The Next Point

French Open, Semifinal

(3) Nadal d. (1) Djokovic 6/4 3/6 6/1 6/7 9/7

The final of this year’s Roland Garros will be contested by Rafael Nadal, who defeated Novak Djokovic in five supple and eventually thrilling sets, and David Ferrer, who saw off Jo-Wilfried Tsonga without much trouble at all. For Tsonga it was a discouraging manner in which to confirm the unhelpful assertion that no Frenchman can win his home Major, thus making it seem far more prophetic than it should be. For the world number one it was a crushing way to fall short of his career Grand Slam. For Ferrer the joy of reaching his first Major final was immediate and overwhelming, even if it is destined not to last. Nadal has now won fifty-eight matches at this venue, from fifty-nine attempts, a statistic that is only enhanced by the consideration that today was only the second time in nine years he actually looked in danger of losing.

The early rounds at this French Open were a polyphonic snarl, with discernible melodies only emerging in the third and fourth rounds. Depending on one’s tastes, these tunes grew wearying or comfortingly familiar by the quarterfinals, although even then there remained plenty of novelty at which to marvel. How the pundits gaped when the round of sixteen featured eight single-handed backhands and an average age near thirty. These proportions were sustained even into the following round. The quarterfinals retained four of these venerable chaps, whom we could term atavistic throwbacks, except that they are clearly vintage models, some in surprisingly mint condition.

Normal service was soon restored: the losing quarterfinalists were in each case the older man, and in every case boasted a single-handed backhand. So much for the breath of fresh air, or even a wafting old breeze. The air remained all but unstirred. Indeed, had Federer defeated Tsonga the semifinalists this year would have been identical to last year. It seems that no matter the path we take, nor the conveyances employed, we somehow end up in much the same place. Like life itself, in which we shed the immortality of youth only gradually, the end point of Roland Garros now feels inescapable. To death and taxes we can once more add Rafael Nadal hoisting the Coupe des Mousquetaires. He has certainly earned it.

It all felt rather less inescapable when he trailed Djokovic by a break in the fifth set of today’s semifinal, having failed to serve the match out in the fourth. Djokovic had trailed for most of the match, even, or especially, in the sets he’d won. Indeed, it had been another of those matches in which to secure an early break in a set was to court disaster (although Djokovic, ever the gentleman, was the only one to see this courtship through to its bitter end). The Serb had recovered a break once in the second set, and twice in the fourth, but now found himself in the perilous position of leading the match for the first time.

Nadal’s firm service hold at 2/4 now seems decisive, although I don’t recall anyone saying so at the time. In hindsight, it granted him a measure of momentum in the next return game, although this wasn’t enough to force the break by itself. It required special assistance from Djokovic. At deuce Djokovic found himself at the net, Nadal well out of position, with an easy put-away. He put it away, but, in a moment that will probably inspire shuddering recollection in the small hours for years to come, fell into the net before the ball could be declared dead by waiting paramedics. Nadal helpfully pointed this out for the umpire, the stadium, and a global audience in the millions, but happily Pascal Maria was on his game, and awarded the pointed to the Spaniard. Djokovic protested a little, for form’s sake, but he knew as well as the rest of us what the rule is. It would have brought up a game point, which he might not have taken, but instead brought up break point, which Nadal didn’t take, either. Nevertheless, momentum had definitely shifted, and Nadal broke back a few points later.

The parallel to last year’s Australian Open final was clear, although the tracks ran in different directions. In that match Djokovic had been steaming to victory before a derailment in the fourth set saw Nadal extend it to a fifth. The Spaniard then broke early, before later handing it back with a loose shot. It’s funny how these things happen, but also suggestive that fortune will fall a player’s way when he’s operating in the seat of his power. Djokovic has now won as many Australian Opens as anyone in the Open Era, whereas Nadal’s record at Roland Garros is unmatched in any era. Or it could just be an amazing coincidence.

Parallel or not, today’s match was considerably better than the 2012 Australian Open final, which mostly proved that anything can be adjudged epic given sufficient length. This reflected Nadal’s approach. Whereas in Australia he’d opened aggressively before reverting to the endless rallying that largely defines this match-up – Djokovic is complicit in this – today he was superbly offensive. He struck 61 winners, and only 44 unforced errors. Winner stats can be misleading, of course, because they tell you little of how the winners eventuated. A winner coming at the end of a twenty-five stroke rally in which Nadal gradually pushes his opponent off the court several times is quite different to one struck immediately and audaciously. Today Nadal was audacious, and was clocking forehands and backhands early in rallies from neutral balls, and repeatedly catching Djokovic out. Given that Djokovic through long habit has grown accustomed to points unfurling in a certain way, this counts as a tactical victory for Nadal as well as a purely technical one. His forehand was struck early, hard and often up the line. His backhand held up well, and was often penetrating. There were only a few lapses, although for these he was invariably made to pay.

Djokovic’s early winners mostly came from one-two plays featuring wide serves to the deuce court, finished off with inside-out forehands. His inside-in forehand was frequently over-hit and the backhand up the line was either directed safely inside the sideline, or pushed rashly beyond it, a combination of tendencies that seriously reduced his capacity to prise apart the court quickly. Consequently he was obliged to build points, although midway through the first set he set about demonstrating that building a point isn’t necessarily the same as constructing one. Often the intent was muddled. The proven tactic of pounding on Nadal’s backhand until it leaks an error or a short response – the tactic that yielded such rich rewards in 2011 – was abandoned early, and only occasionally rediscovered. There was a widespread feeling that Djokovic had come out without a sufficiently clear plan, although Patrick Mouratoglou’s assertion that this cost Djokovic the match was reductive. The Serb did lead by 4/2 in the fifth set, after all.

Anyway, it was all building towards a fittingly titanic climax; Djokovic was holding repeatedly and masterfully to keep the match alive, while Nadal was in the happy position of knowing that under no circumstances would he have to serve out the match. As he has in the past on Philippe Chatrier, Djokovic was troubled by his footing at the back of the court; recall his constant slips in the semifinal against Federer two years ago. At the change of ends at 7/8 he and Pascal Maria engaged in a heated exchange about the need to water the court beyond the baseline, a request to which the umpire would not accede. Fatally unfocussed, Djokovic stepped out, put together his worst service game in hours, including two unusual forehand errors, and was broken to love. Suddenly, like that, the match was over. Nadal looked pleased; Djokovic, less so. It was not, it must be said, a classic finish.

Whether it was a classic match is a nice question, although it’s one that should only be answered in time. It’s with a stultifying lack of surprise that I note the demands for a more immediate assessment. Even while it was going on un-level heads were proclaiming it the match of the year. For some reason this is important, as though the quiddity of a sporting contest must be nailed down at the time, lest it be rapidly forgotten. It could be that I’m out of the loop, and there’s a substantial cash prize awarded to the first person to prove the greatness of a given tennis match. But if there is no prize, I can’t see the advantage in eschewing the advantage of a longer view. Ignoring one’s sense of perspective is a kind of conceit. Not for the first time, and nor for the last, I don’t see how it matters.

Nadal will now face Ferrer, whose feat of reaching the final without dropping a set will be largely forgotten when he loses three of them on Sunday. It’s conceivable that he’ll win one himself, but even that seems unlikely. Naturally he’ll give it everything: that’s the thing that he gives. But they played here last year, Ferrer gave it everything, and Nadal lost five games. That was a semifinal, and this is a final – Ferrer’s first at this level – meaning the gap in their respective experience has expanded to become an unbridgeable chasm. There is a sense in which the first of today’s semifinals was the real final. There’s an even more profound sense in which it doesn’t matter. Once again I find myself astonished by how much some people seem to think it does.

The initial outrage that Djokovic and Nadal might meet in a quarterfinal was quickly rendered irrelevant by the latter’s ranking and Andy Murray’s back. But even before the French Open began this discontent had already expressed itself via stentorian proclamations that any meeting before a final would constitute an offence unto the gods. This view has hardly lost steam now that the match has turned out to be as grand as had been hoped for. Twitter, tapping into this, flexed its comedic muscle by loudly wondering when the trophy ceremony would get under way. (Somehow this query didn’t grow funnier the more it was said.) I can understand why television executives maintain a strong opinion on the matter, since they’re obliged to experience tennis through the drearily smudged lens of ratings. For everyone else, it’s hardly cause for lamentation.

