May 23, 2011

Flag Waving Maniacs

French Open, Day One

Following an inevitably slow week of stuttering build-up and sphincter-collapsingly dull press conferences, the Babolat Ultimate Tennis Experience got underway today, having usefully appended itself to the French Open. Although the press releases hinted at a relationship less parasitic, and more mutual, few are buying it, hopefully.

The top guns ensconced themselves early, and set about vigorously denouncing their own favouritism. The rest of the Tour rolled inexorably into Paris like the Wehrmacht, except, ironically, for the Germans, who chilled out in Dusseldorf, guaranteeing eternal glory and definitive weariness in capturing their fifth World Team Cup. Florian Mayer bagelled Juan Monaco on clay, proving he is worthy of his new ranking of 21. The engagingly flashy Philip Kohlschreiber swashed his buckles in going down to Juan Ignacio Chela in straights. His ranking of 42 feels about right. Little else of note occurred, apart from Robin Soderling turning up the week before he’s due to mount a defence of his main point-haul. Ranked No.4 only a few months ago, there’s a prevailing vibe that Soderling’s ranking may be headed south, especially with David Ferrer eyeing off that No.5 spot, and being due to achieve something of note in Paris.

Speaking of Ferrer, he was one of a clutch of top players infesting the Cote d’Azur this week, along with Tomas Berdych and Nicolas Almagro. Almagro won the event in a tough three setter over an impressive Victor Hanescu, a fun way to while away the day before your favourite major starts. I said he needed to prove himself on European clay, but Nice proves little, and won’t benefit his ranking one bit; he maxed the 250 component back in February.

And so, inevitably, we came to Sunday, which is the first day of main draw action at Roland Garros, a scheduling miracle that even the organisers aren’t quite sold on, given how few marquee players were deployed. Rafael Nadal called a late press conference, eager to share some last minute thoughts on the near certainty of Djokovic’s triumph. Unless you’re a tricolor-waving maniac, it was frankly a bummer line-up on the main courts. Fortunately, most of those in attendance were lustily waving the tricolor. Marc Gicquel got lucky when Lleyton Hewitt pulled out at the eleventh hour, and then luckier still in getting to play on Lenglen. He was lucky enough against Albert Montanes, but sadly not good enough. Over on Chatrier, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga restored French pride in short order. Elsewhere, Mannarino went down, though Benneteau got through in four. Jarkko Nieminen turned up dressed as a member of the Australian Davis Cup squad, although his too-high ranking of 50 gave him away as an imposter.

Meanwhile in the outer, Ernest Gulbis succumbed to Blaz Kavcic, winning just seven games, and committing about eight unforced errors for each of them. He is renowned for not strictly giving his best, but today he actually looked engaged, and the result was about the same. Moving forward, the lesson is clear: why try? He has now lost 21 consecutive sets at Grand Slam level. Some kind of record. Earlier, Marin Cilic poured his soul into a straight set loss to Ramirez-Hidalgo, on paper an upset, on court a shame, and a bore.

By contrast to today, tomorrow’s ticket to Chatrier is the hottest in town, with Djokovic and Federer back-to-back, the latter taking on Feliciano Lopez in what is potentially the match of the round. It’ll be nice to see top players do something other than feign humility, in the only environment where even Nadal can’t afford to. The journeymen, not permitted the luxury of endlessly spruiking their peers, continue to plug away.

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May 20, 2011

Luck of the Draw: Roland Garros

The Roland Garros draw has been released, and can be viewed here. If for whatever reason you’re interested in someone else’s thoughts on it, there are plenty floating around, because this is the kind of self-generating, low-overhead content that can be banged out in half an hour. Unless the writer is suffering from whatever is afflicting this guy, then most breakdowns will basically say the same thing: Nadal and Djokovic are heavy favourites. The overall best draw previews can be found here and here.

Really, there’s not a great deal to be said. Federer is in Djokovic’s half and has a tricky first round again Feliciano Lopez. Murray and Soderling are in Nadal’s half. Anyone who knows enough about men’s tennis to have favourites beyond those guys, knows more than enough to analyse a tournament draw on their own.

