January 30, 2011

A Second Stamp

Australian Open, Final

Djokovic d. Murray, 6/4 6/2 6/3

Channel 7 didn’t exactly redeem itself at the eleventh hour – we’re way beyond that – but it could have been worse. Of course there was the usual ear-jarring nonsense – ‘Djokovic is asking a lot of question marks out there’ – but at least Bruce McAveny got to serve up a line he’s clearly had on the stove for a while: ‘The Djoker becomes a king!’ There was even a touch of feathery irony that I’m going to assume was deliberate. As the players made their way onto court, the master of ceremonies Craig Willis – whose liquid tonsils and dry delivery have helped make AO Radio such a pleasure – announced: ‘Representing Great Britain, Andy Murray!’ The coverage director allowed themselves a momentary caprice, and immediately cut to a placard proclaiming ‘Great Scot’. A telling disjunction between words and images, the gap where meaning lurks. The important point here is that no Scottish man has ever won a major. I might be wrong, but I think that’s what all the hoopla is about. Frankly, it has been generous of the English to get so excited on Scotland’s behalf. Now that Andy Murray has lost his third major final, I’m sure they will be generously leading the charge to trample him.

I don’t really subscribe to a structuralist approach to sport, and am slow to succumb to it when invited to. In general, there is too little acknowledgement of things like coincidence and just having a bad day. That said, after three Grand Slam finals in which Murray has failed to take a set, and in which he has gone relatively meekly into that goodnight, I have to wonder if there isn’t something fundamentally flawed in his approach. This is a guy who owns the Masters Series format – he has six of them – last year defeating Roger Federer in two finals, the second one a comprehensive hiding. He’s good enough to win majors, especially when there isn’t an inspired Swiss guy up the other end. But this latest effort, whereby he fell to a superb Novak Djokovic but wouldn’t have troubled an ordinary Tomas Berdych, shakes ones faith that Grand Slam success is inevitable. Time will tell, eventually. More immediately, the issue will be how Murray recovers. Last year’s loss inspired a five month slump. This year’s loss was worse, through recycling the sins of the past. Hopefully the Scot has grown more resilient.

Anyway, enough of Murray. Novak Djokovic won, and was superb. Regarding his game, there isn’t much to say that wasn’t said by everyone following his victory over Federer, and that hasn’t been said for years. The only thing that really came home to me tonight was how perfectly Djokovic strikes the balance between offence and defence. He is almost never in the wrong mode, unlike his opponent, who was often in neither mode. That balance is a very hard one to achieve. Successful defending – and tonight Djokovic was truly outstanding – frequently inspires a player to grow passive, and to invite attack. Relentless offence can make it difficult to pay proper respect to an opponent’s shots. Doing both at the level at which Djokovic did so is a very rare accomplishment, and not one confined to this final. It’s been a feature for the entire tournament, and the reason he has looked so unbeatable.

To a large degree, Djokovic has been unbeatable, dropping only eight matches since Wimbledon, and all but two of those to either Federer or Rafael Nadal. That’s a solid base, and when you throw in a Davis Cup and an impeccable Australian Open title, you can expect he might start losing to those guys a lot less. I notice Djokovic had a little ‘Nole’ embroidered on the tail of his Sergio Tacchino polo. Perhaps I’m over-reading it, but it suggests he feels like he belongs in the company of the Big Two, who are not hostile to monogramming. Their other vanity is stamping their bags with their major title tallies, like Spitfire pilots advertising confirmed kills on the fuselage. Djokovic would have looked frankly stupid with just one stamp, but he’ll look a great deal less so with two. Based on tonight, who is willing to wager he won’t have a third stamp before the year is out?

The full match, as well as many others from the 2011 Australian Open, can be downloaded here. As ever, please avoid highlights.

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January 29, 2011

A Soul-Miring Comedown

Another update has appeared to the continuing exploits of Israel’s No.2 tennis player Amir Weintraub, whose escapades I first covered here. The third installment of his adventures – entitled ‘Crash’ – has been translated and posted in the original forum thread (it’s on page 5).

