May 5, 2012

Luck of the Draw: Madrid 2012

Andy Murray has withdrawn from the Madrid Masters, citing a back strain. My vague surprise at reading this news was quickly superseded by the stunned realisation that the report had somehow failed to mention that the event is to be conducted on blue clay, and that Rafael Nadal doesn’t much care for it. This report is thus sufficiently unique as to be a collector’s item, treasured for its rare flaw, like that early Spiderman comic in which the hero develops Tourette syndrome. This oversight was soon corrected by the almost impossibly interesting news that Nadal has now had a hit on the court, and still doesn’t like it. Indeed, his litany of gripes has only grown. Novak Djokovic said the court plays lower on slices.

I was already tired of hearing about the blue courts some time ago. I’ve now progressed to a place beyond exhaustion, since everyone wants to joke about them, which would be fine if nearly everyone wasn’t considerably less funny than they realise. One player’s putatively wry query as to whether she was looking at tennis courts or swimming pools might have amused even slightly if a) they didn’t look exactly like tennis courts, and b) there weren’t already several higher profile tournaments to show us what blue tennis courts look like. The elementary passing comment that the courts are ‘smurf-coloured’ was not allowed to pass without being detained indefinitely, and then molested. It has now spawned a hash-tag, and, dully rehashed the world over, has failed to develop at all. The dead horse was removed some time ago, and now people are just thrashing the ground where it lay.

The only upside to this deafening blue noise is that, unlike last year, we don’t have to hear about Madrid’s allegedly excessive altitude (since the Caja Magica is apparently in low orbit over La Paz). Somehow, the same pair who contested last year’s Madrid final fought out the Rome final a week later, at sea level, on ‘traditional’ clay. If these changes have no discernible impact on the results, then what exactly is the issue? Roland Garros is weeks away. Chennai doesn’t play much like Melbourne, Tokyo is quicker than Shanghai, and Basel and Valencia, in addition to being blue are utterly different speeds from each other, and from Bercy the week after, which itself varies wildly from year to year. Player’s adapt. Nadal will probably still win the French Open, and if he doesn’t, it won’t have anything to do with the Madrid Masters.

Nadal is frankly a pretty good chance to win Madrid, anyway. He will almost certainly reach the final. The immediate upshot of Murray’s withdrawal is that world No.5 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga assumes the fourth seeding. On grass or even a hardcourt this wouldn’t raise any eyebrows. But the Frenchman has spent weeks laboriously demonstrating his shortcomings on clay, to my satisfaction if no one else’s. As top seed in Munich this week he lost his opening match to a resurgent Tommy Haas. In Monte Carlo he fell dismally to Gilles Simon. Before that he lost to John Isner in the Davis Cup. None of these losses are shameful, since they were all to capable players, but in none of them did Tsonga look like the fifth best player in the world. The primary reason for this is that, on clay, he isn’t, by a long way. As a potential semifinal opponent, drawing Tsonga is certainly more desirable than drawing Federer, even for Nadal, who has proven himself against both.

As in Monte Carlo, where Federer was absent, Nadal is drawn to face Tsonga in the last four. As in Monte Carlo, there is no good reason to think that match will occur, since on this surface the Frenchman is no better than a handful of others in his quarter, and might struggle to beat John Isner in the quarters, even assuming either gets that far. Novak Djokovic thus shares a half with Federer, who frankly has a bastard of a draw. Federer, who hasn’t played in over a month, must first face the winner of Nalbandian and Raonic, which could only be more unsavoury if he had to face both consecutively, or simultaneously. Bellucci or Gasquet in the next round should be interesting, followed by a likely quarterfinal with David Ferrer. Ferrer’s path to the quarterfinal appears straightforward, with only Almagro providing much to worry about, and then only for Almagro himself.

Djokovic opens against the winner of an intriguing first round tussle between Qualifier and Qualifier. I’m pencilling Qualifier in for that one, although I don’t see him (or her) troubling the world No.1 after that. No one else in Djokovic’s quarter should provide too stern a challenge, with the next highest seed being Janko Tipsarevic, who makes Tsonga look like Gustavo Kuerten on terre battue, even when it is cripplingly bleu. Gilles Simon will arguably, and ironically, constitute Djokovic’s biggest hurdle. Simon, incidentally, faces Fabio Fognini in the first round, a repeat of last week’s Bucharest final, which The Fog followed up on by losing in the first round in Belgrade.

Which brings us to the question of who will win. The cynical answer is Ion Tiriac.

The full Madrid draw can be found here.

I was hoping to have something up on the Munich quarterfinals, in which Youzhny sadly lost, but Haas and Kohlschreiber merrily didn’t. I probably won’t have time, but I’ll say that the match between Youzhny and Cilic was highly entertaining, and that if you watch nothing else, the second set tiebreak is worth a few minutes, if only for the Russian’s backhand to save match point, and for his mighty beard.

Edit – Nadal’s comments about the court favouring guys who don’t rely on footwork (Federer!), were apparently a mistranslation. I have consequently removed this reference.

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May 3, 2012

Nothing To Be Done

Munich, First Round

(Q) Farah d. (7) Davydenko, 6/3 6/2

Defending champion Nikolay Davydenko yesterday lost to Robert Farah, the Columbian qualifier who last week tore lustily into the Barcelona main draw, and now looks capable of doing the same in Munich. The score, the stat that matters most, here ably tells the tale of a match that wasn’t even close. By losing so early, Davydenko has jettisoned enough points that he’ll float beyond the top fifty. Those faithful fans on earth still waiting for Davydenko would do better to search for him somewhere in orbit.

He has just become a father for the first time, and so there’s a good chance he is floating ecstatically, although it will be the haggard ecstasy that nothing before parenthood quite prepares you for.  Thus distracted and encumbered, the chances of Davydenko returning to the truly elite levels of the sport are fading by the week. Soon he will be compelled to qualify for Masters events, a requirement one imagines won’t thrill him. A little over two years ago there was a widespread belief that he was destined to win a Major. Then a second set implosion against Federer at the 2010 Australian Open – it’s rare to be able to isolate the precise moment when an elite career ostensibly ends, but it’s at 6:50 in those highlights – followed by a seemingly innocuous wrist injury sent him into a slump that, somehow, he never recovered from. Once he had returned to the tour, the long wait began for him to return to his previous level. Over the last year that has given way to the hope that he would achieve one last impressive run at a significant event. Now even this looks unlikely. For a very fine player who never received his due, this is a crying shame.

