How did Rafael Nadal fare against Ivo Karlovic on the slick grass surface at Queen’s?z

It’s been cold and damp in London this week and that means everyone has been slippin’ and slidin’ on the grass at Queen’s Club. Andy Murray fell four times and somehow managed to land on his thumb during one of those falls. Of course, Murray is always falling down then getting up and playing magnificently so we can’t go by that. But it happened to Rafael Nadal too and it cost him a point as he slid into the net.

It coulda been worse. Fernando Gonzalez was playing Ivo Karlovic and he got just a tad frustrated. First he smashed a ball – ball abuse, warning. Then he smashed a racket – racket abuse, loss of point. Then he sent another ball flying – ball abuse, loss of game. And that was match over because he was down 5-6 in the second set and he’d already lost the first set. Maybe he got confused and thought John McEnroe was on the other side of the net meaning that such behavior was allowed.

Since the court is slippery enough to let balls skid across the surface instead of grab and spin, I wondered how the match between clay court master/topspin killer Rafael Nadal and super-tall serving machine/totally frustrating Karlovic would play out.

Here’s one answer: At 2-2 in the first set, Karlovic hit a second serve ace, a service winner – the ball careened off the frame of Nadal’s racket, and an almost ace – Nadal started to walk to the other side of the court and Karlovic challenged the call but it was just wide. The game ended on another ace and the longest point had two strokes (who says grass it too slow these days?).

The points on Nadal’s serve were a bit longer but not much. And since Karlovic is 6ft 10in (208cm), his movement isn’t as nimble as most other players so Nadal was able to hit behind Karlovic and generally make his life miserable if he didn’t get his first serve in. Nadal is number one in three of the four return of serve statistical categories in the ATP statistics, while Karlovic is ranked 56th in three of the four return of serve categories.

It’s tempting to say that this was a match of opposites given those statistical rankings – the return of serve expert versus the guy who can’t return but does have the most aces on tour and holds his serve more often than anyone not named Andy Roddick, and it did work out that way as Nadal got only two break points – neither of which he converted – and Karlovic got no break points while serving up 35 aces.

But there was one more statistic that contributed to this match and it’s a surprising stat: Karlovic’s career record in tiebreakers is 129-127. I don’t know Roddick’s career tiebreak record but I do know he once won 18 tiebreaks in a row and it’s surprising that Karlovic is barely even in tiebreaks with that serve of his. That may also explain his mediocre record at Wimbledon. He’s lost in the first round the last three years and during that time he lost five out of seven tiebreakers.

As you should have guessed by now, there were no breaks and we were treated to three straight tiebreakers (who says grass is too slow these days?). Did those tiebreakers give us any clues to Karlovic’s tiebreak problems?

Karlovic won the first tiebreaker by one point – a double fault by Nadal – and served up two aces. Karlovic lost the second one by one point – an excellent return on a tough first serve by Nadal followed up by a passing shot – but Karlovic hit zero aces. In the third one, Karlovic again had two aces but the difference was another beautiful return by Nadal who won the tiebreaker and the match, 6-7(5), 7-6(5), 7-6(4).

Today the defensive skills beat the offensive skills despite those incredible 35 aces. The difference was a few points and the best players win those points – that’s why they’re the best players. Sorry Ivo, the only thing I can tell you is this: “Play the critical points with more focus and you too can make your way into the top ten. You’re only 12 rankings places away after all.”

This match tells me more about Nadal than Karlovic in any case. I was talking to a tennis buddy this morning about Bjorn Borg’s back to back Roland Garros/Wimbledon titles and how much harder they must have been in an era where the grass was faster and Borg faced many more serve and volleyers, a few of them legendary. No doubt Queen’s is still slower than the Wimbledon of old, but you gotta give it to Rafa, this was an impressive performance and tomorrow he gets to do it again.

Roddick got a walkover today because Murray pulled out with that offending thumb, so Roddick will meet up with Nadal tomorrow in the semifinals. There are lots of parallels between the match today and tomorrow but there are also a few important differences. Roddick can do tiebreakers and he can also move better than Karlovic. He can’t cover the net as well but with the way the grass is playing, if he can’t get past Nadal, that’s a problem. Roddick could meet Nadal as early as the quarterfinals at Wimbledon and that will play a lot slower. If he can’t beat Nadal here, it’s not likely to happen at Wimbledon.