Following hard on our hero’s adventures at the Australian Open qualifying, this entry deals with the soul-miring comedown of returning to the minor leagues. Weintraub has gone from scraping into qualifying as an alternate in Melbourne, to being top seed at a Futures event in own his country, a radical downshift in pond-size. The prose is as simple and evocative as ever, and the theme provides a salutory message to the likes of Bernard Tomic and Milos Raonic, who will undergo similarly undignified journies from roaring centre courts to arid backlots.

There is some light for Weintraub, who has been selected for the Israeli Davis Cup squad. However, the promise of this experience exerts a distraction commensurate with Melbourne, and caught between them, he loses to a player ranked 400 spots below him. Cue soul-searching.

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January 28, 2011

A Tennis Player

Australian Open, Semifinal

Murray d. Ferrer, 4/6 7/6 6/1 7/6

The crowd in Rod Laver Arena was particularly rowdy this evening, a fact I quickly surmised from the noise they were generating, which was considerable. Lest I misinterpreted it, a valuable second opinion arrived in the form of the Channel 7 commentary: ‘The crowd is loud tonight.’ They attempted to cross to Todd Woodbridge for confirmation, but he couldn’t hear them very well, what with the crowd being so loud. Woodbridge was stationed at the back of the press pit, which means he was positioned slightly further from the action than the main commentators, but very close to Brad Gilbert, over whose constant babble Woodbridge might conceivably hear the crowd, which was very loud. These competing auditory forces were sufficient to scramble his brain. Thus afflicted, he had no trouble in producing such gems as, ‘Andy Murray is what I call a tennis player’. 364 more of those, and he’ll have a desk calendar.

It is a flourishing statement, one that looks round for applause. It’s also a cliche, and a tacit insult to Murray’s opponent, David Ferrer, the implication being that he isn’t a tennis player. The point, as I’m sure we are all aware and as Woodbridge went on to explain at length, is that Murray plays with considerable variety, and thinks more than most other guys on court, constructing points and adapting his play to prevailing conditions and his opponent’s game. This is standard stuff, and the commentators are contractually obliged to bring it up whenever Murray plays, much like mentioning a sponsor every seventeen seconds. After some time, while we slowly assimilated Woodbridge’s radical philosophy, he spelled out the corollary, which is that Ferrer is merely a ‘ball-striker’. Being a tennis player clearly trumps being a mere ball striker, and so we all sighed with relief when Murray turned the match around with a tactical adjustment, throwing off his opponent’s metronomic game with a some charming and varied play, including a series of bold moves into the forecourt.

Interviewed by Jim Courier afterwards, Murray was invited to elaborate on his strategic shift in the third set. Apparently the Scot hadn’t read the script, and could come up with nothing more sophisticated than some guff about going for looser strings, being a bit more aggressive, and how Ferrer’s level had dropped. Then, in the fourth, Ferrer started playing better and it got tight again. It is a conceit of sports commentary that the inner game is more prominent than is actually the case. Military metaphors are de riguer in this area, so I’ll throw another one in by pointing out that strategy goes out the window once the first shot is fired. When probed, most players tend to feel that the guy who played better won, simple as that.

Woodbridge’s position in the stands was previously occupied by Roger Rasheed, whom one suspects was vaguely put out by having to insert the odd normal word into an otherwise steady stream of neologisms and corporate-speak. His entire approach to tennis is predicated on a faith in strategic management, which makes him a bizarre foil for Gael Monfils. (Perhaps the Frenchman’s continuing befuddlement is not unrelated to the fact that so much of Rasheed’s advice has to be translated into English before it can be translated into French. Chinese whispers ensues.) What would Rasheed have made of the moment when Courier asked Murray what he was thinking, down set point in the second set? Murray confessed that he’d been so focussed on playing tennis – he is a ‘tennis player’, you’ll recall – that he forgot the score, believing it to be 3/4. Look for Rasheed to incorporate hypnotism and targeted head trauma into his ‘integrated coaching solution moving forward’.