Courtesy of his heroics in Barcelona last week, David Ferrer has been much discussed of late, thereby inspiring interested parties to grow profligate with the term ‘dogged’, and to celebrate endlessly just how exhaustively he has maximised his talents. I realise I’m courting rancour by saying so, but I’d hazard that Davydenko eclipses even Ferrer in this latter quality. The Spaniard isn’t tall, but he is solidly built, and yet we’re quick to excuse his lack of power, for all that he’s two barely inches shorter than Andre Agassi (who was never accused of being a lightweight) and the same height as Sebastien Grosjean, whose slapped forehand up the line was rightly feared. Ferrer is also only an inch shorter than the ultra-aggressive Davydenko, who is built like a whippet.

Agassi’s name is not an inappropriate one to invoke. Not since the Las Vegan retired have we witnessed a player so adroit at taking every ball on the rise, when it is still replete with energy, and then redirecting it at will and at pace. His hands, feet, and endeavour are the foundations of his game. A truly attacking player can hit him off the court – his record against Federer is abysmal – but he refuses to be intimidated by anyone. He boasts a 6-4 head-to-head with Nadal, and three of those losses came on clay. Along with Agassi, Davydenko ranks with the most finely calibrated ball-strikers I have ever seen, and amongst the most fearless.

If everyone with a heart dearly hopes that Ferrer wins a Masters title before he retires, it is worth remembering that Davydenko has won three of them (Paris, Miami and Shanghai), and that he overcame Nadal in the final twice. His crowning achievement came at the World Tour Finals in 2009, when he defeated Federer, Nadal, Soderling and del Potro to take the title, driving the giant Argentinean halfway to despair in the final.*

It all seems like a distant memory now. Over the last 52 weeks, Davydenko has compiled a record of 20-23. They aren’t numbers to be proud of, but exceeding even the volume of those losses is their manner. Six of those losses have come to qualifiers, two to wildcards, and one to Viktor Troicki.

A key issue here is the first serve. Despite his modest stature, Davydenko at his best boasted an insidiously tricky first ball, courtesy of a strange torque in his action. I can find no useful stats on his service speed lately, but the perception is widespread that he is going after it less. The numbers that are available back this up. In his best years, which were 2005 – 2009, his first serve percentage was a respectable 67-69%. This is has actually risen in recent years (to over 70% last year). Yet, his ace rate has more than halved. In his glory years, on average 5.5% of his first serves were aces, which is not amazing in the scheme of things – Isner comes in at 16.7% – but is okay for his type of game. In the last year that has been reduced to just 2.3%. The implication is either that Davydenko has only played guys who are harder to ace, or, more likely, that he has indeed dialled back the heat on his first serve. This helps explain why he’s winning so many fewer points behind it (about 6-7% lower than his peak years).

Without his serve to set up points, the widening cracks in Davydenko’s ground game have grown broad enough to swallow him up. I was courtside for his squalid loss to Flavio Cipolla in the first round of the Australian Open this year, and a painful experience it was, savagely hot, windy and depressing. Cipolla’s game is built around reasonable foot-speed and a sliced backhand, carefully placed atop a large mound of nothing else. He is the kind of player that Davydenko would once beat left-handed, for a lark. Time and again the Russian would attack, achieve the ball he wanted, and then miss the put-away. He wasn’t pleased about it, but he mostly just looked nonplussed, gesturing away at his brother Eduardo with an expansiveness and regularity befitting the WTA. For a game that was based around such delicate calibration, it doesn’t have to go off much before it doesn’t work at all. The last two sets weren’t even competitive.

Today in Munich Tommy Haas was immaculate in seeing off the top seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. Haas insists that he has no great designs on a late career miracle, and it’s easy enough to believe him. He plays on because he loves the sport, and for moments like these, in the full awareness that when it’s finally over it will be over for ever. Even as an admirer of Davydenko’s game, and his sly, wry attitude, I would never suggest that the Russian loves the sport that much, or enough to continue on once it becomes perpetually frustrating, once he glances around, and finally remarks, ‘No, it’s not worthwhile now.’

*Perhaps most shockingly, he defeated Monfils, Soderling and Verdasco on his way to the Kuala Lumpur title earlier that year. The draw also included Ferrer, Gasquet, Gonzalez and Berdych. It was only two and half years ago, but the Malaysian Open’s glory days feel as distant as Davydenko’s.

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April 30, 2012

The Flurrying Fog

Bucharest, Final

(1) Simon d. Fognini, 6/4 6/3

Fabio Fognini, in his first tour final, fell to Gilles Simon in the final of the Nastase-Tiriac Trophy in Bucharest. For Simon, it is his tenth career title, three of which have come at this event. As a match, it played out almost precisely as one would expect. Simon steadily smothered the mercurial Italian, whose flashes of brilliance joined up initially to form a blinding light, before eventually breaking apart into fitful sparks, and then going dark entirely.

Fognini – The Fog – typically began in a flurry. Except that fog doesn’t flurry. Ones eagerness to pun on ‘fog’ is as ever vitiated by the Italian’s quicksilver approach to the sport, which is by turns thrilling, irritating and engaging, generally within a single point. As metaphorical classes, there is just no overlap. As a writer, it’s frustrating, though I suppose this is an apt testament to watching him play. It turns out that parsing sentences about him is about as tough as deciphering his matches.

Fognini’s fans – and his broad appeal is such that these are not demarcated by national boundaries – seem generally eager to proclaim his uniqueness. I will thus court opprobrium by suggesting that he is a very similar player to Xavier Malisse, in his indisputable talent, his capacity to impart pace from nowhere, his instinctive court-craft, his ease in the forecourt, and his tendency to alternate breathtaking winners with clearly not giving a toss. The key differences, for the collector of trading cards, is that Fognini generates drama more effortlessly – Malisse is always strained in this regard – and that he is far more handsome. It could be that I am biased in this area, since Fognini and I currently cultivate a similar facial hair arrangement – sometimes referred to as a ‘beard’ – although I will concede that he pulls it off rather more successfully.

