ATP Slapstick: Janko Tipsarevic and Gael Monfils on the verge of qualifying for London

 

So here’s an experiment. Try standing in front of a mirror with your hands behind your back, staring eye-to-eye at your reflection, and saying ‘Gael Monfils, number one seed’ out loud 10 times without pause (keep looking at the mirror).

If you make it past ‘four’ without the trace of a snicker (and without the aid of some sort of biochemical suppressant), I put it to you that your synapses are wired the wrong way and that you should probably be kept away from young children.

That’s where I was (or rather wasn’t) with Stockholm all week. Any tournament with Gael, or for that matter Janko, as its top seed needs to go away and do some thinking. Unless you’re in the business of slapstick.


 
But credit where it’s due.

Both Janko and Gael and, incidentally, Dolgopolov were *and are* in contention for London. They knew it – tennis mathletes certainly knew it.

Normally, that kind of demand is Gael’s cue to slide into a bunch of line judges or to go jump through a window – anything but win the requisite number of matches.

But he didn’t implode, not by that or any other means – and neither did Janko. Both men, instead, somewhat untrue to form, went on to win events in which they were (however laughably) deemed by the numbers to be the top seeds. In other words, they lived up to their billing. And that deserves recognition.

That, incidentally, is Janko’s second title in three weeks – also his second overall. With an appetite like that he might actually wind up qualifying for London (straight face and keep staring at the mirror). This must be why those hoity-toitys at the top of the rankings want to shorten the season.

Dolgo, on the other hand, has just gone out to Dudi Sela in St Petersburg this morning for the loss of only four games. Just last week he lost his opener to Jeremy Chardy, also in straight sets. That deserves recognition too – if only because it’s recognisably stupid.

With all due respect to those other two, only a nincompoop loses that meekly when there’s so much at stake.

Either he doesn’t get it, or he just can’t help himself. Or both. He’s “not wired properly up there” either.

(pics: Getty)
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Pipsqueaks win titles too

It’s kind of an open secret how underrated, and hated, Domi is on so very many incomprehensible levels. Heaping abuse on her as your particular fave “comes of age” or “returns to form”, is practically a rite of passage – had Kanepi had more of a following, and had she come through in Moscow, it would have been no different. 




I’ve never quite understood the potency of some of the rage she seems to give rise to – it seems to me to be disproportionate and it always seems to come from people willing to give a free pass to behaviour that is far worse. 

Haters to the left – it can’t be easy being “ugly on the inside”.

My guess is, she’ll continue to be little more than an annoying pipsqueak for some, and nothing less than the spawn of Satan for an astonishingly large number of other, otherwise sensible, people. Much as I might question the incredibly fuzzy logic and the quite laughable double standards, each to their own. 



What is undeniable, is that this one was long overdue – you don’t, I hope, need to be “a fan” in order to see that.

Having reached the fourth round or better at every Slam (RG SF in 2009), and with previous wins over the likes of Venus Williams and Kirilenko, Wozniacki, Zvonareva, Kuznetsova, Sharapova, Goerges and Schiavone just this season, I don’t think I’m reaching when I say that not having a single WTA title to your name signals the worst kind of underachievement.

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Voodoo Dolls for all Life’s Disappointments

 

1) WTA rebranded

 

 

Meh. It looks a little too Samsung-like if you ask me. Or like a regional broadband provider.

 

The old sonyericssonwtatour.com url – the one which you might comfortably fit all of Aesops fables in -- has gone too.

 

I take it Sony Ericsson are about to jump ship?

 

2) Federer d. Mayer 6-4 6-3 to win the ‘If Stockholm Open’

 

 

I’m no pimply nosed DC Comics enthusiast. BUT  I KNEW I’D SEEN THAT TROPHY SOMEWHERE BEFORE.

 

To date this year, Fed’s won a Slam, a Masters-1000 and, now,  a 250 event. Should he win the 500 event in Basel, the box set will be complete.

 

The last time he did that was back in 2006 – when it wasn’t presumably “all about the Slams”. And now, if you don’t mind, Superman wants his career memorabilia back.

 

3) Troicki d. Baghdatis 3-6 6-4 6-3 to win his maiden ATP title at the Kremlin Cup.

 

 

Viktor’s too good a player not to have a single title to his name. A handy reminder that even in this rarefied year of Career Slam excellence there’s an entire zombie-eyed subculture willing and waiting to get their name engraved on just one of these things – however proletarian it might seem in the grand scheme of things.

 

Moscow is the only event I’ve seen where players get to accessorize quite so freely: winning here earns you not one but two trophies, an expensive watch, a flower bouquet and a $170K cheque in prize money.

 

Not only that, but had Viktor won doubles with Janko later on in the day (they fell 7-6(8) 6-3 to Dimitrov/Kunitsyn), he’d have two of every one of those.

 

4) Also in Moscow, Azarenka d. MariaKiri 6-3 6-4

 

 

Happy to see Vika winning again.

 

Though, to be honest, I’d settle for a semi/quarter if it meant a guarantee she’d not come out flat in Doha next week.