The Next Point will be back in full swing next week, when first round action gets underway in Paris.

Edit: Tried to make it clearer that the draw analysis links I provided were the best of them. Apologies for the very backhanded compliments to Steve Tignor and Jeff Sackman, the latter of whom rightly pulled me up.

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May 18, 2011

Damned Lies

By and large, I have little time for statistics in sport, suspecting they were invented by Americans intent on ensuring the viewing public enjoys itself less. While stats at their best can prove illuminating when judiciously applied, at their worst they are worse than useless, crude or subtle distortions, yoked to dull agendas.

There is also the uneasy sense that for any sport to require so much explicative number-crunching, it must surely have something wrong with it. What is lacking, we might reasonably ask, that so many statistics are required to compensate? To foreign eyes, this seems especially so in American sports, which often seem little more than a framework over which endlessly permutating numbers may be draped to greatest advantage. Sadly, Australian sports are headed that way. Australian readers may know of Championship Data, who provide the thoroughgoing statistical analysis for the AFL and its various clubs. Champion’s breakdowns of each game are so detailed that they provide a level of understanding surpassed only by actually watching the game, and for only ten times the effort. Larger, global markets surely have their conglomerated equivalents, perpetually threatening to overwhelm the viewer, and to divest the activity of any whimsy it may lay claim to. Ultimately, the best sports say most things on their own, if permitted to, and if played or watched.

Still, with all of that said, tennis is among the few mainstream sports that is under-served by statistics. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, a great deal of tennis statistics are either inherently useless, or so thoroughly deprived of context that they grow senseless. Think, for example, of the casual equivalence that has been established between winners and unforced errors, with the implication being that the two are somehow aspects of the same thing. Forced errors, which we never hear about, and for which I’m no longer certain stats are even recorded, are generally far more revealing. The same goes for aces and double faults, which aren’t equivalent, and mean very different things when down match point than they do at 15-15 in the middle of a set. Or about break points converted or saved, which may be revealing when viewed across very large data sets, but within the context of a single match tell you hardly anything, and certainly nothing that isn’t more apparent from just watching the encounter unfold.

Secondly, statistics actually do serve a useful purpose quite apart from boring viewers to death, which is in measuring performance. In tennis – especially in singles – we have something called ‘the score’ to tell us that, and it generally lets you know who the superior player was on the day. However, in team sports performance measurement becomes far more complex, an inevitable result for any system involving a lot of moving parts. The performance of any single part is not necessarily reflected in the outcome of any given game. The score can only tell you so much, especially as results may take a while to reveal under-performance in a given player. With tennis, though, there’s just a person with a racquet. To the even moderately practised eye, on court performance on any given day will pretty much speak for itself. The numbers are just padding.

Of course, it is in comparing that match to other matches that the real statistical interest lies, and where useful information resides. This is the area in which tennis has lagged behind, and is only gradually catching up. Perhaps surprisingly, it is the efforts of hobbyists and bloggers that are yielding some of the finest results – amateurs maintaining their own databases, sifting through mountains of results, and sometimes throwing up some really fascinating results (and, inevitably, a great deal of pretty boring shit, as well).

Here are some useful sites devoted to statistical analysis of tennis, maintained tirelessly and often thanklessly, and with a devoted patience that I can barely fathom:

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May 16, 2011

Running On Vapour

Rome Masters 1000, Final

Djokovic d. Nadal, 6/4 6/4

Along with everyone else, I correctly predicted that today’s Rome final would not be an epic, but again like everyone else, I was mistaken as to why. The widespread expectation was that a rested Rafael Nadal would run over a punch-drunk and success-soused Novak Djokovic. Djokovic had scrapped his way through a tough semifinal against Andy Murray, and Nadal hadn’t. The day had been damp, the court was barely above sea-level, and Nadal had won every title in Rome since Mussolini’s heyday, apart from 2008, when he’d lost a foot to a land-mine, or something.

