Tennis Prose




Jan/15

30

Djokovic looking unbeatable, Maria vs. Serena, the cold war continues

nolebox

Djokovic struggled with his nemesis Stanimal for four sets but took charge in the fifth and dominated. It was a strange match. Djokovic at his best looks unbeatable but you never know when he can hit the pothole and get a flat tire. Once again Djokovic showed his sportsmanship in the fifth, giving Stan a point on a review which barely touched the line, despite that Djokovic touched the ball with his racquet.

Murray looks extra motivated to avenge Djokovic, we have a most interesting final to look forward too.

And the women’s final promises to deliver fireworks as well. We all know there is no love lost between Maria and Serena and after eleven years of failures vs. Serena, Maria’s intensity will surely be off the charts. As will Serena’s incomparable ferocity.

Doesn’t it always seem like Serena would rather eats a brick and rocks salad than lose a match to Maria?

Enjoy the finals dear Tennis-prose.com readers…

No tags

25 comments

  • Scoop Malinowski · January 30, 2015 at 9:15 am

    Stefan Kozlov update: He’s into the Hawaii Challenger QF with wins over Mike Russell and another guy. Meets James McGee for e SF slot. Also into the SF of doubles playing with Donaldson. Harrison lost first round to Dennis Novikov. Kudla was top seed but he lost first round.

  • Illuminatus · January 30, 2015 at 9:42 am

    let’s get ready to rumba ! haha

    since fed / wawa / dimi are MIA – i like murray in 5 (hate that djoko !)

    and as usual – serena will fry that volleyball player maria for snatching her boy-toy dimi away from her bosom…..wat better motivation / fire to feed off of than a bizzare love triangle ? (love new order !)

  • Harold · January 30, 2015 at 11:00 am

    Best line on this site ever.” Kozlov into semis with a win over Russell and another guy”. Thats the Challengers in a nutshell, but you guys make such a big deal about Minor wins.

    Fowler, Cahill and Gilbert are great and were calling the Djoko/Wawa match. But, it was a strange up and down match, they have to realize that some stats dont mean anything in that kind of match. The only stat that matters are the stats of the last 3 points.

  • Dan Markowitz · January 30, 2015 at 12:34 pm

    I’m going Muzz in 4. I just watched a little of Djoko/Stan, but I felt Djoko was playing too defensively. You can’t get away with that against Muzz. He hasn’t beaten Djoko since 2013 Wimbledon, and lost to him in quarters of USO last year, but I like Murray playing more aggressively and being fitter in ’15

    As for Kozlov, hey, come on, the kid’s 17 and he’s beating Mike Russel, who’s more than twice his age, but the dude can still play. I’m getting more impressed by Kozlov. Hope to see him play in Delray.

  • Scoop Malinowski · January 30, 2015 at 1:48 pm

    Kozlov is still sixteen but he turns seventeen in less than 72 hours. To beat Russell is impressive, remember Russell had some wins down under. Harrison getting zapped by Novikov is bad news. Though Novikov beat Janowicz at US Open a few years ago, he’s been struggling since. I like Djokovic to beat Murray but Murray is very fired up and intense right now with a chip on his shoulder. Both finals will be very interesting.

  • Andrew Miller · January 30, 2015 at 2:40 pm

    Murray has his shot. Roddick got 3 chances to win Wimbledon – now Murray gets a 4th to win Aussie. He is playing great.

    I forget Roddick was in five total slam finals and one for five. The four losses, all versus Federer.

    No reason to annoint Kozlov for anything, but he has a nice game. Outside Kudla he is the most technically sharp player with sound technique in the u.s. roster. Brian Baker had more oomph in his game. A real shame that Baker! Could crack winners seemingly from anywhere.

    As i said before…no Harrison watch for me. I like his recent moves like hiring Doyle. Losing sucks but the dislike of losing fuels the desire to win.

