Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Zoo York, Zoo York: The last Slam of the year and who will stop Herr Federer and fan reports as well

Zoo York, Zoo York: The last Slam of the year and who will stop Herr Federer

Well at this moment I can’t be bothered doing a proper write up for this event and maybe it’s the 3 day 1st round, the fact the World Athletic Champs are on at the moment. So I will do my best to provide something relevant to the US Open tennis.

Flushing Meadow well what a place, it’s hard to be too complimentary to an event that has Stupid Saturday otherwise known as Super Saturday, has the final set decided by tiebreakers, cause the local population don’t have the attention span to handle an advantage 5th set, yet can watch baseball and we all know the US Open is a slave to TV demands.

Onto the event itself well Federer got the Xmas section with all qualifers and the fact that big John Isner beat the Shark, will mean that for the first 3 rounds, he will face qualifier, qualifier or qualifier/Wildcard. This will just mean that he will have some good hitting before the matches that he needs to win will come around.

Just going through some of the 1st round results, well Isner winning was a surprise I thought Nieminen would have enough guile to get through, but the big man handled the occasion quite well and has a very winnable match against de Voest.

LaLo give Ferrero a straight set hiding and this is a strange result, though the last time they played in Stuttgart LaLo was playing quite well and the quick conditions helped his serve, but knowing when either of these two will play well is just a lucky guess and now LaLo plays big Andreev, hope Igor ends the LaLo adventure and I’d fancy his chances against Gasquet more so than LaLo.

Berdych had a solid win over Gicquel and will be hopeful of a strong showing here and that Verdasco defeats Simon, cause the annoying Simon is poison for Berdman’s game and also cause Simon is a flea and he would be fodder for Roddick.

Lucho and Luczak, well I am happy that one player that the blog likes made the 2nd round and in this one it was impossible for it not to happen. Lucho won 7-6 6-3 7-6 and saved set points and now plays Alamgro, it’s a match he can win for sure and he is better on hardcourt than Mucho and hope he has learnt something from the Båstad loss.

Other matches in this round:

- Chucho should beat Che and more than likely play Roddick and that should end his involvement in this event.

- Koubek plays big Querrey and this could either be a beatdown by Sam or Stef could play one of those matches where he decides to turn up and show what he can do, but he never does well at the US Open, so that isn’t likely.

- Big Mike Russell plays Blake and he has seemed to have pissed a lot of people off and got stiff draws, but hope he can make Blake hit a lot of balls and then Blake can start missing, cause Russ needs a break at this level.

- Seppi/Calleri: I want Seppi to win mainly cause he is a better match up for Hewitt than Calleri is and at least a player I like makes the 2nd round as well and then will play Hewitt.

- Santoro got Montanes and should get the W here and Pavel got a nice section of the draw and hope he takes advantage of this and beats that big serving buffoon Meffert.

Last of all the King Hernandez is out against “Baby Ali” Tsonga and this one won’t be easy, but anything can happen and also he is playing with Hartfield in the doubles, there are some women who would quite like that team.

Who will stop Federer? Injury or illness is the likely answer.

Montreal and Cincinnati Review

Montreal/Cincinnati review

Lovely Montreal the pride of Quebec and also saw an interesting result within the tennis sphere, but whether to say that it was a changing of the guard or just a blip on the radar is something that will be found out in a very short time.

Novak Djokovic the young cheeky but very ambitious Serbian won Montreal and he did the very rare achievement of defeating of defeating the top 3 seeds Roddick, Nadal and Federer in the event to win his second TMS title of 2007. It seems that while Nole is competent on all surfaces that his best one is a slow hardcourt and he is able to impose his game with more ease on this surface than on clay or grass for example.

Defeating Roddick these days in North America isn’t what it used to be, but still a good achievement nevertheless and best of all was that he didn’t have to play that well to do it and that is always a good sign of a player with a lot of confidence that is able to win and be nowhere near their best.

Once the Duck was taken care of, then it was onto his old foe Rafael “famooos ass” Nadal who had been vulnerable throughout the event and it was a testament to his will to win that he was able to make the semis despite playing a significantly lower level than usual. This was down to his will to win and also down to the fact that Paul-Henri Mathieu after a great comeback against Willy Cañas being a set and 4-0 down, then only lost 1 game for the match, was in a winning position against Nadal with a set and a multitude of break points in the 2nd set, but was unable to take them and deep down it’s doubtful as to whether he has the self-belief to defeat Nadal despite playing some good tennis against him and the 6-0 in the head to head statistics, pretty much indicates this.

Montreal was lit up by Frankie “goes to Montreal” Dancevic, who played very well in this event before losing to Nadal and he does remind of the young Federer in the way that he plays, though he is more reliant on his serve and he had been playing some quality tennis beforehand defeating del Potro, Odesnik and Verdasco who got all shitty when the crowd decided to support Frankie and that carried him to victory and Verdasco forgot his geographical lessons when he said about the Quebecois crowd “what country is this Africa”. He like Mathieu had chances against Nadal and played a blinder of a 1st set, but he wasn’t able to sustain that level, now hope he qualifies for the US Open.

Nole unlike the other guys was able to keep sustained pression ( cause it’s such a cool word) on Nadal and while the others lack belief they could win, this is something that Djokovic does not lack and he was able to serve well to keep the ass picker off balance and then able to punish the short balls that came his way and also when Djokovic came into the net, it wasn’t like “oh what the fuck am I doing here”, he came on his own terms and was able to make the volleys. The key in this match was the 5-5 in the 1st set, when he was down break points and then pression was on, he saved them with courageous play and some big serving and then broke Nadal to take the set. The second set continued on that path of Nole dominating and executing his game plan and it got him the win and ironically this was Nadal’s best match of the week.

The final between Federer and Djokovic, well it was not a classic at all, but the result was a very good one for tennis, but the question lies has it signalled a shift in the balance of the game, obviously it’s not going to happen in one event, but all shifts like this need a beginning and personally it would be good if that was it.

Federer has never been the most complimentary about Djokovic, this is probably due to the ham acting that Djokovic has been known to do in his matches with strategic timeouts at important times. Personally from the experiences I have had with him and seen him around the courts, he interacts well with people and has a personality unlike some robots, this is definitely a foul stain as a player he does not need these antics at all, the one in the Davis Cup when Nole did it to Wawrinka and then as he said in his own words, which was censored for some reason, that after the break that “he was running around like a rabbit”. Yes, he had breathing problems earlier in his career, but those have been sorted now.

Cincy

Once again it showed what a dumb move it is to play back to back Masters events and Federer won the event while playing poorly predictably overcoming James Blake who bends over for him when they play their matches and this was no different.

Not much more to say on this event.