As Ferrer would later, the Flurrying Fog shot out to an early break. Unpack that sentence at your peril. It seemed as though every rally ended in a winner, and that every one of them was different. Simon, beset, looked set upon, although he often does for some reason. Indeed, I am always surprised to see Simon exhibit so much passion in between points, and then dismayed that so little of it finds its way into his actual tennis. It is especially strange when he plays someone like Fognini or, say, Alex Dolgopolov, and they’re running hot and cold. Simon will push one ball airily up the middle of the court, and his opponent will loft it over the baseline. He’ll do the same again, and his opponent will smack a winner, whereupon Simon will turn and lavish some invective on his player’s box. What does he think will happen, that no one can possibly tee off on his mighty groundstrokes? His entire approach is surely based on the awareness that anyone can belt his shots away into the corners, but that they cannot keep it up indefinitely. Eventually the opponent will commit an error or drop it short. Simon is admirably patient in waiting for these opportunities. But why, then, does he drop his bundle so constantly? It could be that there are factors at play too subtle for me to grasp. It could just be that he’s a human being.

Sadly, it take long before Fognini’s winners stopped finding the corners, and began to miss the court (thereby disqualifying themselves), although enough of them didn’t that he remained level with Simon for a while. The tennis was delightfully all-court, as extravagant lobs gave way to deft volleys, and scything backhands, but it wasn’t quite enough to save a tight first set. There was a realistic fear that Fognini would fall away entirely upon losing that opening set, although, typically iconoclastic, he saved his collapse until the middle of the second. He dropped serve for 4/2, and from there appeared to lose interest. One may posit any number of explanations, but there’s no reason to think they’d be correct. Perhaps he’d just had enough. It was only his maiden final, after all. There will be others, and he really didn’t seem that upset.

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April 30, 2012

The Phantom Climax

Barcelona, Final

(1) Nadal d. (3) Ferrer, 7/6 7/5

Having never won a prestigious tennis tournament multiple times, or even once, I cannot say whether the seventh triumph feels more or less special than the fourth or fifth. Looking at Rafael Nadal and David Ferrer at today’s trophy presentation at the Barcelona Open Banc Sabadell, I could not shake off the certainty that whatever seven meant, one would have meant a whole lot more. Nadal was clearly thrilled, but I suspect he would have looked at least as delighted if his friend had won instead. Certainly Ferrer would have been happier. By his own admission, winning Barcelona would have been the climax of his career (which tells you just how passé the Davis Cup has grown for these guys). Of course, he didn’t win, and the phantom of that climax haunted proceedings.

Nadal was effusive in claiming the Barcelona trophy had never tasted better: ‘The emotions are always high, but probably each year they get a bit higher as you are one year older and you don’t know how many chances you are going to have left’. For the record, he is 25, which even for a tennis player is a little premature for intimations of mortality, especially for one who has just won consecutive tournaments without dropping a set. Assuming his knees maintain some structural integrity, his main danger in years to come will be a collapsing shelf in his trophy room. If the shelf holding seven Conde Godó trophies gave way, even Atlas would buckle. And let’s not forget he won Queens as well.

Others were undoubtedly more emotionally invested in the match than I was, and therefore have a different take on it, but even as Ferrer stepped up to serve for the second set I don’t recall my faith in Nadal’s eventual victory wavering. Which isn’t to say that the final wasn’t exciting. It was, although its strange energy derived mostly from wondering how long Ferrer could sustain his stratospheric level, and then marvelling when he kept it up longer than seemed possible. He sprinted along a tightrope for hours, but, aside from those Nadal fans with the hardest cores, it was surely inevitable that he would slip eventually. Nevertheless, frenzied supposition has thickened the ether. What if Ferrer had taken any one of the handful of set points at 6/5 in the first set? What if he’d served out the second? I think the answer is that he would have lost in three.

We can say that the match was close, and it was, but should not therefore infer that Ferrer was close to winning it. Five times he was a point away from taking the first set. Winning a set goes a long way towards winning two of them, which goes most if not all of the way towards winning a match, and climaxing for real. But winning a set is also necessary for losing in three. I’m wearily convinced that’s what would have happened. Others may have different views. But it was a straight sets victory for Nadal, and once he had broken back (to love) at the end of the second set, he grew, typically, into a titan.

It is, naturally, possible to have a very close match without having it go the distance. It occurs when you feel as though the eventual winner is barely clinging on, and that if he loses that second or fourth set, they’re destined to lose to lose the match. The challenger is simply coming at them too hard. The 2002 US Open final provides an excellent example of this. As the fourth set’s intensity soared, Agassi grew stronger and Sampras grew haggard and desperate. If it went to a fifth, Sampras was gone, but it didn’t. He held on. Last year’s best match, the pulsating French Open semifinal between Federer and Djokovic, is also exemplary. If Djokovic had served out the fourth, the odds on him taking the fifth were overwhelming. Federer’s only chance, one felt, was to finish it in four. That was the decider.

Today’s match didn’t feel that way. Had Nadal lost the second set, I have little doubt he would have won the third. Ferrer led in every one of the first dozen or so games, and opened the match by breaking for 2/0, but at nearly every decisive point thereafter, Nadal was superior, and often fearless. Ferrer hammered the Mallorcan’s backhand all day, but on those set points he could hardly find it. Nadal landed first serves (one was an ace), and belted forehands (although he also wrapped his frame around a backhand that wobbled in). In the tiebreak, Ferrer stumbled, and suddenly Nadal’s forehand asserted itself once more. Nadal’s level dropped in the second set, as it has all week, and Ferrer took four straight games. He stepped up to serve for the set. Again, when it mattered, Nadal went big, broke to love, and then stayed that way.

Interviewed afterwards, Ferrer choked on tears. He knew he’d played superbly, but not when it mattered most. Against Nadal, he admitted, you cannot just play well. You have to play perfectly, and you have to do it when it really counts. His lost eyes looked like those of a fine player who had deliberately aimed low for his career’s climax, and who now realises he might have aimed too high.

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April 29, 2012

Meaning the World

Barcelona, Semifinals

The top seeds have moved through to their respective finals in both Bucharest and Barcelona, following a day of straight-sets semifinals, only one of which inspired much beyond yawns and dyspepsia. These have thrown up – or vomited forth – a pair of deciders that will pit an overwhelming favourite against a sentimental one. As a way of settling an uneven week, it is as much as we could have hoped for.

