Shanghai

Trouble with guys like Gulbis and Fogman is that they only play well when they feel up to it. You’d think for a Masters event they’d get up for it, but with these guys you never know. That’s why Ernie’s comment about the Big 4 being boring is absurd. I’m watching Murray this morning and he’s down 5-4 and a break to Gabashvili in the second set and the guy is working like a dog. The effort is always there with the Big 4 while Ernie is too inconsistent with his buddy, the Fogman.

Gulbis has shoulder issues since a while. He retired because of pain in his right shoulder against Klizan in Beijing. It must be serious, becuase he hardly retires from a match.

I was surprised that he wanted to try it today. He just pushed the ball back. There was not much else he could do.

It’s not fair to compare Gulbis with Fognini, who seems a kind of a jerk.

When Gulbis played him in Beijing, he said in italian: You (Gulbis) have pain in your shoulder. Hope you breaks it.

Today Fognini gave the crowd the finger when he left the court. He lost against a chinese wildcard.

https://twitter.com/carole_bouchard/status/519418023909019649

Fair enough, Lorely, but Gulbis’ results are similar to Fognini’s, even with both players having their breakthroughs at the French Open and both really only playing very well there.

How about Thanasi Kokkinakis. He just turned 18 and took F Lo to 3 sets in China. Says his goals are to be No. 1, win Davis Cup and win multiple Grand Slams. Says he trains in LA as well as Australia and has had same coach since age 7. Good to set goals high.

Rafa is scheduled to play Lopez but I still haven’t heard officially if he will. He came down with appendicitis when he arrived in Shanghai Saturday night and has been in and out of hospital since then. He didn’t want surgery in China and will meet with his doctors when he gets back to Spain but the doctors said he could try to treat it with massive doses of antibiotics which is what he’s been undergoing since Sunday.

He finally practiced for 3/4 hr last night and said he didn’t feel great but he’d see how his night went and decide today if he could play.

I can’t believe how unlucky poor Rafa is. 🙂

Uh, JBlitz, you are the Rafa man. What’s wrong with Rafa? I didn’t hear anything was wrong with him other than Klizan.

Did you catch the impossibly good-looking Fognini – at least according to Flavia Pennetta –
(https://twitter.com/Fulvia_Fognini/status/515468928899104768) shoulder barging his Chinese wildcard opponent at the umpire’s chair after his Shangai humiliation?

Classic Harry move, on match point down against Smyczek in Tiburon Challenger, Smee smashed a winner and Harry let fly his blue Babolat, smashing it in the middle of the court. Poor Harry, the guy has just pulled a hat trick, losing in the first round of each Cally challenger. He went down to Donaldson, Kozlov and Smee, beaten in straight sets in the last match.

What can you say about Harry? I watched this whole match and Harry served below 50 % on first serves and only had 2 aces that I can’t remember. You see fits of brilliance, but for the most part, he doesn’t look like he knows what he’s doing. His net forays were mostly duffed with brick hands. He’s still reasonably fast, but nothing like his teen self where the guy was a real streaker.

Right now, Harry’s game is in deep freeze. He doesn’t even look particularly athletic out there and always burning just below the surface (and on match point for the small crowd in Tiburon to see), is Harry’s ugly ill temper. He’s confused and dazed. He better get a good coach. He can’t follow the same path or he’ll be playing Futures soon. If I were Harry, I wouldn’t wear the Nike clothing anymore, not until he gets back to the Show again.

So sure this isn’t losing on purpose? On that RH serve alone should get a tiebreak at least. Or something else in the personal life? Seems like the guy wants a one way ticket to leaving the sport forever.

Bjk,

Where are you getting your info on Q Ball? Supposedly, they have biological passport testing in tennis now where this method keeps track of the blood profile of each athlete over time. Any deviations from their personal norm could be a sign of doping.

In his interview with Oprah, Lance Armstrong named the biological passport as one of the main reasons he was couldn’t continue to take PEDs without detection. He said, “It’s a question of scheduling. I know that sounds weird, but two things changed this. The shift to out-of-competition testing and the biological passport. And it really worked.”

So I imagine they have to be testing each athlete a specific number of times to chart their blood profile.

Very good. Guess it shows you they think Sam is too nice to take PED’s. Odesnik’s a meany and ranked like #125, unscrupulous, test him. Maybe they’re testing Sloane Stephens more now because she was good last year when they tested her only once, and now in 2014, maybe she’s been tested more and she stinks.

How about Sock beating Nishikori in China and Lopez beating Nadal!!?

Obviously, there were extenuating circumstances in both matches. Watching the Harry-Smee match from Tiburon last night and just now the Nadal match from China, it underlines how far Harry has fallen. Here’s Sock beating the US Open finalist in a Masters event while Harry can’t even beat a Challenger player in a small event in California. You wonder what went wrong? Was it innate talent, better coaching or just that Sock is not even at this stage so much better than Harry even as they’re world’s apart on the tennis spectrum.

