Moneyball<\/a> 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 \u2013 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<\/b>, a five tool player who had all the physical tool but didn\u2019t have the proper mental makeup to play professional baseball.<\/p>\nBeane now chooses players for the Oakland Athletics, a major league baseball team, but if he\u2019d been picking tennis players instead, he might have skipped over Monfils because maturity is a word that has seldom been attached to Monfils\u2019 name. Luckily for tennis, players are not signed to teams and given a big signing bonus, they\u2019re allowed to mature over time and they only get paid when they win matches.<\/p>\n
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?<\/p>\n
Monfils started in with the rope-a-dope. If his fellow countryman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga<\/b> can be compared to Muhammad Ali<\/b>, then Monfils actually uses Ali\u2019s tactics. Speaking of which, it\u2019s hard not to think that Tsonga\u2019s run to the Australian Open final didn\u2019t light a fire under Monfils or, at the very least, arrive as a wakeup call.<\/p>\n
Anyway, back to the rope-a-dope. Ferrer is a counterpuncher and Monfils didn\u2019t give him anything to punch with so Ferrer had to be the aggressor and that didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t penetrate Monfils\u2019 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.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d like to tell you that Monfils has turned a corner. That he\u2019s 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\u2019t see it. He doesn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
Instead, he frustrated Ferrer so badly that he had the poor guy imitating James Blake<\/b> 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cargue\u201d and \u201ccoach\u201d in the same sentence three times in his postmatch media session today.<\/p>\n
Whatever, strap me in, I\u2019m ready for the ride.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}