Anyway, Murray is through to his second straight Australian Open final, where he will play Novak Djokovic for the first time in a major: two ‘tennis players’ on the cusp of greatness, hitherto restricted to near perfect parallel by the all-time greats above them, a fascinating rivalry played out in the rankings but not on the court. Until now.

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January 27, 2011

Blinking First

Australian Open, Semifinal

Djokovic d. Federer, 7/6 7/5 6/4

Ever since the 2007 US Open final, when Novak Djokovic augmented the biomass at the elite end of men’s tennis by roughly half, the Serb and Roger Federer have constructed a rivalry seemingly built on very tight sets. It is remarkable how often their important matches feature the numbers 7/6 and 7/5. The score in that US Open final, incidentally, was 7/6 7/6 6/4 in Federer’s favour, but it was only in the final set that he was the clearly superior player. This is the other striking aspect of their rivalry. Their close sets often see Federer struggling to hold on, only for Djokovic to blink first when it comes to the crunchy bit at the end.

Their epic US Open semifinal last year looked like following this pattern, until it devolved into a strange affair defined by Federer’s mental walk-abouts in sets two and four. Then Djokovic took the fifth set 7/5, weathering match points. For once, he didn’t blink, inspiring widespread theorising that their rivalry had experienced a fundamental reordering. Federer punished our presumption with three convincing wins to close out the year, including a commanding effort in the semifinals of the World Tour Finals.

Tonight’s match re-energises the debate. It was close – 119 points to 111 – but Djokovic was unflappable. When he wasn’t shanking backhands, Federer was perpetually off-balance. Federer is amongst the sport’s most economical and elegant movers, but Djokovic, like Andy Murray, has a way of disrupting his footwork, of making him look a trifle awkward. It is as though their capacity to change direction and to embrace the lines off both sides stops Federer from hedging his bets. With no obvious shot to cover, he seems always to guess wrong. As a result, Djokovic could tonight maintain control of a rally while playing within himself, as Federer struggled to set his feet. Aside from that curious period in the second set, when momentum lurched around drunkenly, the Serb controlled the match exquisitely.

The slowness of the surface and balls – a lethal combination that has inspired the epithet ‘blue clay’ – meant that being able to control the game whilst playing within yourself was a pretty useful advantage to have. Federer could only wrest control back by hitting out, which often resulted in him hitting it out. There have been plenty of times in the last decade when it hasn’t gone out – and bear in mind that the head-to-head between these two is 13-7 in Federer’s favour – but today the magic just wasn’t there. That rarified place the Swiss periodically ascends to remained tantalisingly beyond reach. Mired here, Federer is only an exceptionally fine tennis player, which it turns out isn’t enough to overcome Djokovic in this kind of form.

Djokovic moves through to his second Australian Open final, exactly three years to the day after he won his first one.

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January 26, 2011

The More Things Change

Australian Open, Quarterfinals

Rashly, I started this article prior to the last men’s quarterfinal, in which a hamstrung Rafael Nadal was overwhelmed in straight sets by a sporadically inspired and always-solid David Ferrer. Of the four quarterfinals, that was the one whose outcome seemed in the least doubt, so I felt safe in my title. The underlying conceit was that the Big Four would be once again filling out the pointiest end of the draw, which occurs more often than it rightly should, but not as often as you might think. The last time it happened in a major was the first time, at the 2008 US Open, at the very moment Andy Murray joined the club. What does often happen is that three of them make it to the semifinals, while one somehow falls by the wayside. So it has proved again. But what’s done is done; Nadal is gone and with him the ‘Nadal Slam’. Lest you require an epoch-shattering angle in order to remain engaged, I’ll remind you that Roger Federer is attempting to break the all-time Grand Slam record, an achievement which is not rendered less amazing by the fact that he’s a chance to do it every time he turns up. British fans can probably find something to inspire them.

