!96119525 by Pete Bodo
Howdy, everyone. It's odds and ends day here at TW, so let's poke around to see what there is to talk about:
Fernando Gonzalez is in the quarterfinals of the Movistar Open in Santiago, Chile for the eighth consecutive year, and he's gunning for his fifth title. Who knew Gonzo could be so consistent? The four-time champion clearly loves playing before his home-town crowd, which makes it a pity that he's from Santiago, not London, Paris, or New York.
One-trick ponies in the ATP and WTA are interesting cases. Some players just blossom with confidence at events where they have established a winning tradition, instead of wilting from the pressure of being defending champion, year afteryear. The tournament in question doesn't even need to have special significance, the way Santiago does to the Chilean Gonzalez. The best example of a charmed relation between an event and a player (at least one who never won a major or made the Top 10) is Hilversum (the Netherlands Open, basically) and Balazs Taroczy.
Taroczy is long-time a friend of mine; some of you may remember him as the prematurely balding Hungarian stylist with the sweeping, sweet, one-handed slice backhand and heavy serve. Balazs won 25 doubles titles (including one each at Roland Garros and Wimbledon), reached as high as No. 13 in the world in singles, and won the same number of titles as a soloist (13). But he collected almost half of those at one tournament - Hilversum, where he won at six times. What was the secret? Got me. Got him, too. He just liked it there, and after he won the title he was always welcomed back like a conquering hero.
I've been racking my brain to figure out if anyone has had a comparable run of success, now that Gonzalez seems to be closing on the mark.
Marin Cilic is picking up right where he left off in Melbourne, where he was a semifinalist. Cilic, now 22, is in the quarters at Zagreb (where he's already the defending champ - do we have a Croatian Gonzo in the making here?) and he's hardly broken a sweat. In his two matches so far, Cilic has spent a grand total of 1:57 on the court. Sheesh - those are Serena numbers, right?
Cilic is on a serious roll; he won Chennai, semi'd in Oz, and he's whaling on the ball in Zagreb. But in his next match, he's up against another Croat, Ivo Karlovic (Something tells me that Zagreb is not being played on heavily-watered indoor clay). And that can spell doom for anyone on a hard court. Any kind of a court, for that matter. Karlovic holds the ATP record with 78 aces, and I need to remind all you Davis Cup naysayers that the mark was posted in the Croatia vs. Czech Republic semifinal last year - a match that fell just seconds short of surpassing the magic six-hour mark. And for those of you who think all Karlovic can do is serve, check out the above picture; he can swing horizontally, too.
Karlovic lost that epic Davis Cup match to Radek Stepanek. But it's still a very sexy record to hold, kind of like the one for having thrown the most strikeouts in major league baseball. That record (20) is shared by Kerry Wood and Randy Johnson, or three men if you want to include steroid abuser Roger Clemens (who fanned 20 twice). That's another good thing about tennis: 78 aces is a pile (the most you can strike out in a nine-inning baseball game is 27), and it's unlikely that anyone will equal it precisely. I always like it better when a record is held by one man or woman. Having two or more people hold a "record" is conceptually oxymoronic.
Dr. Ivo would have been much better off if had he cracked those 78 clean aces at a Grand Slam event, because the feat would have gotten significantly more attention worldwide (not to mention a sponsorship deal with FedEx or some other outfit that prides itself on rapid delivery). The most mind-boggling thing about the record is that it surpassed the old mark - which was also set by Karlovic - by a whopping 23 aces. It's one thing to outperform another guy by nearly double, it's downright weird to beat your personal best, as well as the game-wide best, by close to fifty percent.
Karlovic has third place (51 aces) nailed down, too, although he has to share that slot with Joachim Johansson. And guess who comes in right after that, merely one ace behind Johansson and Karlovic? Roger Federer. He clubbed 50 in last year's Wimbledon final against Andy Roddick. But all that aside, I don't think anyone is going to come anywhere near the Karlovic mark anytime soon - not even Dr. Ivo himself. That 78-ace performance is not just unique, it's other-worldly.
Alejandro Falla finished 2009 with an interesting distinction. He qualified in a ATP-best eight events, although I wouldn't be surprised if he'd be more than happy to trade places with Thomaz Bellucci or even Sergiy Stakhovsky, each of whom went on to win a tournament for which he qualified (Stakhovsky won St. Petersburg, Bellucci won Gstaad). Poor Falla. Talk about futility: the guy qualifies eight times but goes on to win just two matches in the main draw of those events. He didn't get beyond the second round Washington and Montreal; he didn't even reach the second round at those other six events.
Patrick McEnroe thinks that the toughest match of all to win is the last round of qualifying; there's so much riding on the outcome, yet the loser has so little to show for his efforts. You have to feel for Falla. Maybe he can turn things around this year. He got to the third round of the Australian Open, so that's a good start anyway.
That's all I've got for you on this slow news day, happy weekend!