Foot Fault!

As the craziness continued to wreak havoc on the top ATP players in Miami, it was defending champ Andy Roddick who would next feel the wrath of yet another hardcourt virgin, losing out to Pablo Cuevas 6-4 7-6(4). Unlike the others, he does have a genuine excuse for the loss as he struggled with a virus/illness picked up earlier on in this week, attempting to fight his way through chest and congestive pains.

Still, Cuevas deserves a lot of credit for his performance today. His serve in particular was in fine form today, slamming down 15 aces to get the win. Considering he’s a 5ft10 claycourter, the servng and the angles he was able to conjure up were quite breathtaking, and I certainly don’t remember him ever serving anywhere close to as well as that before today.

The odd thing is that though these upsets continue to run rampant in the ATP draw, at the end it doesn’t really make that much of a difference – the ‘big three’ are still there and easing through their sections of the draw, and at this point in time no one else really matters a whole lot. I’m still undecided on whether that’s a good or bad thing.

Remember a fortnight ago when we watched in horror as Andy Murray was outplayed and outballsed by Donald Young? Never in our wildest dreams did we think it could ever happen, and even less so that he could ever do any worse than that fateful tennis match. He had finally hit rock bottom… right?

Wrong. Andy, always up for a challenge, managed to achieve the gut-wrenching impossible, finding away to cast his performance against Young into the shade by getting served baked goods, and then eventually brushed aside in straight sets by American journeyman Alex Bogomolov Jr.

Now, I’m not one to usually feel sympathy or anything but a quiet, irrational resentment for Andy Murray, but this has all gone so far that I can’t even help but feel sorry and frustrated for him. I mean, he obviously went on a similarly (though not anywhere near as embarrassing) ridiculous slump after last year’s Australian Open final, but back then he was just a moping little mess – throwing tantrums, angering tournament directors by withdrawing from tournaments for no reason and generally just acting like a little child as he struggled to get over that beatdown in the AO final.

However, this year, I don’t feel that’s the case. Off-court he seems much happier and content right like now. In interviews he is very honest and analytical and on-site sightings have almost unanimously reported him as smiling and laughing like never before. After the match he was quick to highlight that he had been playing well in practice;

“In practice I have been competing well, especially this week, chasing everything down, playing a lot of good points and feeling good. Then in the matches I haven’t been able to get it going at all.”

Of course without even seeing the matches, most reports are already proclaiming the need for Andy to hire a new coach, which is nothing but reactionary and, quite frankly, idiotic. This isn’t an error with his style, technique or tactics, no, it’s much more than that. It’s something that he’ll have to solve himself, by himself.

And he better solve it fast, because with the claycourt season nearly upon us, things could get even uglier for Andy Murray

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rp2L8WAPaZ0

I was pretty skeptical with this whole Xperia Hot Shots thing because it seemed so, so random. But so far it has been brilliant. Can’t say I’m a massive fan of Dominika Cibulkova, but she put in a scorching performance at the Sony Ericcson player party while interviewing players on the red carpet. Gotta love when she asks Jo for some red carpet tips and he decides to start giving the camera a strip-tease. And, of couse, her giggle-fest with Maria. Masha’s got friend(s), people. Oh, and her “I’m not going to talk to her, I don’t know her!” quip regarding the Real Housewives of somewhere was pretty hilarious too, but she better pray the woman doesn’t see this video or she could end up getting attacked by a bunch of trashy housewives. Bad times.

I’m still kind of baffled by this whole concept though, and from what I can gather this is almost a competition between the 6 hot shot girls, and so I look forward to the others topping that peformance over the coming weeks and months. Cibulkova has set the bar very high, though.

Who knew? Somdev Devvarman has been in stellar form recently, following up his final in Johannesburg with a Serbian scalp in Davis Cup and a fourth round finish in Indian Wells. However, not many expected him the counterpuncher to take the scalp of Canadian wundakid Milos Raonic. But he did, holding on to take the first set after squandering a double break and around 57 different chances to close it out earlier, before fighting back from a break down in set two to close out the set and match in straights, 7-6(5) 7-5. Not too shabby.