Federer d. Wawrinka, 6/1 6/3 6/3

Lingering disappointment that Federer would not be facing (and disgracing) Andy Roddick at this stage was only slightly allayed by the Swiss master’s finely-judged performance against his young countryman: Federer was often brilliant, but Wawrinka was rarely more than solid, and regularly less. Nonetheless, as Wawrinka remarked afterwards, the degree to which his troubles owed to the subtle machinations of the master at the other end may not have been apparent from afar, but were decisive as far as he was concerned. Simply, Federer did not allow the Swiss No.2 to play how he likes to, whereas Wawrinka’s previous opponents had. After the first set blew out, Federer went to town, and seeing him descend (or ascend) into exhibition mode can hardly have been encouraging for his opponent. My feeling is that, thus far in the tournament, Federer has been seeking to progress with the minimum of effort, but that it took until now to get the balance right. What this portends for the next match is anyone’s guess.

Djokovic d. Berdych, 6/1 7/6 6/1

Perhaps it’s a failing on my part, but there are times when one struggles to find much to say about a tennis match. This was one of those matches. Djokovic was virtually impregnable. He thumped his chest a lot, so I suspect he was pretty into it. There were several dozen topless men with the letters B-E-R-D-Y-C-H scrawled across their torsos, and they seemed pretty into it. Everyone else there (myself included) dearly wanted to be into it, too, but it just felt like a mismatch, even when Berdych broke early in the second set. Djokovic looked sleek, and everywhere. I recall saying much the same thing heading into the semifinal of the Shanghai Masters last year, where Federer cleaned him up. A best-of-five match is different matter, it’s true, but it isn’t that different. Djokovic is good enough to push Federer to the limit, unless the latter is feeling particularly inspired, in which case he can go to that place beyond the Serbian’s reach, the place Andre Agassi once confessed he didn’t recognise.

Murray d. Dolgopolov, 7/5 6/3 6/7 6/3

It’s rare to see Andy Murray outfoxed, but he was by Alexandr Dolgopolov this afternoon, outfoxed and unimpressed about it. Dolgopolov, in the depressing manner of these things, is already being compared to Marcello Rios, though that’s unfair insofar as he isn’t a prick. Still, he’s wily, unorthodox and difficult to read. Murray clearly found the experience to be a colossal pain in the backside. He was good natured about it afterwards, but still had trouble describing precisely what made the Ukrainian so slippery: ‘He’s just . . . different.’

Murray’s fans are rightly thrilled that he has successfully navigated the ‘quarter of death’. It certainly didn’t hurt that both Soderling and Nadal were cleared from his path. Nonethless, Ferrer in the semifinals could well provide a stern challenge. They met in the Tour Finals last November, and Murray had his measure. But then everyone did that week. This is a new Ferrer this year, and no one has beaten him yet.

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January 26, 2011

Triumph And Disaster

Australian Open, Quarterfinals

Ferrer d. Nadal, 6/4 6/2 6/3

Of the four men’s quarterfinals being contested at this year’s Australian Open, there was only one whose result was almost utterly beyond doubt. Rafael Nadal’s record against nearly everyone has been impeccable of late, and he was playing someone tonight, suggesting he would have the edge. The fact that he was playing another Spaniard – his career so far demonstrates scant fear towards those presumptuous enough to be born in the same country – seemingly put it beyond doubt. True, the countryman was David Ferrer, the only Spaniard ever to defeat him in Grand Slam play, but that was years ago, in another place.

Still, when you’re going up against a guy who’s won 25 Grand Slam matches in a row, you’ll take everything you can get. But would Ferrer have taken any solace in this random stat: it is a year to the day since Nadal’s knee imploded whilst copping a ferocious barrage from Andy Murray in the 2010 Australian Open. Friendship and decency would dictate not, quite aside from the sheer unlikelihood of something like that happening again, today. Except it did.

