It was no surprise to see Andy Murray here in the final today, he was my pick to get by James Blake and then Andy Roddick. Blake pretty much shot himself in the foot against Ivo Karlovic in the quarterfinals, and Roddick succumbed to Murray yesterday in straight sets in the semi-finals. Roddick seemed strangely muted by Murray’s excellent anticipation on the return of serve. With his power game on hold, Roddick instead tried to play cat and mouse around the court. This was unwise and did not signal any trumpeting calls that Roddick was going to win this match. He needed to force his game more on Murray, and really go after his serve and attack him at every chance. After game three I realized this was going to be Murray’s match to win.

Ivo Karlovic presented similar problems in that Murray had to figure out a way to mute Karlovic’s serving power the way he did Roddick’s. An interesting contrast was provided by how Beni Becker fared in the previous day’s semi-final match against Karlovic. He couldn’t decipher the direction of Ivo’s big serves at all. Sometimes he would guess, a lot of the time he was the proverbial deer fixed in the headlights. Murray, though, managed to get some part of his racquet on many of Karlovic’s serves, first and second. This was the biggest factor in his win today.

Is it the quality of his hands at work? They’re very soft, the way McEnroe’s were, and McEnroe loved to blunt the power of the big servers. He would often be inside the line to return serve knowing he could anticipate and handle it.

Murray took pace off many of his shots and, at least, Karlovic tried to attack more than Roddick. But his execution was poor. A ton of shots ended up in the net when he was in a dominant net position.

The pair traded sets then concluded the third with another tiebreak. At 2-1 in the tiebreak Ivo stepped around a second serve but knocked the forehand long to go down a mini-break, 3-1. Murray hit to his forehand again and this one sailed long too, 4-1. Karlovic wasn’t dead yet and uncorked a second serve ace up the T to crawl back to 4-2. But then he doublefaulted(!) for 5-2. A chip and charge play was next on Ivo’s To Do list but he netted it. Murray closed the tiebreak and the match out with an ace. The final score was 6-7(3), 6-4, 7-6(2).

Good work Andy, Good work Ivo, you had a great week, and welcome back after your knee problems.

As for Andy Murray, I think he is one of the more perfect opponents for Roger Federer. Sure, Roger lost to Andy last summer when he was plainly spent, but Murray has the sort of game that could give Roger Federer more than a few fits. Maybe not this year, but soon.

This week I’m attending the ATP event in San Jose, California, and thank God the end is in sight. Never having covered a live tennis event before, I am learning a few things. Like how to stretch yourself over a week-long event and knowing how much tennis you should be watching and how much you should be writing. It’s very easy to get swept up doing the former and neglecting the latter. Covering a two-week slam event must be a real bastard. If I ever reach that point, I will go into training for it first. Whatever training one needs. Stamina for sure.

But now we’re down to business again. This afternoon two of the quarterfinals concluded, and the results left the crowd groaning. Clearly they were for Mardy Fish, one of three Americans left so far, besides Roddick and Spadea, who play each other tonight. Fish got bombed, literally, by big-serving Ivo Karlovic of Croatia.

What can we say about Dr. Evil as he is affectionately referred to on occasion? He certainly looks like he’s 6’10” tall but his serve was surprisingly varied. Not quite the steady blasts of hugeness I was expecting. I kept turning to the radar gun to see the speed and was surprised to find he often serves closer to 130 than 140 mph. For some reason the ball flies off his racquet as if it were steadily over 140. The sound is different as it comes off his racquet. Kind of a rumble. From the jungle. Ooohhh. Scary noises! Fish consistently threw in serves close to 140, in fact he kept serve consistently with Karlovic, but his sounds lighter. Maybe we can say he’s a tenor while Ivo is a baritone. Fish was serving sharp cracks; Karlovic’s serve sounds like heavy artillery. Blake talked in his presser last night about how impossible the serve was to read because it is coming at you from a higher up angle than the other guys on tour. It gave Blake fits and today it was Fish’s turn.

