August 22, 2011

Victory Without Triumph

Cincinnati Masters, Final

(4) Murray d. (1) Djokovic, 6/4 3/0 Ret.

For the second week in a row, Novak Djokovic arrived at a Masters final courtesy of a default. Today he departed due to one, meaning that his second streak of the year has ended not with a Parisian bang – an event otherwise not to be missed – but with a soggy Midwestern whimper. The tin sky wept and Andy Murray, even in victory, remained glum as ever. It was victory, but it was hardly triumph.

Still, it’s better than losing, and certainly beats stuffing your right shoulder a week out from the year’s last major. Watching Murray eventually hoist that strange urn, I was reminded of last year’s Asian swing, when he subsided meekly for Ivan Ljubicic in Beijing, only to rise to the Shanghai title a week later, venomously thrashing an in-form Roger Federer in the final. Actually, in writing that I am reminded of countless other examples. Inconsistency is the thing to know about Murray, the sole certainty. After all, arriving in Cincinnati, he had not won a set on North American hardcourts this year, a combination of geography and surface that traditionally suits him best. Now, Murray has his seventh Masters title, and by the reckoning of some – including the flippantly flighty Jim Courier – has pushed his way to favouritism for the US Open, a psychic space historically guaranteed to cripple the dour Scot. Let’s see how that one plays out. If Djokovic wasn’t Djokovic, and if his shoulder wasn’t buggered, Murray would probably be the story of the week.

But there’s just no getting away from Novak right now. He has suffered just his second loss of 2011, so that’s a story in itself, and will sustain everyone for a day or two. By then the US Open build-up week will be well into its stride, an escalating chain of tawdry, lame or dull Media Events, designed to pique our interesting, and not to be confused with those interminably humourless press conferences inflicted on top players, which serve no discernible purpose at all. It’s here that you have to feel for Djokovic. He will endure approximately 82,000 questions about his shoulder, and he will have no choice but to give the same answer each time, since it’s just a shoulder and there’s not that much to say.  Whatever he says, it will be all he can say, and it certainly won’t be the whole truth.

For those more desirous of portent or precedent, let’s travel back exactly ten years. Gustavo Kuerten was the best player on Earth, and by thrashing an in-form Pat Rafter in the Cincinnati final had ably demonstrated that his journey to all-court mastery was now complete. Back then top players played a lot more tennis than now – they also feasted nightly on gluten – and so Rafter and Kuerten also met in the Indianapolis final a week later, on the eve of the US Open. Kuerten withdrew with a seemingly innocuous hip injury, the merest precaution. No one thought much of it. Although the beloved Brazilian would continue on the tour for some years, his time at the top of the sport had ended. From nowhere.

Leave a Comment

Filed under ATP Tour

Tagged as ,

August 20, 2011

The Heart of Rage

Cincinnati Masters, Quarterfinals

(1) Djokovic d. (6) Monfils, 3/6 6/4 6/3

The Roman philosopher Seneca once remarked, perceptively, that rage is self-punishment for others mistakes. As a statement it packs rather a lot into very few words, and was doubtless even more compressed when he wrote it, in Latin. Among other things, it deftly suggests that at the heart of rage lies frustrated expectations, which I think Seneca also said. (It also cautions that succumbing to rage does most harm to ourselves, which may or not be true, and largely depends on where you rate spiritual damage in the scheme of things. Victims of road rage probably rate it somewhere below the grievous wounds they sustain.) It warns us that in order to curtail rage it is essential to calibrate our expectations realistically. Road rage, it follows, bears the imprint not merely of our frustration at other drivers’ failure to meet our expectations, but from having unrealistic expectations in the first place, not only of our fellow drivers, but of driving in general, if not of life.

Anyway, these thoughts meandered through my mind as I watched Gael Monfils’ stately capitulation to Novak Djokovic tonight. A perfect willingness to be personally affronted by any player’s ineptitude is a bad way to watch tennis, but when Monfils is involved, you’re just asking for trouble. For a good set and a half, the Frenchman looked set to confound my prediction that he would rapidly fold to the world No.1. Coming into the match, he had lost something like nine straight sets, including a 6/2 6/1 drubbing just last week in Montreal, but he looked a transfigured player as he broke Djokovic twice to take the opening set. He fell behind an early break in the second, but displayed great fortitude to break back, not to mention considerable virtuosity at the net. Then he forgot how to play tennis, which served the dual purpose of gifting a hitherto disinterested opponent the momentum, and of inspiring at least one commentator to almost blow his stack.