Instead, we witnessed an aggressive and inspired Djokovic prevail in straight sets. The Serb was upfront about his approach afterwards, admitting that that an extended tussle was never going to work. Instead he arrived determined to hit out. On dreary clay, against Nadal, there was little chance that this would work, either. That it did work has nothing to do with luck, however, and everything to do with Djokovic, who is now operating at so stratospheric a level that he can actually choose how to beat the world’s premier dirtballer on any given day, factoring in fatigue, prevailing atmospheric conditions and mood. They met only a week ago in the Madrid final, a zero-gravity environment, and Djokovic played a strikingly different match. Today he stepped in, and displayed little patience with mere neutral rallying. In Robbie Koenig’s memorable phrase, he was ‘vaporising’ groundstrokes, apt for a guy running on fumes.

It has to be said that Nadal’s approach also differed to last week’s. He served with far more variation, and won 25% on second serve. He directed less traffic to Djokovic’s backhand, so Djokovic opened the court with his forehand before vaporising backhands. Nadal’s masterstroke, however, was to stop hitting his own backhand with any conviction, opting instead to loft off-pace junk onto the Serb’s service line, whereupon it was summarily dealt with. I cannot imagine the conversation Nadal and Uncle Toni had in coming up with this ‘strategy’, but I can imagine their assessment afterwards. Nadal’s stricken blank face at the handshake said it all.

It also declared plainly just how it feels for this proud champion to see his strongholds crumbling around him, even if the one that matters most still stands for now. It is the most keenly anticipated Roland Garros in half a decade. Whether Nadal’s greatest fortress still stands in three weeks’ time will determine the top ranking, and the year. In the end, these edifices are not built to last. Eventually, all that is solid melts into air. Or vapour.

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May 15, 2011

In Praise of Ephemera

Rome Masters 1000, Semifinal

Djokovic d. Murray, 6/1 3/6 7/6

Attempting to preserve ephemera via that most base and ephemeral of media – the internet – is doubtless a fool’s endeavour, even with the all the resources in the world. Of the hundreds of professional tennis matches played each season, there are less than a handful destined to endure in the collective memories of even devout fans, and even these few are almost exclusively drawn from several dozen matches between marquee players, and from the four Majors or – occasionally – Davis Cup. There is little use in railing against it, since the collective memory has never been capacious, and if anything the prevailing mania for documenting everything has served to enlarge it. We can now download an early round match from, say, San Jose in 2001, whereas even professional results from the 1960s are irrecoverably lost.

Of the early contenders for Match of the Year, three have occurred in Rome this week. By any reasonable measure, the tournament must already be considered a success, and the final hasn’t even been played yet. Furthermore, two of the classic matches of the last decade were Rome finals (2005 and 2006), with the latter being notorious for helping Tommy Robredo to his sole Masters title the following week in Hamburg, when both Federer and Nadal were too buggered to turn up. The ruling body were so incensed at this outcome that best-of-five finals were summarily outlawed. Anyway, Rome’s reputation as the clay Masters par excellence has been well-earned, and the latest installment has been one to remember. The problem is that unless the final is an epic, almost no one will remember it.

For several reasons, it is unlikely the final will be an epic. Firstly, Novak Djokovic already looked spent halfway through today’s gripping encounter with Andy Murray. The second half of the match proved considerably more work than the first, so he’ll surely have little left for Nadal. Secondly, the best-of-three format rarely produces epics, although Djokovic and Nadal have demonstrated that quantity trumps quality, so long as they hang around long enough. I speak of course of the Madrid 2009 semifinal, in which Nadal overcame Djokovic in about four and half hours. It is the longest best-of-three match in history, although that merely measures time on court, and not actual time hitting a tennis ball. It is not inconceivable that tomorrow’s final will outlast Madrid, so long as they take a 45 second break between each point, instead of the usual 40.