Watching this match was like watching a lot of NBA games. You can hit the snooze alarm and go back to sleep until the last five minutes – or the tiebreak as we call it in tennis – because nothing of import really happens until then, sorry to say. This is the lot of the huge servers. Not many people think they have much of a game beyond their serve.

But Karlovic does. We saw a few actual rallies. I was betting we would not see too many rallies where the ball crossed the net more than three times. We got a few more than that. Dr. Evil held his own off the ground better than Marat Safin did in the following match. He can move pretty decently for a tall tall guy, and he has nice low volleys that skim the net with a firm pace. You don’t want to see this guy get into a groove on his serve, which happened here in the semi-finals, his first signs of real life on the tour after a while off due to a knee injury. His serve is getting more honed in the further he goes.

Fish had his chances. His serve held out well, that wasn’t the problem. A few key points did him in. At 5-4 in the first set he had several chances. Karlovic threw in his first double fault of the match for 0-15, then Fish dumped a good return at Ivo’s feet that he netted. But on the next point Karlovic came to net and Fish decided he wanted to try a lob. Poor shot selection there. I thought for sure he would go up the line to Karlovic’s backhand. Not many lobs get over guys this tall, and Karlovic put it away easily. Then a moment later Fish got a rare gift: a second serve out to his forehand, but he netted it. Karlovic held on to his serve, and into the tiebreak they went. Here Fish’s backhand let him down, he knocked one long and another into the net. His serve was fine, it was the ground game that let him down. Ivo grabbed the tiebreak 7-2.

In the second set a few moments early on caused Fish to give up the break. “It’s not over yet,” yelled a woman in the stands. Oh yes it is, said I to myself. Ivo kept motoring along with those powerful serves and nobody was going to make a dent in them on this day. 7-6(2), 6-4 was the final score.

Ivo Karlovic’s opponent in tomorrow’s semi-final will be a good-serving guy as opposed to a huge-serving guy, Benjamin Becker. Becker handled Marat Safin pretty handily. The crowd wanted Safin for sure, this was his first trip to the bay area and people hoped the experience was such that further trips might be forthcoming. We hope so but not a good day for the big Russian, who looks surprisingly less hunky in person than he does on TV. Nice legs, dude. Oh Pat, they ALL have nice legs, just stop, will you woman?

In the middle part of the first set you could feel Becker was going to have his way with the big Russian. Both men served well, but as far as his ground game went, it was Safin the Here One Minute Gone The Next guy who materialized. Karlovic played better from the baseline than Safin, who had too many errors to have a chance at the win. You could sense Safin was not fully focused somehow into the match, and that if Becker could hold his own halfway the match would be his.

Both men held serve until 5-4 in the first set. Serving to even the match, Safin knocked a backhand long for 15-40 on his serve setting up set points for Becker. The Russian erased one but then netted another shot and Becker had the break and the set, 6-4.

Becker had moments where he could have gone off the track, like in the first game of the second set when he threw in two double faults in a row. I like his calm, capable approach toward the game. He is learning very quickly how to step it up at the big points, decide on the right shot, and then carry it through. He was not rattled at all like he was in the previous match with countryman Bjorn Phau. His serve was seriously in danger of breaking down, and so was his normally very steady and positive attitude on the court.

Here he did everything he needed to do to hold serve, and Safin could not pick up his ground game. Becker broke him for a 3-1 lead and that was all he needed. Pretty neat win in one hour and one minute, 6-4, 6-4. It may look like a surprising win on paper, even if Becker was seeded here and Safin was not. But if you were there you could see Safin was just not quite there. Becker was going to have his day.

Because it’s the quarters now, they held post match interviews during the day events. Becker spoke very positively about his college experience at Baylor which he credits, in particular, for accentuating the importance to his career of proper intense weight training regimes. It also provided him with a very good education, and that, smiles Becker, was really what he went there for. In Europe you go to school to study, period. If you want sports you go another route. So Becker felt the American college experience would be much more appropriate for him as a person and a player.

