I have to be honest, I've never really warmed to Fernando Verdasco, although there's much to recommend him, beginning with the fact that he's left-handed, and has no inhibitions about smacking the fur off a tennis ball. But something held me back. I thought about that today as he warmed up with Novak Djokovic, the winner to earn a place in the US Open semifinals.
The men were dressed in nearly identical gear, which is always a little weird and makes the combatants look like brothers, or a doubles team that blew up and decided to settle the "who's better?" issue the honorable way. Djokovic's orange Adidas shirt was a collar-less T with bright bits of trim. Verdasco's had a splotchy pattern on the back; it looked like some giant pre-historic cat had stepped on his back and left the footprint. And the shirt had a neat little zipper at the throat. I wonder of Nole's going to get on the horn with his sponsor and grouse, How come Fernando got the cool shirt with the zipper, and all I got was this lousy T?
If the men were brothers, Djokovic would be easily be taken for the older one, the role model, even though, at 22, he's three years younger. According to the ATP "official" stats, he's a lean 6-2, 176 lbs, sinewy and loose-limbed, with coat hanger shoulders and a Grand Slam title earned a few years ago in Australia. Verdasco is compact and more smoothly sculpted. He's considerably smaller, or so I thought - turns out the ATP website has him as the same height as Djokovic - and slightly heavier. When I ran that by my colleagues in the Spanish press, they almost fell to the floor laughing. We know how this works; girls are "officially" pounds lighter than your eyes suggest; men are officially taller.
No matter; although Verdasco hasn't scored a major title yet, the image of his epic battle with Rafael Nadal in the semifinals of the Australian Open this year is burned onto most of our hard drives. He's been up and down since then, which I think is germane to the way I've always viewed him. He has what I think of as I.B.D., or Infintisimal Bigness Deficit. Basically, this is a condition that prohibits players from tapping into that little something extra, confidence and performance-wise, that separates the very best players from the solid or even mercurial (like Verdasco) talents.
That may sound harsh, but let's remember that "bigness" is relative, and the difference at the upper echelon infintisimal. But it's still real. The idea itself is pretty abstract, but Bigness is the ability to step up in a big match and seize control. Bigness is a talent for calmly weathering a storm of brilliant play from an opponent without feeling one bit diminished (although you're allowed to be frustrated and angry at yourself). Bigness enables a player to embark on a critical tiebreaker feeling that he ought to win it. Big players look like they own the court; it's a place for them to strut their stuff, not to see if they can survive a trial by fire.
Players who suffer from IBD include a brilliant ball striker who's a lot like Verdasco, Fernando Gonazlez. He hits a slightly bigger ball than Verdasco, for sure. Hail, Gonzalez hits a slightly bigger ball than everyone. Both men can be streaky, which is where the Bigness of an opponent comes into play; it takes nerve, patience, and either deep faith or healthy fatalism to ride it out. Verdasco loves to belt the ball, and can't resist hitting harder than the other guy just did, especially if the guy has the temerity to tee-up a potential winner for him.
There's a kind of Bigness in that attitude, of course, although it isn't recommended. When the day comes when Gonazlez or Verdasco sees his 445,345,345th smoking forehand coming in at warp speed, tempting him to go for too much, he's going to swing like it's a pinata.
This mentality has taken Verdasco far this year, as Djokovic will tell you. "The dangerous thing about Verdasco is to let him take over the control of the match, because he's physically very strong and he's able to do a lot of things, especially from his forehand side. He improved a lot his backhand, so he stays much closer to the line. He likes when the ball is coming a bit slower to him so he can, you know, do more things with it. That's why I tried to mix up the pace, you know, play some high balls and then fast balls to his forehand,and try to just get him out of that comfort zone that he got in in the second set. I managed to do that."
But let's rewind a bit. In the first set, a combination of effective serving by Verdasco and so-so returning by Djokovic kept the match even. Verdasco dodged a bullet at 1-1, falling behind 15-40 on serve, but wiped out the deficit with a pair of service winners (the stats say he had an anemic 45 per cent first serve conversion rate; so much for the importance of stats). Djokovic erased a few break points of his own, and ended up winning the set with his composure and precision in the tiebreaker - the first mini-break was a Verdasco double-fault at 1-2, and Djokovic went on to win, 7-2.
In the second set, Verdasco's inability to resist the lure of pace paid off. He had a temperamental moment in the third game; he almost hurled his racquet across the court, but caught himself and lightly bounced it off his leg instead. This bit of self-control was telling, because he went on to play alluring, focused tennis, rolling through Djokovic, the no. 4 seed, 6-1. The third set was an adventure for both men, as well as the rest of us. They poked and probed at each other,and traded breaks in the fifth and sixth games. Djokovic hung on grimly, his Bigness well-disguised, until Verdasco - who apparently is suffering from micro-tears in his abdomen and a sore foot - punched himself out.
Djokovic had no trouble holding for 4-4 and 5-5, and struck in the 11th game. Verdasco made two errors to start the game, hit an ace, but then fell behind 15-40 when he wildly botched a forehand volley. He squirmed out of that jam, but at deuce Djokovic hit a forehand inside-out winner and secured the break when Verdasco followed with a forehand error. Dispirited, Verdasco surrendered the ensuing set-game without much of a fight, and Djokovic rolled through the fourth set easily.
!90531041 This fast court was suitable for Verdasco, injuries non-withstanding. He's quick and explosive enough to end four or five stroke ralllies - the kind that a streaky ball-belter can get the best of. And his pace, combined with the speed of the court, can keep a versatile opponent - a Djokovic, or Andy Murray - from working on Verdasco's weakness for betting the house on a point-ender. Verdasco likes a shoot-out, even though the streaky nature of his game can cost him dearly in a five-setter.
So Djokovic, the forgotten man of this US Open, is the first known semifinalist. He was relaxed in his presser, djoking freely with the assembled reporters. He seemed to feel, well, Big. When I asked if feared he was having a Murray moment as the second set unspooled, he replied: I managed to come back, and that's what matters. You know, I just tried to focus myself in the third set and work on some things. I returned more balls on his serves, and I think I served well at that stage (59 per cent, if you're keeping count)."
Someone reminded Djokovic of the jam he got into last year, when he criticized Andy Roddick in an on-court, post-match interview that the Andyphile crowd refused to forget.
Well, I obviously. . .obviously the crowd is very important and plays a crucial role in big matches.What happened last year I was saying many times this year already in the conferences was a misunderstanding, and obviously something that we all learn from. I learned from my mistakes.
I mean, it's all right, as long as I realize the things that happen and try to take the best out of it, and then, you know, try to gain back the crowd. I hope that's what I did, because I feel that I'm enjoying it again much more. It feels like 2007, you know, when I played finals here and did all these crazy things, impersonating the players.
So it was really a lot of enjoyment playing with McEnroe the other night. It was something else. You know, it was unexpected. I promise it wasn't planned. It just came out. It was good."
Djokovic probably will play top-seeded Roger Federer in the semis, and it's going to take more than a mended relationship with the New York crowd to pull him through that one. "Big" is a relative concept.