As for today’s match, which deserves to be remembered for a long time but sadly won’t be, it was truly superb. It revealed nothing about Djokovic that we didn’t already know, and little that wasn’t explicit in a streak of 38 matches: he’s the best player going around, he loves to thump his out-thrust chest, his parents are insufferable, and he’s a hell of a nice guy. And Murray? It showed us that he can play well on clay. This week. Anyone who claims to know how he’ll play next week or, more importantly, the week after, is foolish or wrong. He proved long ago that, when he’s on, he can expose weaknesses in every opponent’s game. That includes Djokovic, who today was stranded for a time in the Scot’s psychic mire, and inexorably submerged. He was lucky to haul himself out with his very last gasp of breath. His overblown roars afterward suggested nothing so much as titanic relief.

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May 13, 2011

Important Points

Rome Masters 1000, Third Round

Two more contenders for Match of the Year emerged today, happy news for a season that has hitherto produced few classics. Initially, however, the prospects for even mild diversion looked grim.

Nadal d. Lopez, 6/4 6/2

We were off to a slow start when Rafael Nadal’s appearance on Court Centrale was delayed by illness, which meant that once play commenced, his opponent Feliciano Lopez had to work particularly hard to capitulate lamely. Never let it be said that he isn’t down to the task, although a first set fightback nearly undid some initial bad work. As ever it was the backhand that failed to save the day: when the chips are up, go with what you know. Momentarily abandoning the script, Lopez saved one match point with a superb crosscourt forehand, but thereafter he remembered himself, and pushed a deft slice wide to surrender the match a few minutes later.

Gasquet d. Federer, 4/6 7/6 7/6

The Italian Open remains one of the few meaningful gaps in Roger Federer’s resume, along with the Paris Indoors and the Davis Cup. Twice he’s progressed to the final, the first time going out in an upset (2003), the second in a soul-wrenching classic (2006). I’m pretty tired of hearing about Federer’s age, but there is the sense that his shot at a Rome title is slipping away, not because he isn’t good enough, but because realistic chances are so few. Taking the title this year is looking very unlikely, especially now that he has lost.

Some have suggested that Federer would have won today’s match had it taken place a few years ago. As it happens, it did take place a few years ago – in Monte Carlo in 2005 – and he didn’t win it. Gasquet did, in a third set tiebreaker. Federer did win their next eight encounters, however, suggesting he has a pretty good read on the Frenchman’s game, including an awareness that when Gasquet is firing, he finds it difficult to miss the court, no matter where he aims or how hard he swings. There were patches of that today, even from the notoriously weaker forehand.

On a warm day on a slowish court, there were torrents of winners from both men, and only a meagre assortment of errors. It is hard to argue with Federer’s vaguely arrogant assertion that it was he who lost the match. Gasquet’s brilliance made it close, but Federer was brilliant, too, right up until the tiebreakers, when he wasn’t. We might say that the Swiss played the important points poorly, though this begs the question of what the important points even are. Surely all the points Gasquet won to force those tiebreakers were pretty vital, especially from a break down in the second.

Soderling d. Almagro, 6/3 3/6 6/4

There are only a handful of claycourters in the world better than Nicolas Almagro, and today he played one of them very close in a very fine match. Sadly, for him, he still lost, which means his European clay season has so far turned out even more disappointing than last year’s. His South American adventures back in February had held out such promise, but promise counts for little unless you can deliver when the big boys turn up. The fact is, Europe is where it counts, and Roland Garros is where it counts most. I haven’t checked his schedule, but I pray he hasn’t gone the usual route of the second-tier dirtballer, and sacrificed a potentially deep run in Paris by chasing cash in Nice or Dusseldorf.

In its way, today’s loss to Robin Soderling was better than Federer’s to Gasquet earlier. There was – predictably – less variety, since neither of the protagonists boast anything like the latter pair’s preternatural talents, but there was no shortage of clay court nous, and the jaw-dropping power of Soderling’s forehand is worth the price of admission. It also boasted a tighter finish. It’s worth finding a highlight of Almagro saving the first match point: a classic, and on an important point.

