Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Drinks always taste better in the jacuzzi

This week will be focused mostly on the Challenger circuit again, for the very simple reason that fortunately I was able to attend the Caloundra event last week.

In Costa da Sauipe, El Cabezon Almagro took out this event again, he loves the IS (for those ignorants who started following tennis 2 years ago, not that this anyone who reads this blog) clay events. It's the 8th title he has won on the clay and the second one in Brazil. They really should move this event from the wasteland resort that is Costa da Sauipe. When the event was moved here, it was because the owners of the event were sponsors of Guga and played this in a rich mans resort where nobody visits. It's good for the players, the beach is there and it's quiet, but not like Båstad or Umag.

Alex Dolgopolov made his first final and still making postive steps forward to establishing himself on tour. He will do well on the clay, he has the movement and the game, though with him it will depend on what mood he is in and this is not a bad thing. Too bad this event is a 28 player draw, these events just suck and winning a title after winning 4 matches is piss weak, but hey the big stars love it and they rule the game.


The indoor nonsense was held at Rotterdam and San Jose. In the land of tulips, great footballers and high mountains Robin "the Toad" Söderling took out Rotterdam. The Toad wasn't necessarily playing great tennis only got to do enough on the day and he managed it throughout the week. Söderling is far from a technical masterpiece in terms of stroke production, but he is effective especially indoors where he doesn't have to worry about the wind getting his high ball toss and the sun on serve, in addition to the sledgehammer like forehands.



Milos Raonic the young Montenegrin born Canadian took out the San Jose crown. Could say this year has been a meteoric rise for him. Qualified for the Aussie Open made the 4th round and now wins an ATP title very early in his career. Galo Blanco has done excellent work with Raonic already, and he is very raw so as long as he doesn't break down too often, always a factor with big guys how they are managed physically.

Challengers


Blogger favourite "King of Kaltern" Andreas Seppi won his second Bergamo title and yes he is the best player in Kaltern now after the unfortunate problems that Karin Knapp has had. Even then Seppi was the best, just like the last time he won the event. In the final it was classic slow start Seppi against the luscious Luxembourger Gilles Müller who was serving very well and playing a lot of serve/volley taking the 1st set and up an early break in the 2nd.

Seppi then starting making more shots and was able to break Müller soon after he lost serve in the second. Once he levelled at 1 set all, the crowd were into it and Müller playing the attacking tennis against the precise groundies of Seppi made the last set enjoyable, then at 4-4 Müller loses serve a combination of poor play and some excellent shots from Seppi, who serves it out to 15.

The crowd were happy with the result, Seppi's girlfriend a down to earth and very natural looking lass was shown on the stream enjoying the result, the only bad thing was seeing Romano 'I'm blinder than Stevie Wonder" Grilloti in the crowd and on court in the presentations.

Caloundra

Decided on a whim to attend this event, should have done it earlier to get some better accomodation, however that ended up being one of the better things about the tournament.

Better to get all the shit out of the system now. This was the highest paying Challenger of the week, but there was no hospitality offered to the players, no internet acess, majority of the players had to walk to the site especially if they had early matches as there was no transport unlike the set up in Burnie. The main court didn't have good enough lights so they could have night matches, this would be a better investment for the club than building extra courts so they can get a combined event. It was very warm, humid and windy at times, if they had the option for night matches, then they could start a bit later and in the evenings it's warm but not so hot to play or watch tennis. You know a place is old, when I am one of the youngest people here.

The positives were the food was much better than in Burnie and there weren't any WTA players around. Ran into Robert Smeets the Dutch born Aussie who has retired and married one of John Millman's sisters, he has 4 of them. He is doing some coaching and also studying IT at uni. Pat Rafter was around, as he lives in Noosa, there was Woodbridge and Woodforde as well.

Cervanak was playing Udomchoke in the 1st round. Cervanak has the talent but struggles mentally, he doesn't mind going crazy on the court. He was playing very well hitting big shots and then moving to the net to put away the easy balls. He leads a 7-5 5-2 and then loses the match. Udomchoke then gets confidence and makes his way through to the semis. Unlike the big arenas, at the challengers you can see how pissed off Cervanak is long after the match is done.