  • Gaurang · January 30, 2015 at 3:52 pm

    The Djoko-Murray final’s going to be interesting. I would give Murray a 60% chance to win. Murray has something to prove after a (little) disappointing last year where he even slipped out of top 10 for a while. He is working hard to prove that he is still a part of the Big Four and that Big Four still exists.

    If both Djokovic and Murray play their best, then I think Djokovic would edge Murray in a very tight match.

    But this time, I think Andy really would be wanting to win this much more than Djokovic who has plenty of Aussie Opens trophies in his collection. And hence Andy would step it up more than Djokovic would I think.

  • Scoop Malinowski · January 30, 2015 at 7:29 pm

    Gaurang, I can see that, Murray does seem more desperate to win now. More urgency more hunger more emotion. If it’s decided by who wants it more, I think Murray has the edge in that intangible department. But Djokovic has a fierce drive as well. We will be able to see in the final which one truly really ‘wants it’ more.

  • Scoop Malinowski · January 30, 2015 at 7:37 pm

    Andrew, Murray is a live underdog for sure. I still can’t forget Murray beating Djokovic in the Wimbledon and US Open finals. Very hard to pick against Murray but I’m sticking with my pre-tourney picks – Djokovic or Kei. Picked Kvitova or Safarova on womens side. Hey Lucie won the dubs with Mattek Sands.

  • Andrew Miller · January 30, 2015 at 10:29 pm

    I saw the lucie safarova/sands win! Nobody in the stands but they played excellent and a confidence builder for sure for Safarova. Score remains Safarova 1, Berdych 0 in the aussie title count.

  • Dan Markowitz · January 31, 2015 at 1:44 pm

    Nobody was in the stands because nobody but Scoop and Justin Gimelstob cares about doubles, especially when the Bryan Brothers aren’t in the finals.

  • Andrew Miller · January 31, 2015 at 7:24 pm

    Players themselves care about doubles because at the end of a day, a win is a win. I think Wayne Bryan, by helping to save doubles, rescued a lot of singles’ players careers by giving them multiple chances at every tournament to get more wins than they could have alone in the singles category – more wins, more money, even more fans. It doesn’t matter whether it came on a challenger court or in mixed doubles at a slam – winning cures losing.

    Anyways – Luc Safarova played really well in the dubs, like McEnroe when he was with Fleming. Fognini, who I wrote off because of his awful 1st round exit, partnered with Bolleli to grab the doubles title.

    Personally I like seeing the doubles at tournaments. Allows fans to see many more players than they would have otherwise (saw Federer with Mirnyi in Miami this way – I had little clue who he was. If it were only the main matches without that doubles match, I can say it would not have been worth the price of admission). I think matches aren’t televised correctly – doubles is about inter-action so if media wanted to cover it correctly they should use the court cameras and not the top-down cameras from the top. That way they’d get the communication and the precision-laser like volleys and returns. Doubles is a lot faster than singles, it’s just not sold correctly.

  • Andrew Miller · January 31, 2015 at 7:25 pm

    Facing the Bryan Bros would probably get the whole ATP doubles tour to read.

  • Scoop Malinowski · January 31, 2015 at 8:17 pm

    I became a fan of Hsieh in the mixed doubles, the former #1 WTA doubles player with Peng Shuai. Hsieh is coached by my man Paul McNamee, ex Aussie dubs great. She was toying with Paes and Hingis with lobs and winners but her partner Cuevas made a ton of UEs. Hsieh is smooth as silk. Hingis Paes won in two close sets to make final but Hsieh was my favorite player of this match. And I love Paes and Hingis. Paes hit the shot of the tournament, a behind the back BH stab at the net. Hingis was solid as always. I love mixed doubles. Cuevas couldn’t make a volley and his baseline power was not inconsistent. McNamee gave me 23 minutes of audio gold about his Johnny Mac memories for Facing McEnroe.