Lopsided draws have always been a factor, although they’ve grown rarer in the current era of top-four domination. At the 2001 Australian Open Andre Agassi and Pat Rafter duked it out for the chance to beat up Arnaud Clement (or Sebastien Grosjean) in the final. In 2005 at this very event Nadal and Roger Federer fought for the chance to thrash Mariano Puerta (or Nikolay Davydenko) for the title. In one important sense it worked out for the best: for all that the finals were anticlimactic – notwithstanding Puerta’s early challenge – the semifinals in every case had the potential to be great, and largely delivered. Perhaps I’m unique in this, but I’ll always take two intriguing matches followed by a foregone final over a pair of duds and a close final. Imagine for a moment that Nadal and Ferrer’s places had been swapped in the draw, a configuration that would almost certainly result in a Nadal – Djokovic final. Also assume that any match between the world number one and the defending champion was going to be pretty good, or at least very long. I’d rather have two chances at memorable matches on the last weekend than one. Of course it didn’t work out that way, which is a shame. (I blame Tsonga, although probably not as hard as he blames himself.)

Anyway, there is another notable advantage to having a final whose result is already known. The Tour de France discovered long ago the ceremonial value of making the last round a procession rather than a contest. Facing Ferrer for his eighth title will be for Nadal the equivalent of a cruise down the Champs-Élysées in the gold jacket. Everyone who’s done so insists there’s no feeling like it.

French Open, Quarterfinals

It was probably naïve to believe that the drama, excitement and quality that so enriched the first four rounds of this year’s Roland Garros would be sustained all the way through to the end. Such things are sadly not designed to last. There was bound to be a letdown at some stage, and it was always likely to come when those who’d earned their passage via desperate heroics collided with those who prove their readiness for travel every week.

Stanislas Wawrinka, Tommy Haas and Tommy Robredo had each eked out the narrowest of victories in the rounds before, only to arrive, haggard and ragged, at the station, and there discover three elite players who’d never looked like losing. The latecomers were promptly shoved onto the tracks, there to await their doom. The exception, in every way, was Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, who’d easily out-paced his early round opponents, reached the station at a dead run, and barely paused as he barrelled into a distracted Roger Federer, who was busy tying his shoelace. That onrushing roar was the train they’d intended to board; the sound, Hugo Weaving once insisted, of inevitability.†

All four quarterfinals ended in straight sets, and none of them took very long. The whole affair could only have been quicker if had Roland Garros scheduled them all to be played simultaneously. To be fair, the tournament did its level best. As it was, the baffling decision to run two of them side by side combined with the sense of crushing inevitability – except in the case of Federer, whose defeat was crushing for other reasons – to ensure that a hitherto fascinating tournament foundered mid-way through its final week. One hopes, with diaphanous naivety, that things pick up for the semifinals.

(6) Tsonga d. (2) Federer 7/5 6/3 6/3

The concern coming into the quarterfinals was that Federer’s imposing early performances had come against undeniably weak opposition – a pair of qualifiers and a hobbled Julien Benneteau – thereby distorting one’s perception of his form. Even in struggling to see off a gallant Gilles Simon, the Swiss had looked easily superior when he was playing well, although he’d worryingly punctuated these periods of dominance with a patch in which he could barely have played worse, thus padding the match out to five sets. The hope among his innumerable fans was that this merely reflected the issues he traditionally has with this particular Frenchman, and that they would evaporate when faced with another particular Frenchman. To the contention that Federer had not yet faced a player like Tsonga in this tournament, the reasonable response was that nor had Tsonga faced a player like Federer. At least it had seemed reasonable.

As it happened, I doubt whether Tsonga had ever faced a Federer quite like the one he encountered on Tuesday. If he had, he would certainly have won more than three of their twelve matches. On the other hand, Federer has encountered this version of Tsonga before. It was glimpsed for a few sets in Melbourne in January, and for three definitive sets at Wimbledon two years ago. It is the version in which Tsonga swings as hard as he can at everything, and doesn’t miss. Word is that conditions were playing fast, but it’s hard to imagine conditions that would play slow when a guy this powerful and athletic sustains that calibre of attack, from both wings and everywhere in the court. The only clue that this was clay court tennis lay in the visual evidence that they were actually playing on a clay court.

Federer led by a break early in the first set, but that provided little comfort, since it had come entirely in defiance of the run of play. The four points Tsonga had lost on serve to be broken were almost the only ones he’d lose for the set (there was one other on an unlucky netcord). He served near eighty per cent throughout the first set, and never dropped below seventy per cent for the match. Meanwhile Federer barely had an easy service game all day: Tsonga, typically a weak returner, was virtuosic even in this area. Federer admittedly didn’t serve well – both pace and percentages were low, and I cannot recall another match in which he served no aces – but this was largely in keeping with the rest of his game. It vaguely recalled the heavy losses in Indian Wells and Rome. However, whereas the first of those was heavily influenced by a back injury, and the second by suicidal aggression, this latest was simply a matter of playing badly against an opponent when only the best would have sufficed. In truth, Federer has hardly played well since Cincinnati last August, which he won without dropping serve. Since then he hasn’t won a title, and is now 3-10 against top eight opponents. Those who point to Federer’s poor season would do well to lengthen their perspective.

Hope for Federer briefly flared when he broke Tsonga at the start of the third set, but it was only a break back, and it only monetarily delayed a result that was by now seeming inevitable as well as crushing. Interviewed afterwards, Federer, amidst heartfelt praise for his opponent, professed himself ‘sad’ at the way he’d played. It was an unusual but not inappropriate description: not angry, or disappointed, or frustrated, or chagrined, but saddened. Tsonga, on the other hand, was jubilant; he does jubilation as well as anyone, although Roger Rasheed’s proud tears ran him close. What was especially gratifying about his performance was how consistent it was, not merely throughout the duration of today’s match, but with his other performances this week. He’d looked great already, but he hadn’t faced anyone like Federer. Now he has faced someone like Federer, and he still looks great.

(4) Ferrer d. (32) Robredo, 6/2 6/1 6/1

One hopes he still looks great against David Ferrer, whom he faces next. Ferrer accounted for Robredo with an ease that would be termed effortless if it was anyone else. It was effortful, but inexorable, although I wouldn’t say it was necessarily very interesting. When Ferrer moved ahead by two sets to none, commentary and social media united in entirely expected proclamations that Robredo now had him precisely where he wanted him. This provided momentary interest, in that it invited the question of whether a joke is fundamentally less funny when everyone makes it at the same time. The answer, we now know, is that yes, it is. There isn’t much more to say about the match – believe me, I’d like to – except that Ferrer did all those things he normally does, and that he’s better at all of them than Robredo is. He’ll fancy his chances of pushing through to the final, although I’d be neglectful if I didn’t point out that he, like Federer, hasn’t faced anyone like Tsonga yet.

(1) Djokovic d. (12) Haas, 6/3 7/6 7/5

Novak Djokovic had faced someone like Haas just the round before, in the form of Philipp Kohlschreiber. They’re both gifted German shotmakers, though they of course have their differences. Kohlschreiber, for example, managed to grab a set from Djokovic before submerging into a deep dirty puddle of squandered break points. Djokovic was better today than he’d been on Monday, especially early, and was thus better-equipped to fend off another gifted German shotmaker making shots. He never looked like losing: it wasn’t anything like as close as the scoreline suggests, since all the excitement was confined to the German’s service games, at least until the end.

Before the match there’d been sufficient talk of Haas’ victory over Djokovic in Miami that were we given the merest hint of the hype that would have accompanied a third round encounter between Nadal and Lukas Rosol, inspiring one to thank heaven and Fabio Fognini that this match never eventuated. Djokovic had already gone through it with Grigor Dimitrov, to whom he’d lost in Madrid a few weeks ago. I’m not sure if people really expect lightning to strike twice, although it’s probably just a feeble effort to drum up interest by pretending that the men who audaciously upset the world number one in a best of three Masters event would somehow reprise that effort in a Major. Naturally anything can happen in sport, but Djokovic had reached the semifinals or better at eleven consecutive Majors, and this is the one he now desires the most.

(3) Nadal d. (9) Wawrinka, 6/2 6/3 6/1

At least Haas had actually beaten Djokovic a few times. Wawrinka hadn’t taken a set off Nadal in ten matches, the most recent of these in the Caja Magica last month. On a day in which the all the results felt pre-ordained – Maria Sharapova’s strange first set notwithstanding – this one felt the least intriguing of the lot. And so it proved. Again, I’d love to say more, but like Ferrer’s win over Robredo, this match consisted of Nadal doing all those things he does well in general, but especially well on clay, and incredibly well at Roland Garros. He started slowly in his first three rounds, but seems to have abandoned that strategy, probably for the better. Today he started quickly, and never faced much opposition from an over-matched Wawrinka. The Swiss had survived a very long match the round before, but any chance that his resultant weariness would affect today’s outcome was rendered negligible. Perhaps with more spring in his legs he might have leapt aside as the train bore down, but really, there simply wasn’t time.