(1) Nadal d. (9) Verdasco, 6/0 6/4

The result and the duration of any Nadal-Verdasco clash are wholly predicated on how much better Nadal is at everything on that particular day. Since we’re dealing with people, this is a variable metric. Sometimes, like today, Nadal is much better, and the result is a blow-out. Since we’re dealing with Verdasco, we can assume that even when it is close, the result remains more or less foregone. Verdasco will always find a way, and usually he will find it via the double-fault. In this area, he remains a virtuoso of the first order, like Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, who elevated the performance of Debussy to unparalleled heights with his precision and artistry, where others had merely contented themselves with sloppy gush. Such is Verdasco’s mastery of the double-fault, that even when they don’t prove decisive – and today the decisive moments were dispensed with in the first three games – they maintain an indirect influence on his performance.

The serve is the only area in which Verdasco is putatively superior to Nadal. And yet, haunted by the spectres of double-faults past, Verdasco has lately taken to meekly rolling his first delivery in. It proved disastrous in Monte Carlo, when it cost him multiple set points, and perhaps the match, against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. Today, faced with an opponent he hasn’t beaten in 674 attempts, it was probably never going to matter much, but it would have helped avoid the humiliation of a first set in which he won ten points, and not enough of them consecutively to claim an entire game. Nadal was devastating, but Verdasco was too willing to allow it.

Verdasco rapidly conceded a break in the second set. Then, figuring it no longer mattered much either way, he started to go after his serve, which allowed him to step in on his forehand. It turns out those one-two combos everyone goes on about don’t only work in theory. When Verdasco has time to move forward onto the ball, his left-handed forehand is the equal of Nadal’s, which is not the same thing as saying his forehand is as good a shot overall. Nadal’s remains potent from any position, and for almost any purpose. There was a minor wobble at the end, when Verdasco threatened to break back as Nadal served for it. It was a tricky spot for Verdasco to extricate himself from, since he was returning and therefore couldn’t rely on his second serve to save or damn him. But even artists have solid fundamentals. He found some groundstroke errors when he needed them most, missed a few returns, and tracked down a drop shot from Nadal, flicking it casually wide.

(3) Ferrer d. (11) Raonic, 7/6 7/6

David Ferrer has said that winning Barcelona title would be the climax of his career. Of course, players say this sort of thing all the time. Gilles Simon has presumably prepared a victory speech in which he extols the virtues of the Nastase-Tiriac Trophy unstintingly. Initially, I dismissed Ferrer’s words as more of the same. After all, he is a near-permanent fixture in the top ten, and has tarried at the top of the men’s game for half a decade. Yet, of course, he has never won a Masters 1000, or ventured beyond the semifinals at a major. This is not secret knowledge, and I have written several times about how utterly the top four control the Masters and Slams. It is, as the hopefully inimitable Donald Rumsfeld might say, a known known. And yet, for whatever reason, I was slow to realise that Barcelona would indeed constitute the biggest title of Ferrer’s career, for all that he has an entire orchard of those pear things from Acapulco. A prestigious and richly-traditioned 500 in Spain, which many Nadal fans would prefer to see their idol skip, really would mean the world to the world No.6.*

This might explain Ferrer’s reaction upon sealing a straight sets victory over Milos Raonic today, as he collapsed to his back on the clay. It’s true that both sets were tiebreakers, but Ferrer was unflappable in both of those, especially in the first, when he flew to a 6-0 lead. This had been a colossal shame, since it capped an excellent and dramatic first set, in which neither player could convert multiple break points. Through the early going, Raonic was as savage on serve as he had been against Almagro and Murray, and his off forehand remained almost as irresistible. Ferrer, apparently more astute than Murray, directed almost everything to the Canadian’s backhand. Having dropped the first set, there was an entirely justified fear that Raonic would fall away sharply in the second, and to be frank his level was reduced, and yet it is to his credit that he remained with Ferrer until a second tiebreak. He saved one match point with an inside-in forehand winner, but not the second, and Ferrer hit the dirt.

In the final Ferrer will face Nadal, which means that he will, sadly, lose. He has beaten Nadal four times in official competition, twice at majors, and even once on clay. Aside from Murray, elite athletes are experts at extracting the positive aspect out of any situation, reducing it to a condensed paste, and then consuming it for sustenance. Yet even Ferrer will derive scant nourishment from the consideration that his only clay victory came eight years ago, in Stuttgart, and that it was still 7/5 in the third. Nadal has since won Barcelona six times, which is every time he’s shown up since 2005. Ferrer lost to him in the final last year, and in 2009 and 2008. You can’t sustain yourself on that.

Getting to the final is not an inconsiderable achievement, and Ferrer was probably justified in rolling about on the court afterwards. He has come a long way. But in the grand scheme of taking the Barcelona title from Nadal, he has barely done more than arrive at the venue.

But anything can happen in sport.

* It has been pointed out, correctly, that Ferrer has already won a 500 in Spain (Valencia, 2010). I’ve slightly amended the text to reflect my original intent, which was that it’s the pedigree of Barcelona, as opposed to the ranking points, that makes it so mean so much to Ferrer.

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April 27, 2012

One Enchanted Evening

Barcelona and Bucharest, Second and Third Rounds

There was good tennis to be had today in Barcelona, Bucharest and elsewhere, although having spent frustrating hours in the fruitless pursuit of it, my firsthand knowledge is limited. Nevertheless, I discovered vestiges everywhere, traces evident in still-restive crowds and the detritus of tightly fought tiebreaks. Yet whenever I felt myself growing near, the trail went cold. We’ve all had night’s like these, when everyone just wants to go home to bed, but you all stay out anyway, desperately searching for a good time, until, by 4.30am, you’re barely surviving an unsolicited lap-dance from a West Papuan highlander.

The upset of the round was Milos Raonic’s straight sets rumbling of Nicolas Almagro, which I tuned into just in time to see the Canadian gathering up his things from the Pista Central, under the watchful gaze of that rakishly-tilted Volkswagen, perched at one end of the court. It had, apparently, been a mighty effort by the Canadian, against an eternally disappointing opponent who may or not have been injured.

