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by Pete Bodo
Mornin'. Time to refill the coffee cup and mull over the daily carnival of tennis news. BTW, I'm a regular if somewhat reluctant customer and fan of REI, the camping and outdoors sports outfitters. Yesterday, I ordered a pretty slick product from them for our upcoming trip to the Adirondacks. It's a combination coffee mug/press that enables you to brew up and drink a cup of coffee in one fell swoop. The mug also has a separate, watertight compartment in the bottom where you can store fresh grounds, in case you want to brew up another jolt.
On past trips I've always used a dinged-up tin percolator, and I enjoy the smell of roasting coffee in the morning. So this mug (a classic example of over-engineering if I ever saw one) may make me feel like I've joined the BGY, or the Brotherhood of the Green Yuppies (you can identify them easily by the $7,000 mountain bike, the Volvo with the Thule kayak rack, the $450 sun dress made from recycled plastic water bottles). I wonder if it was a mistake to get these mugs. But I sure do love good coffee, something which my little percolator is hard-pressed to produce.
Anyway, on to the news of the day. Mardy Fish kicked off his campaign at the Legg Mason Tennis Classic (Washington) with a routine win over Viktor Troicki of Serbia. It was Fish's 11th consecutive win, and puts him on track to win his third title in as many tournaments. Remember, he also reached the final at Queens (l. to Sam Querrey). After his obligatory, disappointing loss at Wimbledon (it isn't Wimbledon if Fish doesn't go down in flames early), he's not lost a match. He's 17 of 19 since Queens, which is a great run no matter how you look at it. Is he shaping up as a hard-court terror, the Juan Martin del Potro of 2010?
—But the Washington result that stands out to me is Fernando Verdasco's win from two match points down against Germany'sMichael Berrer, a 30-year-old ranked just inside the Top 50 (Verdasco is No. 10). In the big picture, this was just another match in just another tournament in just another town. But it'sexactly the kind of match that a player like Verdasco needs to win. Fernando has shown frequent flashes of Top 5 talent, but just Top 30 consistency. This year, though, he seems to have reached a different level. And it's the level at which he must win matches like the one he snatched out of the fire yesterday. The prognosis is pretty good, judging from this comment he made.
"Even when I was match points down I just tried to not make mistakes and force him to hit a winner to win the match. When I broke back, I started to get confidence and then broke him again. Those four games were the best of the match for me."
You can't fault Verdasco for being proud of that performance, despite Berrer's modest CV. Although Verdasco might not think of it exactly this way, his obvious delight was that of a player who has figured out the game. He knows how to calibrate his strategy and shot selection; he knows not to panic, and seems to be learning to walk that fine line between aggression and passivity when he's in a jam. The other guy wants the match? Let him try to take it. Use your talents to make him earn it, instead of gambling on your ability to win it.
!103159546 —Over on the WTA side, where the Mercury Insurance Open (San Diego) is underway, the marquee match-up today, and one that I'm going to try to catch some of, finds Melanie Oudin battling Slammin' Sammy Stosur. It's a good test for Oudin, partly because the afterglow of Stosur's run to the French Open final seems to have faded, but she's still a Top 5 player and she likes the hard courts. In the mental matchup, Oudin has that aura that can intimidate a player like Stosur, who once was one of the outstanding "head cases" on the WTA tour. BTW, Oudin is blogging for us on the home page—check it out.
—And did you see that Serena Williams and John Isner are going to represent the U.S. in Hopman Cup play next January? Sure, it's a long way off, but I like this pairing. Couple of American kids with very different personalities and from very different backgrounds. I'll bet they get along like a house on fire. I've come to believe that Serena functions **better in an intimate context. I think she's more appealing as a friend and, in Isner's case, co-worker than a "personality" on the public stage. I know that when I spend time with her in small group meetings, she's always delightful. And that's not always the case in, say, the impersonal setting of the main interview room.
—And finally, I received this e-mail from my pal and astute tennis junkie, Steve Manning:
Apart from being funny (and Gulbis having a coach in Hernan Gumy, last I checked), I think this is an intriguing idea. Gulbis is a champion manque, and he would give be relatively unformed but promising clay with which to work. It might seems a step back for Cahill, a guy who positioned himself as a coach to the superstars, but he would also reap the rewards of turning a flawed player into a champ. It's probably idle speculation, though. Would you give up a plum job as an ESPN commentator—a role that has expiration date—for the uncertainty that any coach faces?
And a P.S.: No disrespect to Gumy intended in this. We're just chewing the fat, right?