† While we work through that image, take a moment to consider how fabulous an addition to the Radio Roland Garros team Agent Smith would make, especially calling Kevin Anderson’s matches.

French Open, Day Seven

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and David Ferrer both progressed to the Roland Garros quarterfinals today, defeating Viktor Troicki and Kevin Anderson in respective straight sets, but that wasn’t the story of the day. Nor was it Roger Federer’s five set tussle with a gratifyingly enterprising Gilles Simon, for all that their match was tremendously diverting. The day’s centrepiece was the electrifying encounter between Nicolas Almagro and Tommy Robredo, in which the older Spaniard recovered from a two set deficit, while the younger once more proved Heraclitus’ dictum that character is destiny, and destiny character.

(32) Robredo d. (11) Almagro, 6/7 3/6 6/4 6/4 6/4

With his limits thus circumscribed, it’s entirely appropriate that so many of Almagro’s matches seem scripted by Aeschylus. The Spaniard certainly fits the part, with his preternaturally clear skin, careworn brow and boundless capacity to generate disaster. If there isn’t a statue of Almagro somewhere already, there should be; it should be carved from finest Carrara marble, and depict the precise moment he has irreversibly blown a seemingly impregnable lead. (Perhaps it’s one for Kickstarter; sillier statues have gained funding.) In Melbourne Almagro blew the lead against Ferrer, who he at least had never beaten. In Paris he did so against Robredo, to whom he’d never lost. Against Ferrer he served for the match repeatedly, but not well. Today he led by a break in each of the three sets he lost. I wasn’t alone in wondering why he bothered, since breaking early was so clearly a recipe for failure. Hope may spring eternal, but destiny cannot be gainsaid, especially when it springs from within.

Robredo in his turn has become the first man since the Battle of Marathon to win three consecutive matches from two sets down. His heroics in merely reaching the fourth round were noteworthy, especially since one of his victories had come against a resurgent Gael Monfils. But Almagro was surely a different creature, if not a divergent species. Before today Robredo had taken only a single set from Almagro, and that was in their first meeting six years ago. As he clawed his way back in that third set, eventually serving it out, the prospect of yet another audacious recovery was aired. Commentators of course do this all the time; no fifth set can attain 6/6 these days with Isner-Mahut being brought up. On the face of it the idea appeared ludicrous, especially when Almagro broke again near the start of the fourth set. Alas, for him, it didn’t stick. They traded breaks again in the fifth, but Almagro, despite his superior firepower, somehow couldn’t finish off enough of the crucial points. Robredo, defying the odds and his age, was getting to everything. His legs, along with Almagro’s brain, were arguably the story of the match. His passing shots were particularly fine. Almagro’s visits to the net – dicey at the best of times – became exercises in futility, and he was passed against and again.

It must be nice for the commentators when their bold early move to establish a narrative pays off so handsomely. They get to look particularly prescient, although not as prescient as Heraclitus, who, transported by misanthropy and a diet of grass and manure, managed to anticipate a Spanish tennis player two and a half millennia in the future. Jason Goodall isn’t quite at that level, but he still sounded eminently satisfied as Robredo expertly served out the match. Afterwards, the crowd went crazy and a global audience wondered aloud why so many broadcasters besides Eurosport were staying with Tsonga’s frictionless procession on the main court. Robredo could barely contain himself (there were tears). He’ll next face Ferrer, meaning a fourth consecutive two-set comeback is impossible. Just like the third was.

(2) Federer d. (15) Simon, 6/1 4/6 2/6 6/2 6/3

Mats Wilander made a convenient slip in his introduction to today’s other five-setter, between Federer and Simon, initially describing the Frenchman’s game as ‘dull’, before backpedalling sharply. This was later revised to ‘one-dimensional’. One cannot quibble with either description. Simon’s defenders insist that his matches reveal a profound grasp of strategy at play, but I’ve watched a lot of them, and as far as I can see they mostly consist of lots of running and near-infinite patience. The length and outcome of most rallies are usually determined by the endurance of his opponent, or potency of their attack. When the opponent is of a similar predisposition to Simon, and has nowhere else to be, the match can go on forever. His encounter with Monfils in Melbourne this year is still whispered about. It might well rank among the most famous matches no one will ever watch again, although there are rumours the CIA uses it to extract confessions from those who grown inured to traditional forms of torture.

Naturally, Simon isn’t the only person who plays like this. Indeed he is rare only in the success he has enjoyed doing it, and the extent to which it seems to be a matter of choice, not necessity. For a conscious choice it seems to be. He doesn’t need to play this way, and demonstrates this two or three times each season: he’ll take to the court in a fey mood, and go after all his shots, varying angles and paces, using the net, and generally controlling the baseline. It’s downright exciting to watch, but as suddenly as it appears, it vanishes, not to be seen again for months. From the perspective of a tennis fan – especially a fan of attacking all-court tennis – it’s as though Simon has unrestricted access to a treasure room, but rarely ventures inside, despite the only requirement for entry being the ability to notice the door, and the willingness to turn its handle.

Thankfully, today he did turn the handle, and thus helped to transfigure a match that might have been close anyway – he often troubles Federer regardless – into one that many will want to see again. Most match recaps have made the point that Federer began very strongly, but that everything changed after his heavy fall in the second set (Federer himself said he shed a lot of confidence at that point), and that Simon wisely chose this moment to assert himself. I don’t think that’s quite right. Simon was already pretty aggressive in the first set; it’s just that he wasn’t doing it very well, yet, and Federer was dialled in nearly from the get-go. Simon’s unusually high number of errors in the first set (17) attests to this. Whatever the case, he certainly took control from midway through the second set, and maintained it until the fourth, by which stage he was in the happy position of leading two sets to one.

As ever, precedent was sought, and as ever easily found. The sport of tennis isn’t so infinitely multifarious that something doesn’t always immediately remind you of something else. For me the hollow echoes of 2009 rumbled loudest, particularly Robin Soderling inflicting Rafael Nadal’s only loss at Roland Garros, despite having been demolished by Nadal just weeks earlier in Rome. Bear in mind that Federer manhandled Simon quite thoroughly in Rome a few weeks ago, so thoroughly that even those Federer fans accustomed to proclaiming Simon a danger-man permitted themselves to relax when the Frenchman popped up in their favourite’s quarter. In 2009 Nadal had never lost at the French Open. Federer hasn’t lost before the quarterfinal stage at a Major since 2004. As ever, a precedent was readily found, but as usual it didn’t tell us much. As Federer once retorted when invited to contrast one loss with another one: ‘Why compare?’

The match was defined by large and decisive shifts in momentum, and the last of these occurred in fourth set. Federer had looked increasingly feeble and beset for the last dozen games, but now began to assert himself once more. Suddenly he found that place in which he resembles no one else, and in which hardly anyone can stay with him. From 3/2 in the fourth set, he won half a dozen straight games, and would never yield back his break in the fifth set, although he did barely survive a nervous final game. Nothing should be taken away from Simon, however.

Federer has now reached his thirty-sixth consecutive Major quarterfinal. For the second time in a row, he is obliged to play Tsonga for a place in the semifinals. In Melbourne they staged an unforgettable five set exhibition of attacking hardcourt tennis, which Federer won. Their destinies are coming to feel intertwined, for all that their characters are not alike. Heraclitus might respond that they’re complementary. In addition to the Australian Open they’ve also met at this stage at Wimbledon and in New York, meaning they’ll now complete a Grand Slam of quarterfinals encounters. Such achievements are admittedly more pleasantly diverting than revealing. Here’s another: last year Tsonga reached the quarterfinals in Paris only to fall to Novak Djokovic , despite holding four match points. As these match points tumbled by, and the crowd in Philippe Chatrier hurled its outrage and delight at the heavens, Federer was crawling painfully from a two set hole against Juan Martin del Potro on Suzanne Lenglen. A sweet moment of simultaneity, probably signifying nothing, but perhaps signalling that they were destined to meet.

