It’s time to reshuffle the deck and do it all again. The surface is similar, the country is the same, the air is still hot, and few of the faces have changed. But they have been moved around a little, and that’s just enough to make Key Biscayne feel fresh.
Perrotta has the brackets covered this time, so I’ll step back and do some of the global thinking. Or global questioning: What will we be looking to find out at the Sony Ericsson Open this time around?
The BNP Paribas had the feel of a fall Masters event, where the top players typically lose just enough of their edge to turn the tournament into a free for all. Of the Top 4—do they still merit the term Big 4?—seeds, only Rafael Nadal reached the semifinals or appeared to be close to his best form.
Like I said in my post after the Indian Wells final, I saw the event as a fluke rather than a harbinger. The flipside to those early losses is that Federer, Murray, and Djokovic should come to Key Biscayne rested and hungry for a solid result. And despite Nadal’s loss in the semifinals, his form was good enough to win the event, whomever he might have played.
Of the other three, only Murray’s performance in Indian Wells was worrisome. Federer has been having off days at Masters events for years and they haven’t carried over to the majors. Djokovic had played a lot of tennis in the previous couple of weeks, and packing it in on a bad day isn’t unheard of for him. But Murray, while he may have been affected by a foot problem during his loss to Robin Soderling, was passive not just in his game plan, but in his attitude as well. Much like his loss to Marin Cilic last year, he didn’t try to change anything after the first set. Worse, it didn’t appear that he could have changed the dynamics of the rallies even if he had tried. Now Murray may have to find a way around Soderling in the quarters in Key Biscayne.
After the co-debacles of Henin and Clijsters in Indian Wells, the ruling class at this moment may be weaker than ever. For every player on an upswing, someone else has struggled. Jankovic rises, Azarenka deflates, Wozniacki reaches a career high, Ivanovic a career low—with her ranking at No. 58, the question may be whether Ivanovic will soon become a wild card baby, à la Anna Kournikova during her slow demise. Yanina Wickmayer is going two directions at once. She had an excellent Aussie Open and is improving over the long term, but she’s taken her lumps lately.
Are there any Ms. Reliables out there, anyone we can count on? While Wozniacki didn’t show much in the final in IW, she does have a game and attitude that seem built for consistent results. I do think Henin will rebound, but I’m not sure what to make of Clijsters at the moment. Her draw looks good, but it didn’t look bad in IW either. Is Venus Williams, who has played very well this year and who will return in Miami, the WTA savior of the moment? She’s as good a bet as any.
- Is there anyone who might surprise us?
One player who I didn’t write about last week, but who I enjoyed watching, was Alisa Kleybanova. She hung tough at the end in her upset of Clijsters and made Jankovic work very hard to beat her in the quarters—Kleybanova doesn’t seem to cave mentally. With her Davenport-esque style, we know she can club the ball, but she ran surprisingly well in Indian Wells and appeared to have shed a few pounds. All of which, of course, means that she’ll probably up and lose her opener in Miami.
As for the men, in his press conference after he’d upset Nadal in the semis, Ivan Ljubicic looked back at his run to the final and made sure that he mentioned his three-set win over Juan Monaco—Ljuby called him a “tough customer.” Monaco is more consistent than he is powerful, which makes a slow hard court a good fit for him. He gave eventual champion Murray a fight in the second round here last year, and he might get a rusty or distracted Fernando Gonzalez in the third round this time around.
ATP
Mardy Fish’s strong serve might give Andy Murray a headache in the second round. Ditto for Taylor Dent and Nadal.
David Nalbandian, a wild card, is lurking in Nadal’s section; he’s beaten Rafa badly on a couple of occasions.
Andy Roddick could get Igor Andreev, a player he’s lost to on hard and clay courts in the past, in the second round.
Marin Cilic vs. Marcos Baghdatis would be a highlight of the third round.
A Roddick-Ljubicic rematch is possible in the fourth.
WTA
U.S. Open junior champ Heather Watson of Great Britain has a wild card and might see Wozniacki in the second round.
Henin and Dementieva, if everything goes according to plan, will go at it again in the second round.
Together, these two Masters/Premier events—both dual gender, both on U.S. hard courts—form a collective almost-Slam. Like the other majors, there’s a distinct type of tennis that's produced on these courts. In general it’s risk-averse. The biggest mistake Andy Roddick made in the Indian Wells final was trying to serve and volley on the first point of the tiebreaker. He stoned a volley badly and, after two first-serve bombs by Ljubicic, he was down 3-0 and the match was teetering on the brink. In this sense, IW/KB presents us with the conservative contemporary game at its purest. But just as it would be wrong to base your assessment of the state of the sport on how it’s played on clay or grass, it’s hard to extrapolate beyond these two events themselves—like I said earlier, in 2009 Murray was the best at IW/KB combined, but he didn’t even reach a Slam final.
We’ve heard a lot about the downside of slow-court tennis. Is there anything positive to draw from it? First, it makes players work hard, both on their serve and return games—points aren’t that easy to finish, even from an attacking position. If it doesn’t necessarily lead to upsets, it does level the playing field slightly, because most players are at least comfortable on these types of courts, with styles and physiques that suit the surface’s demands. If the quality of play isn’t as spectacular as often as we might like, it’s rarely, at least on the men’s side, dreadful. You’ve got all the best players, without as many mismatches as you get in a major, and close to a dozen of them on each tour have a shot at the title. I can't ask for too much more than that.