As for Soderling, today’s was an altogether more accomplished performance than yesterday’s against Fernando Verdasco, which isn’t saying much. Next he faces Novak Djokovic, about whom we cannot say enough.

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May 11, 2011

Roman Horror-day

Rome Masters 1000, Second Round

Soderling d. Verdasco, 2/6 7/5 6/4

Madrid and Rome won’t be the only Masters 1000 events to run back-to-back this year, but as far I can tell they are the only ones that will actually overlap. First round toil got under way in Rome some time prior to the Madrid final’s commencement. Back in the days when unseeded players made it to finals, this might have caused a problem, but they don’t any more, so it didn’t. It does mean the Madrid finalists – Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic – have a pretty brisk turn around. If there wasn’t the pressing matter of the top ranking, one or the other might have given it a miss. Encouragingly, Rome at a bare 20 metres above sea level falls within Nadal’s operational parameters, meaning the world No.1 can be considered a reasonable shot at the title, unlike the exospheric Madrid, where – addled by oxygen debt – he was apparently lucky just to find the venue.

Anyway, Rome is nearly two rounds old by now, and has generated no shortage of fascinating results, of which the most fascinating has been Fernando Verdasco’s very sad loss to Robin Soderling today. Aficionados of choking will want this gem on their hard drives, so they can review it repeatedly, in slow motion, just to pinpoint the exact moment when the Spaniard’s brain irrevocably scrambles. Of course, 6/2 5/4 40-0 isn’t an utterly impregnable position – especially for Verdasco – but it’s undeniably strong. From there a double fault and some tough play by Soderling brought it back to deuce, while a couple more double faults eventually saw the Swede break.

However, Soderling hardly ran away with the third set, although his determination not to take control was trumped at every turn by Verdasco’s commitment to giving it away. Eventually they were on the same page, and Soderling’s win was thus assured, but not before the lights malfunctioned, and a couple of medical timeouts. A bug flew into Verdasco’s eye and set up camp – which was unusual – and at the end he refused to shake the umpire’s hand, which has kind of become his signature move, like Radek Stepanek’s ‘Worm’, or Petr Korda’s scissor-kick.

Djokovic’s is now a mind free from doubt, almost as though his capacity to second-guess himself was systematically extracted. It was then distilled, bottled, and then marketed as an exclusive hair product for men. The recommended dosage produces no side effects, although too liberal an application can lead to acute mental paralysis. We begged Verdasco to lay off the stuff – literally begged him! – but he was having none of it. It’s hard to argue with the results, though. He may not be able to serve out a tennis match, but he sure has great lift.

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May 9, 2011

‘Red Hardcourt!’

Madrid Masters 1000, Final

Djokovic d. Nadal, 7/5 6/4

Novak Djokovic has beaten Rafael Nadal in the final of a Masters 1000 event for the third time in as many months, which doesn’t make the task of writing about it any easier, especially if you’re disinclined to repeat yourself. All things considered, the Madrid final was not radically unlike the finals of both Indian Wells and Miami. The dynamics that so enthralled pundits in those matches were in play once more, with the added spice of it occurring on clay, in Spain, and that the world No.1 looked even less like winning.

Indeed, it was another stark reminder that when Nadal loses on his beloved clay, it may be rare, but it’s never very close. Think of Robin Soderling at Roland Garros, or Roger Federer in Hamburg. If you’re a Nadal fan, such reminiscences are likely the last thing you feel like submitting to. (Perhaps a review of the 2008 French Open final, instead?) Anyway, there are more pressing concerns. Nadal’s entire approach is predicated on breaking the other guy down: outlasting, outrunning and ultimately outhitting. So what can be done about the world No.2, who can stay with Nadal all day, and whose immaculate technique isn’t breaking down? Predictably, there have been strident declarations as to the inauthenticity of the Madrid clay – ‘red hardcourt!’ they holler – and that normal service will be resumed in Rome and Paris. Djokovic, they insist, has yet to prove himself over five sets on the dirt. But the tone is desperate, and predicting what will happen based on Djokovic’s history has become a frivolous task.