It was like seeing Seneca’s axiom play out as a drama, or at any rate a dry comedy. It commenced when Monfils served an excellent wide delivery to the first court, which Djokovic desperately floated back. Presented with the open court, Monfils opted to slice a forehand into the net. The commentator was apoplectic. There was a tirade. Predictably, endless iterations of this followed, but reading about them wouldn’t be as fun as watching them was. I’ll just say that when tough got going, Monfils reverted to type, and retreated to his customary position by the backboard. Robbie Koenig managed to find enough to delight himself with – such as Monfils’ baffling decision to scoot around and hit a left-handed forehand volley at one point – but his booth-mate was in that dark place beyond enjoyment. Monfils had saved a break point early in the first set with a gutsy second-serve ace up the T. In the third he gifted the crucial break by going for the same serve. The first had been ‘brave’ and precisely the kind of thing he would need to do to beat Djokovic. As you might imagine, the second merited a less generous assessment. There was a rant.

By the end, I was forced to wonder: based on everything we know about Monfils, and knowing how every one of his recent matches with Djokovic has unfolded, had anyone really expected anything different? The answer, I think, is that hope springs eternal, and that deep in the heart of the fan it will always trump realism. The commentator had doubtless come in expecting little, but when Monfils romped through that opening set, and demonstrated commendable grit in breaking back in the second, the belief had flickered that the Frenchman might actually pull off the upset. After all, he has done it before, and it would hardly even be the first upset today, with both Nadal and Federer departing in straight sets. Was another shock really too much to expect? Seneca says yes.

More importantly, Djokovic said yes. Remember: resistance is futile.

2 Comments

Filed under ATP Tour

Tagged as ,

August 19, 2011

Bad Scene

Cincinnati Masters, Third Round

(2) Nadal d. Verdasco, 7/6 6/7 7/6

(10) Simon d. (5) Ferrer, 6/4 6/7 6/4

The pressing issue in Cincinnati today was crap tennis, which is a bad issue for a Masters 1000 event to have. Blunt disappointment seemed to blanket each court in the (allegedly) stifling heat. As an Australian, you may colour me unimpressed by the temperature, but about the deflation there can be no dispute. Every third round match took place today, and few of them provided much interest beyond revealing whether both men would prove inept, or only one.

Four Spaniards were in action, and all played so poorly that all four deserved to lose. Sadly, that proved unlikely as two of them were facing each other, and so one was compelled to win. As ever, that one was Rafael Nadal, who has now stretched his domination over Fernando Verdasco to 12 matches without a loss. There’s surely bad blood there. Verdasco’s tepid handshake at the end said it all, or what little the hopelessly poor match hadn’t already said for itself. That it said it at such length – something like three and a half hours – will inevitably lend the encounter some cachet. It seems axiomatic that if a tennis match is to be horrendously dull, it might as well go on for as long as possible. Think of Nadal and Djokovic in Madrid a couple of years ago, when they played out the longest best of three match in history. It certainly felt like it at the time.

David Ferrer and Gilles Simon set about inspiring a similar sensation a short time later. Simon had a golden chance to end the match in straight sets, but, up match point, he crucially thought better of it. Then he thought better of it another four times. It went the distance. Nadal and Verdasco produced an even 100 unforced errors between them, whilst Ferrer and Simon topped that by some considerable margin, quite a feat considering both their games are based around hitting the ball in at any cost.