It’s been a pleasure following his growth as a new player coming onto the scene. He comes over as a reasonable human being.

For a tennis player.

Go Beni!

We are lately debating the merits of Richard Gasquet acquiring a new coach. Nina, I am glad you agree that Gasquet needs a coach who is outside of the French federation. I’m sure Gasquet has seen enough of himself at a tender age on the cover of the French tennis magazines. He’d probably like to track down all copies and burn them. All of which leads me to conclude that tennis matters a lot more in Europe, Russia and South America than it does here in the States. In fact it’s probably slipped here since ten years ago when Sampras and Agassi made life interesting for us stateside.

If you want to grow up anonymously as a tennis player, it would be good if you were an American. You won’t find the same pressure from your countrymen the way Amelie Mauresmo and Richard Gasquet do. Not surprisingly, both players now reside in Switzerland, Land of the Ultimate Cool and Restraint. It’s the home of Federer, after all. They are really blase now, those Swiss. Perfect place to live! Ain’t neutrality grand? I’m surprised that half the French tennis crowd hasn’t moved there yet.

Nina, you ask whether players today are afraid of the treadmill. I think they are even though players are a lot fitter today. I would not say Gasquet is one of them. So his coach’s first order of business should be a solid training program. Then the fine tuning can begin.

Should Gasquet go for what Nina terms “a hard line” coach? I don’t think we want someone who would brutalize Gasquet the teddy bear, but certainly someone who possesses a strong work ethic, and who can recognize that it all starts with physical conditioning.

The key is not how well a coach can run poor Gasquet around, but how well he can communicate. Your hunch about Pete Sampras’ unsuitability as a coach may be correct; I think Pete can analyze well but his verbal fluency isn’t that great. I don’t see him entering the coaching arena at all, and probably not the commentary booth too much either.

Of course there is the other extreme and that’s where I would place Brad Gilbert. He is a coach who provides nearly non-stop verbal patter to his players. The man can’t stop communicating. This is his great strength, I would argue, but his style may be too “in your face” for some people. Ditto John McEnroe, a great player but one who is probably so idiosyncratic that he won’t find a good way to distill his experiences and pass them along. Actually his brother Patrick would make a better coach, and has. He couldn’t play nearly as well, but he can analyze and communicate more effectively than John.

Which raises an interesting point about coaches: does a great player necessarily make a good coach? Not at all, unless the player can step outside himself and see what he’s doing on the court. Some great players know how to do what they do instinctively but they may not be able to teach it or even recognize it themselves. A great player may not know how to make other players great.

When I was working with actors, our coach would stress that you need to communicate clearly and simply what you want from them. For some reason it feels very appropriate in this case too. He used to tell us to talk to actors until the light comes on in their eyes and then shut up. I always thought that was pithy, useful advice.

One of our readers this morning threw in the name of Mats Wilander. This is one of my two choices to coach Gasquet. The other would be Paul Annacone. Annacone’s claim to fame was his long-time association with Pete Sampras. Now he works part-time with Tim Henman. Annacone was not a great player by any stretch, but he has morphed into a really good coach with a calm, analytical style that also appears low-key. The question would be, however, does he want to move on after Henman retires and coach someone new like Gasquet?

Wilander is interesting because he was a great player who can analyze well and he has a style of game that can connect with Gasquet’s all-court play. Wilander won Slams on all four surfaces (he won the Australian Open when it was still played on grass). Mentally, Wilander was very very strong as a player. He is also hard-nosed. I heard his comments last year about Federer losing to Nadal in the Rome final. They were rather brutal, albeit true. It’s the way Mats said it that offended a number of people, but I recognize that sometimes you have to talk tough truth to power. I said that Roger took his foot off the gas at the crucial moment in that match; Wilander accused Federer of lacking balls. Same meaning in the end, but one came out a lot harsher. Does Gasquet need to be talked to in such a strong fashion? Maybe he does. Wilander’s Swedish matter-of-factness may be very good for someone like Gasquet.