Wasting only a few moments on the usual uneasy contemplation of Raonic’s strange proportions and alarming resemblance to Moe Szyslak, I switched streams for Bucharest, where my dark-horse pick Cedric-Marcel Stebe was emphatically failing to beat Andreas Seppi, in spite of the latter’s superior ranking and far greater experience. Stebe has yet to claim consecutive wins on the tour this year, but his time will come. Then watch out. There will be consecutive wins all over the place.

I remained in Romania for the nonce, a deft change of courts delivering me to the cloying embrace of Fabio Fognini, who had thoughtfully coordinated his outfit with his opponent Marcos Baghdatis, and then spotted the Cypriot a break in the opening set, before roaring back to take it 7/5. It was thrilling, apparently. The Fog was fearless, the way Baghdatis used to be. There were allegedly torrents of winners. I saw none of it. They were well into the second set by the time I happened along, and the winners, sadly, had slowed to a fitful trickle. Eventually the players arrived at the point of the set where double faults become crucial. Every game saw one or the other play come within two points of the set or the match.

A tip off on Twitter suggested that Kei Nishikori and Albert Ramos were doing good things. With little reluctance, I tore myself away from Bucharest, and returned to Barcelona. Either the tip was incorrect – a mislead – or the protagonists had worked the initial excitement out of their systems. Nishikori was up a set and break. This of course is not an impregnable position, and so Nishikori set about fortifying it, ever so slowly, with an additional break. Ramos was mostly powerless to stop him.

I’d committed a tactical error. Back in Bucharest, Fognini apparently finished off Baghdatis with a tremendous tiebreak, belting winners everywhere. I must have been something to see. Anything would have been something to see. It all became a bit of a blur by that point, the way all good benders tend to once the witching hour arrives. Somehow I found myself in Taiwan, watching the Kaohsiung Challenger. My mouth felt carpeted. Amir Weintraub was facing the top seed Yen-Hsun Lu, and acquitting himself admirably, insofar as his error quota – though large – barely exceeded his opponent’s. After the extended clay rallies, these quick-fire hardcourt points were startlingly brief. I momentarily perked up. Points were concluded after they’d barely begun, mostly when the returner’s shot landed beyond the confines of the court. Lu took the first set, but I fancied Weintraub’s chances. I hadn’t watched him since qualifying at the Australian Open, and he was playing better than that. He lost.

A return to Barcelona revealed Andy Murray thrashing Santiago Giraldo. There is often a great deal of pleasure to be gained from watching a top player dish out a hiding to a lesser one, but Murray can be relied upon to provide the exception. It was as dull as a 6/1 6/2 result can be. Still, it was a pleasure to have Jason Goodall back in the commentary box. Afterwards Ivan Lendl was invited down on to the court, and strove mightily to deliver clichés through the PA system’s excessive reverberation: ‘Andy-dy-dy is taking-ing-ing it one match-atch-atch at a time-ime-ime.’ As a two-time former champion, and a reigning Ivan Lendl, he was presented with a plaque. Albert Costa was there, under the presiding gaze of the impassive Volkswagen: Aus Liebe zum Automobile.

I tarried in Barcelona, now fit for naught but torpid staring. The court was slowly rotating clockwise. Feliciano Lopez beat Jarkko Nieminen handily. The Spanish commentators, whose smug bonhomie had grown muted following Almagro’s upset, were back in full song. And with good reason: Rafael Nadal was up next, his stately procession to the title scheduled to continue. But it’s only stately because they insist on making him wait a day in between matches. The whole thing would be over much sooner if they allowed him to play all five matches consecutively. Today’s victim was Robert Farah, a Columbian ranked somewhere in the 240s. Goodall declared Farah to be a doubles specialist, and I suppose, compared to singles, he is. This was the pair’s first meeting. It is a contractual obligation for players and their fans to overstate the degree of difficulty that facing an opponent for the first time entails. But I can’t imagine how unusual a new player’s game would have to be for it to trouble Nadal on clay. Safin’s power, combined with Raonic’s serve and Santoro’s finesse? There’s a reason guys like that aren’t ranked No.242.

Having said all of that, Farah won’t be ranked there for long. His results this week alone will propel him up to No.208. He is also a decent player, and based on today’s effort it isn’t any stretch to see how he beat Pablo Andujar in the previous round. He has power to burn on the first serve, and a fine backhand. He pressed Nadal closely at times today, and even broke him at the start of the second set. Nadal, naturally, hit some excellent forehands, especially on the run, and especially passes.

It was now very late, and through the haze I noted the burly Papuan in the corner eyeing me off worryingly. Fernando Verdasco and David Ferrer won easily, although in my final desperation I’d already fled back to Bucharest, figuring that nothing untoward could befall me in the former Eastern Bloc. Gilles Simon was handling Dudi Sela with ease. Gratifyingly, he has retained the assertive style he unleashed on Nadal in the Monte Carlo semifinals. Unfortunately for Sela, this meant losing rapidly, rather than eventually, which is Simon’s traditional timeframe. Still, it wasn’t enough to save my evening. As the weight descended onto my legs, I felt myself go under.

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April 25, 2012

Greatness in Obscurity

Readers may not be aware, since this site’s layout is rather less intuitive than it might be, but there is a sporadic series of columns that I write here on excellent, but potentially unheard-of tennis matches. The series is called Great Matches You Probably Haven’t Heard Of. Naturally, many of the matches will be perfectly familiar to the kind of reader that visits a men’s tennis site of their own volition. But I suspect most are long forgotten by the general fan.

Of course, obscurity is something of a grey area. One of my favourite matches, Pat Rafter’s fabulous win over Andre Agassi in the 2000 Wimbledon semifinal, certainly fulfils the criteria for greatness. But most interested fans, when questioned under duress, would confess to having at least heard of it. Perhaps I’ll write about it anyway, just so I have an excuse to watch it again.

Reading through these, it should be apparent that I’m not particularly interested in a simple and wretched summary of each encounter. Prose is a poor medium for conveying the excitement of a sporting event, and will generally tell you less about a match than just watching it would have. The value is in the ancillary detail, and the wide context. The matches I’ve done so far:

1. Los Angeles, 1999, Final. Sampras d. Agassi, 7/6 7/6

2. Tennis Masters Cup, 2003, Round Robin, Federer d. Agassi, 6/7 6/3 7/6

3. Tennis Masters Cup, 2000

4. Sydney, 2003, Final, Lee d. Ferrero, 4/6 7/6 7/6

5. Chennai, 2008, Semifinal, Nadal d. Moya, 6/7 7/6 7/6

6. Paris Indoors, 2000, Safin d. Philippoussis, 3/6 7/6 6/4 3/6 7/6

7. San Jose, 2002, Final, Hewitt d. Agassi, 4/6 7/6 7/6

Surveying this list, two trends become readily apparent, and might require explanation. Firstly, most of the matches are concentrated in the early part of last decade. As a period it boasts the twin attractions of readily available footage (there are matches available from before this, but they’re generally famous ones), and sufficient distance that the matches may have been forgotten.