For a wonder, of the three Spaniards who lost today, Nicolas Almagro conducted himself with the most on-court reserve – both Ferrer and Verdasco dropped their bundles repeatedly – although he was admittedly the farthest from winning. Perhaps his heart wasn’t in it. His opponent, Tomas Berdych, remained merely solid, which today that was more than enough to guarantee a win. Given the prevailing vibe, Monfils v Kohlschreiber thus had Carnival of Suck written all over it, so it was surprising when the Frenchman proved similarly unflappable, and watched on with idle curiosity as the German fell in a heap. The match was not necessarily more enjoyable as a result, but it was over quicker. It’s odd how these things change, almost as though there’s a roster in place. Two rounds ago Kohlschreiber stood by while Roddick disintegrated. Meanwhile, in the quarterfinal Monfils will face Djokovic, which is unfailingly his cue to go haywire.

Leave a Comment

Filed under ATP Tour

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

August 18, 2011

Raging Impotence

Cincinnati Masters, First and Second Rounds

The centrepiece of the week so far has been Andy Roddick’s lamentable capitulation to Philipp Kohlschreiber – belatedly lamented – a mental collapse that was almost out of character, punctuated by an utterly characteristic set-to with the umpire. Denied ready access to the flak-happy Fergus Murphy, Roddick instead channelled his ire at Carlos Bernardes, whose crime had been to punish Roddick with a point-penalty on a break point. The raging impotence of the subsequent outburst revealed a man still very much in the initial, essentially-Learesque phase of his decline, although its insipid pettiness and lowgrade thugishness has proved to be an enduring leitmotif for Roddick’s entire career.

The upset of the week saw Jo-Wilfried Tsonga collapse to Alex Bogomolov Jr., in its way a bigger shock than Andy Murray’s loss to the same man back in March, which at the time I likened to electrodes to the genitals. Murray had been in a slump, and Tsonga has played beautifully since Queens. Not today. Andy Murray, incidentally, is in another slump, but was fortunate to encounter in David Nalbandian a man who has forgotten more about playing disappointing tennis than even Murray may ever learn. It was billed as the day’s marquee matchup, and so the disappointment was compounded.

Yesterday’s marquee matchup saw Federer avenge some losses dating back to last decade to a frankly underdone Juan Martin del Potro. Federer hardly looked like losing, although for a while, as he tossed away break points like confetti, he didn’t look much like winning either. The second set thus developed into something of an impasse. At 5/5 in the second, the man they call Juan Martin del Potro resolved the stand-off by breaking himself. Federer then served it out to love, apart from two forehands he hit out for no reason. Until then, he’d served beautifully.

Michael Llodra’s attacking game  has never enjoyed success on the fast North American hardcourts, and there’s really no good reason why. He saw off Mikhail Youzhny in a ripping first rounder, suggesting that his time had come. Then he lost to Verdasco, somehow and easily, proving that for a Frenchman on a roll ‘no good reason’ remains reason enough. Verdasco next faces Nadal, in the most concentrated part of the Spanish half of the draw. Nearer the top, David Ferrer returned to tour duties, and saw off Grigor Dimitrov deep in the third, yet another of those matches that Dimitrov could have won to announce his arrival, the types of wins that his near-contemporaries have used to leapfrog him in the ‘next-big-thing’ stakes. Less a Baby Federer than a Baby Haas, then.

The other big story of the week is that Andrei Golubev has put together his longest winning streak since early March: one. In between he lost a truly heroic 18 matches. In the opening match of the year at the Hopman Cup, I watched Golubev blast the anointed Novak Djokovic off the court for a set and a bit. Now he sits at 4-22 for the year, and only narrowly failed to capture the record for worst losing streak in ATP history (21 matches and still held by Vince Spadea, who from his Twitter posts I gather is both illiterate and insane). Anyway, Golubev’s treasured win was over Stan Wawrinka, who had seemed to be rounding into some form, and his inevitable loss the following round was to Radek Stepanek.

Leave a Comment

Filed under ATP Tour

August 15, 2011

Resistance Is Futile

Montreal Masters, Final

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

Novak Djokovic’s excellent gambol through 2011 continues untrammelled, although for all that it has ranked among the most impressive runs in men’s tennis history, it is only now that he has captured a significant record. He has become the first man ever to claim five Masters 1000 events in a single season. (The manliness of this achievement has been appropriately commemorated.) Contrary to what some have written, he has not swept them all, since Nadal won Monte Carlo; a minor quibble, given it’s just Monte Carlo and Djokovic declined to play. There are three remaining in 2011 – with one already underway in Cincinnati – and who’s to say he won’t claim one of them, or all of them? Certainly the rest of the men’s tour seems to have scant say in the matter.