Who’re you taking, Roddick or Rafa?

When there are suspicious betting patterns on tennis matches, who looks out for the bettors interests?

In May, the ATP announced the completion of its “Environmental Review of Integrity in Professional Tennis.” In other words, is there match fixing going on in professional tennis or isn’t there?

The answer is: yes and no.

First of all, the co-authors, Ben Gunn and Jeff Rees, former police officers who specialize in anti-corruption programs in sports, have found “no evidence of any ‘Mafia’ involvement” in gambling. However, they don’t doubt that “criminal elements” might be involved in corrupting players and officials and those criminal elements might include “organized criminal gangs.”

The report also says that a “number of [Betfair.com] account holders are successfully laying higher ranked players to lose/backing lesser ranked players to win” and it appears that those bettors used inside information to make those bets. If you remember, this is what put this whole “integrity” movement in motion: there were suspicious betting patterns on a match between Nikolay Davydenko and Martin Vassallo-Arguello in Sopot last August. Some Betfair users laid a whole lot of money on Vassallo-Arguello, who was ranked much lower than Davydenko, and made him the favorite before the match had begun. And Vassallo-Arguello remained the favorite even after Davydenko won the first set. Davydenko retired in the third set and Betfair made the unprecedented move of voiding all bets.

The report then talks about tanking tennis matches (not trying hard enough), unauthorized use of credentials to get access to the players’ locker room, and abusive behavior towards players by coaches and “other related persons.”

Despite those problems, the co-authors conclude that “professional tennis is not institutionally or systematically corrupt.”

I don’t have any problem with these conclusions though I’m not exactly sure that there’s much difference between “organized criminal gangs” and “Mafia.” I suppose it’s a matter of scale. A small time organization doesn’t qualify for the term Mafia. Or maybe tennis is just sensitive to the term Mafia ever since the Russian Mafia was attached to the Davydenko case because the bettors laying down the big money came from Russia.

But I am concerned about something at the moment. There have been a suspicious betting patterns since the Davydenko/Vassallo-Arguello match and yet Betfair did not void the bets. Professional tennis is watching out for itself by churning out an environmental integrity report and creating an integrity unit, but who’s protecting the bettors?

On April 14, Oscar Hernandez played Juan-Pablo Brzezicki in an ATP match in Houston. Brzezicki won the first set and was up 2-0 in the second set and yet his odds of winning the match on Betfair had dropped since the beginning of the match while Hernandez’ odds of winning the match had increased. Hernandez finally did win the match in three sets. Betfair users contacted Betfair to alert them to the suspicious betting pattern on this match but Betfair settled all bets very quickly after the match ended.

On May 21st, Teimuraz Gabashvili played Blaz Kavcic in Poertschach. Even though Gabashvili was ranked number 125 at the time and Kavcic was ranked number 357, Gabashvili’s odds of winning the match dropped after he won the first set and they continued to drop after he won the first game of the second set at love. Gabashvili ended up losing the match to Kavcic in three sets.

If you go to the Betfair Forum on the day of this match, you’ll see 15 pages of complaints about the suspicious nature of the betting pattern. On page 10, Betfair officials posted this message:

We are aware of customer concerns in relation to the above market and are currently investigating. On completion of the match we will follow our normal procedure for these circumstances: the market will be settled and we will suspend the accounts and freeze funds of any accounts which we believe warrant further investigation. Additionally, we will liaise with the ATP In accordance with our Memorandum of Understanding with them.

Betfair may decide to suspend or freeze an account, but once the market is settled, it’s too late for bettors who lost money on that match. Their money is gone.

The Davydenko/Vassallo-Arguello match brought a huge amount of unwanted publicity to tennis because Betfair had never voided all bets on a match before. People who previously had little interest in tennis were all over the incident and not because they cared about tennis. Despite repeated messages from Betfair users calling for all bets on the Hernandez-Kavcic match to be voided, Betfair did not void bets and has not voided any match since Davydenko/Vassallo-Arguello.

Betfair has its own team of integrity experts as does the ATP and WTA. But Betfair seems to be handing the problem over to tennis by using the “normal procedure” of settling the market. It saves the world of tennis further embarrassment by not voiding the bets, but it doesn’t protect Betfair users who aren’t sure they’re betting on fair match.

