Basel, Valencia and Singapore

Well, winning a slam is a real stretch for Gulbis. It’s not like he’s been knocking at the door of winning a slam up until this year. In fact, the exact opposite was true. But for Gulbis to lose 6 and 3 to Coric, a 17-year-old, is really bad. I saw Estrella Burgos beat Coric in 4 sets at the Open. Gulbis is just not a Top 20 player with results like this. I’m sure Gulbis wasn’t at his best, but he’s playing a 17-year-old.

Biggest win of the day goes to Nick Monroe and Austin Kraijcek beating Butorac and Klassen. Nick Monroe is playing some good doubs with different partners. I’ve got to commend him.

How can you not like Halep, Bryan? Girl is like 5-5 and obliterates Serena yesterday.

You don’t like Nishikori? One of the cleaner strikers of the ball ever. You don’t like the way Fed is playing these days?

Besides Gulbis, who are your favorites?

I think we all know Jerzy Boy is not competing for any slams anymore. He didn’t go past a 3rd Round in a slam this year. But demoting him back to Challengers might be bit much. Dude is still No. 36.

I disagree with you, Andrew. I don’t think it’s just a money grab by Kozlov to take the wc. The guy had gotten to a finals of a Challenger recently, he deserved a wc. Interesting it was in Valencia, though. Why would a Spanish tournament give an American junior a wc?

But you might be right on DY, Andrew. He has taken the 2nd set breaker against Raonic and it’s a set apiece in Basel. DY showing life. Even serving and volleying to win final point in breaker at 6-5.

Dan, no complaints from me. If Kozlov gets wcs and wants to test the waters and get paid for it, what’s not to like as a player? From the player point of view it’s all upside – experience, main draw action, higher level tennis, accommodations – seems plus all the way around. So my comments on the shameless play for cash is definitely wrong, there are more reasons than that.

I do have an issue with Papa Kozlov’s statement that 3 and 3 is a good result all things considered. But maybe I ought to check the tape and see how Kozlov actually handled the storm, maybe this was a competitive match with lots of 40-40 games and Kozlov getting break points and responding to the Klizan game. 3 and 3 is not 0 and 0 or 1 and 0, and I’d guess the Kozlov game is handicapped on an indoor court at least at this age.

Here are some results:

Williams d. Bouchard 6-1 6-1 in under 58 minutes, including towel breaks, line call reviews and more. That big X on Bouchard’s back is now bigger than Bouchard! This has been an embarassing 2nd half of the season for Bouchard, her performance post Wimbledon has been pretty substandard in comparison to her match play up until the Kvitova match. This is a real tale of two cities with Kvitova doing better and better after that match and Bouchard doing worse and worse! Reminds me of the Ivanovic tailspin some years ago.

Why I like Ivanovic. She recognized her game went south and abandoned her, and went about getting back in the hunt.

Woz win over A Rad is a good one, Rory you did good! The WTA should send Rory a thank you card for bringing Woz back to life.

Not putting much stock in the Sharapova loss, Kvitova can be on fire sometimes – when she’s on she’s on, and when she’s off well she is just off off off.

Valencia:

Chardy d. Dolgo. That’s a nice result for Chardy.

Anderson d. Klizan without a point played. Guess Klizan was more affected be the Kozlov match than I thought! Maybe Mr. Kozlov was right.

Andujar d. Lasovic, follows up the Berdych win. Don’t know Andujar but this is a good win after an upset.

Murray downs the Fog-man. Nice work by Murray.

Ferrer over Verdasco. No surprise, as much as I like Verdasco’s game it’s been years since he’s been a consistent threat.

Bellucci beats Bautista Agut without playing a point. I guess last week was too much for Bautista. Nice to see Bellucci continue to advance through draws. I think he really is on his way back into the top 50. Nice work.

Basel:
Milos Raonic d. DY, 7-6 in the third! I got this wrong but I hand it to DY for backing up my hunch that he was due for a big match result. Hope he takes this in stride and goes out and wins an ATP tournament soon, get that milestone out of the way.

Becker d. Kukushkin. Nice result for Becker. The Harrison loss earlier this year is looking a lot better – I thought Harrison should win that match vs. Becker but obviously Becker has a lot more to say about that. Apologies to the Harrison camp.

And in Argentina, the challenger there featured four matches and all Argentines. Let’s hear it for gaming the system!

Raonic inside out forehand the best in the game? Is that really even a compliment these days? U.S. players usually can only hit the forehand and the inside out forehand nowadays so I’d think their inside out forehands are good (so it seems like a put down of the Raonic game!)

Yeah but DY might say to himself: “I was close to Raonic, I must not be that far” <– fallacy though. He'd have to be brutally honest, "Missed a lot of backhands out there, worth checking out and let me check with Spadea or someone who knows how to do this well so that next time this works".

Nadal does that but it's not clear how many other players do it or who does that. I know Sock re-works things but to go from "that was a close match and with a few balls here or there this will work out for me" to "backhand losing me matches" to "I got to get advice from someone who can fix this with me" is just not a given, can't just take that to the bank that a player will accurately diagnose what's wrong and fix it.

I mean look at Bouchard? She might be saying to herself hey, I made a slam final, slam semifinal, nothing wrong with my game. But that's a recipe for disaster. Sharapova is the exact opposite, who says (this is on the record) my serve isn't working, I need to re-do this, I will get the right help and make it work out in the long run.

