Aus Open Day 1 Blog sorry for delays

Day 1

This is where the real action begins and all the stuff previously was just an entrée to the main dish. Though by the end of it I think I had a severe case of food poisoning caused by the shocking results that was caused by cross contamination of the shitty results. It will be memorable for the wrong reasons.

Calleri vs. Fleishman

Which ever way you look at it, this match should have been a nice comfortable opener for Calleri to ease into the second round and maybe he thought the same thing as well. All was going to plan with Calleri leading 5-2 with 2 breaks in the 1st set and then when serving for it, plays a loose game and what happened afterwards was shocking to say the least. Calleri then manages the feat of losing 8 games in a row to the legend of Fleishman, who probably hasn’t won 8 games since the Under 12s Kosher Cup and he takes the 1st set 7-5 and then lead 4-1 in the second. Calleri then wakes up and takes the next 5 games with some good backhands and dominating the rallies like he should be doing against this jabroni.

Now at 1 set all and Calleri should win in 4 sets, but big Zack has more confidence now and even that knucklehead forehand is working well and he is able to hold his serve and then Calleri throws in a game of comedic errors on serve and the Zackster got the break without having to do anything.

Then the 4th set was a combination of Fleishman playing well and Calleri mixing in a few good shots with about a 6 to 1 ratio of crap to good, missed backhands, woeful forehands and gave away another serve with 4 errors. Fleishman was good enough to take it out, but it’s disappointing to see a guy of Calleri’s talent have such a shit GS record. He allegedly had some back problems again, as he has had in the past. Even so this definitely ranks as a poor performance.

Koubek vs. Arthurs

Koubek starts well and is aggressive and easily wins the 1st set with good passing shots and Arthurs not serving to his best, but is getting beaten down. The 2nd set is closer, but Koubek is still in control of the match when the rallies were engaged and he takes the 2nd set in the tiebreaker.

The pattern continues on with Arthurs serving and volleying and Koubek hitting good passing shots and they get into the breaker and Koubek has a break as well. This in most cases would mean a routine 3 sets win for Koubek, but Arthurs starts going for more and gets the 3rd set.

With the crowd behind him, Arthurs feeds off them and Koubek is still in cautious mode in not trying to lose match instead of taking it by the balls and winning it. He is pushing the ball in court and Arthurs is taking advantage and knocking off the volleys.

Koubek then takes a break for a 2-0 lead and that should be good enough in theory against a guy who has no groundstrokes. But he became tentative again and it got to the point where Arthurs was dominating from the baseline and when it gets to that level you know something is wrong and Arthurs broke 2 times and was able to stage the comeback. Koubek has every right to be pissed off with his performance, had this match in the bag, but managed to lose it. This is classified as dickhead performance number 2.

Acasuso vs. Querrey

This was the first time I have seen Querrey live and he has the typical Yank game of flat groundies and the big first serve, movement will always be the problem for him. He seems to have a good temperament and has weapons, he will struggle on clay, but do well on the other surfaces.

Chucho is shit first up after a break and his team tried something different with the preparation by not playing Auckland, this had more to do with the Davis Cup final and the stress that caused, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. He could have played in NZ and got the crap out.

As expected there was plenty of big serving, not much finesse and the first set was very tight and Acasuso won it in a tiebreaker. The match continued in the same manner except there were longer rallies with Chucho 1km behind the baseline with the big swings and Querrey a bit closer to the baseline trying to flatten his shots and Chucho played a sloppy game at 4-5 down to lose the set 6-4.

This was the key as Chucho was moping around after losing the 2nd set and hitting aimlessly and Querrey was very controlled and executed his game plan very well and ran away with the 3rd set.

Chucho was playing better, but Querrey was able to maintain his concentration and level of play, but he failed to convert his break point opportunities and he had 5 of them in one game, well he blew 2 of them as the other 3 were saved by big serves from Samuel. Then at 4-3 in the 4th, Chucho tries to be a bit more aggressive and was dominating the rallies and had 2 easy volleys which were hideous with one of them going 3m long and that cost him his serve and then big Sam served it out to record a good win and another shit GS performance from Acasuso.

Spadea vs. Andreev

Igor needs a lot of tennis to get the best out of him and he is still a long way off from there and he will be going to South America afterwards and it will be good for his knee to play on the clay.

Spadea was just too solid and was able to hit very good length and even with Andreev in form this could have been a difficult match for him. The forehand is still heavy as, but he still won’t hit a backhand.

Ferrero vs. Hajek

Well what can one say about a 3-0 retirement in the 1st set, it seems big Jan has a stomach problem, maybe it’s a pulled muscle and he had to retire in Sydney as well. The funny thing was that Hajek was allegedly checking the internet at 10.45 which is an interesting preparation for someone with an 11 am match. Then again we all have our own way of dealing with things don’t we.

Djokovic vs.Massu

Massu has been in shit form and Nole has been playing well already and the result of this match isn’t surprising though I did think Massu would get more games. Djokovic was hitting the ball very cleanly from both sides and was breaking down that rubbish backhand of Massu. If he hit the ball as hard as he grunted then he might have got 3 games in one of the sets, but Nole was toying with Massu and it’s what is known in the industry as a raping.

The 3rd set Massu checked out and thought about his flight back to Vina del Mar and played like it. When you see El Vampiro serving and volleying then you know he has given it up for the day.

Glad to watch some tennis, but pissed off with all the shit results on this day.