Johnny Millman and Tomic played the best last set of the week easily. Millman started well and Tomic got some treatment on the foot, but more a strategy to change momentum loses 1st set easily. Then Millman can't find a serve and Tomic takes him to school wins the 2nd easily. The last set is very competitive, hard fought tennis. Tomic up an early break and Millman broke back. One hilariously bad call that was out by 15cm at least off a Tomic lob and it wasn't called out. At the same time Millman got a couple of letcords. Went down to the last set tiebreaker, which had a dodgy overrule at 3-3 on Tomic's 2nd serve and it was an ace. Excellent last set to make up for the up and down first 2 sets.

Millman will be going to play on the clay, he used his forehand more than he has in recent times and it was good to see, as he is going to need to improve it to push higher up the rankings. It's a safe shot, but got to be able to do more with the groundies than safe.



At least the tournament ended up with a good winner in the Slovenian number 2 Grega Zemlja taking out Tomic in the final. While he only lost 1 set all week, he wasn't playing outstanding tennis for a lot of the event. In the first 2 rounds he was comfortable against Duckworth, had a tough battle against Phil Bester winning in 2 tiebreakers. Bester was serving well this day and was not amused by some of the calling, though he is not Lukas Rosol who questions everything.

The quarter final against Ball was his best performance of the week, though this is relative as Ball has been in woeful form for a while. When you lose to Riba on a hardcourt in your home Slam with a massive serve as your weapon, then the signs aren't good. Zemlja wasn't missing much and playing aggressively this with Ball making a lot of errors.

Zemlja and Udomchoke match was very similar to the Millman/Tomic match. This was a rematch of last round qualies at the Aus Open which Zemlja took in 3 sets. Grega started very well dominating from the baseline and ripping Udomchoke's 2nd serve taking it easily 6-1, then his concentration lapses and starts playing like Kavcic from 5m behind the baseline but without the mobility. Udomchoke is ripping backhand down the line winners for fun and takes it 6-0.

The last set was a bit better quality, mostly fighting tennis as Zemlja is mixing in passive play with some errors and excellent shots. Udomchoke hit 4 lets in a row, where I'm from he buys the beers and dinner for that effort. Gets to the 3rd set buster and Zemlja fights his way through to the final. It was a similar story for Tomic who made the final, he wasn't playing his best tennis either apart from the 3rd set against Millman, he struggled with Polansky and Klec for 2 sets. The semi was easier against Ebden though.

Tomic was the crowd favourite, but Zemlja was aggressive and played a quality tie breaker to take the first set. Once he was able to do that, then the match became easier and shut the crowd out of it with a comfortable win in the final. Not a bad week for Tomic, he is off to the USA now for a few tournaments, after the US Open where he hardly played tournaments before Brisbane. He has become quite strong and that forehand which used to be a weakness, especially the high balls on that side are now dealt with contempt.

Marinko Matosevic isn't looking in great mental shape at the moment and it shows in his game. Ebden has improved a lot and it's clear to see, though how much improvement does he have is the question. One thing is that he does work hard and believe in himself. Fro him making the Davis Cup squad has furthered his development.

In the Klec/Tomic match in the 3rd set. Klec was 3m behind the baseline and didn't have much room to move, he was pissed off the linesperson didn't move so he could hit the ball. He almost ended up in the crowd and this woman said "come on" and Klec fired up and asked "who said come on". The woman said it was her and then Klec said "why you say come on, when she didn't get out of the way" . She mouthed him back and then Klec gives it back, some funny stuff.

Highlight of the week was the "Cockatoo" or the "Grothawk" the unit known as Sam Groth. He played Millman in the 1st round in a very tight match, where both guys haven't had great starts to the year. Deep in the 3rd set, they have a huge rally and Millman hits a big forehand pass and Groth fires up big time. At the end of the match which Millman wins 7-5 in the 3rd. Big Groth gets the shits throws his racquet over the fence, the wind picks it up and it ended up being at least a 60m throw onto the adjacent field. No, it didn't break.

David Lenar coach of Zemlja, my xbox victim from Burnie, former coach of Blaz Kavcic, the hititng partner of Patty Schnyder and hopefully Davis Cup captain one day summed it up perfectly. Zemlja has the strokes, the talent, but is a bit lazy with training and mentally not so strong and Kavcic is limited talent wise, but works very hard and fights for everything. Yet, both their personalities are the opposite to the style of game they play.

Paolo Lorenzi, Flavio Cipolla, Zemlja and Lenar shared an apartment in Caloundra. They drew cards as to see who would get each room in the place, one of them had a jacuzzi in the room and yes Zemlja was the man who drew the ace and got the jacuzzi. The drinks don't taste too bad in the jacuzzi. Now he is back in Slovenia skiing in a race against some other tennis friends.