I guess it’s safe to say that Milos’ hot streak has come to a halt after his last two events. This is where we will really see what the 20 year-old is made of. Was that run just a brief flash in the pan, or will he be able to consistently replicate that blistering run? The rest of 2011 should be very revealing.

Yaroslava Shvedova toughed out an epic 6-3 5-7 7-6(5) victory over the gritty Sara Errani to move into the second round of Miami and capture her first win of the year.

With injury and surgery before her year had even begun, this is a pretty monumental step in Slava’s comeback. Up next for her is Jarka Groth which should be an interesting prospect, but first she should focus on sending out a ‘thank you’ card to Errani for her double fault at 5-5 in the tiebreaker.

So, get this; in his last three tournaments (Dallas Challenger, Indian Wells and Miami), Bernard Tomic granted wildcards directly into the main draw of the events. Bearing in mind the fact that he isn’t even from the USA, that’s a pretty bold and generous move from the tournaments, and you would expect Tomic to take advantage of those free passes, right?

Right. But apparently Bernard Tomic doesn’t agree, instead choosing to spit in the faces of all three tournament directors. Last month he pulled out of the Dallas Challenger after falling a set down in his first rounder, citing fatigue for his withdrawal, however it was clear that he just couldn’t give a rat’s ass. In Indian Wells, he scraped past a sub top-500 doubles specialist in three audaciously tight sets before getting dusted aside by Viktor Troicki in straights. And finally he completed the set today, losing in the first round of Miami to Pablo Andujar, a claycourt specialist on a 5 match losing streak with only one win in the main draw of a hardcourt ATP or Challenger event in his 7 years on tour.

2011 should prove an interesting year for him. Talented as he may be, it’s always the attitude and mental side that determines how far a player goes in his career, and I think it’s safe to say that his attitude stinks like a decomposing skunk.

If so, I don’t ever want to leave. Both Queen Anna and Her Royal Nastyness look majestic as ever.

Check the rest of the women underneath:

Read more of this post

Q. Because you practice with men regularly.

CAROLINE WOZNIACKI: Yes.

Q. Do you feel like on the ground that there isn’t that much difference between the power men and women use? Main difference is in the serve? Or do you feel like groundstrokes is quite a bit of a difference?

CAROLINE WOZNIACKI: I think it’s different. I think the men play with a lot more spin. They play with a bigger margin over the net. Maybe it doesn’t seem so fast when it comes to you, but once it bounces, it just goes away.

Of course, they are stronger. They’re faster than us, there’s no doubt about that. And they have a better serve. If I play just from feeling from the hand, I can win tiebreakers, I can win to 11. But, you know, there’s no chance to do that if you serve.

And also, the men, sometimes they just think differently. Sometimes we can panic when we get a shot and we don’t really know what to do with it. They just place the ball. They know then that they can expect this and that.

And I think that’s what we can learn from the men, as well. I think it’s just different, because sometimes you play the girls, and the ball just comes so fast. I mean, it’s like this over the net, and you really have to be ready, because otherwise the ball just goes everywhere.
So it’s different kind of tennis, for sure.

An uncharacteristically analytical answer from Karolina, and one that I largely agree with. However, I do think that as the world number one and a player council representative of the tour, it’s quite dangerous and even irresponsible to imply that the Women are inferior to the men in anything other than natural physical differences. Especially with the WTA striving for equality and joint events at so many tour stops.

But yeah, I disagree with that part anyway. The WTA gets so much stick for having chokers and so many breaks or whatever, but I don’t think it’s fair. If you look at the ATP tour, you’ll probably find just as many players considered mentally weak as on the WTA, the difference is that the serve plays such a pivotal part, and regardless of whether or not you’re actually considered a good server, it’s just so much tougher to continually break serve as it is on the WTA.