Monte Carlo, Semifinals

(1) Djokovic d. Fognini, 6/2 6/1

It seems magnificently unfair that Fabio Fognini should look the way he does while being a highly-ranked professional tennis player. It’s unfair on the many actors who’ll never look like that, no matter how much they’ll spend on cosmetic procedures.
It’s unfair on his poor fellow-pros who toil day after day on the practice court, yet won’t ever be able do the things Fognini seemingly does on a whim. (As I write this he has casually held to love, comprehensively outfoxing and out-stroking Novak Djokovic.) But most of all it’s unfair on those of us who’ll never look like that, and never strike a tennis ball half so well, but who are cursed to write about those who do.

It’s a badly kept secret that those who can merely turn phrases, even as we labour to turn them until they trip, skitter and catch the light, feel an abiding envy towards those who effortlessly turn heads. It is an envy nourished by the sad discovery that even the most serious writers spend all their time thinking about those who in return barely think about them, and abetted by queasy realisation, which usually comes at night, that the seductive pleasures of the depths might add up to less than the undoubted thrills of the surface. And even though we might console ourselves that the turning heads are empty, there’s usually enough evidence to the contrary to suggest the consolation itself is hollow. Deep down, I’d probably give it all up to be Fognini. Or maybe not so deep down.

For a while we have comforted ourselves that the Italian’s head, at least as regards tennis, didn’t have that much in it either. Despite all the talent in the world, his middling ranking attested to a crippling lack of mental fortitude. The Italian has never won a tour title, despite several excellent opportunities to do so last year, and has thoroughly-earned his reputation for losing interest once he falls behind. He is always the first to make the assessment that he cannot win, whereupon he works hard to make it true. His general air of strutting insouciance attains a haughty grandiloquence as he tosses aside handfuls of unwanted points. Lazy narratives attach themselves to particular players, and they are very hard to dislodge, partly because Il Gattopardo doesn’t change its spots, but also because those who talk about tennis can grow complacent. Tales of wasted talent are the easiest to tell.

Now we may have to find a different tale. Fognini defeated a pair of top ten players en route to the last four in Monte Carlo, remaining poised, focussed and professional throughout. Suddenly, he is ranked well within the top thirty, a lofty status which brings with it all the attendant respectability of a French Open seeding. No longer will he be a dangerous floater, an inspired wastrel ruining a serious player’s day. I confess it doesn’t feel quite right.

On the other hand, Fognini in the semifinals of a Masters event did feel right. That it happened in Monte Carlo felt entirely appropriate. He is made for tennis along the Mediterranean, although he would doubtless be better suited to an earlier, more permissive era. It is no stretch to envisage Fognini as a Lothario prowling the sun-drenched claycourts of the bygone Riviera. Once again, deep down, the sensation is one of envy, mixed with a piquant nostalgia for an era when a pure stylist might attain the heights of the sport, when even the best played tennis as though there was more to it than winning.

Alas, befogged nostalgia is all it is. In this era, more than any other, one sooner or later collides with an entirely modern reality. The modern reality is usually incarnated in one of the big four, and the collision is invariably catastrophic. That game that Fognini held to love might have been delightful, but it certainly wasn’t pivotal. The entirely modern Djokovic had already broken once to open the set, and would break again to seal it. He broke a few more times to win the second set, and thus the match. The romance of the old world had encountered the stark reality of the new, and it was like witnessing a cavalry unit charging a Panzer division.

There were naturally moments of pure Fognini brilliance, but Djokovic was perfectly ruthless in never allowing them to join up into something meaningful. A benevolent dictator, the Serb will permit dissent but not resistance. This is almost always the case when the greatest players face Fognini. Fully aware of his penchant for theatre, they use the scoreboard to stifle his opportunity to create drama. There’s not much more to add. The whole thing was over very quickly; under sixty minutes. Although there is great theatre that takes less than an hour, none of it occurs on a tennis court.

(3) Nadal d. (6) Tsonga, 6/3 7/6

Rafael Nadal, another aspect of modern tennis reality, had earlier finished off Jo Wilfried Tsonga in straight sets, although his eagerness to do so quickly and therefore avoid unnecessary drama was undone by an audacious late change from the Frenchman. The Spaniard has now reached his ninth consecutive Monte Carlo final, despite being the overwhelming favourite to do so. Earlier in the week he was asked about this matter himself, he was unsurprisingly quick to disavow his favouritism. I wish someone would explain the concept to him, but really it hardly matters. Fortunately, favouritism isn’t a matter of opinion, and isn’t something the players get to choose for themselves, although this obvious point does not deter the assembled media from endlessly pestering them about it. Thankfully the betting market had long since made up its own mind, and so Nadal remained virtually unbackable.

Tsonga began aggressively, and to be honest he never really eased up. His failures, once he’d unluckily failed to break at 2/1 in the first set, were entirely of execution and focus, rather than of intent. Simply put, he began to play awfully, to a level that I hadn’t truly believed a top-ten player could play at. It is hard to believe that that simple failure to break serve was so decisive, given that he’d been playing well until then. It was almost, dare I say it, Fognini-like.

Conditions, admittedly, were difficult: unseasonably cold with a strong swirling breeze, although the sun was out. Nadal, for the most part directed the ball safely between the lines, lofting it over the net with ample air. Faced with a rapidly disintegrating opponent, he was entirely right to do this. But it was by no means interesting. The Spaniard finished the set with five winners to four unforced errors, which was at least a dozen less errors than Tsonga, who managed a heroic 16% of points behind his second serve.

The match continued to stagger down the same path in the second set, with Tsonga broken straight away, and Nadal eventually moving to 5/1. Having learned his lesson in the first set, Tsonga had now won precisely zero points behind his second serve. From there the defending champion’s standard did not alter appreciably, while the conditions remained unchanged. Yet somehow, at the uttermost end, Tsonga for no good reason rediscovered his form. He broke Nadal back twice, saving four match points in total, and eventually forced an unlikely tiebreak. Sadly, at 3-4 Tsonga’s capacity to make sound decisions once more deserted him, first with an ill-considered backhand up the line, then with a pointlessly risky slice that curved into the tramlines, but that would have yielded him no advantage had it landed in. Nadal sealed the match with a bold series of forehands, capped by a winner.

In the end a semifinal that looked like being a perfunctory blowout achieved a small measure of interest, although I’d be overstating the case to say it achieved more than that. Social media inevitably told a different tale, although the tale was mostly told by Nadal fans who don’t realise that almost coming close to dropping a set isn’t the same as losing a match. In the end their man faced no set points. Indeed, I don’t recall that Tsonga ever came within three points of winning the set. A similar, if more fraught, scene had played out yesterday, when Nadal defeated an inspired Grigor Dimitrov in the quarterfinals. Dimitrov did actually take a set, and made it to 4/4 in the decider, although he never came especially close to a match point, or even a break point.

The narrative that has coiled about Nadal is that of the unstoppable warrior, battling against impossible odds to achieve desperate victories, defying his own crippled body, hordes of blood-thirsty foes, and the very gods themselves. Through this snakes the sub-narrative of his innate fragility – that his form is only ever contingent on a perfect mental state and ideal conditions. (You should have heard people go on about the effect of the weather yesterday, as though cold damp coastal claycourts are Dimitrov’s ideal operating environment, somehow placing Nadal at a crucial disadvantage, which he then heroically overcame.)

These narratives are fatuous. The reality is that Nadal wins the overwhelming majority of his matches in straight sets, even when he isn’t at his best, just like the other top players, who often aren’t at their best, either. For almost a decade he has defeated almost every other tennis player on the planet in every kind of weather on any surface, regardless of his prevailing form. (The last time he lost in Monte Carlo, Federer hadn’t yet won a Major. To put it into a broader global perspective, the first year Nadal won here, in 2005, Youtube didn’t exist.) He does that because he is a very, very good modern tennis player. Tomorrow he’ll face another very, very good modern tennis player in Djokovic. As baffling as it sounds, the markets have installed Nadal, eight-time defending champion and arguably the best claycourter of all time, as the clear favourite. Yet another thing he’ll have to overcome.

Indian Wells, Quarterfinals

(1) Djokovic d. (8) Tsonga, 6/3 6/1

(7) del Potro d. (3) Murray, 6/7 6/3 6/1

Idle hopes that the second pair of Indian Wells quarterfinals would prove more interesting than the first grew forlorn after today’s first match, although I suppose this depends on one’s definition of ‘interesting’. If you’re fascinated by groups of highly partisan tennis fans losing their minds on social media, then last night’s disappointing encounter between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer had it all. (I’m not particularly interested in that, although I will register dull wonder at how incensed some people become at the differing opinions of others around trivial matters.) Fans of public executions no doubt appreciated Novak Djokovic’s flawless fifty-four minute thrashing of Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

Sky Sports was my provider of choice for today’s matches, partly because their streams are of reasonable quality, but mostly due to Andy Murray’s presence on the order of play. My firm belief is that the spectacle of professional tennis is only heightened when it is accompanied by a deranged cheer-squad.