Rankings:
S,johnson 42
S querrey 48
J sock 60
Dy 67
Smyczek 101
Bklahn 123
Kudla 124
Kokkinakis 174
Harrison 192!
Mcgee 199…
Rhyne w. 200…

Capriati. Harrisons slide is like jcap.

Nishikori won Kuala Lumpur as well. Two tournaments in a row.

Sometimes guys get lucky, draw exhausted or ill players.

Too bad Dominic Thiem got the best player in the draw for second round. He played well, but Djoker is a machine & a wall.

There are not many seeded players left. Everyone seems injured, ill or exhausted. Typical for the end of the season.

Rusty Federer almost lost against Leonardo Mayer, who played out of his skin. Federer saved 5 (!) matchpoints.

via SI Twitter:

Roger Federer called that his “greatest escape”. Said it was all luck. Feels Mayer deserved it and feels bad. Also dealing with a cold.

In fact, Spadea’s 20-match losing streak (I just went back and counted and I only counted 20 matches lost in a row) was weird because the streak started in 1999, a year where he beat Federer, Agassi, Magnus Norman, Kuerten on clay 7-6 in the third, Santoro, Grosjean, Kucera, Kafelnikov twice, Sampras, Clement, Courier and Canas.

I mean what a year. He got to the Aussie O quarters, Monte Carlo quarters, Stuttgart and Gstaad quarters, Lyon semis, Indy finals, French 3rd round and Us Open Rd of 16. He played 60 matches winning 33. Maybe what set off his losing streak was exhaustion.

“Rafael Nadal hopes to delay surgery until after the season”, from :
http://www.si.com/tennis/2014/10/08/rafael-nadal-appendicitis-shanghai-atp-season

Odd timing to wait until December for the surgery. It would affect his preparation for Melbourne.

Nadal dislikes indoors. No mystery!

Watched Harrison-Smyczek. First, Smyczek is a smart player – the announcer said Smyczek’s the kind of player that if you follow tennis you appreciate. It’s true – he is business like, no fuss, and organizes his matches to win. He is lightning fast, he often hits the right ball at the right time – he reminds me a little bit of JC Ferrero with his whip strokes. That was a good win last week from Kozlov and no doubt Smyczek said too good – if you can beat Smyczek you have a future on the tour. So count me a Smyczek fan.

As for Harrison – he obliterated a racquet at the end. Yells at himself too. This player is in turmoil. I didn’t have issues with his game but the rap is out – feed Harrison a steady diet of returned balls and he’ll throw in an error. He has to find a way to stick with the rally without playing from three meters behind the baseline, and he has to be able to hit one more shot as well. The player is plenty powerful – his serves and groundstrokes can be big shots. But when he misses he either hits straight into the net or misses several feet behind the baseline. Suggests he’s pulling down on his serve and lifting up on his shots. Maybe not sufficient knee bend, or general footwork.

Sometimes Harrison waited for the ball rather than hit on the rise – this also gave Smyczek more than enough time to line up his own response, usually resulting in an unreturnable ball. He gave away a lot of free points and sorry to say but he gives up on himself out there. Part of it is that somethings wrong with his consistency – he has to be able to stay in those rallies a little longer. The other part is footwork. The last part is the confidence that comes from knowing you CAN stick around as long as it takes to finish the job.

So – Harrison’s groundstrokes actually looked OK – the funky forehand sometimes made an appearance but for the most part looks like he’s shortened up and reduced the chance for the error. However it’s not all that clear how long he’s had these strokes in his tool-kit – if he’s not used to them that could be reason for the mis-firing, as well as the temptation to go ahead and revert back to the odd forehand production. Wouldn’t do it.

When Harrison stepped in he took away time from Smyczek and won a lot of points this way – surprised he didn’t use this more often. He teed off a number of Smyczek serves but didn’t do this consistently.

Sharpen up the return, stay with the serve, stay in the rallies, etc. Again he didn’t look too bad out there – not a lost cause. But, neither is he playing top 100 ball – he’s playing ball around his ranking. Needs to get comfortable with the style that he’s being asked to work on, with the solid backhand, solid forehand taken early, taking serves early, not pulling up on his shots and not caving in on the serves. All of this is possible.

Also interesting what announcer for smyczek/harrison match said about harrison drop : better scouting by opponents ( there is a rap out on how to beat him! ) and confidence ( meaning in previous years harrison stayed with his shots through thick and thin – going for extra ball etc). Wonder if a racquet problem? Noticed Harrison racquet is a power enhancer while Smee plays with a racquet that gives good feel , contrl. Given Harrison breaks a few racquets per match ( that is a lot of racquets ) maybea racquet switch is in order. Just saying Harrison doesnt need to hit harder but he does need a heavy racquet to stabilize his swing etc . Why not just ditch the babolats.