It’s Finals day in Indian Wells, with Caroline Wozniacki facing off against Marion Bartoli followed by Rafael Nadal versus Novak Djokovic. After two weeks of upsets, beatdowns and tears, the only question left to answer is ‘who will win?’

And it’s a very interesting question indeed. A couple of weeks ago in Dubai, Marion stormed into the semifinals only to be handed a 6-1 6-1 drubbing by Karolina, her finals opponent this week. With that in mind, you would expect Wozniacki to run out an easy winner, right? Right. But the WTA is never that simple. The two matches before that were won convincingly by Bartoli, with a victory last year in Cincinnati, incidentally Wozniacka’s last loss at a tier I event, and also on the clay in Stuttgart.

I vividly remember that Cincinnati third-rounder. Wozniacka went up an early break in the second set, then at *4-3 to Wozniacka, Marion checked a mark and then correctly challenged a call to win back a break, which led to Karolina throwing a tantrum and giving the umpire a bollocking for allowing the challenge to happen. During the exchange, you could see Marion staring firmly at Wozniacki, and with every Wozniacki finger point in the direction of Marion, the look of pure disgust on Marion’s face would harden just a fraction, and by the end of the exchange she was unabashedly furious. When they resumed play Marion began to pummel the poop out of the ball while channelling Justine Henin’s pipes and screaming ‘allez’ at the top of her lungs after practically every point. She lost only one game from that point onwards. Moral of the story? You don’t want to get Marion Bartoli pissed off.

Marion will have to come up with more aggressive tennis today if she wants to win, and not let herself get sucked into Wozniacki’s darned trademark long rallies that suck the life out of everything good in the world. That said, I really dislike it when people and players feel that the only way to beat Wozniacki is to, in a nutshell, hit the ball hard and hope for the best. It totally isn’t – it’s about being aggressive, yes, but also being smart, sensible and very creative.

I guess that’s a characteristic of Karolina’s that I have (*gasp*) come to admire. She really sorts the brainless from the smarter players and forces players to be creative in their tennis. We watched a couple of days ago as Maria just pounded the ball straight down the middle with no direction or thought into what she was doing, and she was completely slaughtered. The intelligence of her ballstriking was always easily the most underrated and least talked about part of her game, but since she has come back, that has been one of the biggest problems for her. As they say; you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.

However, Marion doesn’t have such problems. To his credit, because of her distinct lack of athleticism, “Dr” Walter with his crazy techniques has always strived to optimize other aspects of Marion’s game, including her ability to think on-court. Oh, and not to mention the fact that she is totally armed with an iq of 175. Hopefully this final will help to redeem what has been a quite lacklustre fortnight of tennis in Indian Wells this year.

Considering Novak Djokovic sprinted through his last two matches with the loss of only two games, it was quite a shock to watch Richard Gasquet, variety flowing and backhand looking gorgeous as ever, immediately double that tally as he raced to a 2-0 lead in the first set. With Richard looking that good earlier on It looked like we were at least in for an interesting semi-competitive match.

That, of course, couldn’t be any further from the truth. Novak quickly righted the ship, ditching his angles and consistency in favour of more straightforward attacking tennis and he was quickly in the driving seat, reeling off 6 games to take the first set 6-2. The second set was a similar story, with Gasquet flying to an early lead before Novak found his way back, this time, after a little bit of shouting and racket breaking, he added more variety to his game, pulling off numerous deft dropshots and continually confusing his opponent.

It’s that ability to seamlessly change and alter his tactics that has been one of the driving forces in Novak’s stunning form over the last 5 months, and behind the awesome athleticism and tennis playing ability, his intelligence around the court is so often overlooked.

He’ll meet the winner of Roger Federer and Stanislas Wawrinka in the semi-finals. So, yeah, he’ll meet Roger. It will be the 6th time the pair have met in the last 7 big tournaments they have both been present in. Now that’s a rivalry.