Nina, I like the idea of Courier a lot too. He is a Francophile, but he is not part of the French system. The best of both worlds there. He’s got a good head and a steady game. But he may be so thrilled to have landed Sampras on his Seniors Tour that his time and energies may really want to go there.

Besides, the thing I wonder about Courier as Gasquet’s coach is this: Does a player need to have a coach who plays a nearly identical game? Or can they be miles apart? Should they be miles apart? Courier’s game is much more a power baseline game, while Gasquet is more about finesse and all-court play.

What says you, Nina?

Well, she’s done it! The improbable fortnight drew to a close in Melbourne and Serena Williams, unseeded, delivered a majestic shellacking of World’s Number One Maria Sharapova. In the unofficial Battle of the Citruses, Serena (lime) and Maria (lemon) whipped us up a fine little cocktail, probably a bit tarter for the Russian girl than the one from Compton. 6-1, 6-2 sounds pretty tart to me.

It was not a good sign for Maria that her first serve was a double fault. That was the first of six for her. Even though she got to 40-15 in that opening service game, Maria ended up dropping serve. This was especially alarming because reportedly before the match Maria had been out doing a last-minute tuning of her serve, which has not been especially stellar here down under. Her serve has been up and down, mostly it has been down.

The stats on serving revealed the damage: Maria won only 6 of 23 points on second serves for 26%, while Serena earned 10 of 16 for 63%. And even on some of her first serves Maria appeared like a deer in the headlights. Serena was just too on her game and returning too well for Maria to make any headway with her serving game. Serena had 7 aces to 3 for Maria; double faults were 6 to 2. The errors were close, 13 to 11, but the winners showed Serena’s dominance, 28 to only 12 for Maria. When given break chances, Serena munched a bunch, earning 4 of 6 breaks to 0 of 2 for Maria.

I think Maria came out and was intimidated nearly from the get-go. When Maria Sharapova cannot use her biggest weapon, her serve, the night in question will probably stretch for an eternity.

Her other big weapon, her forehand, barely saw the light of day. The problem there was Serena just never let her into anything resembling a rally. If you want to devise a plan for beating Sharapova, this is nearly a perfect way to go: you serve like gangbusters and hope that her serve goes south, which it can. Then you pounce on her serves, first and second, and hammer them for outright winners, never letting her get into a rally. Basically, you smother the poor child. She never got a chance to see the light of day.

Serena spoke in the presser about her ability to hug the baseline, another reason she got the early drop on her opponent. She can step inside the court and take away the angles and pressure her opponent relentlessly from there. Sharapova plays well when she can get momentum going. This time Serena allowed her none at all.

As Serena has shown over the years that when she gets up in a match she is nearly always in control. She is 25-0 in matches when she wins the first set. Her main regret was that she could not bagel Sharapova, especially in the first set when it seemed clear that was what Serena was going for. She probably recalled how Davenport baked a couple of bagels for Maria at Indian Wells in ’05 and figured she should at least try for one herself.

Is it easier to go down to defeat feeling like you’re a seal pup at clubbing time, or would you rather have it come down to a hair’s breath between you? I mean, if you really HAVE to lose a match. Of course Maria would say that either way sucks. She is a woman who does not care to lose to anyone in any fashion, nor is it fun for her to look across the locker room and “see someone else sipping champagne.” She’ll suck it up like a big girl, she’ll hang out with Andy Roddick (rumor has it they have been quietly dating for a year now), they will commiserate with each other. Both will be back.

You kind of wonder what father Yuri had to say to her afterwards. Does she get another drubbing, this time verbally, from Pops? Probably not in this case. Serena was in a zone and Maria was not. There is not much anyone can do for you, Mama did say there would be days like this. That seemed to be Maria’s chief regret: it was her mom’s birthday, and her daughter could not give her the one gift she really wanted to give her.

For a minute there in the latter stages of the match, I thought I detected a tear rolling down Maria’s cheek. I nearly felt sorry for her.