I don’t mean to suggest that Sky does nothing but cheer for Murray. After all, sometimes they’re obliged to show matches that don’t involve him. They’re careful to bring in a non-British commentator for these encounters, to lend the affair a suitably cosmopolitan feel. Peter Fleming had come all the way from America. Absolved of the need to be partisan, he could merely be inscrutable: ‘I don’t think Tsonga has done enough to throw caution to the wind. He’s just been a little reticent to throw everything at the wall.’ It was a hard point to argue with, at least until I’d deciphered it. I think it meant that Tsonga was too reluctant to be reckless. He needed to be more reckless about being reckless. Or perhaps he needed to be more reckless about that. It didn’t help that even as Fleming spoke Tsonga was ploughing a sequence of insufficiently reckless forehands into the lower half of the net. When your safe game is producing extravagant errors, there’s no reason to believe greater abandon is the key. Still, perhaps it was a question of intent.

Cutaway shots of Tsonga’s coach Roger Rasheed gave little away. I imagine he was preoccupied with the effort of distilling this debacle into a psychotically positive message. If anyone is going to manage it, he’s the man. (It’s a quality he shares with North Korea’s military regime.) You can always tell with him – it’s in his chewing. Today he clearly had his special tweeting gum in. His eyes remained hidden behind sunglasses, but I like to believe they were closed, enabling perfect stillness while he composed the perfect hashtag.

Fleming was the only one among Sky’s assembled luminaries who had much to say about the match at all. Marcus Buckland, who apparently lives in the Sky studio, didn’t bother with the link man’s usual job, which is to sustain interest even when the match turns out to be a dud: ‘Totally predictable so far,’ he remarked after the first set. He asked Mark Petchey if he thought it was totally predictable. Petch concurred that it was totally predictable. They were totally killing time until Andy Murray took the court. This wasn’t due to occur for another hour and a half, but they knew they could fill the gap with replays of the Scot’s past triumphs.

Djokovic thereafter grew only more magnificent, and finished with the astonishing ratio of twenty-one winners to just six errors. Sky was contractually obligated to provide some kind of post-match analysis, and hastily arrived at the conclusion that the result had hinged on Tsonga’s tactical shortcomings. Admittedly these are legion, but I’m not convinced they were decisive today. When the better tennis player plays as well as he can, he invariably wins, and right now Djokovic is unquestionably the best tennis player in the world. Tsonga could have channelled the enmeshed spirits of Napoleon and Hannibal, and he might have made it closer. But he would have done better to hit more of his forehands in, especially the reckless ones.

Having disposed of all this unpleasantness, Sky brought us some more in the form of Carlos Berlocq’s apparently notorious grunt. This was a clear improvement from their point of view, since it permitted them to express righteous outrage. Surprisingly their feelings on this tedious matter aligned perfectly with Murray’s, which was that the Argentine’s grunt is excessive. This ate up a bad ten minutes, and left enough time for an extended highlights package from the final of the 2009 Cincinnati Masters, between Murray and Juan Martin del Potro. Apparently the ideal way to prepare for an extended hardcourt tussle between two guys is by watching the same two guys on a different hardcourt several years earlier.

Eventually this gave way to live tennis, expertly narrated by Andrew Castle and Barry Cowan. By 3/3 in the first set Castle declared this to be the best of the Indian Wells quarterfinals, and you didn’t need to be British to agree. I seem to be in a minority of tennis fans in that I quite enjoy Castle’s work. His delivery is fine, he’s sufficiently opinionated and won’t let idle idiocy from his booth-mate pass by without interrogation, and his flights of fancy are generally well calculated.

For better or worse, I can hardly recall the titanic climax of the 2008 Wimbledon Final’s fourth set tiebreaker, as Nadal then Federer produced outrageous shots to gain then save championship point, without hearing Castle’s response: ‘The two best passing shots of the tournament – without doubt ­­- have just taken place on the last two points. It’s eight-all. What’s next?’ He started out solidly today, easily talking rings around Cowan, although his equanimity sagged as del Potro gained a break in the second set, and displayed no interest in giving it back: ‘He’s not choking; he’s not getting uptight! Why not?!’ Though probably intended ironically, it sounded a trifle petulant. Cowan, who’d astutely backed the Argentine, offered no answer.

It was the first time Murray and del Potro had faced each other since the end of 2009, and this is the first tournament the Scot has played since the Australian Open. Nevertheless, the belief was fairly widespread that he’d win. This belief seemed justified as he claimed a densely-textured first set, winning the key points by targeting del Potro’s backhand. The Argentine was unusually reluctant to bring his mighty forehand into play. This changed in the second set, and he started to venture forward more. Indeed they both did, although back in the Sky studio they made it clear that only their man had any business up there. Petchey later delivered the entirely backhanded compliment that del Potro ‘volleys well when he can get his racquet on the ball’. He got his racquet on enough. By the third set still hadn’t faced a break point, owing mostly to prowess off the ground, since his serve numbers were hardly stellar.

Murray finally achieved a couple of break points early in the third, but didn’t appear to realise how valuable they were, leaving them untended, whereupon a gleeful del Potro snatched them back. Murray was broken in the following game, and it was hard to say it wasn’t a mental let down, and that he hadn’t been distracted by the missed opportunity, a feather on the soul. Murray was broken again to close the match, sealing it with a double fault. It was still the best of the quarterfinals, but for a match that had started out so strongly, it was strange for the way it just melted into air. The issue was probably match-play, which Murray sorely lacks, and del Potro’s forehand, which grew almost uncounterable as the match wore down. ‘He has a big game,’ remarked Murray in his press conference, ‘and when he strings it together he’s a top, top player.’

‘Probably not the result we were all looking for,’ admitted Buckland back in the studio. The Sky coverage presumably wasn’t going to Argentina.

During the final set, querulous messages appeared from several senior British journalists on Twitter. Firstly David Law remarked that: ‘Following Twitter during big televised matches I’m learning commentators can’t say anything right.’ Richard Evans responded: ‘Commentators are such easy targets for people who have never done the job.’ I have no idea whose comments they were responding to (certainly not mine), but I’ll still make some general points, since it has a bearing on the theme of today’s post, which is nationalism in commentary.

Firstly, it’s worth pointing out that social media, and Twitter in particular, entertains a very heavy selection bias in this respect (and in all respects, which is why it is so questionable as a metric for measuring popularity, let alone value). The nature of the medium is such that you are far more likely to hear about bad commentary than good. Ninety-five per cent of commentary is at worst unremarkable, but it is the remaining five per cent that will be aggregated onto your timeline. People are more likely to praise a commentator or coverage overall, but will only very rarely relay a specific moment of commentary they liked.

To an extent this perception is compounded because most of the people who are likely to be commenting on Twitter during a professional tennis match probably have little need for commentary anyway. They would certainly miss it if it wasn’t there, since it has become part of the furniture of sports coverage, but it provides little informational value for those who know the game well. Tennis isn’t that complicated, and there is usually broad agreement about what is going on most of the time. The knowledgeable often only notice commentary when it’s missing, or when the commentators are wrong or biased. Indeed, this is the reason why I seek it out.

Secondly, just because most people have never or will never commentate doesn’t disqualify them from having an opinion. If that were the case then bad commentary would drift almost beyond reproach. Especially in an age of specialisation, the contention that you shouldn’t criticise someone because you couldn’t do their job better is specious. Thirdly, the validity of criticism is not predicated on how easy or hard it was to make. Yes, it is indeed easy to criticise.

I am not accusing Sky Sports of patriotic bias towards Murray. Surely the matter is beyond question, and I cannot imagine their coverage is intended to sound any other way. They know their market, and their market is British. They are currently running a poll in which viewers are invited to name the male tennis player they miss most. Tim Henman is the clear number one (although I’m deeply impressed to see that Fabrice Santoro is at number six). Indeed, I imagine that any effort towards greater neutrality would be looked on unkindly by management. I’m not suggesting it is even especially cynical – although it might be – merely that those speaking on air are permitted the ful  range of their pleasure or disappointment when the local hope triumphs or loses. Like it or not, such policies are unlikely to change.

I don’t particularly like it, and I will go on poking fun.

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.

