a speed faster than everyone else, for example, how she will split step in between shots in a much more lively way compared to everyone else. It’s also little details like that, which show how much Clijsters enjoys playing, at least at this point of time.

I thought Garbin would put up more of an even battle, but she appeared to be intimidated. Maybe appropriately so, or knowing she’d get overpowered in a longer rally. I don’t know whether it’s the right thing to do, for the less powerful player to be the one to shorten the points. But that’s what she did, seemingly throwing in a large amount of short crosscourt slice backhands and dropshots, and approaching the net as soon as possible. The thing is, you can’t just hit an approach shot to the opposite side of where Clijsters is standing expecting that the width of the court will be enough to get Clijsters off balance. She’s too good of a mover for that, and so she passed Garbin almost every time. Though I think in trying to hit a good approach shot, Garbin also often put herself in knots by not giving herself enough time to find a good net position.

The problem with Garbin’s game is that her topspin backhand is weak, lacking in pace. She cannot flatten it out, and her wrist is not strong enough. It looks like more of a flick than a drive. Regardless, it’s clear that Clijsters is at a different standard and forehand winners seemed to be coming at a rapid rate. Soon enough, Clijsters had bludgeoned her way into a relatively comfortable victory, though perhaps Garbin’s tactics showed that she never believed herself that she could win anyway.