  • Scoop Malinowski · January 31, 2015 at 8:19 pm

    Safarova is one of the best players in the world to not win a singles major. I love seeing great/very good singles player win doubles majors – Sock, Fog, Rochus, Gasquet, Gimelstob, Golovin, etc.

  • Andrew Miller · January 31, 2015 at 8:39 pm

    Golovin! She was very solid – sad to see her retire early. Great athlete.

    Safarova can do it. She can make a slam finals. If Majoli could, so can Safarova.

    Facing McEnroe should be great. He’s the best doubles player of all time, always surprising when he makes a negative comment about doubles. Point is – doubles does matter. It’s marketed very poorly. The Bryan Bros. have (for the most part) been the only good thing about U.S. men’s tennis in the post Roddick era and the only ones winning slams on the u.s. men’s side.

  • Dan Markowitz · January 31, 2015 at 10:22 pm

    Please, enough about the doubles. I was watching so Mahut-Herbert/Fognini-Bollelli and let’s just say it wasn’t scintillating stuff. Doubles can be great when you’re watching up close at a tournament, but come on, you really interested in that men’s double match up? I like Mahut’s backhand return, one handed, but none of these guys are artists the way Johnny Mac was. The angles Mac hit were sick.

    The reason why doubles doesn’t float is you don’t have the star players in the mix. I mean you used to have Stan Smith and Peter Fleming was a fine singles player, too. The Bryan Brothers are the only attraction in doubles unless Paes/Stepanek get together.

  • Andrew Miller · February 1, 2015 at 12:54 am

    Davis Cup doubles is pretty exciting. Yeah, at ATP tournaments I like doubles a lot, no problem there. Sometimes the singles/main attraction falls flat – look at the undercard match I saw a few years back with James Blake. He was on the comeback trail and played an abysmal match, losing to someone I’ve never heard of before or since. Agassi had also won his match earlier that evening in little to no time. Roddick had dropped Fish in another match – none of them were exciting.

    But the doubles were.

    Goes to show, sometimes the doubles matches, or the qualies matches to enter a tournament, are better than the tournament matches.

    Anyways Dan – look, my point is this – any comeback can have interesting origins and sometimes it’s a doubles match or a public parks match or something that just re-kindles the fire. Winning is a cure for losing. Sock is smart enough to attribute his singles success of last year to the doubles Wimbledon title with Popsipil (and Pops attributes his comeback of sorts to the same event).

    Pretty simple concept really…get your wins where you can.

  • Dan Markowitz · February 1, 2015 at 6:58 am

    You talk about Sock’s great singles year. What did he do in the majors? The guy defaulted against Andujar in the first round of the US Open last year, and two days later was back playing doubles. Maybe if he wasn’t entered in the doubles, he wouldn’t have defaulted in his singles match.

  • Andrew Miller · February 1, 2015 at 9:03 am

    Dan, last year by far was Sock’s best year on the atp tour. He played especially well after the wimbledon doubles win. Maybe it is that they also beat the world’s best doubles team to get there, which amped up the motivation.

    Hingis hated practice and opted to use doubles as practice during tournaments.

    Could be that doubles makes great players even better, or that excellent players are excellent no matter if in singles or doubles. I dont know…seems like a chicken egg thing.

    When the players themselves say a win makes them proud and they thej use the doubles to push theselves harder in singles, that is hard to dispute that doubles doesnt matter. Fognini and Bolleli won the first all italian mens doubles slam in over 50 years and they said it was amazing . They said their main focus was singles but this made a difference and if your tournament in singles is over making the most of a tournament made sense to them.

    Sure it was an afterthought to them – they are singles players. But a slam is a slam and now they go home as slam champs. Will either benefit from the doubles win? Maybe – if they want to recreate the magic they will work hard to do it somewhere else. Fognini is not the most inspired player out there even i he owns a singles title already this year.

    They beat Hugues and Mahut – Hugues bowed out in qualies after a great run for hin last year to round of 16. Doing this in the doubles matters.