Tuesday, February 08, 2011

Tommy Robredo the king of sportsmanship. Andre Ghem back on the tour and all fun in Challenger town

Here is an attempt to try and get this blog more active during the season, not exactly sure whether the balance will be right between quality and quantity.

This is a summary of the recent events after the Aussie Open and will be a mix of ATP and Challengers, as that would make the most sense plus I have been two recent challengers, one not bad the other one has a lot to improve upon.

Last week had 2 first time winners on the tour. Big Kevin Anderson won Jochallengersburg which was good for a local to win the event, also that he was the best player left in the draw, it would have been a crime against tennis if van der Merwe won an ATP IS event, but there was a tennis crime committed last week at another venue. Sadly, Jochallengersburg won't be on the calendar. It wasn't a bad idea per se to have an event in South Africa but why was it put there initially. Was it the fact that former CEO and all round incompetent Mr. Disney Etienne de Villiers is South African or that South African Airways a sponsor of the ATP.

The timing of Jo'burg was wrong coming after the Aus Open and it's quite a long trip. The altitude would be a factor, but personally more events at altitude wouldn't be too bad, not pissy altitude like Madrid, which they go on about being like Mt.Everest and K2 combined. If they were to have an event in South Africa, the first week of the year would be better and preferably at sea level. Congratulations to Anderson, he has improved quite a lot and Devvarman pushes more than an Amsterdam street dealer.

In Zagreb, it was a true bolter Ivan Dodig won the event over defending finalist the German he-man with the very soft voice Michael Berrer. Dodig is an example of hard working triumphing over natural talent. He has worked relentlessly on the serve and the forehand and while being far from the most talented player around, has managed to win a title very quickly in his career. He has lofty ambitions about where he'd like to be ranked, while he is limited anything can happen in this game. The funny part at the end where he threw his racquet in the crowd after he thought he won and needed it passed back to him, as he hadn't done the job.

Sadly for the game of tennis took a monumental beating when the talented yet fragile Santiago Giraldo served for the title against Tommy "I don't believe in sportsmanship" Robredo, but he shat himself when it came to the crunch and Boredo played a solid game to get the break back. Once it went to the tiebreaker, then the chance was gone for Giraldo to make it the first time that 3 people won their first title within a week.

Boredo fights hard and maximised his talents, that's the best thing I can say about him. Though I had to chuckle at his fight with Fabio "the Fog" Fognini. If they were playing Slams on strutting ability then the Fog would be a multi Slam winners. Plenty of needle in their match and Boredo doesn't shake his hand at the end of the match, he showed his true class. The Fog calling him "hombre de mierda" was priceless, this and the Stakhovsky incident this year has been good to Boredo.

Challengers

Burnie was quite fun and enjoyable this year, well not result wise as most of the players that I was cheering for lost early in the week. This doesn't mean there wasn't some fun to be had watching matches.

There was a lot of shit weather around, so there were some days where doubling up of matches happened. Cipolla carried on his excellent start to the year by winning the title, though he didn't play the final against the "Gooch" Chris Guccione who had to withdraw with an achilles problem.

It was great to see the sexy Guccione back on track, after the injury problems and the Green Card issues which meant he had to miss the Aus Open playoff. Best of all he took out Bernard 'the Golden Child " Tomic in a 3rd set buster. Interesting fact that the Gooch doesn't like night matches, as he can't pick the ball up very well. Of course he did in style, didn't even come close to losing serve and then serves for it at *5-4 in the 3rd and plays a lax game, but justice was done in the end.

There is good access to Challengers which is something I like and while Burnie is not the best place on the planet and very quiet, there were enough humourous moments during the week to make it worthwhile.

McDonalds in town the only place open after 9pm, this was the epicentre of the event. The ridiculous waiting times on the food sent Matosevic even crazier than usual. Ivo Klec in fine form with the ladies. The locals with some good mullet action looking bemused at these tennis people in there.

Rain delays were a feature in Burnie, but thankfully there was an Xbox there which got plenty of use. The highlight was big Sam "the Cockatoo" Groth, yes he is called the cockatoo after his hairstyle teaching me how to play Smackdown vs. Raw. After a few attempts, then playing David Lenar the former coach of the man Kavcic and now coaching the talented but lazy Grega Zemlja. It was a very tough battle that went for ages but the Undertaker (myself) managed to get over Shawn Michaels, which was almost as good as their Wrestlemania matches.