Such considerations usher weightier records into view, most particularly McEnroe’s unsurpassed 1984, in which he lost just three matches, and won 84. Federer came within a few points of replicating that in 2005, before he fell to Nalbandian in the Masters Cup final. Djokovic now stands at 53-1, and at a rough guess I would say he has another nine or so events to play before year’s end, assuming Serbia makes the Davis Cup final. 31 more wins and two more losses is a tough ask, especially across a stretch that will feature the US Open (which he has never won) and the World Tour Finals (which he has). It seems like a long shot, but Djokovic has proved the folly of positing limits based on mere history. Then again, I have a quite irrational feeling that he won’t be winning the US Open. If pressed I couldn’t say why.

Possibly it is because he wasn’t all that far away from not winning Montreal. Given how lustily I sang Mardy Fish’s legitimacy as a top ten player just yesterday, it was gratifying when he set about living up to it today, although it is possible he was motivated by something other than a desire to prove me right. Either way, he has supplanted Gael Monfils at No.7, and so it was fitting that his loss to the world No.1 contrasted so radically to the Frenchman’s effort two rounds earlier. Monfils checked out early and thoroughly, while Fish shrugged off a hugely disappointing first set to make a real match of it in the second. He has now lost more Masters finals than Andy Murray has major finals, but unlike the Scot he invariably goes down fighting. His third set wasn’t bad either, besides a couple of game when it couldn’t have gone worse. Unforced errors flowed, and Djokovic was suddenly everywhere.

This sudden ubiquity also provided the most telling moment of the week. During a change over in the Federer-Tsonga match, a tediously lightweight interview with Djokovic appeared on the Jumbotron. Distracted, Federer glanced up. A sardonic smile ghosted his lips. Then his expression collapsed into disgust, he shook his head, leaped up and strode back out onto court, well before Lahyani could call time. Djokovic was in the great Swiss’ head. He is in everyone’s head. Resistance is futile.

Leave a Comment

Filed under ATP Tour

Tagged as , ,

August 14, 2011

A Comforting Thought

Montreal Masters, Semifinals

Fish d. Tipsarevic, 6/3 6/4

When Mardy Fish assumed the mantle of the top ranked US male tennis player, there was a widespread and mostly justified belief that his ascent owed as much to Andy Roddick’s decline as anything else. Fish himself was neither slow nor coy in agreeing, and he remains manically diffident in all matters Davis Cup, insisting to anyone straying into earshot that Roddick is still the main man. That’s generous, especially since they recently combined so perfectly against Spain, but there’s a difference between playing second fiddle and taking up the viola. US fans were probably right in hoping their top player would assert himself a little more. The United States hasn’t gotten to where it is by not throwing its weight around, loudly.

Reaching the quarterfinals at Wimbledon was a stride in the right direction, given that it is both a surface that should suit Fish’s game, and a tournament that American fans associate with excellence, even if Roddick himself associates it with crushing losses to Federer. But it has always been on the North American hardcourts that Fish’s finest results have accrued – passive voice intended – suggesting that the goodwill of his compatriots means as much to him as whatever the court is made of. His perennially poor showings on foreign hardcourts – from Australia and Asia to the European indoors – attest to this. As the tour returned to the States, patriotic eyes – wept dry after Houston – were typically merciless, unblinking.

So far so good. Fish defended his Atlanta title, if barely, before being hustled out of LA by Ernests Gulbis. Pulling out of Washington hardly endeared him to the tournament organisers, who were rightly worried that the event might consequently disappoint, a worry that proved justified. Still, it turned out to be a scheduling masterstroke from Fish. Thus rested, he has ambled through to the final of the Montreal Masters, the only person not named Novak Djokovic to do so. Mostly interestingly, until today he had progressed without playing very well at all. The quarterfinal against Stan Wawrinka was particularly uninspired. He and his fans should be encouraged by this. Until now, Fish’s greatest accomplishments – including his top ten ranking – have always come when he performs at his limits, if not beyond them (see Indian Wells in 2008). This week, aided by a miraculously cleared draw, he has managed to progress to a fourth Masters final without impressing anyone, even if today he was clearly a class above Janko Tipsarevic.

