Fighting Through at the Foro

Feliciano Lopez is agitated. He loses a point, looks to his box, lifts his arms in the air, and issues an angry complaint. About what, it’s hard to say. The score is 1-1 in the first set. It’s going to be a long day.

From the look of Feli, it’s also going to be a hot day on the Grandstand at the Foro Italico. By the fourth game, his hair is stuck to his forehead as he squints across the net at his opponent, Nick Kyrgios. In between points, Lopez looks up at the sun, closes his eyes, and weaves back and forth, as if he’s about to keel over.

Lopez will be 34 in September; he is in his 16th year on tour. Yet he’s ranked No. 13, one shy of the career high that he reached in February. He has largely shored up the weaknesses that held him back when he was younger; the slice backhand has more pop than it once did, and he has become a little smarter and surer when closing out matches. Feli's serve, slow to build, remains of the game’s underrated weapons, and he’s old enough to know how to volley.

Despite that, Lopez is still best known for his looks, a fact that seems to get in the away of appreciating the energetic, and photogenic, athleticism he brings to the court. Once a point begins, he comes to life and flings himself around the court.

On Tuesday, Lopez had just enough of that energy to beat Kyrgios, a player 13 years his junior, in two tight sets, 6-4, 7-6 (4). Lopez broke serve in the first set with a surprise topspin backhand pass, and he came back from 1-3 down in second-set tiebreaker. When it was over, he closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths as he walked to the net to shake hands; this time, experience had overcome youth. But he was still agitated. Instead of celebrating, Lopez walked to the other side of the net and had a few words for a group of fans who had been making noise during the match.

As Lopez has shown, a player can get better with age. He can get crankier, too.

“Just try to get through this one,” Victoria Azarenka’s coach, Wim Fissette, pleads with her. She has just lost the second set to Lucie Hradecka after committing 14 double faults and having her blood pressure checked on a changeover.

At first, Vika stares blankly as Fissette rambles on. He's working hard to find the right mix of positivity and plausibility for what appears to be a dire situation. Finally, her face softens. She nods and flashes a hint of a smile. As he walks away, Fissette seems to be skeptical that his coaching has done any good, but something he said has connected. Azarenka wins six of the next seven games and the match, 7-5, 2-6, 6-1.

Azarenka, a former No. 1 currently ranked No. 29, has spent this season fighting through the thickets of the WTA wilderness. After missing most of 2014, and with an unprotected ranking in 2015, she has been thrown to the draw wolves so far this year. At the Australian Open, she played Caroline Wozniacki in the second round; in Doha, she played Angelique Kerber in the first round; in Indian Wells, she played Maria Sharapova in the second round; in Miami, she played Jelena Jankovic in the second round; in Madrid, she played Venus Williams in the first round and Serena Williams in the third round. After her win over Hradecka today in Rome, Azarenka will face Wozniacki again.

The one piece of good news is that, now that she has squeezed herself back into the Top 32, Azarenka should be seeded at the French Open. She'll be out of the woods for two rounds.

Yet Azarenka’s struggles in 2015 somehow suit her style and personality. When she’s on court, everything is a fight: With her opponent, with the ball kids who don’t throw the ball to her from the right spot, with the chair umpire when a call doesn’t go her way, with her often-balky body, with the crowds who have been cold to her, with herself. On Tuesday against Hradecka, Azarenka also seemed to be fighting the memory of her last match, against Serena Williams in Madrid, when her serve broke down under pressure and she double-faulted a victory away. Today Azarenka was unable to decide whether to try to crack her serve, or just to spin it in. She ended up doing neither. By the time she had tossed in her 14th double, all she could do was put her hand to her face in despair.

Yet she still won. Azarenka won because, when she was down 1-3 and break points for 1-4 in the first set, she came away with a hold. She won because, despite contracting a case of the serving yips in the first set, she broke to win it anyway. She won because, whether she actually heard Fissette or not, she took his advice and played less to win than to live another day.

As far as her form goes, Azarenka is still in the wilderness. But all of the fighting she’s had to do there may help her down the road. She won today because she didn’t beat herself, and that’s a start.

It’s mid-afternoon and there’s a good crowd in the main stadium when Novak Djokovic’s name is announced. The world No. 1 likes to be appreciated, but often the audience ends up pulling against him. Sometimes that’s because his opponent is the underdog; sometimes it’s because he’s a legend, like Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer. Today, the Italian fans roar with approval as Djokovic takes the court against Nicolas Almagro. It’s a welcome befitting the world’s best, and Djokovic can’t help but smile when he hears it.

This is Djokovic’s first match in a month, but it goes exactly the way so many of his wins have this year. He starts cleanly, in control, timing the ball well, and applying pressure—nice, safe, conservative, sustainable pressure. Then, just when it looks as if that will be enough to earn him another win, Djokovic hiccups.

This time the hiccup comes when he’s two points from the match, at 5-2 in the second-set tiebreaker. The formula that has been working for him—stay solid, let Almagro hit himself out of the match—stops working when the Spaniard relaxes and rips off five straight points. It’s hard for anyone to have success against Djokovic from the baseline these days, but Almagro finds openings by using sharp angles and sending the Serb well wide of the sidelines. Are his colleagues watching?

But just as Djokovic repeats his 2015 pattern by losing a lead, he repeats it again by never letting himself fall behind. Just when things look interesting at 3-3 in the third, Djokovic quickly makes them uninteresting again by winning the last three games, and the match, 6-1, 6-7 (5), 6-3.

Will there come a time when Djokovic doesn’t respond to a hiccup by settling back down in the next set? Yes. For now, though, he remains the master of opening the door just far enough so he can shut it in your face again.

Murray left the practice court on Tuesday in Rome still unsure of whether he should play the tournament. But he was there, he felt good, he’s on a roll, so why not? Against Chardy, he’ll try to make it 10 wins in a row on clay. Murray is 5-1 versus the Frenchman. Winner: Chardy

Rafa and the Turkish qualifier, ranked 87th, have never played. Nadal, it seems, couldn’t ask for a safer way to recover from one of the worst performances of his career. Winner: Nadal

They’ve played twice this year, and Azarenka has won handily both times. But Wozniacki has improved on clay, and Vika struggled mightily with her serve on Tuesday. This one should be closer. Winner: Azarenka

Federer is 1-0 against the Argentine turned Uruguayan, but Cuevas is ranked 24th and has won three clay titles in the last year. Federer will need to go light on the shanks in this one. Winner: Federer

The 34-year-old American and the 20-year-old Ukrainian have never faced each other. It should, if all goes well, be a shootout. Winner: Svitolina

Bouchard, despite her No. 6 seeding, has been relegated to the fourth court at the Foro. She’ll try to win her first match in two months against Diyas, a fellow 21-year-old ranked 34th. It may not be easy, but she's too good not to win a match someday, right? Winner: Bouchard