The second thing that leaps out is that many of them feature Agassi losing. I hope this doesn’t reflect any special bias against Agassi, although I wasn’t a particular fan of his when he was active, so perhaps it does. I would insist, however, that it owes more to just how good he was. Beating Agassi was an achievement to be proud of, and he rarely went down easily, especially between 1999-2005. Not all his losses are classics, but plenty are. Having said that, Agassi going down is not fundamental to the enterprise.

If anyone has any suggestions for a great yet obscure match for me to check out, that would be greatly appreciated. There will need to be a full match available somewhere for download. As I say at the end of these columns, it’s always best to view the full match, and to avoid highlights where possible. A great tennis match doesn’t necessarily have to signify anything beyond itself, but it will still have a compelling internal narrative, and there is a rich fascination in experiencing this as it gradually unfolds. It is less like a novel, than a symphony; we may search in vain for meaning, but we will discover drama in spades.

One further note, most of the links to the full matches at the end of the columns no longer work. This is due to the death of Megaupload, coupled with the disappearance of the superb and much-missed El Rincon del Tenis website. If anyone knows of a comparable repository of downloadable matches, please let me know.

Please enjoy.

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April 24, 2012

A Mild Hangover

The week following Monte Carlo always feels like a small hangover after a modest bender, the queasy Saturday morning you spend lining your stomach with bacon and eggs ahead of the planned Bacchanal that night. We’ll all be riotously drunk on clay soon enough. Rafael Nadal’s latest trophy feast at the MCCC has been duly digested – exultantly or wearily depending on one’s constitution – and his inevitable victory in Barcelona is still days away; a curious echo, or a short satisfied belch. The presiding genies have thoughtfully bulldozed his draw, smoothing any stray bumps on the path before him. These bumps initially took the forms of Tomaz Bellucci and Tomas Berdych. Both are now unrecognisably mangled, and have been carted away.

Barcelona, First Round

(11) Raonic d. Falla, 6/4 7/6

The ATP website has commemorated Milos Raonic’s first round win over Alejandro Falla with typical literary panache, running the by-lines ‘Good step forward’ and ‘My serve was key.’ Amazing. On that note, they recently promoted a profile of Matt Ebden with the revelation that ‘I’ve made good progress’. While I’ll concede that neither of these guys is an aphorist on par with, say, George Bernard Shaw or Roger Rasheed, the ATP needs to work harder to help them sound less like cavemen.

Nevertheless, it was a decent match, and no one can say that Raonic was wrong: his serve was, without question, key. Falla, whose leg was taped so comprehensively that he initially resembled a swarthy Phillip Petzschner, toiled with great heart. He produced some tremendous passing shots. One running forehand, had it been struck by Nadal or Federer, would have featured in YouTube compilations for years to come. But it wasn’t, so it won’t.

Bucharest, First Round

Malisse d. Dimitrov, 6/4 6/2

Someone will undoubtedly win the mercifully rescheduled BRD Nastase Tiriac Trophy in Bucharest. Based on current form it won’t be the defending champion Florian Mayer, which is a shame. Nor will it be Grigor Dimitrov, who has already fallen to Xavier Malisse. Flash forward a decade, and imagine the Bulgarian’s careworn face: that ingravescent brow, and those tired eyes, still searching for that breakthrough win. Or flash back a decade, and picture the Belgian: gaze dew-laden with hope, calm with the knowledge that a trip to the Wimbledon semifinals guarantees big things to come. Sometimes, all the talent in the world isn’t enough. For a match so fraught with perspective and portent, today’s was mostly without incident, until the end, when character became density. Thus weighed down, Malisse blew a 5/2 lead, and a few match points. Dimitrov blew a break point in the final game, utterly buggering a simple return. I was less exciting than it sounds.

Elsewhere

Flash back just a year, and the week following Monte Carlo was dominated by the Spanish tennis federation’s set-to with the USTA over the surface for the Davis Cup quarterfinals in Austin, which they insisted was illegally fashioned from oiled glass. It was a complete non-story – which grew farcical when Spain took the tie easily on the allegedly unplayable court – but this is the kind of week for that kind of thing. Thankfully this week has produced actual news. As expected, the San Jose 250 event has been relocated to Texas. Concerns that this will cruelly overload the already inadequate facilities at the Racquet Club of Memphis have been allayed by the decision to sell the Memphis 500 to IMG, and haul it off to Rio de Janeiro. Those who were worried that IMG has too little say in tennis, and that they don’t own enough stuff, can rest easy for the moment.

This will mean that the so-called Golden Swing – or as I prefer it, the Nicolas Almagro False Hope Parade – will boast two 500 level events. It will also mean that the United States only has one. I’m satisfied with both of these outcomes, although the USTA, justifiably given their mandate, isn’t overly thrilled. Apparently they’ve written a letter. But Memphis, honestly, was a dud 500, and invariably served up a far more malnourished field than the concurrently run 250 in Marseilles. The USTA has expressed fears that US players will now venture abroad in the lead-up to Indian Wells. Even if Mardy Fish’s disastrous adventure in Marseilles wasn’t a salutary warning to his compatriots, Monte Carlo last week proved just how realistic the USTA’s fears aren’t. There was one American in the main draw, and none in qualifying. However, that lone American was Donald Young, who was dealt with severely. Hopefully he has learned his lesson, and that it is a lesson to others.

Update: The lesson has indeed been learned. Mardy Fish’s aversion to leaving the States has grown so consuming that he has opted to skip the Olympics, and play Washington instead. Lleyton Hewitt controversially did the same in 2004, and went on to win Washington and Long Island against piss-weak fields, before running to the US Open final without dropping a set. Then, famously, he was destroyed by Federer 6/0 7/6 6/0.

