The Next Point

Davis Cup, First Round

It has been a long week, and it isn’t over yet.

The Australian Open concluded last Sunday, as ever seen out with considerable pomp by a 200-piece brass band performing a vexatious medley of tunes by John Philip Sousa, arranged by Erik Satie. On Wednesday I released The Next Point’s 2012 Annual to considerably less fanfare: a lone hobo with a decrepit sousaphone attempting the Baby Elephant Walk. Having resolved to take an extended break from writing, watching and thinking about tennis, my reaction upon realising that the Davis Cup first round would begin in only two days was thus mixed. I was dismayed to learn that drinking heavily only made the time go faster. Still, it helped. If by Friday my mood hadn’t quite lightened into ecstasy, at least my resignation had shed its bitter weight.

The singles began on Friday, but precisely what this meant within a global context was unclear. At no time is the transcontinental nature of tennis more evident than in the first round of the Davis Cup, when ties are spread across nearly every continent on Earth, besides Antarctica, whose bid to host South Africa’s home tie at McMurdo Station fell through at the last moment. For determined tennis fans camped on the prime meridian, Friday began at about ten o’clock the night before, when New Zealand and Lebanon kicked off their tie in Auckland. Friday finished as Canada and Spain completed an intriguing day’s play Vancouver at about three o’clock Saturday morning.

The first day of play, in other words, went on without a break for about twenty-nine hours, and by the time it ended the second day’s play was already under way across the date line. By the time Frank Dancevic had engaged fully with the task of thrashing Marcel Granollers, New Zealand’s doubles pair were already well on their way towards securing the home tie. It turns it’s possible to watch David Cup almost continuously over its first weekend, assuming you have an internet connection capable of simultaneous streams, a ready supply of amphetamines, and no loved ones to talk you out of it.

I won’t pretend I have any intention of doing that. I fear I lack the means and the fortitude. As a rule I don’t sleep much, but that only causes me to covet the little I do get. For the Australian tennis fan, the sadness that accompanies the conclusion of the Australian Open is heightened by the awareness that following the sport and adequate rest will be mutually exclusive until at least October, during the tour’s brief return to Asia. Most of the results that truly matter occur in the middle of my night. So do the results that don’t matter much at all, such as Novak Djokovic’s bold (and not-at-all fearful) romp over Oliver Rochus in the first match of the Belgium-Serbia tie. By the time the plucky David Goffin had established a two set lead over Viktor Troicki, I felt at once enervated and energised. I had never felt so alive; if the dead do yearn, it isn’t for their beds. Nothing much matters when you feel like that. Or like Jurgen Melzer, who’d just lost to Evgeny Korolev.

I rose in time to see Granollers collapse to an inspired Dancevic, thereby frog-marching the Spanish squad to the edge of elimination. The last time Spain contested a Davis Cup tie without Rafael Nadal, David Ferrer, Nicholas Almagro or Fernando Verdasco was long before any of those men had attained the top ten or even world fame, back when Juan Carlos Ferrero and Carlos Moya were national heroes, as opposed to national treasures. Alex Corretja probably would’ve preferred to bring either or both of those guys back. We marvel endlessly at Spain’s depth – and I suppose there are of nations competing this weekend who would struggle to field a team at all without their top five players – but it isn’t infinite, and they’re one lost rubber away from a first round exit.

Meanwhile France’s best pair was available for the tie in Rouen, where they had little difficulty in seeing off Israel’s best pair. Amir Weintraub is something of a Davis Cup warrior, but he’d yet to face anyone of Jo-Wilfried Tsonga’s quality. He acquitted himself very well in taking a set, and seemed like the better player for passages in the fourth, with the difference being the Frenchman’s superior serve. It ended badly for the Israeli, in a flurry of silly errors. I hope that isn’t the part of his performance that stays with him, although it was clearly the part he was dwelling on in the immediate aftermath. It was the last thing I saw before sleep pulled me under.

My dreams were troubled, but at least they were dreams. Alas, they were too brief, and featured a terrifying hobo with a sousaphone.

Now that Bernard Tomic has attained twenty years of age – a milestone that was as restrained in its celebration as it was devoid of homoeroticism – there are once again no teenagers ranked within the ATP’s top one hundred, a shortcoming that has proved quite popular in recent times. Indeed besides Tomic there is only one twenty-year-old, although he doesn’t share the Australian’s penchant for canary yellow Ferraris.

Leaving one’s taste in garish sports cars to the side, this remains a serious problem. The age at which a player first ascends to the top hundred correlates strongly to their future success. As this article by Jeff Sackmann reveals, of the 25 players who broke into the top hundred between 2001 and 2011, 20 went on to reach the top twenty, while 17 reached the top ten. Of course attaining the top hundred so young is no guarantee that you’ll one day reach No.1, but failing to do so makes it all but certain that you won’t. Of all the No.1 players since the rankings began, only Patrick Rafter didn’t reach the top hundred before his twentieth birthday, which explains why the party was a decidedly glum affair at which he refrained from stripping off and wrestling his mates. It’s enough to make one wonder where the next top players are actually going to come from, or if they’ve even left the Juniors (there are some especially promising prospects in the class of ’96).