If Tomas Berdych defines the upper capabilities of tennis robotics as it currently stands, then Novak Djokovic offers a glimpse of where this exciting science might be in twenty years. I don’t mean to suggest that the Serb is robotic – far from it, though I am saying that Berdych is – but merely that if you were to design a tennis player, you’d probably come up with something like him. The way he is playing right now, the closest thing he has to a weakness are strengths marginally less extravagant than others. His serve and forehand are merely world-class, and not to be compared to his backhand and movement, which are out of this world. I suppose his volleys are less than stellar, but he’s a hard man to lure forward on terms that don’t suit him, since he moves as well into the court as he does laterally.

Perfection only remains interesting until you’re sure it will last, then it grows onerous. Djokovic is not at that point yet. Again, far from it. Even discounting the possibility that his erstwhile and lately-submerged fallibility will resurface without warning – and I don’t discount it – there remains the matter of McEnroe’s record to keep things interesting, not to mention the fact that he can claim the No.1 spot as early as next week. Djokovic is 32-0 for 2011, the second best start to a year in the Open Era. No doubt a loss is due, but having dismissed Nadal on clay, even his staunchest detractors are unwilling to say how, or when.

The full match, and many others from this tournament, can be downloaded here.

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May 8, 2011

Atmospherics

Madrid Masters 1000, Semifinals

Nadal d Federer, 5/7 6/1 6/3

Djokovic d Bellucci, 4/6 6/4 6/1

The word of the week has been ‘altitude’. Apparently Madrid has lots of it, and no opportunity has been missed to point out the Spanish capital’s remoteness from sea level, as though the Caja Magica is the enchanted annexe of a Tibetan monastery. To be sure, 640 metres is not sea level, but it’s also not so high that the laws of aerodynamics cease to be compulsory. Presumably there’s still air. In a similar vein, much has been made of the fact that the roof was closed for last night’s semifinals. The difference, it was intimated, is that it was now an Indoors Match, recalling those serve-centric blitzkriegs of the 1990s, the ones that were allegedly destined to kill tennis. On the other hand, scant attention was paid to the reason why the roof was closed in the first place, which was because it had been raining all day. The court was damp and played like treacle, even if the venue is apparently so stratospheric that there was hardly enough air to retard the ball’s progress through it.

All of which is to say that it is a clay court, a fact that is obvious to the average punter but has proven harder to keep in mind for the avowed experts. Hacks sufficiently jaded that they usually take Nadal’s humble pronouncements with a bowl of salt have allowed themselves to be temporarily sucked into believing the tripe:

“It’s clay, Nadal is the clear favourite.”

“Don’t forget, the altitude . . .”

“Yeah right, the altitude. Nadal winning will be almost impossible.”

So it goes. Anyway, assuming for the nonce that Madrid is actually played on clay, it came as no real surprise when Nadal and Djokovic – defenders par excellence – today set about confounding the trite theory that attack is the best form of defence. On clay, this has never held true: a sturdy defence will almost always prove impregnable for a comparable attack, or even a superior one. It isn’t by accident that Roland Garros remained the glaring hole in Pete Sampras’ curriculum vitae, though really, the whole clay swing was a sore point for him, and no one in the 90s could cover a court like Nadal or Djokovic.

For fans of Federer, numbed by the relentless discourse of decline and fall, today’s semifinal was hopefully heartening. If it had been played five years ago, between younger men, no eyes would have been batted. Indeed, it was pretty reminiscent of several bygone clay court encounters between these two, particularly some Monte Carlo finals. In other words, Federer didn’t lose today because he’s past it, he lost because Nadal is arguably the greatest claycourter who has ever lived. Relentless attack was always going to be a long shot, but it was better than no shot, and he was nowhere near as far from winning as the scoreline suggests. Many have suggested that Nadal didn’t play his best, but it wasn’t the kind of encounter whereby he could. His best is based around dictating patterns, and Federer was not allowing him to dictate much at all. This resulted in plenty of errors from both men, but also some truly wonderful shotmaking, again from both. Nadal was rightly proud to have progressed.

