For the first week of Roland Garros I've be exchanging emails with TENNIS Magazine senior editor Jon Levey, who was in Paris to cover the tournament. This is the last of the bunch.
Jon,
By now you may be in your office two doors down from me, but I’ll continue our virtual conversation for one more post. If we were talking, we’d just start to imitate the players’ accents and never get anywhere.
You started your Saturday post talking about Nicolas Almagro. Since you last wrote, he’s beaten French Cinderella Jeremy Chardy (a fun player to watch, though I wonder when we’ll see him again; Bodo has a good post up about him) and moved on to a quarterfinal encounter with fellow Spaniard Rafael Nadal. A few years ago, I wrote somewhere that I thought Almagro had as much raw talent—that’s a different thing from potential—as Rafael Nadal. I’d seen him play Guillermo Coria, the best clay player in the world at that point, and blow him off the court in a first set in Hamburg. Almagro had, and still has, monster strokes off both sides and a very natural kick serve motion, as you mentioned. The reason he’s only reaching his first Grand Slam quarterfinal right now is that he’s the polar opposite of Nadal mentally. Where Nadal plays with intensity, Almagro plays with anger. That’s an unstable way to approach a match. You mention, correctly I think, that he has the backhand of Guga, but not the charm. I saw those two play a five-setter at the French in 2004. It was quite a display of clay-court prowess, but in the end Almagro kept going for gigantic shots no matter what the score was and ended up hitting himself out of the match after five hours, at 5-5 in the fifth. He’s 0-2 against Nadal, but there’ s no doubt he can hit with his fellow Spaniard; he may even be in control of most of the points. To make that fact mean something, he’ll have to modulate his game—play the right shot at the right score—better than he usually does.
Just like you, I didn’t see much of Gonzo-Wawrinka. In theory, I agree that the running-around-the-backhand-at-all costs play should be outdated by now, and it is at the very top of the sport. Federer and Djokovic certainly don’t do it, and Nadal doesn’t need to, at least on clay (the relative weakness of his backhand may be the biggest explanation for his lack of success on hard courts; his opponents can get the ball to that side more easily than they can on clay). But watching Gonzo unload his forehand on Ginepri today makes me think that at most levels of the sport the forehand still rules. Even more so than the serve these days—Sampras’ biggest weapon was his serve, Federer’s is his forehand.
You also asked about drop shots and their prevalence. There are always more of them on clay, but this year there seems to be a greater reliance on them than ever, even on the women’s side. They even cropped up more at Indian Wells and Key Biscayne. It's not a problem with me; I like the dropper and the way it takes the action into all parts of the court. Sharapova has a surprisingly nice forehand version, which I’ve always thought to be the more difficult of the two wings; I guess she would find it hard to switch to one hand in order to execute a backhand drop. Maybe she should study Melzer and his patented jumping two-handed backhand drop shot.
Otherwise, Sharapova is more difficult to watch on clay then anywhere else. Everything looks like a chore, and she becomes even more deliberate. But you won’t have to worry about that anymore, because she just lost to Safina, who now has a decent shot at going all the way to the final. Why the sudden turnaround for her? She looks a little faster, or at least fitter, than in the past. In the other half, you have to like Ivanovic. This could be a watershed generational shift for women’s tennis, if she can win her first major. So far, I’d say Ivanovic’s determination to improve and succeed at the highest level has been the most pleasant surprise of the tennis season.
As we speak, an even bigger surprise is unfolding, though I can’t see it because ESPN is busy showing the already completed and never-in-doubt Federer-Benneteau match. Monfils has just beaten Ljubicic to reach the quarters. It’s a funny sport, isn’t it? Just when we’re ready to write off one Frenchman (Monfils) and anoint another (Tsonga), things go in the opposite direction. You mentioned that you don’t bother to fill out your brackets for the Slams because by the end of the second round, you’re going to be wrong just about everywhere. I’d say that’s true in the longer run in tennis as well. Other than the really special talents, like Djokovic, it’s tough to say that a few wins for a guy mean that he’s turned any kind of corner. Right now, that’s more true than ever on the men’s side, which has become more predictable than the women’s at the top. Besides the big three, all you can do is be happy for a guy when he has a big win—but don’t expect it to last. That said, there are few players I’d rather see succeed than Monfils, who brings a uniquely elastic quality to the court. I’m not sure he can ever change and become a reliable, efficient attacker (not that he shouldn’t try). For now, I’d love to see him employ his current style—basically: range behind the baseline and unload—with confidence. He exuded it at the 2006 French Open, and his strutting expressiveness was one of the highlights of the two weeks. I haven’t seen it since.
As for Davydenko, I don’t think I’ll ever have any expectations for him again. He’s another guy who had a nice run (at Key Biscayne) but who has gone back to business as usual. He’ll always be quantity over quality when it comes to matches played and won. I can’t blame him, I guess; he wants to make money while he can, and obviously the endorsements aren’t rolling in. But his "there's always another match next week" attitude makes it hard to forge any kind of bond with him as a fan. I want a player to act like this match, the one he's playing right now, is the only one that matters.
Reading TENNIS.com, I sometimes wonder why guys like Federer, Nadal, and now Djokovic inspire such strong fan followings, almost along the lines of home sports teams. One reason, of course, is that they win so much; it’s easy to love a winner. Another is the quality of their games; they play charismatic tennis, in very different ways. But maybe more than that is the fact that, like all the great players, they’re committed to quality over quantity, to majors before money. It’s easy to care about players and get caught up in their quests when you know that they're going to lay it on the line, to risk making this match mean more than any other, when they get to the Slams. The big three—and they've been joined by Ivanovic among the women—always do.
Thanks for the reports,
Steve