You doubtless know how it went down, how two games into the match (following a good 20 minutes of grind) Nadal strained his left hamstring, and departed the court for extended treatment at the next change of ends. He returned, having resolved to play on if he could – he later confided that he’d ‘hated’ that moment of default last year – but his look was grim, and his serve speed well down. Hamstrung, he toiled until the end. Ferrer was unrelenting, and it is not unreasonable to suggest he might well have troubled Nadal had the latter been fully fit. We’ll never know, and the story of the night was not Ferrer, which is a shame for a nice guy moving into his second major semifinal. But it is what it is, and Nadal was chasing history.

History escaped, again. The mystique of the Grand Slam is considerable, and it will only gain lustre after tonight. Nadal is fond of telling anyone willing to listen how ‘impossible’ nearly every task on a tennis court is, whether it is beating a geriatric qualifier, or winning four majors in a row. Turns out, this time, he was right, though I suspect even he was late in believing it. As the reality sank in, his face said it all, which means the supplementary commentary supplied by my television was completely superfluous. In case it wasn’t clear, the close-ups of the world No.1 wiping away angry tears during a changeover late in the match made it crystalline. We were talked through that, too. Nadal’s face – stricken and furious – proved a valuable corrective to the sometimes overwhelming sense that he is an inhuman and unstoppable robotic killing machine, recovering again and again from seemingly mortal blows, returning to the fray to visit bloody retribution on Roger Federer. A few tears did Andy Murray’s image no harm, and surely no one is exulting in this outcome. Shadenfraude has its limits, except on the internet.

In his press conference afterwards Nadal was philosophical, pointing out to the hushed room that any tennis career has its high and low points, and that of late the highs have been abundant. Had he been poetic, he might have recalled these lines, which he should by now know by heart: ‘If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same . . .’

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January 25, 2011

Officially On Notice

Australian Open, Fourth Round

Full steam into Day 8 of the Australian Open, where a titanic whirlpool of predictability threatened to suck us down. A still-recovering Rafael Nadal would be pushed by Marin Cilic, as would Andy Murray by the dangerous Jurgen Melzer. How each of them navigated these reefs would have a strong bearing on how they fared further into the tournament, especially as Murray would next be facing the very dangerous Robin Soderling, a shoe-in over an overwhelmed Alexandr Dolgopolov. The only result that was in serious doubt was David Ferrer’s, who might well be troubled by the young Canadian Milos Raonic.

It didn’t work out that way.

Dolgopolov d. Soderling, 1/6 6/3 6/1 4/6 6/2

I still don’t know why some people back Soderling to win majors. The best explanation I can dredge up is that they fancy themselves as cool-hunters, and are determined to be in on the next big craze from the outset. Last year it was ironic yo-yos and whatever came after Twitter, this year it’s taciturn Swedes. Lock it in. Sadly, Soderling put in his usual quarterfinal effort, one round early, for some a premature capitulation, meaning he left too soon. For his part, Dolgopolov was a revelation, quite literally for some. For those late to the party, he’s a crafty young Ukrainian. Channel 7, unhinged by the dearth of top-line local tennis talent, has made a great deal of the role his Australian coach has played. Against his will, he is now Aussie Alexandr, which rolls off the tongue like the drool of someone lobotomised by the coverage.

Murray d. Melzer, 6/3 6/1 6/1

Dolgopolov will play Murray in the quarterfinal, who overcame Melzer in a match that was clinical, meaning it was as about as fun as any other visit to a clinic. Murray was peerless and the Austrian was hopeless. The only interesting moment came afterwards, when Jim Courier was put in his place by a dispeptic Billy Connolly, who’d apparently come to the tennis to watch tennis, and not be engaged in a pointless media stunt. Ambushed with a microphone, and invited to put some questions to Murray, all we received was an ominous, rumbling burr: “Leave me alone!”. Wisely, Courier left him alone.