Serena held thoughts of her dead half-sister, Yetunde Price, during the match. We really won’t know all that this family has been through in the last few years, as Serena has said. That’s why I think this win, her third Australian Open title and her 8th Grand Slam, has to be one of her greatest victories. A lot of order was restored to the House of Williams with this one.

For Serena I could not be happier. This was a tremendously satisfying win to experience with her. After all, we’ve experienced everything else with the Williams family. I made fun of her size and her outfits and her huffs and puffs as she covered court in her early matches. The “R” word for retirement was probably hovering around the heads of both the Williams girls, I thought.

Now Serena is already laying plans for the French. As she puts it, there are “some things” she wants to work on, now that she’s got the bit firmly between her teeth again. Is she saving Wimbledon for Venus? I hope so. The other Williams sister is going to want in on this hand, she was the one who helped Serena get back fit enough to enter Melbourne. In their offseason training it was Venus who was really pushing her sister, in spite of her wrist injury. At some point very soon Venus Williams will join her sister and they will feed off each other’s success once again.

With her ranking suddenly now catapulting to number 14 in the world, Serena should feel a lot of incentive to keep improving. There is a great rush of energy when you win a big event; you want to keep building on that. We all have wondered what this means for women’s tennis, to have a former champion suddenly emerge from inactivity to the top of the heap. Is this a good or bad thing? Does this completely demoralize the rest of the field? Probably not in the way that Federer’s dominance poses problems for the men. He really is running away with the field.

But right now in women’s tennis the real estate at the top just opened up again. We have a handful of women who could vie for the top spot at year’s end. It’s up for grabs. Justine Henin will return, in what sort of spirit God only knows after her divorce. Mauresmo is flickering again like a candle in a sudden draft. Sharapova is back to her drawing board and Serena Williams needs more fitness and yet more matches.

Today it’s especially good to be a Yank, but hopefully we can all celebrate the return of one of the game’s real power brokers. This could be a fun year in tennis!

Go Serena!

See Also:
Warrior Women: Serena Meets Shahar
The Yanks Step It Up In Melbourne

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Back when I was a feral youth I had occasion to thumb my way through Israel, arriving at a southern kibbutz where I promptly headed for the showers. To my great astonishment, an Israeli girl my age got into my very small shower with me. Now, there were about fifty other fine showers in the immediate vicinity, but she happened to pick mine. God, something interesting to write home about, I thought. My first lesbian experience. Or something like that. No such thing happened, she was probably just being a good water-saving citizen. But her aggressiveness really threw me.

I happened to recall this episode yesterday when I saw Shahar Peer push Serena Williams all over the court in the first set of their quarterfinal encounter. Basically the Israeli came out and got in Serena’s face in a major way. Serena probably thought, like I did, “What the hell is going on?”

This was not the same 6-1 drubbing Serena got from Nadia Petrova in the first set of their encounter in the third round. This set went 6-3, but I was more worried here about Serena than against Petrova. We know Petrova can go the way of the Big Chokes. Shahar Peer sends out the message, very strongly, that she’s not a choker; you have to beat this babe, she won’t do it herself. I saw her play for the first time last summer when she beat Dementieva in the fourth round at Roland Garros. Her game had heft and her personality had the fire and strength of a future Top Tenner for sure.

This is one tough cookie. We can safely say that Peer has a level of experience that the other women on the tour don’t have: she’s been in the Israeli army. Maybe I am overly impressed by this fact, but this girl can kick ass. Serena unfortunately has a lot of ass to kick. We have made fun of her rather mercilessly here of late, but Serena is getting the last laugh on all of us. Peer made a good leap at the throat of Serena in this match and, particularly in the first set, she showed us a powerful repertoire of shots.

After losing the first set to the steady, deep shot-making of Peer, Williams got herself in gear a bit and took the second, 6-2. But even with that comeback you were holding your breath for her chances. Shahar was not going to be a bagel in the third set, as is often the case with the big women stars who play lesser female players. How often have we seen one of them fight a set off of a name player, only to see that player come back and punish her severely in the third? This is where bagels get baked. Peer was not going to be in this league. And to her credit, Serena realized she was going to have to dig very deep to beat her.

