The first day was so overcast and rainy, the courts played like Hamburg. On this day there were some great results well personally anyway. The "Peruvian Pearl" Lucho Horna beating Richard Gasquet more details in my previous entry, then he defeated Chucho Acasuso, one of his friends and then lost in the 3rd round to the crafty and sexy Radek Stepanek, who used an injury timeout at the beginning of the 3rd set to break the momentum and it worked, more on Radek later.
On the same day, we had a bit of needle in the Andy Murray and del Potro match, which is always good for the entertainment value. del Potro hits a few balls at Murray at the net, which is perfectly legal, then Murray says something about it. Juan replies about Murray acting like his mother and how it's always the same. Here is the link to the incident . The commentators in this Jason Goodall and Robbie Koening, wanting some biffo out of this, good for the game.
Rafael Nadal finally lost a match on clay this year to Juan Carlos Ferrero and of course the excuse makers are out there, trying to justify blisters as an injury. They aren't an injury and medical science backs that up. Sure, with the ridiculous schedule that is in place for the clay season, that is another post. He played 10 singles matches in the last 2 weeks and won easily for all of them apart from the set against Ferrer in the Barcelona final.
All this does is take away from the performance of Ferrero who tactically played a very good match and was able to execute his plan to the letter. While not a huge fan of Ferrero, too many tend to forget about how good he was on clay from 2000-2003, his forehand was one of the biggest and the speed as well. He will never get back to that level, the game has passed him by mostly, sure he can have the odd moments of brilliance, but not the day in, day out consistency of previous years. Not surprisingly he lost to finalist Stani Wawrinka in the next round, different day, different match up and it's always difficult to follow the big win, with another one in the next round.
The courts started playing the way they normally do in Rome, which is very fast. With Nadal gone, all eyes were on Federer to take another title, but this was killed by "Thunder Lips" Stepanek in the quarter finals, playing some aggressive, clever attacking tennis. The serve was working very well, and that made it easy to put his plan into process. He has pushed Federer before and Radek doesn't mind getting in the face of opponents, it works for him and also the crowd being so pro-Federer, made the win even sweeter for Thunder Lips and he pulled out the worm, which is never a bad thing
The semis were decided by retirements. Stani Wawrinka played only 3 games and then "Duckboy" Roddick, who had to play such clay legends as Fish and Bolelli, then beating his pigeon Robredo for a place in the semis, decided to call it a day with back spams. If this wasn't bad enough for the crowd. Thunder Lips was down 6-0 1-0 and pulled the pin against Djokovic, with nausea and he didn't look right, and both Roddick and Stepanek have decided to be cautious and withdraw from Hamburg.
Djokovic definitely had a charmed life in making the final, having a Bye in the 1st round, then having retirements from Almagro in the QFs and Stepanek in the semis. Unlike Wawrinka who made the semis in Barcelona last week, then had to play Safin on Monday, he got his Bye on Saturday, but he has played a lot of tennis.
The final was quite a good match, with Stani starting well and keeping Djokovic back with solid serving and not making errors and he took the 1st set, he really had to win the final in 2 sets, because Djokovic was so much fresher and that was going to count the longer the match went. This, plus in addition to Djokovic adjusting his game, moving forward more and taking charge in the rallies, he was able to expose Wawrinka's forehand and by the end of the match, Wawrinka was not moving as well and leaking errors on the forehand side, he played well, but Djokovic's extra experience in these situations and freshness counted in this match and he deserved the victory.
Welcome to the top 10 for Wawrinka, he still has some significant improvements to make, but fantastic achievement for the pleasant and likable individual.
Big cheers to my friend James, who was calling the lines and saw you on the TV during the Blake vs. Seppi match, which was one of the worst I have seen and both players didn't deserve to make it through to the next round.
1 comment:
Good for Wawrinka to make the top 10 and it was a lot chance for Andreev.
Djokovic took advantage as he should of his breaks.
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