Rafael Nadal won the French Open today by beating Roger Federer 6-1, 6-3, 6-0. Can you believe it?

I came across an excerpt from Bjorn Borg’s 1980 autobiography, My Life and Game, on the Men’s Tennis Forum a few days ago. In one section, Borg explained his definition of percentage tennis:

My synonym for percentage tennis is patience. I want to hit one more ball in court than my rival. I want him to think I’m much more patient so he’ll make a mistake either in execution (racquet error) or in picking a low-percentage ripper for the lines.

It worked well enough to win six French Open titles, four of them consecutive. Rafael Nadal was going for his fourth consecutive French Open today and his opponent for the last three has been Roger Federer. I don’t know what Rafa’s odds were but you wouldn’t have made much money off him because he hasn’t dropped a set here and only one player, Novak Djokovic, pushed him to a tiebreaker.

You’d have made a bunch of money, though, if you’d bet that Roger would win a total of four games in the match because no one expected that. How could Rafa – who’s undefeated at the French Open – have possibly improved? This is how: he played slightly lower percentage tennis.

He didn’t stand way behind the baseline and he didn’t play patiently. No, he didn’t turn into James Blake or Dmitry Tursunov overnight and rip every ball in sight, but he did move closer to the baseline and he did flatten out some balls that he would have hit with topspin in the past. This is how he explained it after the match:

I play more inside the court…so I play more aggressive. Not the typical clay court style, for sure, but I play more aggressive than usually.

Roger was surely watching Rafa’s matches here so it’s surprising that he seemed so shell-shocked. Rafa was up 3-1 in the first set when he hit some flat backhands and broke Roger at love. Roger was already walking around with his head down – the official pose of the befuddled – and it didn’t improve as Rafa’s court positioning allowed him to hit passing shots before Roger had fully arrived at the net.

Roger recovered his state of mind briefly with a break to get to 1-2 in the second set – only the second game he’d won in the entire match. Three games later, he hit one of those extreme angled cross court backhands he used against Rafa earlier this year but Rafa calmly hit a winner off it and Roger tipped his head back in disbelief.

Roger was playing more aggressively himself and it was working as he held his serve twice in a row to get to 3-3 in the set, but his mental state was still in the doldrums. In the next game, Rafa hit a winner off a net cord – which you expect after all – and Roger looked like a bedraggled rag doll as his head drooped and he threw his arm down in frustration. He never really recovered and, unbelievably, he didn’t win another game.

Roger, baby, Rafa has been nearly impossibly to beat on clay the entire tournament so we didn’t expect you to beat him, but dropping your head and flailing away, that is too much to bear. Three all in the second set and you couldn’t win even one more game? Novak Djokovic put up a better fight than you did. And what’re you going to do at Wimbledon?

The match was so short the network was reduced to showing last year’s Wimbledon final and somewhere in the back of Roger’s mind he must be thinking: if Rafa is playing this much better on clay by being more aggressive, how good is he going to be on grass? And what do I have to do to keep up with him?

After the match he admitted that Rafa had improved:

He no longer plays short balls as he did in the past. You can no longer attack him on his forehand, as I could in the past. He is getting much more aggressive, and it’s becoming much more difficult.

Difficult isn’t the half of it. Rafa’s performance was masterful. But Roger was decidedly absent and we didn’t hear his usual “I’m getting close to beating Rafa on clay” because he isn’t. He’s as far away as he’s even been and it’s hard to see that changing.

It looked like Djokovic might be the one to move pass Rafa and Roger, especially with his hard court skills and Rafa’s problems on hard court, but Rafa isn’t done yet and a title at Wimbledon, which looks a whole lot more likely after today, might get him to number one first.

And what if Rafa improves on hard court? That’s a scary thought.

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The grass season is upon us but some people are still hanging onto clay. We have grass in Halle and London/Queen’s Club, and clay in Warsaw. Halle and Queen’s are both paying more prize money than Warsaw and they both have higher ranked players, so let’s pick three players each from Halle and Queen’s and two from Warsaw to make up our eight player team.

