Saturday, January 14, 2012

Jurgen Zopp, Freddie Nielsen make main draw and Fabio Fognini can strut like no other man

Final day of qualies is a special day, where there is so much on the line not just financially, but ranking points wise which will help the financial side of things.

Ghem vs. Bautista-Agut
It was a good standard match but frustrating at the same time as well. Bautista was solid in the 1st set and apart from one poor service game didn't make many mistakes. Ghem was playing well but too passive on the big points in return which cost him in this set. Many occasions he wasn"t aggressive on 30 all or 30-40 points. He played a poor tiebreak, whiich changed the momentum of the match and second set.

Bautista got more confidence started to play around the baseline pushing Ghem further back, using the angled forehand to expose Ghem's movement on that side which isn't as good as the backhand. Ghem was returning poorly hardly adjusting his return stance, it's not like Bautista has a huge serve. There were some well constructed points from Ghem using the angled forehand and volleying, but there weren't enough it was comfortable in the end.

Happy that Freddie Nielsen qualified, played aggressive tennis, had good support and Wozniacki was there yet she was hardly pestered at all. The forehead is a work of art and could land a plane on it.

Lukas Lacko qualified comfortably whereas Jurgen Zopp did it the hard way, yes it went 3 sets again. He was up 6-2 *5-3 but got so tight losing the next 4 games in a row. Thankfully he was able to win the match comfortably at the end, he was so tight but he prevaled.

After the match great photo with Zopp with 13 Estonian fans who travelled down, plus the Aussie contingent who followed all his matches special shout out to Rosie, and Andrew who were there for all the interesting rides. Lucky his name isn't Zop cause that means dick in Maltese.

More people training on site today. Fabio "the Fog" Fognini the man was strutting up a storm. On the backhand side he was out the singles sideline and hits a perfect drop volley with backspin, with that strut.

Andreas Seppi didn't train well at all, when he does scream he does it in Italian, though German is his first language and better for swearing. Get the shit out now and take down Gasquet.

Daniel Gimeno-Traver arrived yesterday, thankfully he doesn't play on Monday, that extra day is needed to get over the jet lag, though who knows what he will do against Bogomolov, it could be ugly.

Saw Nalbandian training with Milos Raonic, the backhand was pretty sexy. Dogs Balls was training on the next court, the coach Jack Reader is a legend of a coach. He looks like anything but a tennis coach and this works perfectly for Dolgopolov.

Haven't seen my mate Roddick yet, but I bet he is still a tool.

1 comment:

Choupi said...

This is again that time of the year when it's your time to fully enjoy live tennis. Looking forward to your reports. I hope you have a blast!
Could you pass on my greetings to the Gimeno Traver son and dad. Wish Dani good luck.