His manifest superiority over the Serbian No.3 justifies a moment’s diversion. Montreal has been arguably the highwater mark of Tipsarevic’s career, if we set aside last year’s Davis Cup final, in which he personally contributed little more than stomach ulcers for the home crowd. He will enter the top twenty tomorrow, for the first time in his career. He hasn’t won a tournament yet, but I’ve no doubt he is good enough to, and seeing a No.20 next to his name doesn’t seem unreasonable. But he was no match for Fish, who smartly opted out of trading groundstrokes with his opponent, and surged netward almost constantly. Fish looked like a top ten player. Not a top ten player playing out of his mind, naturally, but nonetheless like a top ten player. Whether he wins the final or not, he will rise to No.7 when the rankings are released on Monday.

Coming into the US summer, the looming question was always whether Fish could defend his points from last year’s Cincinnati final. It is to his credit that the question has become less important than it might have been. His portfolio of strong results has grown sufficiently diverse that he is protected from the odd poor week. Indeed, he could pull out of Cincinnati next week and he would probably fall no lower than No.9. It’s a comforting thought, something to hang onto while Djokovic tears him to pieces tomorrow.

Leave a Comment

Filed under ATP Tour

Tagged as ,

August 12, 2011

Federer-like

Montreal Masters, Second and Third Rounds

(13) Tsonga d. (3) Federer, 7/6 4/6 6/1

Dodig d. (2) Nadal, 1/6 7/6 7/6

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga this evening defeated Roger Federer in an enthralling three set encounter that recalled last month’s Wimbledon quarterfinal, in vibe if not in shape. As in London, it was the Frenchman’s willingness to damn caution in the big moments – damn its eyes! – that proved decisive. Federer on the other hand, never deployed a commensurate boldness when it mattered most. Indeed, an uncharacteristic lack of fearlessness on the part of the big names has so far defined the week, though not as succinctly as the fact that most of them have lost.

Both points render my pretensions as a tennis analyst questionable. Following Murray’s loss to Kevin Anderson, I went on at some length about how the Scot appears to lack whichever instinct allows his peers to transition so fluently and suddenly into attack when pressed. I don’t think I was wrong about Murray, but both Federer and Nadal displayed little fight in their losses, and almost no willingness to push back when pressed. Nadal was arguably justified in thinking Ivan Dodig would prove incapable of sustaining attack for as long he did. But Federer had no excuse, since Tsonga proved as recently as last month that he can not only sustain that level, but elevate it if permitted to. As the commentator remarked tonight during that remarkable third set, Tsonga grew ‘Federer-like’. Federer, it hardly needs to be said, didn’t.

For their parts, Murray and Nadal certainly played their matches all wrong, but they were still unfortunate to have flat days against journeymen playing the matches of their lives. I don’t mean ‘journeyman’ in any derisory sense, but both Anderson’s and Dodig’s elevated form in securing such extravagant upsets was thrown into sharp relief when each lost with scant fuss in the following round, to Wawrinka and Tipsarevic respectively. Tsonga may be ranked a modest 16, but since the clay season ended he has surely numbered among the top five or six players in the world, not merely on results on but on raw ability. Federer would have done better to treat him as such, and to approach tonight’s match a semifinal. This is only amplified when we consider that Tsonga has somehow transformed himself into a tough matchup for Federer, an impressive feat against the greatest and most complete player of the era. Bear in mind that the calm assurance with which Tsonga served out tonight’s match – and their Wimbledon quarterfinal – was nowhere in evidence against Bernard Tomic yesterday. The standard word on Tsonga before this year was that for all he was an impressive physical specimen, he was streaky, and that pronounced technical deficiencies in his service return and backhand would ultimately curtail his ascent up the rankings, even if he could dodge injury. He seems to have addressed those concerns, if in an atypical – and therefore typically French – way. To take one example, if top coaches were invited to compile a list of ways to improve Tsonga’s backhand, the idea of incorporating a seemingly gratuitous one-handed passing shot to his repertoire would probably not feature. And yet he has, and it is certainly working. He hardly ever misses with that thing, and it looks more natural than his two-hander. It capped off his most Federer-like point of the match, in which he ran down a drop-volley and flicked the backhand cross-court for a winner.