Halle (grass, first prize: $177692)
Queen’s (grass, first prize: $130,000)
Warsaw (clay, first prize: $104,231)

Because Halle and Queen’s attract the top players, the draw is more predictable than Warsaw, a smaller tournament with lower ranked players. Twice in the past five years, six seeded players have reached the quarterfinals at Queen’s and Halle averages between four and five seeded players in its quarterfinals.

Roger Federer has won the title in Halle four of the past five years (he withdrew last year) but you should obviously save him for Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. There are also four Masters events left to play so save him for one or two of those also..

Below Federer’s quarter, Mikhail Youzhny reached the quarterfinals here last year but his first opponent is Dmitry Tursunov who reached the semifinals in two of his grass events last year and beat Youzhny on carpet the only time they met. I’m going with Tursunov.

The next quarter is exceptionally tough to pick. Radek Stepanek is a good grass court player but he faces Tommy Haas in the first round. Haas is an even better grass court player but he’s been injured and Stepanek beat him three times last year. Philipp Kohlschreiber reached the semifinals here last year but Tomas Berdych is also in this quarter and won this tournament last, but he’s recovering from injury too. Stepanek is having the best year so I’m going with him.

James Blake should be able to get to the semifinals and I’m taking him because I can still use him for both summer Masters events, the U.S. Open, and Stockholm. He always does well at the smaller hard court summer events but a semifinal here pays as much as a final at any of those tournaments so I’m taking him here.

Rafael Nadal has reached the quarterfinals at Queen’s for the past two years but obviously you should save him for bigger tournaments. Is there someone in his quarter who can reach the semifinals or final? There’s no sure thing because Ivo Karlovic beat Fernando Gonzalez on grass here last year and those are the two best grass court players left.

Andy Roddick is in the next quarter and he’s won this title four of the last five years but should you use him here? Probably. You can still pick him for Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, and one of the summers Masters events and that still leaves you one more event in the fall.

In David Nalbandian’s quarter I’m going to skip over Nalbandian and Richard Gasquet because Nalbandian has lost in the first round here both times he’s appeared and Gasquet has a few problems: the past few years he’s lost early in his first grass tournament of the year and he’s been suffering through a confidence crisis so let’s look at Mario Ancic and Nicolas Mahut instead. Ancic beat Mahut on carpet earlier this year so I’m going with Ancic.

Novak Djokovic is likely to win his quarter but you should save him for Wimbledon, one or two of the remaining Masters events, and the U.S. Open, so let’s see who’ll meet up with him in the quarterfinals. Marin Cilic reached the quarterfinals last year but hasn’t done much else and that leaves us with Lleyton Hewitt and Paul-Henri Mathieu. Hewitt has a much better record here but Mathieu’s game is improving and Hewitt has been struggling due to a long term hip injury so I’m going with Mathieu.

I’ve picked six players so I need two players from Warsaw to complete my team.

If there’s a clay court tournament somewhere in the world, Nikolay Davydenko is sure to be there and he’s in the draw at Warsaw. I used him for clay court Masters events so I’m saving him for the U.S. Open and Moscow. He’s won the title in Moscow three of the past four years and it pays a lot of money.

In the quarter below Davydenko, Gilles Simon has a winning record over everyone in his quarter except for Guillermo Canas – they’re even at 1-1. Canas has lost his last six matches on clay so I’m going with Simon.

Tommy Robredo is 4-0 over Albert Montanes on clay and beat him in Valencia this year so he’ll probably get out of the bottom quarter. If he meets Juan Monaco in the semifinals that’s a tough choice. Monaco beat Robredo in Kitzbuhel last year in their only meeting but Robredo has better results in the bigger events this year so I’m picking Robredo.

Picks

Here are my picks for this week: Tursunov, Stepanek, Blake, Roddick, Ancic, Mathieu, Simon, and Robredo.

Happy fantasies!

Gael Monfils feinted and jabbed and ran a few miles along the baseline on his way to a victory over David Ferrer in the French Open quarterfinals.

Gael Monfils, Gael Monfils, what can you say about the guy? The French tennis federation brought him along, then he jumped ship to the rival Lagardere Group, then he came to the U.S. and signed up to work with Tarik Benhabiles, then he went back to Lagardere. He’s like a kid in a candy store who can’t make up his mind. He leaps and splits and splays those arms and legs all over the court retrieving balls that should be out of reach. He celebrates wins with the moonwalk and the robot and good shots with equally boisterous outbursts of childlike glee, one of which ended up with an awkward landing and a badly sprained ankle and a trip off the court in a wheelchair. There he was a few weeks later looking just as good at an indoor Masters event.