In the meantime I’ll confine my gaze to the youths who’ve already ensconced themselves in the top hundred. Given that an article summarising only Tomic and Ryan Harrison would be either too short or provide me with too much space in which to poke fun at them, I’ll expand the selection to those young men who are old enough to purchase alcohol in the United States. I can justify this by saying that in the current climate twenty-one still looks very young. In David Goffin’s case it looks downright embryonic. But it is still a largely arbitrary restriction, and I don’t mean to imply that the most notable twenty-two-year-olds – Jerzy Janowicz, Guido Pella and Evgeny Donsky – aren’t worth discussing. The number in brackets is each player’s ranking at the start of the season.

 

Milos Raonic

Current Ranking: 13 (31)

Milos Raonic barely qualifies for inclusion in this survey insofar as his birthday falls only two days after Jesus’, which will thereby propel him to the advanced age of twenty-two before the year is quite spent. He also stands out from this crowd for his tangible accomplishments, and for the way that in discussing him one isn’t obliged to deploy a term like ‘potential’, let alone precede it with ‘wasted’. This season he compiled a respectable 8-8 record against opponents ranked above him, and 37-12 against those below.

He has already won three tour titles, including two this year, reached several finals at 500 level, and beaten various top ten players, including a hobbled Andy Murray in Barcelona and a perfectly fine Murray in Tokyo. He saw off Tomas Berdych on a fast hardcourt, and Nicolas Almagro on clay. He also faced Roger Federer three times on three different surfaces, and on each occasion acquitted himself well in a narrow three-set defeat. There was also that marathon loss to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga at the Olympics, 23/25 in the final set.

His strengths and weakness are easily grasped. His impenetrable serve is ably supported by a commensurate forehand, and he generally remains undaunted under pressure. On the other hand his movement is poor, his backhand can’t do the things he tries to make it do, and his returning is of a standard that makes tiebreaks feel inevitable. More subtly, I suspect he still hasn’t quite worked out how to prepare for really big occasions in a really big venue. But he will. On the other hand, he won’t convince me that anyone besides the French should wear Lacoste.

 

David Goffin

Current Ranking: 46 (174)

David Goffin has been kicking around for a couple of years, but it was during his excellent run to the fourth round at this year’s Roland Garros that he established a broader appeal, first as he ended the career of Arnaud Clement, and then as he pushed Federer to four sets. While this provided Federer’s innumerable fans with a measure of unwelcome anxiety – traditionally grounds for excommunication – all was forgiven when Goffin professed himself to be among his opponent’s more ardent admirers, which earned him a hug at the net.

Although Goffin went 17-14 at ATP level, including a win over John Isner en route to the Valencia quarterfinals, he compiled a fairly healthy 44-25 record across all levels, including a pair of Challenger titles in Le Gosier and Orleans over a strong field. His game is built around light feet and great hands, offset by tremendously fine bone structure and a hairstyle straight out of That ‘70s Show, or contemporary Belgium. He rose almost 130 places over the course of this season, and it’s a reasonably secure bet that he’ll rise higher yet.

 

Grigor Dimitrov

Current Ranking: 48 (76)

Grigor Dimitrov remains tantalisingly close to a definitive breakthrough, as he has for several years now, although he continues to defy expectations that it will ever come all in one go. His biggest win this year came over Berdych in Miami, although he’d already acquitted himself well in Melbourne, taking Almagro to five sets. There was also that savage drubbing of Mardy Fish at the Hopman Cup, a few highly entertaining wins over Kevin Anderson in England, and over Julien Benneteau indoors. His best result came at Queens, where he fell in the semifinal to David Nalbandian in abhorrent conditions (and luckily before the blood rage took hold of the Argentine). He also reached the quarterfinals in Basel in fine style, especially in his straight sets victory over Viktor Troicki, which featured the officially endorsed shot of the year.

A blessed side-effect of Dimitrov’s more regular appearances at the business end of tournaments is that we’re increasingly spared the unrelenting comparisons to Federer. Apparently even commentators can tire of saying the same thing over and over. I’m as surprised as you are. It feels like Dimitrov now succeeds or fails more or less on his own merits, and references to ‘Baby Federer’ sound jarring and extraneous.