With that said, the drop-volley hadn’t been very good, and was only necessitated by an approach driven conveniently at the waiting Tsonga’s forehand. From memory, it was a breakpoint. It was a terrible lapse on Federer’s part, one of several, all of which revealed an underlying caution. He played not to miss, and to be fair he didn’t miss much. But neither did Tsonga, and the bits of the court that Tsonga didn’t miss were all closer to the lines.

Inevitably, parallels will be drawn between this match and the pair’s encounter two years ago on the same court, which was similar in shape but not in vibe. In that match, Federer had led 5/1 in the third, before losing the match in a tiebreaker. Of course, he was invited to ruminate on the connection afterwards. Characteristically, he showed little inclination to do so: ‘Two years ago he [Tsonga] didn’t really deserve the victory. I believe he played a lot better today, and he deserved it today. Two years ago I think he was lucky to pull out the win. Tonight he played well and he played extraordinary shots as we know he can do. I was not able to do that.’ This seems true enough, but it begs the question: was the issue that Federer was not able to play extraordinary shots, or that he just didn’t attempt them?

2 Comments

Filed under ATP Tour

Tagged as , , , , ,

August 10, 2011

The Big Flaw

Montreal Masters, Second Round

Anderson d. (4) Murray, 6/3 6/1

Kevin Anderson today defeated two-time defending champion Andy Murray in two astonishingly straight sets. It was clearly the upset of the day, although it may not rank in the top five for the year, even for Murray. Anderson is several classes above Donald Young and Alex Bogomolov, and today he played well. Still, it was upsetting enough, and the world No.4 will shed nearly a thousand points, which might have seen his ranking threatened had either Soderling or Ferrer turned up. They haven’t, so he’s safe for now.

Anderson performed strongly, imposing and probing, and for a man of his height he is surprisingly mobile, a trait that was widely lauded after his gallant loss to Djokovic in Miami. The lopsided scoreline might conceivably inspire the assumption that Anderson’s serve was impregnable, and certainly the combination of steepling bounce and 65% didn’t make Murray’s task easy. But the South African served only 5 aces, so the Scot’s task was at least feasible. Really, it was Anderson’s willingness to press the attack behind the serve and the return that proved decisive. Murray seemed discontent enough to let him, in full retrieval mode, scampering dourly, until his opponent eventually put him away. Anderson was potent off the ground, especially on his approaches.

That is by some considerable margin the most baffling thing about Murray, the way that defence and attack are so discretely separated in his mind, the way it is one or the other. The three men ranked above him – and now far above him – are rightly famed not only for their capacity to transition immediately to offence, but also for their willingness to. When pressed, they grow bold. For Murray, however, it is usually either one or the other and whole sets can go by without a perceptible shift in approach. Generally the approach is pre-determined according to his opponent. He usually goes all out against Nadal, and is impressive until he unravels. Nadal by now realises that he must merely weather the initial tempest. Faced with Andy Roddick in the Queens semifinal, Murray calibrated himself for maximum hostility – inspiring Roddick’s plea to ‘keep it social’ – and it was a definitive display. Two days later he saw off Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the final, having flicked the switch in his brain to Defensive. Tsonga dove and smashed his way to a lead, but couldn’t finish it, and so Murray was largely vindicated.

Today, by Murray’s own admission, he fell behind early, and thereafter the requirement to break Anderson’s serve proved overwhelming. This is precisely the situation in which Nadal, Djokovic and Federer get busy, but Murray opted merely to dial down the intensity further. It is forgivable to begin sets badly – that happens to everyone, even Djokovic – but to then end them badly suggests you were either facing someone much better than you (which he wasn’t) or that there is a problem with your approach. In the press conference afterwards he bemoaned the fact that ‘nothing was working’. Admittedly, we’ve all had days like that, but we’re not all world No.4, a two-time defending champion, and facing a guy who has never broken the top 30. At least, I’m assuming we’re not. Honestly, I’m not certain what the match would have looked like if what Murray was doing had been working. There is only so much mastery you can bring to bear when your game plan consists of defending until your opponent misses, especially when he isn’t.