One thing Monfils doesn’t do is play aggressive tennis and retrieving is not a recipe for success against David Ferrer – the human wall – especially in the quarterfinals at the French Open. Right? Monfils’ only consistently aggressive shot is his serve: the beanpole version of Andy Roddick’s power serve with the feet together and everything bending instead of stepping. And everything bends on this guy. I was never sure Monfils was designed for tennis. Not that he isn’t very good at it, mind you, and not that many other tennis players couldn’t play another sport, but Monfils, in particular, is the best example of what we call a pure athlete on the pro tennis tour.

That’s not necessarily a good thing, by the way. I’m currently reading Moneyball by Michael Lewis, a book about the way statistics have changed player evaluations in baseball. It used to be that baseball scouts looked for the best athlete – the five tool player: the guy who ran fast, thres the ball hard, fielded well, hit well and hit with power. The subject of the book is Billy Beane, a five tool player who had all the physical tool but didn’t have the proper mental makeup to play professional baseball.

Beane now chooses players for the Oakland Athletics, a major league baseball team, but if he’d been picking tennis players instead, he might have skipped over Monfils because maturity is a word that has seldom been attached to Monfils’ name. Luckily for tennis, players are not signed to teams and given a big signing bonus, they’re allowed to mature over time and they only get paid when they win matches.

Today Monfils was paid a lot. He beat Ferrer, 6-3, 3-6, 6-3, 6-1, to reach the semifinals at the French Open. How did he do it?

Monfils started in with the rope-a-dope. If his fellow countryman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga can be compared to Muhammad Ali, then Monfils actually uses Ali’s tactics. Speaking of which, it’s hard not to think that Tsonga’s run to the Australian Open final didn’t light a fire under Monfils or, at the very least, arrive as a wakeup call.

Anyway, back to the rope-a-dope. Ferrer is a counterpuncher and Monfils didn’t give him anything to punch with so Ferrer had to be the aggressor and that didn’t work so well. Monfils had won the first set and was facing break points at 2-2 in the second set. They were on their third deuce and Ferrer was hitting the ball as hard as he could and running Monfils all over the place. Ferrer finally got to the net and Monfils calmly threaded a backhand down the line and past Ferrer for his second game point.

On the next point, Monfils served and volleyed and put the ball away easily. By now, though, Monfils appeared to be gassed as he lost his next two service games, and the set, and twice leaned over on his racket to prop himself up. Not the best signal to give your opponent and also one of the consequences of a defensive playing style because you end up running a whole lot more than your opponent.

Two errors and an ill-advised drop shot by Ferrer and Monfils was up a break immediately in the third set. Monfils took the gift and, well, continued on with his rope-a-dope. Ferrer couldn’t penetrate Monfils’ defense so he went for more on his shots and made errors, including a mishit and a drop shot into the net to give Monfils the third set.

I’d like to tell you that Monfils has turned a corner. That he’s finally listened to one of his many coaches when they suggest he play more aggressively. He did sneak into the net occasionally and finish off the point and he did turn some second serves into mincemeat but, honestly, I don’t see it. He doesn’t seem to make the connection between playing a grind it out, defensive style of game with a spindly body and a high occurrence of injuries. After today, he has even less reason to listen.

Instead, he frustrated Ferrer so badly that he had the poor guy imitating James Blake by going for smoke on every shot. And Ferrer did it badly. On break point in his first service game of the fourth set, he hit a forehand so hard it barely missed hitting a ballperson on the fly. Monfils took him completely out of his game. Ferrer managed to win only one game in the fifth set.

I will say one thing, Monfils is the most talented grinder in the world and if he can frustrate Ferrer, the number five player in the world, then he can also beat a whole lot of other players. What I saw today is the full commitment of Monfils to his uber-defensive tennis self, this is who he is so we should all just get over it.

And that probably means more of the same: the ongoing rollercoaster ride with the same cycle of injuries interspersed with brilliant play. We might even get the coaching rollercoaster: Monfils mentioned the word “argue” and “coach” in the same sentence three times in his postmatch media session today.

Whatever, strap me in, I’m ready for the ride.