In addition to smallfry’s Frozen Chicken award, we need an award for the the surprise player who catapults his fantasy team up the rankings because no one else picked him. For lack of a better name, let’s call it the Baggy Award after Marcos Baghdatis who made his way to this year’s Australian Open final while ranked number 54 in the world. Please help me out here by coming up with a better name for the award- this kind of thing is not my forte.
Strangely enough, Ivan Ljubicic (number 4) and Mario Ancic (number 12) rate a mention for the award despite their rankings because their games are suited for hard court. Everyone, and I mean everyone, in our subleague (tennisdiary.com) chose Federer, Nadal and Nalbandian but only one team – Team Torpor owned by my co-writer Pat Davis – picked Ljubicic. That’s $82,242 she’ll get that no one else will.
There are four players left in the draw ranked number 68 or lower: Alberto Martin, Julen Benneteau, Ruben Ramirez-Hidalgo, and Novak Djokovic. Either Martin or Benneteau will get to the quarterfinals – I have to go with Martin, the Spanish guy. If someone picked one of those two players, they’ll shoot up the rankings. Ramirez-Hidalgo is also Spanish but I’ll pick the numbers and go with Ljubicic. The French Open should change its name to the Spanish-French Open, three of the last four champions have been Spanish.
Blake is now 0-8 lifetime in five set matches. That’s more than a slight problem when it comes to grand slams.
It happens at every grand slam. At the US Open, for instance, the American players are chosen to play in prime time even if they’re ranked lower than the European players. Here at Roland Garros, Blake arrived on the premises at 11am Thursday morning and started his match with Nicolas Almagro at 8pm. Since there are no lights at Roland Garros that means he waited nine hours to play a match that could not be finished until the next day. On Saturday, he arrived at noon and started his match with Monfils in the evening, again, and completed the match today. Of course, Monfils is French too but grinding Blake down with scheduling difficulties is one way to get rid of the 8th seed.
Having said that, Blake played his part in losing to Monfils. Clay usually requires a diverse game, you can’t just stand at the baseline and blast the ball because clay is so slow that the other player can run everything down by camping themselves ten feet behind the baseline. That’s why Roddick always goes out early. After Blake lost the first set to Monfils easily, he thought otherwise.
Blake stood at the baseline and blasted the ball and it got him to 4-4 in the fifth set. I’m telling you, matches may last five sets but there is still that one moment that qualifies as the tipping point. Blake was serving at 0-15 when he hit a medium difficult volley wide. Up until now, even though Monfils is a Parisian, the crowd had been quiet, but after that shot they woke up and Monfils fed off it. On his first break point in the game, Monfils floated a hard Blake shot back over and Blake came in to hit an overhead. Monfils, unbelievably, sliced that back too and Blake put it into the net. Match over, 6-2, 6-7(2), 7-6(1), 5-7, 6-4.
And here’s the problem: Blake is now 0-8 lifetime in five set matches. That’s more than a slight problem when it comes to grand slams. After the match he told Bud Collins:
It’s not anything indicating my fitness or anything like that, or my not being able to come through in the clutch, it’s just one of those things where I’ve come up against guys who’ve played great right at the end of their matches.
Dear James, you are contradicting yourself. The other guys have been able to come through in the clutch and you haven’t – by definition – because that’s what coming through in the clutch means: to play great at the end of a match. Blake deserves credit, he came close to making it to the quarterfinals, but his five set record is a problem and he needs to be honest with himself and treat it as one. I have a list of sports psychologists if he needs one.
Oh no, Amelie Mauresmo is out, again, she lost to a teenager, again.
By the way, the British are curiously inept when it comes to protecting British players at their own grand slam, Wimbledon. It turns out that they were putting tennis balls in the cooler prior to Wimbledon to slow them down a bit. Tim Henman, a pure serve and volleyer who was their top player at the time, was mightily pissed off when he heard that news.
Oh no, Amelie Mauresmo is out, again, she lost to a teenager, again. I was nervous about her chances here as was everyone else in the tennis world. And this is where I think the problem lies. At 5-5 in the first set tiebreaker of her match with Nicole Vaidisova, Mauresmo hit two high defensive loopers to get back in position then found herself with open court down the line. Mauresmo is now ranked number one partially because she learned to flatten out her shots and go for more winners – in other words to be more aggressive – and here she was in perfect position to hit a flat shot down the line for a possible winner. She did hit it down the line alright but it was another high looper.
In a previous version on this post I theorized that Mauresmo is not by nature aggressive. I said that the mix of offense and defense required to play on clay sent Mauresmo into a more defensive, less aggressive state of mind – hence the high looper down the line instead of a hard hit winner. To back up my theory, I claimed that Mauresmo had never won a tournament on clay. Big mistake. She has won six tournament on clay and, luckily, Kat, a reader pointed this mistake out. I have to agree with Kat’s concise and accurate opinion: “Mauresmo has won a bunch of tournaments on clay: RG is a mental hurdle for her.” Mauresmo went down to Vaidisova 4-0 in the third set and never got back up.
Venus Williams has put herself in position to get to the semisfinals, she plays Vaidisova next. I noted before that Martina Hingis and Venus both have five slam wins each but Hingis was ranked number one for two hundred and nine weeks and Venus a grand total of eleven weeks. This is a supreme example of rising to the occasion and Venus could do it here. This is only her fourth tournament of the year and she’s in the quarterfinals of a slam. True, the women don’t play five sets matches, but since Venus is so good at rising to the occasion, maybe Blake should consult with her.
