With 4 events going on at the moment, there is a bit to go through, but so far there haven't been many major surprises, it seems that there is more interest in who is not playing the Australian Open, than the tennis action itself, but that will discussed at some point in the near future.
Starting in Adelaide from a personal view the tournament has gone quite well, even though Lleyton Hewitt is still in it. Tomas Berdych today got his revenge against Andy Murray from Basel 7-6 4-6 6-1. Their matches could be quite interesting in the future, while Berdych has the firepower and the extra weapons, Murray is very strong in the mind and barring injury should be one of the better players during his career. Berdych has made the quarters and has continued his form from the end of 2005, it will be interesting to see how he goes when the real stuff comes along.
Andreas Seppi had a very good win yesterday over James Blake who is at his best on this kind of surface. Blake is a very good athlete and hits the ball very well, but he is tactically limited, which is disappointing, considering he is one of the brighter players around. Seppi has come along slowly, but made very good progress in 05 qualifying for quite a few TMS events and having some good wins along the way. He says he likes playing on hardcourts and also in the after match interview said he was trying to improve his attacking game, just hope he has improved that forehand as it is a clear weakness.
Jarkko Nieminen and Xavier Malisse have started well and just hope that "the Shark" can win a title this year, he is good enough to do it, just hope he doesn't become passive as he has at times.
It was good to see Younes El Aynaoui win a match in Doha, where there is a large Moroccan community and it is a home tournament for him and beating Seb Grosjean was a big win for him and sadly he couldn't keep up against Dmitry Tursunov, who is very talented and erratic, just hope that he can overcome his injury problems and plays promising Frenchman Gael Monfils, in which could be an entertaining match, especially if Tursunov is on, but trying to guess when that is isn't very easy.
Roger Federer, just keeps on going and today plays the cheeky and smiling Cypriot Marcos Baghdatis who did well to beat LaLo (Feliciano Lopez) and hopefully he can show some of his entertaining brand of tennis against Federer and he must be getting sick of seeing Federer, but it is all a good learning experience for him and hopefully he will be fitter than he has been in the past.
The Hopman Cup the exhibition event that is, well the Netherlands have qualified for the final and they deserve it. Wessels and Krajicek have played well together and Kiefer did the right thing by withdrawing especially if he has back spasms and this isn't worth him putting the Australian Open in jeopardy, in spite what some people think about taking this event seriously. Gaudio won a match, I hope Franco Davin can get him into gear, though he has his girlfriend with him and I don't think that will be beneficial for his tennis, they can be distracting things.
Chennai, is progressing along and it would be a fairly safe bet to assume either Ljubicic, Stepanek or the Chennai king Moya will win this title, it's good that India has a tour event, it would be good if they could improve the quality of the field over time.
For some players it will take longer to get into gear for the season, it depends on what happens in the off season, but many players need to be fitter than they are. It's a case of training hard and smart and maintanence during the regular season.
1 comment:
Very accurate summing-up.
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