Mayotte I think had a really good opinion on this – a player can ALWAYS improve. But few players actually do the improvement. Part of what makes Nadal such a great player, his humility and ability to recognize reality then put in the work to do it with his team is part of what makes him such a great champion. Hard to beat someone who is always a moving target and whose game keeps evolving.

Agree on that scoop. Dy has t talent, why it can be tough to be a dy fan, it is a rollercoaster. The less heralded players like steve johnson are doing better than thr more hyped yankees but it is all relative. U.s. players just arent the story – it is better than last year at least and in best of three set matches i think a player not named quisner will soon break through and grab a title. Not a slam or a masters but not a challenger either.

Today’s matches and results.

Basel
Federer vs. Dimitrov: My pick is Grigor. He’s due to beat Fed and on his home-court. Federer won’t want to lose this but not wanting to lose isn’t winning, so I’m going with Dimitrov.

Nadal vs. Coric. JBlitz is right, this should be interesting. I think no matter what Nadal wins. He might need a warm-up set to get used to Coric, but I think he wins that too.

Valencia
Robredo vs. Andujar. Still don’t know Andujar. Must be a dangerous player! I like Robredo here.

Results:

Ivanovic d. Halep in 3 tough sets. What’s not to like about Ivanovic? Used to think she said the right things but didn’t execute on court, but here she is again, beating Bouchard to bring their H2H to 1-2 and avenge Australia, now beating Halep too. If Ivanovic wins the WTA final, that would be a huge result, proof positive that the long road back to relevance is worth it. for all players in a funk, Harrisons included, take note.

Wozniaki d. Kvitova, 6-3 6-2. The WTA should not only send a thank you to Rory McIlroy for calling off the wedding but also a bottle of champagne. He’s done more for Wozniaki’s game than any coach or motivational speech or anything – he hit a nerve and that nerve came back to life. Three cheers for Wozniaki, who I think Scoop said would come back too.

Wozniaki and Ivanovic, comeback players of the year!

Sharapova d. Radwanska in 3 plus hours. Sharapova grinds it out against the clever Radwanska, no way this was a pretty match. Let’s hear it for winning ugly.

Valencia
Murray d. Anderson in 3 tough sets. Murray isn’t winning beautifully either so credit him for toughing these matches out. Anderson has put together his best year, I liked him in Delray and he has been a consistent performer with a clean as a whistle game. Wonder if anyone can light a fire under Anderson so he wins these matches.

Chardy d. Carreno. Carreno made leaps last year in winning challenger after challenger after challenger – he was like a Goffin without Goffin’s game, or a poor man’s Ferrero take your pick! and at age 23, 24? he’s had a good result here. Nice work by Chardy in winning a match he should win and in 51 minutes – just enough to break a sweat. Chardy, Cilic and DY, three players who were at the tops of their junior division, are making a decent career out there (Cilic of course the top one here by a long shot, but not bad work from Chardy and Young – better make the most of it!). Seems at age 25 is when tennis players are hitting more of the mark these days on the ATP tour.

Ferrer d. Bellucci 6-1 6-2 in 67 minutes. Another blowout, at least Bellucci has made a nice run here up to this point.

Basel
Goffin d. Raonic in 3 tough sets. I liked how Goffin played at the US Open vs. Dimitrov at least for the first two sets. Count me a Goffin fan, let’s see how far the Belgian can go!

Karlovic d. Ben Becker. Another tournament and more proof that Karlovic and Becker are from from done on the ATP.

Nadal-Coric has officially started.

Coricwins 6-2 7-6. Coric joins Kyrgios as teenage heirs to Nadal. Expect Nadal to rebound next year. He will have to. Job well done by the kid.

Federer d. Dimitrov 7-6 6-2, 90 minutes. No Baby Fed here.

Interesting mix these days of players on the verge of big titles like Nishikori and a crop of players that refuse to wait their turn for a crack at the big time in Coric. Then you have the gatekeepers who just want to keep winning big titles, Nadal Djokovic Federer Murray.

Kudos to Coric. He played a terrific match and his composure for a 17 yr old was amazing to see. He reminds me of Rafa in so many ways.

However, Rafa was at about 50%, maybe 60%. You’d have to dig deep into the history books to find a match where he made 37 UEs in two sets. It was very difficult as a fan to see him struggling so much and unable to hit a forehand or to run for shots. I’m not taking anything away from Coric as Rafa started to play better in the second set and Coric stayed with him but let’s not be calling Coric a world beater just quite yet, although I’m certainly looking forward to seeing what he can do.

Rafa has pulled out of Paris and the WTF and will have surgery on November 3. He’s also going to have something done to his back although he was rather vague about that but he’s been struggling with it all year since the AO. This is what he said after the match:

‘…he made the decision last week to undergo surgery on Nov. 3, and that his 2014 season is over. ‘It’s the day to say goodbye to the season,” Nadal said. ”It’s been a very hard year for me, mentally and physically. I’m not going to play Paris and London, I’m not competitive enough for that. I need to do the surgery for my appendix and I need to work on my back.

”I need five weeks of rest and I want to have one month to try to work as much as I can to be ready for 2015. The only way to work on being fit is to be healthy. I need to fix all the things in my body first.”

Needless to say, I wish Rafa the best and hope he can resolve his problems. It’s been a tough year for his fans too. ;’)