    Winning matters, no matter what court.

  • Dan Markowitz · February 1, 2015 at 9:15 am

    I don’t agree with you. I opt for your prior point, great players turn matches into victories no matter if it’s singles or doubles they’re playing. Take Fognini, he’s been getting his ass kicked in singles lately. I don’t think this doubles slam win will change that. Players like Fognini win in doubles because they don’t have to face the top players in the world. It’s like Spadea said in Break Point, the doubles players were inferior. They only had to cover one half of the court. The guys who became doubles specialists were players who couldn’t hack it in singles. Is there a special skill to the game ? Yes, but people don’t primarily watch it because it’s the same reason people don’t attend Challengers, you don’t see the best players.

  • Andrew Miller · February 1, 2015 at 9:56 am

    OK, Dan. Every one has their own opinion. I don’t think doubles is where struggling ATP players find a home or former “good” players prolong their career. I do think doubles can impart some skills that come in handy in singles and my main point is that confidence can come from anywhere – a doubles win, a public park win, a win against your neighbor…whatever it is. These guys and ladies are competitive people and “losing” is far more common than winning – look at Fognini, a top 20 player who is ONE MATCH above .500 in his ATP win/loss column.

    Losing does funky things to players – their habits generally get worse. They stop doing what it was that made them win. Winning, anywhere, is helpful. Does that mean that a good doubles player becomes a good singles player on the tour? Like you said, probably not. But if you are a good player and you are dipping into the doubles for the money and the extra benefits, like practice time, it helps.

    Sometimes it can help a lot.

    Look at the women’s tour – who’s more interesting to watch? Players with much more complete games. Serena Williams, for example – outstanding champion, happens to be a great doubles player too. Don’t think those volleys or the serving was sharpened up in doubles? I’d wager they were. So when she comes up against Sharapova, who puts everything into her singles, it’s no surprise Serena Williams brings more to the table. An unreadable serve, an ability to charge the net when necessary – on and on.

    No one knows how Serena Williams developed those angles. Certainly she practiced them, but they have to be hard-wired into a players game, which means match play. You can only get enough match play by playing everywhere you can – and at a young age Serena Williams and her sister played a whole lot of doubles.

    I’m not saying doubles made Serena Williams who she is. I’m saying it’s indisputable that the extra match play from doubles shows up in her singles. Just like it did for Hingis. Just like it does for Federer. Nadal happens to be an excellent doubles player too.

  • Scoop Malinowski · February 1, 2015 at 4:06 pm

    Saw the first few games of mens final, good stuff. Any match with a major on the line is going to be good drama, especially with four players who have never been close to a major title. I don’t care to see fancy angles or deft touch, I want to see how these players handle the pressure and how they play under pressure and tension. Awesome match so far. A major title is a major title, I’d take a major doubles title over a singles final loss any day of the week. To be a major title champion is historic achievement. Well done by Fognini and Bolelli. They made HISTORY. Who cares of they grinded out a win and didn’t hit drop volleys or acute angles. Doesn’t matter. What matters is they found a way to win a major title. Hat’s off. Think of all the great players who never won a major title of any sort. Fog and Bolelli did it. Hat’s off.

  • Dan Markowitz · February 1, 2015 at 4:45 pm

    Here’s we differ, Scoop, I’d much rather see artistry in a qualis match than grinders in a slam finals. Grinding is its own art, but I loved watching doubles when Johnny Mac was playing, the ad court return of serve, the volleys without the racquet head moving more than an inch, the quick steps with which he closed on a volley and went back for an overhead, it was all a thing of beauty.

  • Scoop Malinowski · February 1, 2015 at 6:44 pm

    A good battle is a good battle. Qualis or major final. You gotta grind, fight, battle, do what it takes. Every pro can play beautiful tennis, some more than others. There is something miraculous about every pro, they are all racquet swinging miracles.

<<

>>

Find it!

Copyright 2010
Tennis-Prose.com
To top