Australian Open, Quarterfinals

 (1) Djokovic d. (5) Berdych, 6/1 4/6 6/1 6/2

(2) Federer d. (7) Tsonga, 7/6 4/6 7/6 3/6 6/3

(3) Murray d. Chardy, 6/4 6/1 6/2

(4) Ferrer d. (10) Almagro, 4/6 4/6 7/5 7/6 6/2

Four men’s quarterfinals have been contested in the last two days. The upshot is that we now know who the four semifinalists will be. Fuzzy likelihood has sharpened into weary certainty. I doubt whether many are surprised that the semifinals will be contested by the top four seeds, who are at present the top four ranked players in the world.What might surprise you more is that this configuration is exceedingly rare in the Open Era. It hasn’t occurred at the Australian Open since 2012.

Rare or not, it certainly seems to happen a lot these days – relatively speaking I suppose it does – which can mean it feels inevitable. But given the extravagant lengths three of the men went to in order to progress, we shouldn’t assume that anyone’s presence in the last four was guaranteed, excepting perhaps Murray. It’s rather like watching someone navigate an exceptionally long tightrope. The longer they stay on, the more you may be lulled into believing it isn’t all that difficult, when in fact it only becomes harder. The top four seeds are through, but they certainly didn’t have to be.

Of the quarterfinals, two staggered in laden with baggage, and the other two didn’t. The two that did turned out to be perfunctory affairs, while the others were dramatic five-setters, although the shape of the drama was radically different for both.

The gossip before Andy Murray’s match was that his camp was furious that he hadn’t yet been granted a night session on Rod Laver Arena. Today’s match amply demonstrated why. It barely deserved a crowd. My prediction before the tournament began was that the Scot would face the most formidable quarterfinal opponent in Juan Martin del Potro; in fact I boldly asserted across several websites that the Argentine would win their match. Somehow I didn’t predict that he’d fall to Jeremy Chardy in the third round. I’m sorry about that. That’s my fault.

The quarterfinal is easily recapped: Chardy belted humongous and lavishly-prepared forehands, sliced a lot of backhands, and was completely outclassed. Murray wasn’t spectacular, but I don’t mean this as a criticism. A spectacle was hardly uncalled-for, and would have felt gratuitous, if not a waste of energy in the allegedly crippling Melbourne heat. He did what a true champion does, per Niki Lauda, which is to win going as slowly as he feasibly could. It was still fast enough to deliver a comfortable win. Now he’ll get that treasured night session.

Nicolas Almagro’s loss is an easy one to be ungenerous about, due both to the strained particularities of its unfolding, and because the capacity to deride extravagant choking has already been honed to a fine point by Sam Stosur. When it comes to poking fun, I’m in practice. The comprehensiveness with which Almagro failed repeatedly to close out victory could have only been rendered more excruciating had he actually held a match point. But he never did.

Almagro served for a spot in his first Major semifinal no fewer than three times in the first four sets. But he lost it in five, to his compatriot David Ferrer. Astute fans will recall last year’s Davis Cup final, and that Almagro lost the deciding fifth rubber, while Ferrer, whose heroics had so far kept Spain alive, watched on helplessly. I’d assumed that was the lowest moment of Almagro’s career, especially afterwards as he sat alone and for too long none of his teammates sought to console him. If Ferrer was that kind of guy, today would have constituted some kind of revenge. For the record, I don’t think he is that kind of guy, and I doubt whether it crossed either man’s mind at the end. But it crossed mine, if only as a reminder that two of the lowest moments of Almagro’s career have occurred in rapid succession, and that a tumble into the crevasse was prefigured by a glimpse of the heights.

In fact, I’m not quite sure what did cross Almagro’s mind. Afterwards he appeared too little chagrined by his fall, seemingly subscribing to the view that what’s past is past. Naturally there were plenty of positive aspects to his performance. He did, after all, lead the world No.4 by two sets and a break, and recovered well from the disappointment of losing the third set. But the careening flair that repeatedly brought him to the precipice of victory entirely stalled when he needed it most, and instead of leaping desperately he tried to edge his way forward. It behooves him to think on why this might be so. Anyway, Ferrer is through to another Australian Open semifinal, to face Novak Djokovic.

Based on the on-court interview conducted immediately after the second quarterfinal, and the presser staged slightly later still, the main item of interest in Novak Djokovic’s match was how he’d recovered from his titanic struggle with Stan Wawrinka two nights earlier. ‘Very well’ was the obvious answer, but the assembled press clearly wanted more, and wouldn’t be satisfied until they got it. It wasn’t enough to know that he’d partaken of ice baths. They had to know how many, and precisely who was present (turns out it was Lleyton Hewitt at least once).

There was, sadly, little to speak of about the match itself. Aside from some stiffer resistance from Tomas Berdych in the second set, there wasn’t much to differentiate this encounter from the one between the same men at the same stage of the same event two years ago. That previous match was so unmemorable that I can barely remember it, for all that I spent its duration seated cheek-by-jowl with the Berdych Army. For those who’ve forgotten, the Berdych Army was an allegedly lovable coterie of larrikins whose entire act consisted of painting the letters of the Czech player’s name on their torsos, and yodelling shoddily arranged pop medleys in ragged unison. I can remember the incessant chanting – on television they term it ‘atmosphere’ – but little of the actual match beyond the score, which as I think had a six in it.

What had seemed clear that night, and has since come to define what we may generously term their ‘rivalry’ is that Berdych’s defensive capabilities are limited, while Djokovic’s are not. Furthermore, although Berdych’s firepower is immense, his arsenal is relatively small. For example, his mighty forehand is considerably mightier when directed cross-court than up the line, and his ability to create angles is questionable. His second serve neither kicks nor bites, and slots neatly into the returner’s strike zone. Djokovic’s defensive skills are already unworldly anyway, but he reads Berdych’s game so well that he remains impregnable even when earthbound. In other words, the top seed’s B-game is generally good enough to deal with Berdych’s best, and last night the Serb brought his A-game, which meant that as well as defending desperately he was pummelling his opponent without mercy. As in Shanghai, when Berdych confessed he simply could find no way through Djokovic, it felt like a mismatch at a fundamental mechanical level.

Jo Wilfried Tsonga, on the other hand, is more creative than Berdych on attack, and, being a superior athlete, also defends with considerable virtuosity. I am inclined to agree with Jim Courier, who repeatedly stressed that Tsonga is the only player around his ranking who combines these attributes. This isn’t to say he lacks shortcomings. His middling results over the last year or so aren’t entirely contingent upon bad luck (he is 1-16 against top ten opponents since the start of last season), and nor was his loss tonight, for all that he was the superior player for large parts of the match.

For longer stretches than I would have believed possible Tsonga reprised his performance in the 2011 Wimbledon semifinal, when he recovered to inflict Roger Federer’s first ever defeat from two sets up at a Major. As he had that day, Tsonga’s considerable presence tonight caused his half of the court to shrink alarmingly. There were times when Federer could find no avenue of attack that wasn’t already blocked off, usually by artillery. Meanwhile Tsonga was lethal whenever he could get his feet set, off both forehand and backhand, while his returns – generally the weakest part of his game – landed not only miraculously in, but searchingly deep. Federer admittedly did not serve well, both by percentage and placement, and ended up with few aces, especially compared to his opponent.

Federer was compelled to fight, and to take what few chances he could get. Even then the chances were often yielded back. Several times in the first four sets his grip on service breaks proved rather too relaxed, especially in the face of a fearless and bold opponent. The second seed held four match points on Tsonga’s serve at 2/5 in the fifth, but failed to take any. The sighs of Federer’s legion fans could be heard across the globe, a vast pained exhalation that accelerated the melting of Greenland’s permafrost. Normally so secure in closing out victory, the prospect of Federer serving out the match seemed like the diciest enterprise since, well, Almagro the day before. It had just been that kind of night. From anywhere, at any point, Tsonga remained dangerous until the very end.

As it happened Federer did serve it out, and interviewed by Courier immediately afterwards was even more ebullient than usual, undoubtedly owing to a profound upwelling of relief. He’d known, as we all had, that this match hadn’t been over until the last overhead landed in and Jake Garner finally called it. He moves through to his tenth consecutive Australian Open semifinal, where he will play Murray for the fourth time at a Major, but for the first time before the final.

Mikhail Youzhny yesterday recorded his first career match win over Benjamin Becker in Doha, which would admittedly be of scant interest even to me, if it wasn’t simultaneously the Russian’s 400th career match win over anyone anywhere. One night earlier Philipp Kohlschreiber saw in the New Year by seeing off Ivan Dodig handily on the same court. Meanwhile in Perth Jo-Wilfried Tsonga was last night imperious in defeating John Isner. I won’t insult anyone’s intelligence by pretending I’m unenthused by any of these results, for all that I have no issue with the men who suffered losses.