Leave a Comment

Filed under ATP Tour

Tagged as ,

August 8, 2011

Deuced Flat

Washington, Final

Stepanek d. (1) Monfils, 6/4 6/4

Radek Stepanek today defeated Gael Monfils in straight sets in the Washington final, a putative upset that has been widely attributed to the vagaries of scheduling, as though a poor Monfils performance requires any explication from external sources. He looked deuced flat, make no mistake, but some regard the lithe Frenchman as the greatest pure athlete the sport has yet witnessed, and it isn’t as though a night match with John Isner saps ones stamina to quite the degree that an extended tussle with, say, Novak Djokovic would. There were also a couple of lengthy and restful rain delays, which allowed viewers to revisit the quarterfinals from the day before, in case we hadn’t yet tired of the commentators mangling Victor Troicki’s name: Trow-eeki. The semifinal had ended late, but it was hardly the turn-around demanded by the apparently Super Saturday.

It’s more accurate – if less helpful – to say that Monfils played badly for the same reason he usually does, which is to say none. These performances generally occur out of nowhere, usually signalling the end of an upward trend in his form, a subito piano at the peak of a crescendo. Think back to last year’s US Open, when an imposing passage through the early rounds counted for nothing against Djokovic in the quarterfinals, a match in which Monfils barely seemed to be playing tennis at all. Frequently the crescendo carries him to a final, but rarely further. His record in finals is now a dismal 3-11. There’s an issue here.

Stepanek’s finals record is now a more respectable 5-7. Today’s victory has neatly halved his ranking to 27, which means that he will be seeded for the US Open. This will be a relief for him, but an even greater relief for the other seeds. A wily veteran on a fast hardcourt, Stepanek is a truly unattractive prospect in the early rounds.

1 Comment

Filed under ATP Tour

Tagged as ,

August 7, 2011

Luck of the Draw: Montreal 2011

The Montreal Masters draw has been released, and as usual bad vibrations are thrumming the ether: it’s all rigged, and your favourite player has the toughest draw since the Challenge Round was abolished, which as I understand it required William Renshaw to battle seven top opponents simultaneously, who would periodically combine into a Voltron-like mega-robot. My grasp of the details might be shaky, but I think I have the fundamental concept right. Anyway, you know the drill. Winning will be a tough out.

So let’s save some time. Federer and Djokovic again share a half, as do Nadal and Murray. This happens a lot, and the odds on it happening so often are small. Three things to bear in mind:

  1. The odds on it happening are not zero.
  2. It didn’t happen in Miami, Madrid or Rome.
  3. Let it go.

Moving on, who has the toughest draw out of the top four? Djokovic. Will someone from outside the top four win the event? Probably not, given that all four are playing, which is the sole precondition of one of them winning a Masters event (especially in Canada, where they’ve shared the last seven titles). I suppose Soderling won the Paris Indoors last year, but Nadal didn’t turn up. Soderling hasn’t turned up in Montreal, so winning this one might be a long shot. Ferrer, Roddick and Melzer are also no-shows. Curiously, the draw looks no leaner for their absence, which I don’t mean as an insult. Anyway, who will win? I don’t know. Andy Murray is the two-time defending champion. Maybe him. Maybe not.

As for the rest, there are enticing first round matchups littered throughout. Gulbis should beat Ferrero, but only if he retains his form from Los Angeles, so pencil Ferrero in for that one. Nalbandian versus Wawrinka will almost certainly prove disappointing, a succinct demonstration that good players out of form are indistinguishable from bad players. Granted a wildcard, Bernard Tomic will face a qualifier first up. For his own good, he should have been a qualifier. Wimbledon proved that. For shotmaking, try Haas and Tipsarevic; for short points at either extreme of the sex-bomb scale, try Stepanek and Lopez; for tightroped flair and near-certain mental collapse, you could do worse than Gasquet and Mayer. Or better.

Leave a Comment

Filed under ATP Tour