Pride is something that Djokovic has in abundance. I’m not convinced it’s doing him much good, since it sometimes seems to choke his heart, causing him to beat his chest like a maniac, as though suffering a heart-attack, or a fit. I recall he has a history of breathing issues, and this might explain why: bruised bronchials from over-pounding. He was at it again today when he finally overcame an initially inspired Thomaz Bellucci. Bellucci’s faithful fans, those who’ve stuck with him through some lean times, will take much from this week. Mostly it will be good stuff – beating Murray and Berdych, and bossing Djokovic around for a set and a bit – but there will also be concern for his groin, which he strained. More concern than usual, that is. I last watched Bellucci play live in the first round of the Australian Open, where he overcame Mello in five tough sets. Judging by his support that day, no few of those faithful fans have been patiently awaiting their chance to examine his groin in some detail.

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May 6, 2011

Just Because It All Looks Smooth

Madrid Masters 1000, Third Round

Federer d. Malisse, 6/4 6/3

Returning to the court less than a day after scraping through a life-shorteningly tense encounter with Feliciano Lopez, Roger Federer today saw off another talented near-contemporary in Xavier Malisse. Federer’s last three matches have been against players aged 29 or 30, which, as we are reminded daily, is his age, too. In the wider world, we like to refer to this type of thing as a ‘coincidence’. Within the more limited scope of tennis reportage, it apparently indicates a clear case of something or other, and therefore has to be exhaustively dissected.

Interviewed on court after the win, Federer was unusually expansive when invited to elaborate on why Malisse has never made it to the top level of the game. It is the kind of reasonable question that almost invariably elicits a guardedly bland response from a player, and so the comprehensiveness and honesty of Federer’s answer caught everyone off guard. He happily conceded that Malisse boasts an array of excellent strokes – although he suggested the Belgian’s second serve was a little ‘predictable’ – but then went on to add that despite this, Malisse generally falls short in his application. Malisse will hit some ‘magical’ shots, but the physicality and ‘work-ethic’ required to make oneself run down balls and grind it out from week-to-week is missing. In other words, Malisse is lazy. I have often wondered whether Federer looks at Malisse and experiences a ‘there but for the grace of God go I’ moment. Now we know he doesn’t.

Federer finished by suggesting that ‘just because it all looks smooth doesn’t always mean it all comes so easy, either’. Mere talent does not guarantee greatness, and it’s worth considering the idea that Malisse has actually played to his abilities, or even exceeded them. It’s a discussion worth having. I’ve noted several times before that onlookers tend to exalt talent over mere hard work. The expectations for the talented know few limits, though the capacity to feel betrayed when they do not meet those expectations is consequently vast.

Part of the problem is that Malisse and Federer entered fan-consciousness at around the same time, and were foremost in a coterie of touted next big things. Following the 2002 Wimbledon, the standard word was that Federer was merely a promising headcase – he fell to a qualifier in the first round – while Malisse was the real deal, having progressed to the semifinals. Nine years later, however, and that Wimbledon semifinal remains the Belgian’s best result in a major, and that Wimbledon is itself considered to be among the worst in living memory, not least because the last four included Malisse. His fans wait in vain for a Melzer-style late-career bloom, but it wasn’t hard work that’d hitherto held Melzer back, and a work ethic is not something players suddenly discover at 30.

Federer didn’t bother to point it out, but the corollary to these considerations is that his unmatched accomplishments owe less to talent, or even his oft-ascribed genius, than to his willingness to grind out matches when his game isn’t flowing free. Naturally, those truly intimate with the sport know this, but it always bears repeating, along with Martina Navratilova’s line that it doesn’t matter how good you are when you play well, but how good you are when you play badly, or the line that you’re only as good as your second serve. Cliches both, but particularly pertinent to Xavier Malisse.

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