 

Bernard Tomic

Current Ranking: 52 (42)

It was always a long shot that Tomic would replicate his results from 2011, though there nonetheless remained a measured hope that he might compensate by playing well elsewhere, or at least by displaying some evidence of progress. What was a surprise was the extent to which his game stagnated, and how desultory he grew once the results ceased to flow. After January he did not beat a player ranked above him (0-14), and he is the only player on this list whose ranking failed to improve.

There was also confirmation of something many had suspected, which is that for all his undeniable talent, and immense racquet skills, his game will only trouble good players when they’re having an off day, and that the very top players would need to suffer a catastrophic day indeed, which by definition they almost never do. There has been endless talk about his poor application in New York and Shanghai, as well as his more spirited efforts in Gold Coast rooftop spas, but for me the definitive moment came in Miami when he faced David Ferrer. Given the gap in experience between the two men, there was no shame in it being a mismatch. But the gap between them was a chasm, and it wasn’t clear how Tomic might ever hope to bridge it.

 

Ryan Harrison

Current Ranking: 69 (79)

The first time I watched Ryan Harrison this year was from close range as he lost a practice set to Alex Bogomolov Jr the day before the Australian Open commenced. I next saw him the following afternoon as he wrenched a tough set from Murray in crippling heat, and looked for all the world like a different player, not merely from 2011 but from the day before. There was a maturity and boldness to his play that left everyone present in no doubt that he might have contrived a longer stay in Melbourne, had he only chosen his first-round opponent more wisely.

It would be unfair to say that the remainder of Harrison’s season was entirely disappointing, although it mostly was. Those of his fans with whom I’m personally acquainted have permitted their disappointment ample expression. Still, he reached three tour semifinals, although none occurred at an especially noteworthy event (San Jose, Eastbourne and Newport). More impressive was his run to the last sixteen in Indian Wells. All the same, Eastbourne forced him into the top fifty, while Newport pushed him to No.43, his highest ranking. Since then, however, he only won two matches, and they weren’t consecutive. Interestingly, Harrison’s overall record for the season stands at 23-25, but he is only 6-20 against players ranked higher than him, and 17-5 against those ranked lower. This suggests that, for now, his ranking looks about right.

He once insisted with special vehemence that he really hates to lose, with an earnestness that implied he’d invented the sentiment, as though no one had ever felt that strongly about it ever before. In other words, he sounded like a teenager. He has hopefully spent a year learning that the other guys don’t enjoy losing any more than he does, and that those passions he’d assumed were unique are common. That’s what growing up is.

 

Evgeny Kuznetsov

Current Ranking: 78 (222)

This time last year Evgeny Kuznetsov didn’t attempt to qualify for the Australian Open, instead confining himself to Futures events in Russia and Egypt  two of which he won. This time round he will gain a comfortable direct entry into the year’s first major. This is despite compiling a 2-5 record on the main tour (with both wins coming against lower-ranked opponents in Umag), and owing entirely to an outstanding season on the Challenger circuit. In all he won four Challenger events, for a record of 42-13 at that level. After winning three in a row in September, he steeled himself for an actual ATP tournament in Moscow, and promptly lost in the first round. It was a similar story at both Roland Garros and Wimbledon, where he fought through qualifying only to exit in the first round, although I can well recall how desperately contested the loss to Florent Serra in London was.

I have to wonder just long he can maintain a ranking of No.78 without starting to compile results on the main tour. We saw a similar story play out with Cedrik-Marcel Stebe, who roared into the top hundred after winning the Challenger finals last year, but subsequently found the transition to the main tour overwhelming, and then fitfully subsided.

French Open, Day 8

(3) Federer d. (LL) Goffin, 5/7 7/5 6/2 6/4

Roger Federer today defeated David Goffin in four sets, and thereby moved through to his 32nd consecutive quarterfinal at Grand Slam level. This equates to eight years without failing to reach the last eight. However, through the early going in today’s match there was, unexpectedly, a mounting anxiety that the streak would halt at 31. This would have represented a stunning deviation from the script, since Federer beating the unheralded Goffin was about as foregone as it gets, rather like beating Roddick in Miami had been.

I should declare, without further preamble, that Goffin boasts a fresh and youthful look. This is important, and was therefore made abundantly apparent even for those who didn’t watch the match, but merely followed its progress on Twitter or Radio Roland Garros. The pre-existing stream of jokes about his appearance expanded rapidly during the hit-up – proving that Federer is wrong: hitting up does have a point – until it threatened to burst its banks; a flash-flood of dull gags, and similarly impressive for its ferocity and volume rather than the quality of its component parts.

Few of the gags were especially funny, even in the broad sense in which the term is used on the internet, whose denizens – if they are to be believed – are mostly laughing out loud, whether seated or while rolling on the floor. (This is why internet cafes always sound and look like Bedlam.) Many of these humdingers implied Goffin was on exeat from high school (ho-ho), that we hoped he’d handed in his homework (har-har), and did his mother know where he was (my sides!). My instinct was to raise the stakes by lowering the tone, but I refrained. Tennis is family entertainment, and no one ever gained anything by being risqué on the internet.