 

I had her down for a breakthrough before Caz – which she sort of made good on by winning Miami last year (even if it was against a limping mummified Serena).

 

And were it not for Serena, she may even have made more of an impact at the Slams (she has been especially unlucky in this respect).

 

Still, it’s been pretty meagre since then by her standards. Next week’s a chance to put all that right. With not a Williams in sight.

 

5) So according to Tennis Magazine, “the biggest disappointment of 2010” is…

 

Dinara Safina.

 

Never mind that her back complaint meant she spent the better part of the year either severely compromised or out of action altogether.

 

It’s also wholly at odds with the type of press Ivanovic got during her little fall from grace – which was all about “what she must now do” to reassume what media-lovey-doves presumably thought of as her rightful place at the top of the game.

 

Newsflash: Ana played fantastically well, but still only won a Slam because Henin had retired that very month and because the Williams, quite frankly, haven’t been a factor at RG for a long time.

 

It’s a credit to her that she managed to do what neither Dinara or JJ were able to by taking advantage of that window of opportunity, but only the most feral of AnaKads will try and make much more of it.

 

And if you really want to talk disappointments, then how about  Marin Cilic? Who’s been practically extinct since winning Zagreb back in Feb this year. He has, in fact, made only one Masters QF in the last 12 months – and that was in Paris last year.

 

But he’s won Zagreb right? So that’s ok.

 

6) Roberta Vinci d. Julia Georges to win her 3rd WTA title in Luxembourg.

 

 

Voodoo dolls trump alien eggs any day of the week in these ‘ere parts.

 

Quite simply the most grotesque artefact ever awarded to anyone, anywhere. 

 

What exactly were they thinking?

 

Quite apart from anything else, it’s the sort of “thing” (what would you call it?) that might have been used as a prop in “The Wicker Man”.

 

I wouldn’t want to play Roberta now either. You might lose a limb. Or a family member.

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Russian Love…

It hasn’t been the most ‘happening’ of tennis weeks for a while, despite there being events underway in Moscow, Luxembourg and the wonderfully named ‘If…Stockholm’.

Most of the action appears centred around Moscow. And Marat.

I don’t know if it’s me, but the WTA Kremlin Cup seemed a whole lot more entertaining last year, when Jelena bagged a hat trick of post-Flushing hard court titles, and with it, a much maligned position atop the rankings.

This year, with most of the top ten evidently saving themselves for Doha, it seems to have been reduced to a two-woman shootout between Vera and Jelena both of whom had an opportunity of qualifying for Doha, and both of whom turned in less than inspiring performances.

Jelena eventually made the cut by … wait for it … all of 5 race points, before promptly going out to Kleybanova earlier today.

(NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA/AFP/Getty Images)

Mission complete, though just by the skin of her teeth.

Vera fizzled and spittled her way out of the event with a 6-0, 6-2 loss to Tsevtana Pironkova.

"She is a good player and I knew that," Zvonareva said. "It's very difficult to play against her. She moves perfectly on the court, can hit the ball hard and can vary her tempo.

"I'm not in my best shape now and to beat her today I should have played more attentively.

"Maybe I'm even happy. Finally I will have time to restore my health and start the new season in full strength."

(Sky Sports)

I sincerely hope for her sake, that that’s true. Winning only two games against a player that rarely breaks the three-digit barrier on her first serve suggests more than just a want of ‘attention’. For our sakes, it’s probably best she didn’t qualify in this form.

(AP)

This time last year, Marat reached the final of the men’s event in Moscow before promptly going down in flames to Igor Kunitsyn, This year I don’t think he even expected to get half as far – and as it turned out, didn’t.

He did manage to score an interesting, if not entirely unexpected three set win over Davydenko, which of course, resulted in a hazy blaze of Russian brotherly love.

I thought it would be a little bit slightly different, all these feelings toward the tournaments. It's a little bit different, different from what I thought—it's difficult to explain. The feeling that I thought I would get from coming back for the last time to the tournaments, I don't get this particular feeling that I was hoping to get. But of course it's nice, it's nice to know that it's over—last time [at the U.S. Open], last time in L.A., last time in Cincinnati—just enjoy it. I don't want to have any more stress.

(tennis.com)

It doesn’t get any more candid than that.

In fact, with his thoughts on the calendar, A-Rod’s short term memory, and Tomas’s manhood, it rather seems, these remaining few weeks are turning out to be more about candid reflections than anything else.

I’m not sure what I expected, and maybe Marat’s not that well suited to teary farewells, but I think Tennis Magazine did themselves a disservice with this month’s feature on his so called ‘misery tour’. The content is exclusive to the magazine and to my knowledge appears nowhere on their site, but if you’ve read the latest edition, you’ll know the one I mean.

An odd assortment of some of the more cruder Maratisms, with a front page shot of him sporting those two black eyes he turned up to Hopman Cup this year with.

It’s not that I don’t think Marat is any, or all of those things, the essence of which the article is so keen to capture. It just seems an unnecessarily skewed assessment of a player that managed to be charming, blunt, tortured and twinkly-eyed all at the same time.