Doha

Aside from Youzhny’s fabulous rally and a small pothole that is somehow shadowing David Ferrer – possibly the world’s first case of a negative space stalking a professional tennis player, or indeed any sportsperson – the main issue in Doha has been the stricter interpretation of the time rule. The existing ATP rule is that the time between points must not exceed twenty-five seconds. This is not a new rule, although it has been altered in that the penalty is now capped at a fault for an offending server and a dropped point for a tardy returner. Previously the penalties would escalate almost indefinitely, up to and including a frozen bank account and salting of the family land. Umpires, burdened with human empathy, were understandably reluctant to impose such punishment.

Indeed, the truly original part of the new rule is that umpires have shed their erstwhile reticence to enforce it. This was undoubtedly the aim of softening the penalties. Players are now being warned all over the place. Feliciano Lopez was the first to exceed a warning, and he was either unlucky or injudicious in that he allowed it to happen while serving to save set points against Lukasz Kubot. Having tarried in his post-point preening, he was finally set to serve when the umpire called ‘second serve’. Lopez, incensed, won the point, but thereafter dropped his bundle and lost the set. He then remonstrated with the umpire at considerable length, pointing out that in all the years he’d been on tour he’d never experienced the like, which suggests he was at least halfway towards discovering why everyone persists in calling it a new rule.

Lopez then wasted little time in losing the second set, although Kubot’s flair in attack certainly helped. His fellow Spaniards – Pablo Andujar and Ferrer – afterwards rallied around him on social media, and presumably in the players’ lounge. Earlier in Brisbane Tommy Robredo averaged twenty-seven seconds between points against Ryan Harrison, for which he was duly admonished, although he retained the wherewithal to win in straight sets. The temptation for the Spanish men to position themselves as victims of a crusade will inevitably prove considerable, but I hope the ATP doesn’t allow itself to be browbeaten if it comes to it. With more players ranked in the top ten, fifty and hundred than any other, it’s not as though Spain lacks clout, and historically their federation is not slow to lobby on its players’ behalf. It’s also the kind of issue that readily devolves into partisan bickering. All of which is to say that there will be a debate, and there will be mud.

(Update: Gael Monfils last night was also docked a serve for luxuriating too long with his towel, at which outrage he promptly blew his top and the second set. His defence was that he needed longer to dry himself, because black people sweat more. As I say, the debate was always going grow muddied, and it only took a few days for the race card to be played.  That’s an impressive rate of decay, even by the lofty standards set by the internet, in which a discussion about knitted doilies will descend into racial slurs within a page.)

The real test will come when the umpires are obliged to penalise any of the top four in a crucial match, such as a later round at a Masters event. I should point out that since this is an ATP initiative the same revised rules will not apply at Grand Slam level, since the Majors play by their own rules. The time-limit at the Majors is twenty seconds. If the contestants once more collude to make the Australian Open final ten per cent more epic than it needs to be, then it will be up to the umpires to stop them, umpires who’ve thus far proved unequal to the task.

Hopman Cup

Tsonga d. Isner, 6/3 6/2

Being an exhibition, the Hopman Cup is equally untroubled by ATP requirements, which means that not only can the players idle indefinitely between points, their results will not figure on the official record. Officially, Tsonga is still riding a two-match losing streak against Isner. Unofficially, the Frenchman celebrated the slackening of Perth’s apocalyptic temperatures by thrashing Isner in a shade under an hour, breaking him three times and rounding off a frankly terrible day for American men.

Tsonga’s victory was mostly testified to a new-found determination not to blow a lead. Although he appeared no less exuberant than usual, it was encouraging to see that his characteristic flamboyance did not translate into eagerness to sacrifice victory for mere entertainment. He was unfailingly judicious in his shot-selection – even the preternaturally cautious Fred Stolle could find little to quibble at – and played within himself despite any number of excellent opportunities to conclude rallies with excessive panache. The flamboyance was limited to footage of him carving up the stage at the Hopman Cup New Year’s ball the night before, which was shown after the match on the Perth Arena’s screen, apparently with no other goal than to make the Frenchman blush. He covered it, as ever, with the sport’s broadest smile.

Throughout a patchy and stuttering finish to 2012 Tsonga had appeared unfocussed when he didn’t simply look unhappy. There seems to be a new purpose to his play, and it would be unfair of me to suggest that his appointment of Roger Rasheed hasn’t played a part. The endlessly knowledgeable Darren Cahill said as much in commentary, relaying a conversation in which Rasheed admitted that special attention was being payed to Tsonga’s attitude and conduct when he was ahead in matches. Too often he lost focus when he needed it most, and never quite seemed concerned enough to recover it.  By forgetting how to win Tsonga had consequently misplaced his hunger to. It is early days in the new season, but I’m surely not alone in hoping that by rediscovering the means, Tsonga has also rediscovered the desire. If Rasheed’s appointment gains Tsonga nothing else, it will have been enough.

Having exhausted their supply of bombastic hullaballo the night before at the ominously-lit player’s party, today’s draw ceremony for the 2012 Barclays ATP World Tour Finals turned out to be a fairly muted affair. Juan Martin del Potro was on hand to ensure it was all above board. Once it was released, the ramifications of the draw took all of three seconds to sink in. They were six-fold.

Firstly, it became immediately apparent that it is possible to divide up the world’s top eight eligible players into two groups that are strikingly uneven. Secondly, Rafael Nadal’s absence has a strong bearing on this. Thirdly, in downplaying this imbalance some commentators were obliged to take dramatic understatement to a truly transcendent level. Fourthly, del Potro has no patience for journalists who cannot remember his name. Fifthly, anyone who mentions the tour finals but forgets to include the title sponsor will have that sponsor’s name inserted awkwardly into any quotable material. Sixthly, the special round robin format of the [Barclays] World Tour Finals requires a new appendix to Bracketology, the Reading of Draws, and Why Men Have to Sleep Around. The tour finals pose something of a problem for the professional Bracketologist, quite aside from the perennial concern of finding time for work amidst all the scientifically-mandated infidelity. A few of these six points will be addressed in due course, but certainly not in that order.

If the tour finals were to be staged elsewhere, the two groups of players would hopefully be given more evocative names, like Lotus and Moon or Lust and Envy, and the lads would be kitted out in some representative local duds. London really missed an opportunity to garb them all as chavs, instead opting for austere pinstriped suits. They looked uncannily like stockbrokers, especially Novak Djokovic in his spectacles. The groups were called Group A and Group B. They could more usefully have been called Bloodbath and Pillow Fight, respectively. Here is why:

Group A (Bloodbath)

1. Novak Djokovic

2. Andy Murray

3. Tomas Berdych

4. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga

Group B (Pillow Fight)

1. Roger Federer

2. David Ferrer

3. Juan Martin del Potro

4. Janko Tipsarevic

Federer is the two-time defending champion at the tour [Barclays] finals, and has won it a total of six times in the past decade. In this year’s edition, he’ll commence with a combined 30-3 against his group-mates, with all three of those losses coming to del Potro, but only one of those occurring in the last three years. Admittedly that loss came just two weeks ago in Basel, but Federer surely intends on playing better than that. I should mention that aside from Nikolay Davydenko, del Potro remains the only person to defeat Federer at this venue. But that was a long time ago, and this del Potro is surely fatigued, has just lost to Michael Llodra in Paris, and must face Ferrer first, a match-up that favours the Spaniard. Then again, Ferrer still has a final to play in Paris. Federer meanwhile opens against Tipsarevic, who has been in quite terrible form of late, and who in any case hasn’t looked much like beating the Swiss since January 2008. For Tipsarevic neither group was going to be easy. Federer will assuredly make the semifinals, but whether he is joined by Ferrer or del Potro will depend quite heavily on how that pair fare against each other.

Meanwhile over in the Meatgrinder section, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga must be wondering what he did to piss off that old gypsy woman. Like Tipsarevic, the Frenchman hasn’t been at his best in recent months, and I sadly cannot imagine he’ll repeat last year’s run to the final. Admittedly given the season he’s had, any configuration of available players would have been problematic. His record against the rest of the top ten is 1-11 in 2012, and he has fallen twice to Berdych in the last month. Berdych’s recent record against Djokovic and Murray hasn’t been especially good, and readers may recall how utterly blunted he was by Djokovic in Shanghai last month. Uncontroversially, I expect Murray and Djokovic to make it through the round robin, but I also think they’ll be considerably more dinged up than Federer, and it’ll be a nice question which of them gets to face him first. Those among their fans who’d so gleefully celebrated their favourite tanking in Paris might learn to be careful what they wish for.

