Distractions in the real world had put me off writing last week, but enough of this. Davis Cup is still a great event despite what these top player prima donnas think about it. Yes, Chardy was labelled as a brainless ball basher who makes PHM look like Einstein, while this is true he managed to get France get over the line and Golubev managed the same feat for Kazakhstan. Jakke Nieminen tried his best and always plays Davis Cup for Finland, but he couldn't overcome Blaz and the boys in Ljubljana.
Yes, there is some TMS event called Indian Wells at the moment and can't be bothered writing too much about it. It's a wank of an event having a 96 player draw going over 10 days, yes Miami is in the same boat but they have the Latino crowd which can give it some good atmosphere. Ideally they'd be reduced to a 64 player draw and cut it down to a week for each event, yes it's a coast to coast flight but they can handle it. Seems to be Ok for the Americans to whine about being Europe for too long during the clay season, but if it goes the other way then they are crybabies. South Americans and Aussies don't get it so easy when it comes to travel on the global tennis circus.
We all love a story that has a good ending, well sometimes we do. This one one of these cases the comeback kid Amer Delić won the Sarajevo Challenger, the first player representing Bosnia to win a title, yes Cilic, Dodig and Ljubicic are from Bosnia but play their trade for Croatia. Delić is back now playing for Bosnia after several years playing for the USA. He explains it himself as to why he decided to switch allegiance, the lure of playing Davis Cup and the Olympics didn't hurt Amer Delic on playing for Bosnia
After being out of tennis for 14 months due to knee surgery, so many different thoughts would be going through Delić's mind, there are the hours upon hours of rehabilitation, the doubts about whether they can make it back on the tour, revaluation of goals. Another thing is well that happens in tough times in any field, you find out who your true friends are and the people that want to know, it's very easy to hang around, congratulate and be good to people when things are going well, as soon as it goes to shit be it through whatever circumstances many of these same people fade from the scene.
The Aus Open missed Delić this year, he loves Court 13 with the big battles he had out there. In 2008 where he qualified without losing a set, taking out Kendrick and then losing a 5 set thriller against Juan Monaco coming back from 2 sets to 0 down. The local Bosnians got behind him big time and for the most part were fine, sadly there were a few arse clowns who didn't realise that it wasn't football. Next year he came back as a LL in qualies, took out Dent in 5 sets and then he got the comeback this time against Paul Henri "Einstein" Mathieu and the atmosphere was rollicking this day.
Challengers after Davis Cup week are always interesting as surprising results are the norm, due to the travel factor and also celebrating the wins with their team mates takes a toll. Sarajevo is unusually for a tennis tournament these days played on a fast surface indoors, so it makes Delić's win the more rewarding. He came from Morocco playing on the clay and some flight issues, naturally he used the wildcard here instead of using protected ranking.
The fast, low bouncing surface suiting his game had a tough 1st rounder against improving Estonian Jurgen Zopp took him down in straight sets. Huge 2nd round match with Andi Beck where every set went to the buster and pulling through gave him the confidence taking out Martin Fischer only needed one tiebreaker in this one. The semi final against another attacking player and big server Nicolas Mahut, thought this one was going to go to 3 tie break sets only the last one went to the buster. Delic delighting the home crowd winning 7-6 (8), it would have been odds at about 1.05 that Mahut's hair would be still stylish with gel after this tough loss.
Next was Karol Beck who withdrew in the warm up with a back problem, it's not the best way to win a title on a walkover.
At the same time Delić deserves a bit of luck after batting through quite a tough draw, being out of the game for over a year with injury and adjusting from the clay to a fast low bouncing indoor surface. The crowd weren't too disappointed with the result and the hopefully Delic can use the momentum of this tournament victory to maximise his potential.
1 comment:
Great to see Amer back on the winners circle. Took me a while to read it, but thankfully I did.
Post a Comment