This article from September, and recent interview do a much better job.

Only one more event before all the pain goes away.

And only three more weeks before I get to say “We’ll always have Paris…”

***

Meanwhile Big Rob has made the last four in If…Stockholm.

The other three sharing the table are Olivier Rochus, Thomas Belluci, and Marcos Baghdatis. Marcos I have some sympathy with. His recent troubles with form resulted in a dip that saw him drop outside of the top 100. Seeing him at #66 comes therefore, as light relief.

But I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one keen to see Big Rob qualify for London.

Davydenko’s presence is as essential to the event as furniture and subtitles are to a cosy art house flick.

But Big Rob is capable of getting into the faces of most everyone not named Federer, and as such seems to have a pivotal role to play before the curtain goes down on this curious year.

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A Match Too Far...

Ok so I got my Kremlin Cup prediction completely wrong this weekend - Santoro didn't even make it to the final and Safin lost to the world #71, Igor Kunitsyn. I didn't see the match but from what I can gather, Safin didn't lose this by self destructing in a way thats become all too familiar. He played solid but not spectacular tennis, but in the end wasn't good enough to overpower Kunitsyn who soaked up everything thrown at him.
As disappointing as the loss is, it is perhaps more worrying that Safin has incurred a shoulder injury that's caused him to pull out of Madrid. I mean as important as it is to win in your home town, Moscow should in all seriousness, have been treated as a ramp up to Madrid: Losing to an undistinguished opponent in Moscow is disappointing, but being prevented from competing in Madrid strikes me as something of a double whammy - oh well, let's hope the shoulder is ready in time for Paris.

On another note, there was something noticeably different about the way Djokovic and Federer came across in their Madrid build-up interviews with Sky today.
Federer's answers all seemed to revolve around the need to rest and how he even considered taking the rest of the year off, whilst Djokovic's focus was largely on the improvements he has to make in his fitness and net game.
Nothing wrong with either of those in principle - Federer, we all know has had his problems with mono earlier on this year and has seemed troubled (especially on hard courts) thoughout the season, whilst Djokovic has not been able to keep up the form that led him to his first Slam and two further Masters titles this year.

I just found them both uncharacteristically guarded and significantly less confident than I've come to expect: almost to the point of preparing us for a potential early exit. I find this all the more surprising since they must both know they are potential winners.
Nadal has had a great year, but there comes a point when your body just won't allow you to give your best; plus we all know he's been overpowered before on a fast indoor court.
Granted, Federer and Djokovic have both had their troubles this year, and there's plenty of young upstarts in the mix who must give almost anyone cause for concern (anyone who saw Gulbis versus Nadal today will know what I mean), but that has never previously appeared to dent their confidence in this way.

Maybe however, their concerns about form and injury are justified, and are right on the money in having slightly lowered expectations - besides what do I know? I can't even predict a Safin match.

Djokovic image by Toga
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Conquering Demons...

Marat Safin has just defeated Nikolay Davydenko 7-6, 4-6, 6-4 in the quarter finals of the Kremlin Cup in Moscow. He will now play Mischa Zverev (ranked 98) while the other semi final will be contested between Fabrice 'The Magician' Santoro and Igor Kunitsyn (ranked 71).

Were it not for Santoro's 7-2 head to head against him, this should have been a straightforward proposition for Safin. If he triumphs here, it will be his first title since the 2005 Australian Open and as such provides a much needed opportunity to recapture that winning feeling.

With the greatest of respect to Zverev and Kunitsyn, this is really all about Santoro and Safin. Not just because of their greater standing in the game but also because of what Santoro has come to represent to Safin.

In a sense 2008 has been something of a turnaround for Safin; since taking on a new coach he's beaten a top 10 player for the first time since 2006 (Berdych in a Davis Cup tie against the Czech Republic) - this was also incidentally, the first time he's come back from 2 sets down; he also finally put right his horrendous record on grass with that incredible run to the semis at Wimbledon.

This may be a little simplistic, but I get the feeling that Safin's poor record against Santoro is largely down to his loathing of the irregular. Lets consider surfaces: he's had his best results on a hard court where you don't have to contend with uneven bounces and changes in pace that are such a feature of the other surfaces. Its taken him the best part of his career to put in a good performance at Wimbledon and he's only won two out of his fifteen titles on clay.

Santoro is just about as irregular and nuanced a player as you'll find on tour (can you imagine what Bollietteri makes of his double handed scything forehand!?) and is for all intents and purposes the antithesis of what Safin considers tennis to be about (he'd probably prefer to play Nadal on clay).

However I've got a good feeling about this: Santoro has already signalled his intent to cut down his schedule over 2009, so he may not provide as stiff opposition as he's done in the past. Moreover, getting past an old adversary such as Santoro, whilst also winning his first title in three years is certain to allow him to shed some psychological baggage and may prove to be exactly the kind of springboard he needs ahead of Madrid and Paris (a tournament he's already won three times).

Safin image by Toga

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