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April 22, 2012

An Unmatched Achievement

Monte Carlo Masters, Final

(2) Nadal d. (1) Djokovic, 6/3 6/1

Rafael Nadal defeated Novak Djokovic today in a Monte Carlo final that was even more straightforward than the score line suggests, and considerably less exciting than the epoch-defining epic we’d been promised, and therefore dreaded. As a match, it was a fizzer. Even before the tournament commenced, we were told that the eventual result would give us a clear guide as to how the clay season would play out. Well, the result has eventuated, and I don’t feel any wiser.

I doubt whether Nadal or his legion fans are overly concerned. Rightly, they’ll take a win over a spectacle any day. That being said, the numbers themselves are spectacular. This was Nadal’s 42nd straight victory at the MCCC, and he moves clear of Federer atop the list of all-time Masters winners, to 20. He has now won eight consecutive titles here, an achievement that may go unmatched in our lifetime, although he’ll very likely augment it in years to come. Nadal winning Monte Carlo is coming to feel eternal. If there’s any justice, the Centre Court will be renamed in his honour. If he wins again next year – lucky number nine – he’ll finally be allowed to kiss Princess Charlene. Something to strive for. Djokovic was permitted to give her a peck even in defeat, because he’s a resident, and that’s apparently the rule, which I think is pretty generous of Prince Albert. It was surely the highlight of Djokovic’s afternoon.

He certainly didn’t do anything memorable on the tennis court, aside from spraying a heroic 25 unforced errors and failing to hold serve in the entire second set. Errors against Tomas Berdych yesterday inspired broken racquets. Today’s mistakes produced nothing more flamboyant than a wry grimace. Afterwards, on the podium, he was relaxed and chatty. I can’t recall anyone looking less put out after receiving a hiding from his closest rival.

For those keen to debate it, the debate to have is whether Djokovic could have won had he played better, or whether the hiding would merely have been less comprehensive. It was Nadal’s finest match since last year’s clay season, which is when he last won a title. The most remarkable aspect of it was how assiduously he eschewed his usual patterns, and yet maintained iron control. He and Uncle Toni had clearly devised a game plan, one that went deeper than just landing a lot of first serves, although he did that, too. Unpredictability was the key. There were very few of those three-forehand sequences that Nadal uses to open up the court. Instead he often drove the strong off forehand immediately, and Djokovic was sent scurrying. Halfway through the first set, the Serb began to guess, early and wrongly. Nadal served heavily at Djokovic’s forehand, which leaked errors. At one point he hit three body serves in a row, and the world No.1 picked none of them. There was a fabulous running backhand up the line, some excellent drop shots, and, most importantly, a courageous willingness to return with greater depth. And nearly all his mishits landed in. It was a good day.

And yet, it wasn’t as though Djokovic was always off-balance. Plenty of times – 25 of them, in fact – he missed perfectly simple groundstrokes, mostly on the backhand, and mostly long. The wind was a factor, and so was the opponent, but it wasn’t everything. There was something else, a kind of numb disconnection. The temptation for too many people has been to invoke the loss of Djokovic’s grandfather midweek. Undeniably it played a part, but no one is qualified to say which part, however, and no one should try to. Of course, this did not excuse too many from attempting precisely that, from weaving the death of Vladimir Djokovic into the extravagant pre-match hype. Sadly no loss is so great that it cannot be traduced, and re-spun into a convenient narrative of redemption: ‘Do it for Grandpa’. Djokovic afterwards didn’t look or sound like he’d let down anyone, even himself.

The rest of the hype rightly centred on Nadal. By now everyone knows the numbers, although this didn’t forestall constant reiteration as the week ploughed on from sunshine through rain into wind, and the Nadal-Djokovic final blossomed from figurative into actual inevitability. Could the Mallorcan claim an eighth Monte Carlo title, and avoid an eighth consecutive final loss to the world No.1? It turns out he can.

With so much going on, today’s final is therefore a difficult one to parse properly, although not as difficult as the allegedly expert analysts on the Sky Sports coverage made it seem. It was still possible to do it wrong. Boris Becker went on at tedious length about Djokovic’s efforts to step up onto the baseline several years ago, apparently because this was the first thing that came into Becker’s head and he was being payed either way. Greg Rusedski declared with unfeigned awe that this was the first bad match the Serb had played since he gained the No.1 ranking, apparently forgetting Djokovic’s abject showing in Dubai. (And we know Rusedski saw that one: his disciples may cast their minds back to Miami, when he astutely chalked Djokovic’s loss up to Dubai’s excessive altitude.) At the risk of sounding like a tennis nerd, there was also Kei Nishikori in Basel, and David Ferrer at the Tour Finals. Peter Fleming was invited to speculate on what was going on in Novak’s head. To his credit, he begged off. They were unanimous on Nadal, though. He was just tops.

Opinion elsewhere has bifurcated sharply over what today’s result signifies for the clay season’s remainder. As a rule, I am slow to assign meaning to these things. Sometimes a tennis match is actually just a tennis match. Clearly others feel differently. Some insist that Djokovic’s domination of Nadal is at an end. Nick Lester, signing off on Tennis TV, demonstrated that even metaphors would not endure the new order intact: ‘Rafa has broken the mould . . . that Djokovic had over him.’ Others have been more circumspect, taking their lead from Djokovic, who didn’t appear particularly ruffled. Today’s result means nothing, they insist: the real tests will come in Madrid, or Rome, or Paris.

Come what may, today the real test was in Monte Carlo. For the eighth time in as many years, Nadal passed it. For whatever reason, Djokovic didn’t, but then he never has. I don’t know what to make of that. If everything is just the same, then what has really changed?

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April 22, 2012

A Picturesque Picture

Monte Carlo Masters, Semifinals

(1) Djokovic d. (6) Berdych, 4/6 6/3 6/2

‘It’s hard to imagine a more picturesque picture than this,’ remarked Chris Wilkinson on the Tennis TV feed, his verbal inspiration failing him (and us) just when he needed it most. Accompanying his words, the screen revealed a delicately graded Mediterranean sky (strangely muted to Australian eyes) dissolving away to the left in white dazzle, and falling through a fractal eternity of blues to the abrupt horizon. The sea sprawled back towards the camera, a flat plain flecked and gouged with white, lent volume by the vast pleasure yacht placed just so, and form by the tennis court in the foreground, like a swatch of burnt Sienna. The most picturesque of pictures surely deserved better.