The phrase ‘a little bit’ sees much use in sports commentary, which seems ironic given most commentator’s tendency to soar into unfettered hyperbole given the merest opportunity. Cricket fans are perhaps familiar with Tony Greig’s indefatigable recourse to the phrase. ‘The pitch is opening up a little bit at the Paddington End’ might be used to describe a crevasse into which the bowler has just lost his shoe. ‘There’s a little bit of swing out there’ might fail to evoke a Waqar Younis yorker that was initially aimed at second slip. Shane Warne’s famous deliveries to Andrew Strauss or Mike Gatting, by this definition, spun ‘a little bit.’ So when Peter Fleming remarked that the groups for the [Barclays] ATP World Tour Finals were ‘a little bit’ unbalanced, I assumed it was merely more of the same. He then went on to qualify this, however, by matching up each of the players, and concluded that Group A was ‘marginally tougher’ than Group B. I suppose it is, in the sense that patting a lone purring tabby is a marginally more agreeable feline experience than being set upon by a horde of them. With their tiny claws, and those cruel, cruel eyes . . .

It’s a worthwhile thought experiment to see how this draw would have shaken out had Nadal turned up, and assuming he was in something approaching fighting trim. He would have been drawn in Federer’s group, although it must be said that the O2 Arena is the court upon which Nadal troubles the Swiss the least. Rounding out Group B would have been Berdych and Tsonga, while Ferrer and del Potro would have moved over to Group A. Tipsarevic would have been the alternate. That’s quite a different configuration, and, I would argue, a more balanced one. If nothing else, it suggests that the top four and the group of four players ranked below them complement each other quite well, and that draws can be thrown into minor disarray, even round robin draws.

Anyway, it is what it is, and each man can only make the best of the hand that was shakily thrust his way. I can’t think of a much fairer way to conduct things, aside from having all eight players dropped into a narrow alleyway in Pamplona, and having Jerzy Janowicz released amongst them. Incidentally, the newly added appendix to Bracketology includes full colour illustrations of how this might look. Unfortunately, the graphic nature of these images has seen the book referred to the classification board.

Paris Masters, Days Three and Four

Querrey d. (2) Djokovic, 0/6 7/6 6/4

(Q) Janowicz d. (3) Murray, 5/7 7/6 6/2

For the first time in precisely two years, a Masters 1000 event will be won by a player outside of the top four. If it was going to happen anywhere, it was probably in Paris, and if it was going to happen any time, the chances are that it would happen this week. Two of the top four never showed up, and the other two have already left. If London wasn’t on their mind already, it certainly is now.

Novak Djokovic was yesterday upset by Sam Querrey from a set and a break up, while today Andy Murray suffered a similar fate at the hands of Jerzy Janowicz, with the added twist that the Scot served for the match and even held a match point. In both cases the belief has rapidly disseminated that the higher ranked player would have taken a straight sets win, and did his utmost to achieve that. But when his hitherto over-matched opponent showed steely resolve to level the match, the choice became whether to fight out a tough three set win or to lose convincingly. The season has only a week and a half to go, and everyone’s energy reserves have never felt more finite. In other words, the idea is that once they dropped the second set, Djokovic and Murray tanked. I will, for the moment, leave to one side the question of whether this is true or not.

There was a time when so serious an accusation would only have been levelled by a given player’s detractors. After all, the accusation is one of bad sportsmanship, and the ATP has a rule imposing penalties for lack-of-best-effort, although in order to actually be charged a player must more or less recreate The Baumer’s meltdown from The Royal Tenenbaums. However, what is most troubling is that we have reached a point at which it is the player’s most ardent fanatics who are the first to cry ‘tank’, and invariably the loudest. They actually seem proud of it. In essence, they’re implying that poor sportsmanship is preferable to the idea that your favourite lost to a ‘lesser’ player, and that they subsequently compounded this by casually lying to the media about it. I’ve never heard a player come out and immediately declare that they’d tanked.

Indeed, the sport’s most famous such admission was Andre Agassi’s in Open, which he made some 13 years after the event. Unfortunately, in confessing that he’d thrown the 1996 Australian Open semifinal to Michael Chang, Agassi has opened a floodgate. Sadly, it’s a floodgate that sluices directly into a septic tank. When you’re willing to make such assertions in defence of a player, be in no doubt that your regard for the player has exceeded your respect for tennis. Winning and ranking have come to mean more that the means by which those things are achieved, to the detriment of the sport’s integrity. Of course tanking happens, but it is never the right thing to do. It is hardly defensible, let alone a worthwhile defence for losing.

Whether Murray or Djokovic tanked or not is, for me, a less interesting issue. I don’t think they fought as hard as they might have in their respective third sets, but they’d looked pretty committed before that, and to make too much of such points to unfairly belittle the outstanding efforts of their opponents. Janowicz in particular grew into an almost unplayable colossus in the final set, and the comparisons to Lukaz Rosol at Wimbledon are as apt as they are obvious. A few years ago, I recall lamenting the way big men would once upon a time go ungovernably feral for a week or two, and tear draws to pieces, but that this no longer happened, since the top echelon was now so solid and all the big men were head cases. (It was in the course of an initially inspired Robin Haase being ground painfully down by Andy Roddick.) Suddenly, the big men are back, and doing what they’re supposed to do, especially indoors. They’re playing first-strike tennis, and making their opponent’s life miserable.

Murray has fallen to such a player twice in his last three tournaments, although I don’t recall the roof being closed when he fell to Milos Raonic in Tokyo. It’s also worth mentioning that his last three losses have come after he held a match points (in addition to Paris and Tokyo, there was the heartbreaking loss to Djokovic in the Shanghai final). I don’t think this constitutes a meaningful pattern. Of slightly more concern to his fans, and not merely those commentating for Sky Sports, is that his US Open victory has proved less transfigurative than many had hoped it might be. Murray looks about the same as he did before. What this should tell us is that he was good enough to win a major before, but people will doubtless persist in the belief that becoming a Slam champion instils some ill-defined ‘champion’s mentality’. It also means that Murray will end his best season without a single Masters title, the first time he has failed to win one since 2007.

I first heard of Janowicz that year, when he finished runner-up in the Juniors at the US Open to Ricardas Berankis, an incipient David and Goliath tale that has failed to sustain itself on the professional tour, although there’s still a chance if the Lithuanian can get his body in order. The next time I saw him was during a flailing five set loss to Amir Weintraub in Davis Cup (from memory this was the Israeli’s first match for his nation). Unsurprisingly, my only real thoughts were that he was a big lad with a big serve. Like everyone else I saw no need to include him in the group of talented youngsters who for the sake of convenience and laziness are endlessly grouped together: Tomic, Harrison, Dimitrov etc. Even at this year’s Wimbledon, when he reached the third round and fell to Florian Mayer in five sets, he didn’t rise perceptibly in pundit’s estimation. His defeat of Ernests Gulbis, accomplished though it was, was still held to be Gulbis’ fault, as so much else is.

But beating Murray in Paris has been the result Janowicz needed. The bandwagon is now rolling. He is being compared to Raonic, who lost today. He’s still a big lad with a big serve, but he moves particularly well for his size – he has said that fitness is now a major focus – and has decent touch around the court. Murray isn’t the easiest player to out-fox, but time and again he was stranded on his heels while a Janowicz drop-shot perished beyond reach. That the world No.3 was already rocking backwards was a testament to the rest of the Pole’s game, which is mostly a series of variations on lethal power, which is fearless even when erratic. After winning Janowicz fell heavily to the court, and his smile was boundless. It was, by his own account, the ‘most unbelievable day’ of his life.

In other news from Bercy, both Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Janko Tipsarevic have successfully qualified for next week’s World Tour Finals by reaching the quarterfinals, defeating Nicolas Almagro and Juan Monaco respectively. I could say that no one had been in any real doubt that this would transpire, but that would be to insult those who spent considerable time thrashing out the mathematical scenarios whereby Gasquet, Isner or others might squeeze through. Juan Martin del Potro also lost, which is either a good or a bad thing depending on how you look at it. Good because he might be better prepared for London next week. Bad because this could have been a real chance for him to pick up his first Masters title. There’s always next year.

For the record, of all the players remaining in the draw only Tsonga and Tomas Berdych, who earlier in the day survived a rampant big man in Kevin Anderson, have won a Masters event in their careers. Both men have one, and in both cases it came here at the Paris Indoors.