This week, I'm at Caloundra. This challenger has a good club as in facilities, but lacking in a lot of areas. There is no internet for the players, the courtesy cars show up randomly, there are no ballkids until Friday, these three are annoying. Worst of all, the website is a joke, there is no ATP livescoring at all, even little Burnie could do that. The lights on centre court aren't good enough to host night matches, they need to be a certain wattage and don't make the grade. This apart from the fact that in the wonderland of Queensland there is no daylight saving, so there is a window only of 8 hours of play from 10am to 6pm due to the lack of light.

To end on a more positive note the man Andre Ghem qualified for Costa da Sauipe, the place where he defeated Guga Kuerten. He has had a lot of injury problems and making a comeback. Won a Futures 2 weeks ago, then taking out Junqueira (aka Danny Devito) and then Navarro to make the main draw. Hope he can be inspired to beat Craplocq, but the Carlos has the power of the mullet.

Wednesday, February 02, 2011

Burnie Challenger Round 1 : Everybody Wang Chung Tonight

It’s already February and it’s the last event that I’m travelling to for the year, hope this will change in the future, but enough of that.

This comes from the throbbing metropolis known as Burnie located on the northwest coast of Tasmania. Too bad they don’t play the Fed Cup tie on King Island and move the men’s challenger to Hobart that would be a lot better for the fans, though it’s a good thing that I am not in charge of the tour.

The event has had a mix of everything weather wise. At the moment it’s raining and there could be some double duty days. Day 1 there was only one singles match completed, Tuesday got the first round completed in singles. The doubles are behind schedule, but that always takes a lesser precedence than singles.

Round 1

Lindner vs. Minar

Only got to see the last set of this match, as I arrived from a horrible bus ride in the afternoon. Lindner who is the son of Bob Lindner, a former Queensland and Australian rugby league player. He qualified for main draw, in most fields qualifiers have an advantage as they are used to the conditions.

Minar was playing in this very sexy hot pink number. There were fences so I couldn’t take pictures of this funky shirt. He came from Singapore and not exactly sure when he arrived, but he looked like he was drunk and not caring too much.

Lindner who is a tall guy with a good lefty serve was able to use this well and not too make too many mistakes from the ground. Minar was making quite a few errors and couldn’t make much headway into the Lindner serve, who took the match and his biggest scalp on tour.

Tuesday had everything weather wise. It started off boiling hot, then it got cloudy, very windy that the fence on centre court almost fell down. So, play was suspended on centre court until they got some maintenance people to fix the fence. The wind in the afternoon was so hilarious, it was gale like and just hitting the ball in the centre of the court and hoping for the best.

Polansky vs. Lojda

Both guys haven’t been in great form for a while. So it was far from surprising that it was a close match. Polansky started the better, he was trying to play close to the baseline whereas Lojda who seems to have copied his strokes from Jürgen Melzer, is mostly defending.

Polansky was slightly the better player in the 1st set making more things happen, whereas Lojda seemed quite heavy legged and just reacting. The 2nd set is a bit different Lojda starts being more offensive and playing further in the court and is able to push Polansky around the court, hitting some big off forehands and then finishing off with angled cross court backhands. In the process Polansky is dropping short balls and getting punished.

Lojda, a former US Open junior champ hasn’t really kicked on in the seniors. He has an early break in the 3rd and looks like he is going to run away with the match, but Polansky keeps fighting and Lojda starts to make more mistakes. Polansky breaks back and then Lojda is playing from almost the back fence, just running and trying to be Franco Squillari with the big off forehands, but not having the required heat. Polansky takes advantage and breaks twice for the win.

Cipolla vs. Millman

Very tough match for Millman here, one because Cips is in solid form this year and has a unique and difficult game to play against, second Millman only arrived on the Monday night. He and Klein were stuck in Singapore for various reasons, unlike the rich guys on the tour, sometimes finances are a hard thing to manage.

Cipolla started very well, the slice backhand was hitting the targets and keeping very low. The outside courts play a lot quicker than centre court. Millman was struggling with timing and this was due a lot to Cipolla’s play as his rally ball naturally comes in a bit lower than usual, plus Millman feeling a bit shit. Cipolla is not the guy you want to play when you aren’t on your game.

The pattern continued Cipolla wasn’t making errors, hitting good length on his shots, the forehand was reliable and the slice almost as sexy as Guccione’s, but not much is that hot. Cipolla comfortably takes the 1st set 6-3.