Let’s pick up the action in the third set, the set where Mary Carillo said we’ll see “who stands up and for how long.” It looked like Serena was on her way, finally, when after four deuce points she finally broke Peer for a 3-1 lead. She consolidated the break serving for 4-1. But Peer broke back to make it 4-3, then fought off Serena to hold for 4-4.

Peer swings a good two-handed backhand and she has a booming forehand. She may want to build up more power on her serve though. Right now it has a big roundhouse motion but not a lot of power coming into the ball. It reminds me a bit of that other loopy server, Patty Schnyder.

Serena Williams however still has a great serve, it has helped her through her earlier matches here, and this was about the time she figured she had better use it. At 4-4 with two break points against her, Serena uncorked an ace for 30-40, then did it again for deuce. She wriggled her way free of that game with yet a third ace and it was now ahead 5-4 with Peer to serve.

Serena had a total of 11 aces, Peer had none. The serve may have separated the two players in the end. As Serena’s serving got better, Peer had trouble getting her first serve in, and Williams was enjoying a bit of a munch fest on the second one. Peer struggled to hold for 5-5 thanks to a few more errant forehands from Serena.

Crunch time came with Williams serving to go up 6-5. She knocked another forehand wide for love-15. But there was nothing wrong with her backhand, which she used beautifully to pick up a ball from a low angle and hit cross court for a winner to get to 15-15. A moment later at 30-30, Serena knocked another forehand into the net and she was down a break point. Her serve helped her out. A good rocket serve out wide to Peer’s backhand set up an easy swing volley that Williams knocked off for deuce. But she missed her first serve and Peer hit the second for a clean forehand winner up the line for a break point. Williams then uncorked a daring second serve up the line to Peer’s forehand, but Peer handled the return well and Williams smacked ANOTHER forehand wide. A break for the Israeli, and a chance to close the deal at 6-5.

This was where Peer needed a bit more experience under her belt; Williams has been living in these moments for a long time now. She knows the drill. Peer missed a couple of first serves and Serena made hay with the second. At 30-30, Peer hit a forehand wide, then on the long rally for the next point another forehand went into the net and Serena had broken back for 6-6.

The Australian Open, like Wimbledon, does not have a tiebreak in the closing set, so whoever wins by two games takes it all. Serena could smell the goodies now, and to celebrate she started off with a 122mph ace for 15-0, then aggressively moved into net on a short forehand from Peer and put the point away with a winning backhand. She went up 40-0 with another ace, then got the break when Peer netted another easy forehand.

Trailing 7-6, Peer served, and Williams unleashed a good forehand return of serve for a winner, 0-15. Following a fierce rally, Peer came back with her own great forehand up the line for 15-15. Williams netted a backhand for 30-15, but then Peer went into Williams’ forehand and Serena put it away for 30-30. Peer decided to come into net but overhit a backhand volley, match point against her. After another intense rally the Israeli pushed a forehand long and Serena was the one leaping for joy.

Whew! Is it great to have her back or what? I know my co-writer thinks Serena will have little motivation to get fitter if she does advance further into this tournament, but I disagree. I think the joy of getting through these tough rounds is going to translate into Serena Williams heading back to the gym and riding that emotion to a new fitness level. I think she will want to celebrate her good fortune, her sudden resurrection, which now only she can make permanent. She will become a grunt again. She must become a grunt again.

Supported by a small but vocal group of supporters, Peer played peerlessly for the first set, then was able to turn around her lack of consistently good play in the second and make her way back in the third to the doorstep of victory. The fact that she could not close the deal just means she does not yet have enough experience in really big moments. That will change. But how she got to this really big moment is a matter all of her own doing. She should take away as much from this match as Andy Murray will out of his encounter with Nadal.

Mazel Tov!

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