Nadal d. Cilic, 6/2 6/4 6/3

Fans have marvelled at Cilic’s resurgence. He has so far looked almost like that guy from last year’s Australian Open, the one who battled through to the semifinals. Tonight he looked more like the guy who barely won consecutive matches for about seven months. Nadal looked like Nadal, and played like him, too, which is a pronounced improvement over his performance the round before. This was the world No.1, and he was terrifyingly good.

The rest of the field is officially on notice.

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January 24, 2011

Thrashing Roddick As Aesthetic Experience

Australian Open, Fourth Round

Wawrinka d. Roddick, 6/3 6/4 6/4

Aficionados of tennis demolition hold the 2007 Australian Open semifinal between Roger Federer and Andy Roddick in stratospheric regard. Undoubtedly, Federer has dished out more comprehensive hidings – the 2004 US Open final leaps to mind – but there was just something about this one that really cements its place among the Great Shellackings. Perhaps it was Roddick’s win over Federer in the meaningless Kooyong event a few weeks earlier, and the cloying commentary that the ‘gap had closed’. The match itself started auspiciously, and until 4/4 in the first set there was no way to anticipate what was about to happen. What did happen is now part of the folklore, and startled even Federer, who admitted afterwards: ‘I had one of these days when everything worked. I was unbeatable. I was playing out of my mind. I am shocked myself . . . I’ve played good matches here, but never really almost destroyed somebody.’ The most telling stat? Federer hit as many winners (45) as Roddick won points. For a certain variety of tennis fan, this was as good as it gets.

This type of fan was probably hoping somewhere in their hearts that Roddick would find a way to overcome Stanislas Wawrinka tonight. I am not unsympathetic to this point of view, notwithstanding the fact that if I was compelled to compile a list I would name Wawrinka among my favourite players. The reason, mainly, is that I’m going to be at Rod Laver Arena on Tuesday. I’ve watched Federer live any number of times, but, sadly, I’ve never witnessed him dish out a comprehensive beat-down. It’s something I’m hoping to see before I die. Given the thoroughness of Wawrinka’s effort tonight, it’s not a treat I’m likely to be enjoying soon. Federer will need to lift just to win.

Andy Roddick is now held in such low regard by some that praising him can feel like willful perversity. I like the guy, but I can see their point. His matches are frankly boring, mostly for the way that any point extending beyond that first decisive strike tends to unfurl gradually outward without almost any appreciable tautness. Just tuning in to watch feels like a duty; his Grand Slam campaigns feel like tours of duty. As a defender, he lacks the tenacity of Hewitt, the audacity of Nadal, or the virtuosity of Murray. He is merely desperate and ornery. Beyond that, however, even beyond the increasingly frequent and self-defeating tantrums, he is just so frustrating. There was a time when his game was synonymous with excitement. Think back to the 2003 US Open final, when he blew Juan Carlos Ferrero off the court. Now the only thing exciting about his game is when someone dismantles it as expertly as Wawrinka did. If the point was to see a Swiss dude break Roddick’s heart, I suppose that would be enough, but that isn’t the point at all.

The point is that with Andy Roddick up the other end, watching Roger Federer can become an aesthetic experience seen nowhere else in tennis. Maybe next time.

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January 22, 2011

A Clear Way Forward

Australian Open, Third Round

Nadal d. Tomic, 6/2 7/5 6/4

Bernard Tomic was not good enough to beat an out-of-sorts Rafael Nadal tonight, but there was no shame in it. It has been years since any teenager could have, the last one perhaps being Nadal himself, in a brasher, sleeveless and altogether drier incarnation. Honourable losses naturally feel worse than wins, but that was never on the cards, even at 4/0 in the second when the odds on Tomic plummeted to $9.00, more proof that gambling is largely a tax on the stupid.