Second set is very similar to the first, whereas Millman is extending the rallies and Cipolla is defending well. Unfortunately for Millman, he could hardly hit a winner, as Cipolla was running, running and making shots from everywhere, which lead to some great comments from Millman. After one very long rally, side to side, forwards and backwards. Millman comes to the net hits his only decent volley of the day and Cipolla rips a running forehand past him. He says “ how the hell did you lose to Benoit Paire in straight sets at the Aus Open”. Cipolla stands at net just smiles.

Some other comments there was a donkey overrule on the far side, not from a clear mistake either. Millman tells the umpire using a Adam Feeney line “You are a liar”. The umpire fires up and says to Johnny, you call me whatever, but don’t call me that. Then after an overrule on a call a blind person would see, he came out with “well done you have reached a personal best”.

Cipolla was just too solid all around in an excellent performance. Millman tried to move to the net, but was volleying poorly for the most part and couldn’t get into the court to force Cipolla to hit topspin backhands.

Bester vs. Matosevic

The conditions changed in this one from burning hot to cloudy and fucking windy. No it wasn’t just breezy, it was very windy. Matosevic said as a joke, they should stop cause it’s too windy and then the referee came out and stopped it and Marinko wasn’t enjoying it at all.

Bester was playing quite well at the start, hitting some good length and Marinko was sluggish initially. In the 2nd set Matosevic picked it up, able to his backhand to better effect and was able to take it 6-4.

In theory Matosevic should have been able to take the last set, but the ball was moving around so much and he was getting pissed off with the wind that he couldn’t hit his shots and mentally he was too pissed off. Bester played the conditions as well as he could and didn’t whine about them too much, in the process knocking off the top seed and plays Cipolla for a place in the quarter finals.

Guccione vs. Klein

Gooch was in a huge serving mode and not missing many and Klein was jetlagged, so this was a battle between former champs. Klein even had some crowd support, plus he provided some comedy moments in the match.

Klein played one poor service game and lost the 1st set. Gooch the Stud with the wind at his back was kicking the ball over Klein’s head at ease, so he had try and get some action at the other end. Klein had a mid court forehand and swings to hit it, but hits his leg and the ball bounces twice before it goes in the net.

Another Klein classic, as he was getting humbled with the serve out wide. He decides to charge the serve, no chip just charge and ran past the thing, as he knew he had no chance of returning it.

It goes to the tiebreaker, which is quite hard fought. Klein manages to get to set point, he plays it well has a chance for a backhand pass which he rips down the line. It’s halfway between the ground and the net on the backhand side of the Gooch, who then gets a racquet on it and hits a drop volley with underspin to save set point.

On the match point Klein hits a decent serve and the Gooch doesn’t quite catch it, hits the top of the tape and dies, therefore winning the match on a dead netcord. Klein is just shaking his head and then after the match as I was watching it with Millman, who precedes do a Klein impression when he went down with cramps and it’s right on the money. The crowd that were still there weren’t quite sure what was going on.

Zemlja vs. Ebden

This had the potential to be an excellent match, but Zemlja unlike Kavcic isn’t going on with the good form from Australia. Here he looked heavy legged, didn’t give a shit about the match, this doesn’t help at all when playing Ebden, a guy who has been solid for some time, who likes windy conditions and does well in Australia.

The match worked out pretty much as expected with Zemlja just hitting the ball, not thinking about what to do with it, most noticeable was that he didn’t move his feet much at all. Whereas Ebden was playing the percentages hitting down the middle, letting the wind do the work a lot of the time.

Rain delay came at the right time for Zemlja, so he hoped it had, but while he was striking the ball better after the break. He played one lazy game, had game point but couldn’t convert, saved break points a few times, it was not meant to be his day and now Ebden plays the “Golden Child” Tomic next round.

In other notes Erik Chovka who qualified is a really cool guy and took out a very jetlagged Rosol. Chovka is a Czech-Canadian leftie who lives in Montreal, so speaks Czech, French and English. Had to ask him the important question, which is the secret of a good poutine? The cheese has to squeak, once it does then you have a fresh, high quality poutine.

Big Sammy Groth couldn’t take out “Golden Child”, he served 20 aces but still not enough, too many holes from the ground. He was fairly quiet with the commentary, usually you get some good stuff from Groth when it’s not working for him.

Paolo Lorenzi who took out the junior finalist from Aus Open Saville, he was just happy to get through, lets say the standard of pasta at the club isn’t quite like what he is used to in Italy. Matosevic loves giving to Cipolla and Lorenzi saying that it’s al dente and even better than you’d get in Italy.