Andreas Vinciguerra : The Long Road Back

Ever since the retirement of Magnus Norman and to a lesser extent Magnus Gustafsson, who did well in the lower level clay events, but couldn’t convert that to success in the big clay events retired, there has been a distinct lack of ability to play on clay by the Swedish players.

From the days of the golden generation of the 80s where even Stefan Edberg who was not at his best on the clay, yet won TMS events and made an RG final to prove that he was very effective on the surface, that many of the Swedes were proficient on the surface, but changed with the retirement of Norman.

The current crop of Swedish players range from indoor idiots thanks Aphex for that term which include mostly Joachim Johansson with his huge canon of serve and to a lesser extent Robin “the Toad” Söderling who has been able to secure some good wins on clay, he lacks consistency to the other guys like Björkman and Thomas Johansson who have never been good on the surface doesn’t help things.

“Vinci” for those who don’t know is a Swedish-Italian, his Italian dad runs a pizzeria in Malmö in the deep south of Sweden where they speak a special dialect which is like eating mouth full of food with a throat problem speaking Swedish and sounding like a Dane and “Vinci” does have the special accent and his mother is Swedish. “Vinci” is good friends with the Ian Thorpe lookalike Zlatan Ibrahimovic, both are from the same city and share an immigrant background, as well having their particular issues with the police at different time.

Vinci was a top 10 junior and he started the year of 1999 ranked at 633 and he finished it ranked 98 and that was a massive leap showing his potential and made his first tour final in Båstad as a WC losing to Cheech Marin and then winning a challenger over the same guy later in the year.

This was a good start for Vinci and I remember when saw him in Båstad that year when he defeated my countryman Christian Ruud in the semis and he played a game quite similar to Muster in the way that he would try and dominate with his heavy left hand forehand with heavy topspin and his fighting hard and running down a lot of shots and he quickly became a favourite with the fans and myself, but even then his backhand was a liability, but it was hard to get to that side.

So I made the annual trip to Melbourne to watch him play and there were plenty of Swedish fans there to support him and saw his first match with Hernan Gumy who didn’t win any prizes for aesthetics when it came to his tennis, but Vinci blew him and Leander Paes away, before losing to Escude.

The funniest thing about that year was that he won his only title the Copenhagen indoor which is the closest he will get to a hometown event and even funnier it was in the middle of a 4-0 head to head victories over Marat Safin who is an indoor monster and Vinci beat him Marseille in straight sets 2 weeks earlier and then beat him at the Copenhagen semis before winning over Magnus Larsson who is now his coach. Then he defeated Safin again in the US before losing to Sampras. After that he struggled on clay and got a bath from Guga at RG where he lost the first 15 games in a row, but then held out to only lose 6-3 in the 3rd.

One of the best Vinci memories was the singing and chanting during his great AO run where he made the 4th round. He defeated Medvedev easily and the Swedish fans were just singing all the way through, well at the change of ends and before the warm up and Vinci really appreciates that and after the matches he has won he speaks with the Swedish fans and jumps in the crowd and he feeds off their support a total contrast to say Thomas Enqvist.

On Show Court 3 it was a late match against big Wayne Ferreira and once the women finished the Swedes started with the songs, one of them is a silly Midsummer song which is fun to sing, but can’t translate among others and it started and while there was plenty of beer to be had, it was a carnival atmosphere, so much so, that during the warm up you couldn’t hear the names being mentioned by the umpire, so it was on for 10 minutes and then Vinci came out smoked Ferreira. When they wanted him to give a wave, he would give them a wave and when the Swedes asked him to dance then he’d dance. After that he’d lost to Kafelnikov as he had done later in the year at Bercy where he defeated Safin and also made the semis in Rome, where the Italian press wanted to adopt him cause of his Italian parentage.

2002 is where all the injury problems began and the motivational ones came in as well, as he has not played a full season since 2001, he injured a bone in his finger and had lower back problems as well. He made the 3rd round at the AO which is his favourite Slam and helped Sweden win against Brazil in Davis Cup and he loves this environment and plays for the team and not just himself, then he later he injured his knee in 2003 and had 2 months off and has been chasing time ever since.

Vinci was out from Feb 04 to July 05 where he made his comeback in Båstad. He got into some trouble and involved in a brawl with some Danes in one of the Malmö pubs, but at least he doesn’t mind going out at night which is something. He had a lot of injury problems with his ankle, feet and knee and including problems with motivation and wasn’t sure whether he wanted to come back even though he is not old as tennis players go. There were minimal steps last year and he had another operation on his foot.

Now the question is can Vinci come back and make the top 100 again. Potentially yes he is capable of doing that and how much he wants to do it as well is the key, well Boris Pashanski is an example the guy won all these challengers last year and made it in the top 70 and he is not a better player than the Vinci. Having watched him recently I am disappointed that he still hasn’t improved his backhand or maybe he has, but it is not significant. He had the time off to do and didn’t manage to do it.

He has only played 2 main draws this year in Båstad and wasn’t impressive against Dlouhy and lost to Massu in Amersfoort. Mainly this year, one thing Aphex ( the great Swede) pointed out that Vinci seems a bit slower these days on his feet and if that is so, then that will hinder him, especially since his speed around the court was one of his main assets, he might have bulked too much, then again this is not likely with Magnus Larsson as one of his coaches and big Magne wasn’t known for his strict physical regiment.

Vinci has had some good wins on the Challenger circuit and is moving up the rankings as he started at 407 for the year and is now in the 230s and he is in the quarter finals this week of another Challenger, just hope he can a few of these performances into finals or victories. He should stick to the challengers for the year and try and stay healthy as that is the key. If he keeps up with some solid performances he can finish the year within the top 200 and considering where he was a year ago where he didn’t have a ranking, he isn’t doing too badly at the moment.

2007 will be a key year to see whether he can make it back to a respectable level or not and one of the ironical things is that he was the prototype playing the Rafa Nadal game before Nadal was around, except Vinci doesn’t use all the antics in between points and or is that particular, plus Rafa just plays it better than him.

It would be great to see Vinci back in the top 100 with that huge forehand, fighting spirit and a Swede that can play on consistently, the thing he has on his side is that he is not old and even if he doesn’t come back to somewhere near his former level, then I can appreciate watching him on the small courts in a football like atmosphere which was always quiet once play started, but very loud when he broke a serve or was doing well. It’s not everyday some player gets 10 mins of cheering before the match and during the warm up, but Mr Charisma Sampras never got that.

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