Down on the court, the once picaresque Novak Djokovic seemed rather less impressed by the sumptuous locale. For one thing, he lives here and is doubtless used to it. For another, he could see little through the billows of dust periodically coalescing and gambolling across the court, and setting up camp in his throat and eyes. The picturesque picture hid the reality that it was a horrible day for tennis. For all television’s manifold benefits – celebrity cooking shows and sitcoms about fractional men – it isn’t at its best when showing wind (although it retains an edge over poetry and ballet in this respect). It relies on images, and moving air looks more or less like still air. Those white caps and the writhing flags were a giveaway, I suppose, and the effects microphones registered a dull moan over and below the ceaseless chatter of a crowd always too slow to settle. Djokovic was put out by them as well. For days, and with reason, he’s matched any environmental setback with a darkened regard. Today, by all accounts, was his grandfather’s funeral.

His opponent Tomas Berdych was all business. The Czech had torn through Andy Murray yesterday with a comprehensiveness that left English commentators across three networks scrambling for explanations. His game had mostly survived the night intact, although he’d unfortunately left his first serve back in the hotel room. Five double faults in the opening set suggested he’d misplaced the second, as well. Nevertheless, Berdych still won the set. Djokovic was peevishly distracted – to his litany of squalid outrage we might add countless dodgy bounces and a patch of clay behind the landward baseline requiring mid-set maintenance. But Berdych, once the rallies got under way, was imperious, combining patience with power and depth so potently that even the sport’s best defender was frequently stranded. It was the Czech’s immaculate point construction that stood out, the way his winners were a logical conclusion of each rally, and seemingly entailed little risk. Bossed around thus, Djokovic’s mood soured, the wind roared dully, and the set disappeared.

The remainder of the match, once Djokovic saved breakpoints early in the second set, witnessed a gradual but accelerating reversal, apart from the gale, which never abated. Berdych’s immaculate length shortened and Djokovic began to exert control. By the third set, it was all Djokovic, and Berdych’s winners grew wild, and eked out from desperate positions. Even by midway through the second set, however, the intensity had drained from the match. The crowd grew restive, and the only energy came howling in from the sea. Djokovic, as is his way, bellowed with great vigour once it was over. It was an ugly match, inevitably in the conditions, but, yet again, he’d won it.

(2) Nadal d. (9) Simon, 6/3 6/4

His opponent in the final will be Rafael Nadal, who surprised no one by defeating Gilles Simon in the second semifinal, although Simon surprised everyone by playing so well. I confess that Simon is probably my least favourite player to watch, although this view would see sharp upward revision if he continues to play like he did today. Notorious for his passive, pushing game, a game predicated around fleetness of foot and junkiness of shot, Simon to his credit realised that such an approach would yield only one outcome against Nadal on clay. If Simon played ‘normally’ – as he had done so far this week in seeing off both Tipsarevic and Tsonga, grown men beaten to death with pillows – he would hardly last the hour: he’d be kukushkined.

Nadal on this court is just too dangerous. That forehand was designed and constructed for clay like Monte Carlo’s, which rewards full value for spin. It helped that conditions were fast (and that the bounce was uneven). Consequently, Simon attacked, without relent and with tremendous poise. His crosscourt backhand, in particular, were taken tremendously early, smothering Nadal’s vicious spin, and consistently leaving the world No.2 stranded in the backhand corner. I was astonished, and the commentary and various online media suggested I was not alone. It was as though the plodding Geoffrey Boycott became Adam Gilchrist for an afternoon. There was surely no way he could keep it up.

The wind had eased somewhat by the later match, although it remained a steady zephyr, gusting intermittently. Thus assaulted by his opponent, with uncertain conditions and a partisan crowd, Nadal’s victory was a minor masterpiece of focus and footwork. The fleetness with which he scooted into his backhand corner was outstanding. More than the forehand itself, it is the virtuosity with which he enables it that truly stands out. It is also remarkable how much more adept he is at this on clay than on hardcourts. Pundits sometimes wonder why, say, Federer doesn’t simply redirect sliced backhands up the line to Nadal’s backhand. The blinding speed with which Nadal backpedals around his backhand is the answer. Simon today had nothing to fear from Nadal’s backhand, it was just a matter of finding it.

The turning point came early, at 3/3, when Simon moved to 15-40 on Nadal’s serve: two breakpoints. The first was a muscular rally, typically for the Spaniard, if not for the Frenchman. Nadal’s launched a backhand that found the line, and steepled suddenly off a bad bounce, rearing over Simon’s racquet. I remarked at Indian Wells (against Nalbandian) how often Nadal finds the line when facing breakpoint. On the next point, Simon played a fine rally, and swooped in on the net, but struck the put-away volley off centre, putting it not away but smack in the middle of the court. He read Nadal’s subsequent pass, but netted the makeable second volley. Nadal went on to hold. Too often players are broken after failing to break their opponent, and this especially seems to be the case for lower-ranked players when facing Nadal (which is currently everyone except Djokovic), arguably a testament to the desperation they must feel at having blown their only chance. Simon was duly broken, and Nadal held comfortably for the set.

The Spaniard opened the second with another break, capped by a whipped forehand winner up the line. He was now 2/2 on breakpoints. Simon wasn’t. Nadal would coast to the match on that advantage, although they would trade unrequited breakpoints for the next few games. The wind rose again, the shadows encroached, and a final forehand winner sealed the day. It was the best I’ve ever seen Simon play, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t the best Nadal has played – not by any stretch – but it was enough.

Whether it will be sufficient in tomorrow’s final is an entirely different question. Nadal should be pleased with his forehand and his footwork, but concerned about his returning – which had improved since yesterday, though not by much – and the tendency to leave his forehand corner unguarded. These are both areas where Djokovic, who has a better serve and crosscourt backhand than Simon, will make the Spaniard bleed. After the match Nadal remarked that ‘At the end, you cannot change your game a lot, no? I don’t have that talent to change a lot my game.’ But these are areas he must change, if he is to staunch the flow. Tomorrow we will discover whether he can become only the second man in the Open era to claim the same event eight times, or whether Djokovic can defeat him eight times in a row, all in finals. There is much to play for. As Chris Wilkinson might say, it should be a spectacular spectacle.

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