Tomic was a revelation tonight. Like Andy Murray in last year’s quarterfinal, he arrived steeped in the knowledge that his regular game – which I’ve cheerfully derided as ‘pointless noodling’ – wasn’t going to cut it. Consequently, he was aggressive and purposeful, almost never yielding position, and so very calm. There were only a few forehand slices, although that was still a few too many. Those notwithstanding, it seems Tomic’s blithe declaration that Nadal wouldn’t like his game was reasonably astute. Unlike Murray, however, he couldn’t sustain it when the time came to put the Spaniard away in the second set. That was largely down to inexperience. Certainly it had little to do with Nadal, who by his own admission was already looking ahead to the third, and seemed to be locked in a futile battle against his t-shirt, which Nike has apparently fashioned from wet nylon.

Probably the most impressive aspect of Tomic’s performance was his court positioning. The expectation was that Nadal would camp in the middle of the baseline, and that the youngster would be sent scurrying. Few rallies panned out that way. Nadal’s groundstrokes lacked their usual penetration, it’s undeniable, but it was Tomic dictating many of the points, and Nadal was the one on the hop. The world No.1 remarked upon it in his on-court interview afterwards: he simply couldn’t move Tomic from the baseline. Graphics demonstrating the rally-points for each player bore this out.

Amidst the crass media-storm surrounding Tomic’s scheduling at last year’s Australian Open, the reasonable fear was raised that, having sampled the big-time, he might find it a chore to slum it on the Futures and Challenger circuits. In all the fancy theories as to why he has played so little tennis in the last 12 months, this one sounds as likely as any. His straight sets loss to Nadal was in every way a more accomplished and larger effort than his five set tussle with Marin Cilic last year, which was really just a testament to the young Croatian being bamboozled by some lumbering kid pointlessly noodling the ball around. Once again, the test for Tomic will be on the lower tours, proving himself in the weekly grind against a kaleidoscope of players, some with styles as weird as his. Once there, the trick will be to build upon the aggression he displayed tonight, since it demonstrated a clear way forward, a direct route that leads to winning tennis matches. The other task will be to subsume an overweening sense of entitlement, and to treat every moment and opponent with due respect. If Tomic learns one lesson from sharing a space with Nadal, it should be that one.

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January 22, 2011

Another Game For Milos!

Australian Open, Third Round

Raonic d. Youzhny, 6/4 7/5 4/6 6/4

Now that he has defeated No.10 seed Mikhail Youzhny, Canada’s young Milos Raonic can feasibly lay claim to being the story of the first week. Including Qualifying, it was his sixth straight victory at Melbourne Park.

Still only 20, he is a big man (6’5”), with a commensurate serve, an inclination to attack, and fine composure. For those who follow tennis only occasionally, he has sprung seemingly from nowhere. Those who follow it closer know he has sprung from Montenegro by way of Canada, and that his results over the past six months have been building to something notable. He progressed to the quarterfinal of Kualar Lumpur (l. to Andreev), and pushed Rafael Nadal in Tokyo. With compatriot Vasek Pospisil, he knocked off the dream-team of Nadal and Novak Djokovic at the Canadian Open. Arriving in Melbourne he was ranked No.152. If he loses to David Ferrer in the round of 16 – by no means guaranteed – he will rise to somewhere around No.100.

In addition to his undeniable abilities, Roanic boasts some more strings to his bow, which is of the rare multi-string variety. Firstly, being from Canada he is well positioned to capitalise on their dearth of top line tennis talent, in much the same way Ai Sugiyama and Sania Mirza have in their respective countries, though on an admittedly more modest scale. Canada is hardly a tennis backwater, thanks to its proximity to the United States and a well-attended Masters 1000 event. A successful player could very much write his own sponsorship ticket, and is virtually guaranteed a reasonable start-up fanbase.

His other advantage lies in this:

Every time he wins, this gets posted everywhere, which will eventually grow wearisome if he starts winning a lot. For the time being, though, there are worse fan bases to tap into than Seinfeld‘s, so vast, and so receptive to precisely this kind of quirky juxtaposition. With a baked-in fanbase and his very own catch-phrase, watch Raonic go viral.

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