The Canada-Cincy double lived up to its reputation as perhaps the toughest turnaround in tennis yesterday. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, so brilliant last week in Toronto, looked like he had forgotten how to play the game in his 6-1, 6-4 defeat at the hands of Mikhail Youzhny. Jo lost the first set in 26 minutes, won just seven of 23 points on his second serve, and was discombobulated throughout. Even the simplest putaways were complicated for him.
“It’s never easy,” Tsonga said afterward, with a hint of understatement, about playing back-to-back weeks. “You have to get used to the conditions really quick.”
Tsonga obviously could have used another day to recover, but there were no more days left for him in tennis’ accelerated August schedule. Normally, the winner of a tournament like Toronto would also be one of the top eight seeds in the following Masters event. That means he would get a first-round bye and not have to play until Wednesday. But Tsonga, whose ranking has slipped, wasn’t among the Top 8 in Cincy. Even if he had won his opener, he would have been up against it in Cincy. To win the title, he would have had to play every day until Sunday.
The turnaround was just as tough on the women’s side. Venus Williams, who was nearly as brilliant as Tsonga in reaching the final in Montreal, went out in Cincy on Tuesday to Lucie Safarova, 6-7 (2), 6-3, 6-4. Venus, like Tsonga, was ranked too low to secure a first-round bye. This was also a bad draw for her; Safarova reached the semifinals at Wimbledon last month. Even worse than that, Venus wasn’t happy about being scheduled at 11:00 in the morning. Yet she was philosophical about the defeat afterward.
“It was definitely a quick turnaround,” Williams said. “But she just played so well. No matter what shot I hit, she hit a winner.”