by Pete Bodo
NEW YORK—At his most desperate moment in today's match with Gilles Simon, Juan Martin del Potro thought back to that enchanted year of 2009, when he ripped the U.S. Open title out of Roger Federer's hands with a breathtaking display of firepower and nerve under the lights of Arthur Ashe stadium. In that match, he won the fourth-set tiebreaker 7-4, then blasted his way through a 6-2 fifth set to win a Grand Slam title at age 20, thereby joining the elite company of comparably young U.S. Open champions of the past, including Pete Sampras, Marat Safin, and Jimmy Connors.
"I play tiebreak on fourth set both in the final (2009) and today," del Potro said when I asked if, at any time during his confrontation with Simon, his mind wandered back to his finest moment in tennis. "I was thinking if I win the tiebreak, maybe I can win the match again, but that's not happen and Simon won the match."
That blunt if accurate assessment skips over a great deal of nuance, but very little about del Potro invokes the use of words like "subtle" or "textured." In a game in which power has become the grail, he's a knight of the highest order. Yet today's 4-6, 7-6 (5), 6-2, 7-6 (3) loss was less about any failure of Delpo's grid than the spirit, skill and, most of all, legs (those thin but surprisingly durable and strong pins) of Simon, the French poodle turned Dogue de Bordeaux.
At an even six feet and 154 lbs, Simon was giving away six inches and nearly 30 pounds to his opponent. But this being tennis, the longer the match went on, the more the difference in height and weight began to work to Simon's advantage. Game after tense game, forehand after atomic forehand, serve after blistering serve, Simon remained locked onto del Potro's psyche until it began to crumble, and the former champion's game soon followed. We've all see this kind of thing happen before, and every experienced player has been on either end of this equation at one time or another. Every once in a while, a regular guy will become Rod Laver, and on even rarer occasions he'll remain Rod Laver until the last ball is hit.
But let's be fair to Simon here. If you discount the difference in the two player's ages (at 26, Simon is four years older than del Potro), their statistics match up surprisingly evenly. Simon is No. 12 in the rankings—six places ahead of del Potro, who's still in the process of battling back from missing nearly all of last year (when he withdrew from the tour during the 2010 Australian Open, he was ranked No. 5). Their career Grand Slam records are comparable: Simon is 34-22, del Potro 39-17. Del Potro is an outstanding 15-3 at the U.S. Open, but Simon is a most respectable 10-5. In fact, the last man del Potro lost to at Flushing Meadows was Simon, in 2008.
Simon is quick as greased lightning, and that makes it difficult for a bread-and-butter power player like Delpo to hit through Simon—unless he's in full control of his game. As Delpo said after the four-set loss, "He is a fighter, no? It's very hard to make a winner playing against Simon."
How difficult was it for Simon to chase del Potro's laser-like groundstrokes over the course of a match that fell just two or three minutes short of four hours? "Well, it's hard. But it's my job, so. . . I just try to do it as good as possible."
Often, the miraculous transformation of a Gilles Simon into Rod Laver isn't quite as mystifying as it seems. In this case, you could see signs of impending doom for del Potro from the start. The character of the match was pre-figured in the first set, in which del Potro proved less than overpowering from the baseline. His stock in trade is the north-south game; he likes it better than going east to west between the sidelines. Del Potro enjoys driving the long ball and pushing his opponent back off the baseline, with a good margin of safety relative to the sidelines. He seeks an opening or angle that enables him to go for the putaway.
The problem today was that del Potro's basic rally shots were often falling closer to Simon's service line than his baseline, and that allowed the Frenchman to settle in and force long rallies in which he was often in the superior position. To use the popular terminology, del Potro wasn't "taking time away."
The first set came to head at 4-all, with Simon serving. He immediately fell behind, 0-40, recovered to deuce, but ultimately handed del Potro the break with an errant passing shot. In truth, it was a game neither player deserved to win, and when del Potro closed out the set with an easy hold, it appeared that Simon might prove incapable of capitalizing on his opportunities.
Simon had a break point with del Potro serving to even the score at 3-all in the second, and wasted it with a backhand error. He had another chance in the 12th game of the set, and blew it with another backhand error. In the ensuing tiebreaker, though, Simon tightened up his game and outplayed del Potro, winning it 7-5. The shot that probably won it for Simon was his outstanding strength, the down-the-line backhand. He cracked a beauty to get the mini-break for 4-2 and won the tiebreaker 7-5. Del Potro wouldn't be the same, although Simon would face one more crisis, late in the fourth set.