This deluge of high comedy eased markedly after Goffin broke Federer late to claim the first set, sealing it with a scathing forehand up the line. This wasn’t going to script, and it was hard not to conclude that all the jokes about Goffin’s youth had reflected a widespread assumption that he would pose no threat whatsoever to the sport’s greatest player. It also suggested few people had ever seen him play before. Like many others, I’d already seen Goffin play a few times, and therefore had a distinct advantage. I’d long since worked the lame jokes out of my system: ‘If ever you need Tobey Maguire to seem old and wise, Goffin’s the guy you’d cast as his sidekick.’ I’d even progressed to the stage of trying to work out who he reminded me of. Back in Chennai, where he reached the quarterfinals, I concluded that he resembled Guillermo Coria, with a kinder face. This was reaffirmed when he opened today’s match with a double-fault.

But if Goffin recalls Coria, he boasts Nikolay Davydenko’s endeavour, hands and fearlessness. As with the Russian, these combine with admirable court-positioning to offset modest height and a slight frame. Throughout the first set, in which he was frankly the better player, it was arguably his anticipation that proved most significant. We now all know that his boyhood room was papered with images of Federer, but his performance today reflected countless hours watching his idol play. (Goffin, according to one of the few amusing tweets, had ‘really done his homework on Federer’, proving yet again that funny is all in the timing.) Conditions were heavy, but Goffin seemed to have little trouble hitting through them, and hustling Federer around the court. Whenever Federer tried to do the same he found his opponent already there with time to kill. Goffin’s anticipation and foot-speed made the clay seem especially heavy for the Swiss.

Having said that, Federer was playing well within himself, perhaps partaking of the general belief that the Belgian would sooner or later succumb to the moment. After all, Goffin didn’t even qualify for this event, but slipped in as a lucky loser when Monfils withdrew. For whatever reason, Federer did not play that first set (or the second) as imposingly as he should have, content to be solid, serve well, and permit his aura to work its trick. As a broad strategy it doubtless has merit – he knows how to win tennis matches – but on the level of each rally it meant he immediately ceded initiative to Goffin, who teed off on anything, and wasn’t missing. Off the ground, I can barely recall Federer going for a line through the first few sets. Goffin hardly bothered going for anything else. His depth was incredible.

But just because a guy is a great mover is no reason not to move him. Federer’s intensity lifted at the end of the second set, at precisely the moment Goffin’s wavered, and the Belgian gifted up his first break of the match. Federer, as is his way of late, blew a few set points, and fended off a break-back point, but eventually closed it out. He then broke again to open the third set. Conditions seemed to be clearing, and quickening, although I’m inclined to think this was owed largely to Goffin fading. He remained as quick as ever, but his anticipation, so preternatural through the early going, began to desert him. Federer was now lashing his forehands with greater pace and bite, and finding openings everywhere. He settled into his ominous groove of 90 second service holds, and the set vanished quickly. The fourth set grew momentarily complicated after Federer once again broke early, as Goffin resumed his earlier attack, and threatened to break back. The point of the match ended with the Belgian bowing to the crowd. He later admitted that he hadn’t really known what to do, but that it was a great moment and he’d consequently felt obliged to do something. He probably knew it was coming to an end, and seemed determined to enjoy himself. Federer eventually coasted to that end, sealing the final game with his mightiest forehand of the afternoon.

Immediately after the match, both players were subjected to an on-court that was both manufactured and awkward, the latter quality abetted by those in the crowd insisting that Federer and Goffin seal the love-in with a kiss. The Belgian was compelled, before a packed house in Lenglen, to reiterate just how much he’d idolised the fellow standing right next to him. Neither man failed to look embarrassed at this. Goffin would have been justified in pointing out that he was an actual professional tennis player, and could they all please stop patronising him, but he didn’t. In the end, they settled for a friendly hug, after which Federer gave the youngster a fleeting pat on the head.

Elsewhere

Play was suspended overnight in the final two men’s matches. In the first, Tsonga has consolidated a break in the fifth set, after Wawrinka rescued himself from a two-set well. In the second, del Potro leads Berdych by two sets to one. I suspect that one can still go either way.

There was also a match between Djokovic and Seppi, although this was mostly without incident, except for when Seppi went up two sets to love and looked like knocking out the world number one. Italy’s top player, battling exhaustion and a world No.1 who’d finally found some range, also ground his way back from a break down in the fourth, and was gallant in keeping the fifth close. As I say, barely worth commenting on. Luke Saville, the top seed in the boy’s event, also fought back from a set and a break down. It was the theme of the day. Victoria Azarenka is right to be furious that she wasn’t told.

I’d love write more, but I’m out of space.