Nothing I can say will do justice to the distilled quanta of awesome that is this video.
Can we all, instead, simply agree that it “does what it says on the tin”?
(word, big-up, hat-tip and many, many thanks to @andy_murray)
Delpo on the brink of making his first final since his injury comeback….Dolgo on the verge of winning his first ATP title….with Sod/Tsonga and Petra/Kim still to look forward to. That’s how I left it on Saturday night.
It’s not often I ask for EVERYTHING. I’m usually open to a watering down of at least some of my dreams – such flexibility is an essential coping mechanism for life itself.
But then the stakes aren’t usually this high, are they?
Dolgo has “arrived”, now, I would imagine, by anyone’s reckoning – a first ATP title would have accorded perfectly with his gung-ho, indie, all-court narrative. (Aside: Truly astonishing anyone thought he’d find the nickname ‘Dog’ either cute, funny or a term of endearment – he doesn’t)
And I’m guessing friends, fans, frenemies and foe alike are all united in wishing Delpo the best as he makes his precarious comeback – if only (in the case of the latter) so they may feel free to root against him again.
Those particular narratives will have to wait.
1) Soderling over Tsonga 6-3 3-6 6-3
Perhaps the wrong narrative altogether, because I’m afraid the stakes, in this instance, are no longer very high at all.
The most visceral, charged narratives often involve those who stand to lose or gain everything - a remote, anachronistic existence in which ‘anything can happen’ and ‘impossible is nothing’. It seems to me we’ve already had the first act of this with Sod upsetting two of the best players ever.
Always great seeing him come through of course – even a piddly 500 event reminds us why he’s here to stay, and defending a title definitely lends itself to a certain truculence which is, by the way, completely in keeping with his narrative and station.
The very last thing I want to see, however, is this coming at the expense of bigger and better things – or worse, seeing him get comfortable as the “Andy Murray” of the 500 or even the Masters-1000 level. As good as it is, a title like this should, now, mean less to him than it does to someone like Jo-Wills (his first final in 16 months).
There be bigger fish to fry out there Robin. Classical form would now demand that you go fry them.
2) Petra over Kim 64 63.
Voluntary disclosure of rooting interests for 2011: As many as half of my WTA eggs are in Petra’s basket.
Was Kim not at her best? Perhaps. This certainly wasn’t the officially endorsed narrative for the newly crowned world #1 (Update: Neither is Petra’s 76 76 loss to Morita in Dubai earlier today)
What I do know is that Petra’s serve out wide might just be the best shot in women's tennis right now. Unreadable pace. The worst kind.
Oh sure, ‘one win does not a champ make’ and all that, but it’s not just been about the one win has it? This is her second title in 6 weeks which, taken together with her QF run at Oz and SF at Wimbledon last year, simply demands that we take note. (Two Slam fourth rounds in her late teens isn’t too shoddy either)
Perhaps most convincingly of all, it’s the way in which she outplayed rather than outlasted Kim. Ask yourself whether the narrative of the timid counterpuncher is nearly as compelling as that of the audacious upstart.
Timely too – with a whole raft of retirements imminent in 2012, I have an opening in my tennis pool. Maybe even a number of them.
Yes I’m on board, but don’t think for a minute that the decision has been taken lightly:
-- She’s a lefty. Not the philosophical solution to life it’s sometimes made out to be, but the different look does, nevertheless, throw many players (more than you’d think) out of their rigidly defined comfort zones.
-- She’s daring and/or unhinged enough to imagine winners where none exist. True that this can sometimes prove counterproductive (if you saw her match against Woz in Beijing last year you’ll know just how counterproductive) – it’s also a necessary mind-set for anyone with an eye on the big stuff.
Put simply, you have to have it within you to be just a little suicidal against the best players. Both classical form and the big occasion demand it. The timid counterpuncher would never even conceive of blitzing the world #1 and winner of the last two Slams in straights.
-- She has all of the big weapons necessary to pull off an upset at the highest of levels unlike say a MJMS, yet remains far more nuanced than a Rezai – both of whom won Premier events last year. Why should we expect any less of Petra?
-- Best of all, the braces are a feint echo of Sveta’s 2004 USO run. Detail like this is at least as important as any of the above if you’re in the business of narrative.
Nothing is certain of course (whole matches can turn, have turned, round very fast when she loses focus the way she did after Wimbledon last year), but consider all of the above points my “due diligence”.
3) Confession: I still haven’t seen Milos play
I’m hearing the dubious Pete Sampras comparisons. I’m hearing utterly terrifying ice hockey jokes. I’m even hearing some doubts being expressed over the prevailing (overwhelmingly stark) opinion about the future of non-European tennis.
Listen carefully and you might even hear the wind carrying the sound of Dancevic cursing into his glass.
I’m yet to see him hit a ball. Laughable I know. But that’s just the way it panned out with timezones being what they are. All of which means I’m not in a position to weigh up any of the above.
I aim to rectify this before he, you know, wins a Slam or something.
From what little I have gathered, he seems (in common with Dolgo) to have the makings of an all-courter and is not afraid to have a crack at the ball – both of which bode well for the future. Being 6’5 can’t hurt very much either.
If I had it my way, Delpo would have made the final and Dolgo would have won in Brazil. And yet all this talk of “narrative” and “destiny” is of course all utterly preposterous. Smug, self-satisfied spiritualist nonsense – a little too full of its elemental self.
What makes one narrative more compelling than any other lies not always in its strict conformance with classical form. But rather in its audacity.
And more often than not, the more audacious narratives are forged through what seem like mere random inflections at the time.
Like Hantuchova winning her first title since 2007 for instance.
Ask yourself whether Delpos comeback would be nearly as gripping if he won his 2nd event back.
Ask yourself whether Sod winning a Slam (should it happen) would be nearly as compelling if he hadn’t pulled off what he pulled off in 2009.
Nestled deeply somewhere in the swinging, conflicted narratives of Dolgo’s floating hair, Petra’s shining braces and Milos’s scrawny 6’5 frame lies a future threatening to be as uplifting as anything we’ve seen.
Don’t let’s forestall it by being that twat sitting directly in front of you that always gets up and starts clapping before the credits have even started rolling.
By the power of Grayskull!
I have the POWER!
Verdasco d. Ferrer 5-7 6-7 6-3- 6-3 7-6
Aus 2009 folks: Let’s will it into existence.
Minion Gene: Let’s inbreed it out of existence.
[13] G Simon (FRA) d [2] A Roddick (USA) 63 63
[3] [WC] F Verdasco (ESP) d [Q] R Sweeting (USA) 64 75
[4] M Cilic (CRO) d [15] M Fish (USA) 64 46 62
X Malisse (BEL) d [5] J Isner (USA) 64 36 76(5)
I don’t buy into the US Open Series as a concept – never have, never will. A situation not helped by LA and Washington getting practically zero coverage here.
Incentivising players, not likely to bag the USO (and thereby double their earnings), amidst a climate of injury and burn out doesn’t strike me as that plausible nor desirable.
getty
Not unlike these results, of which, perhaps, only Dasco’s win over Sweeting doesn’t cause mild whiplash. Unlike, say, Izzy’s shirt.
There’s also the smallish matter of Squerio, last week’s winner in LA, falling in the first round to Tipsy, leaving, guess what, not a single American left in the draw.
Oh, and Roddick falls to #11 next week.
This picture’s doing funny things to my eyes. Is that trophy levitating?
Verdasco d. Soderling 6-3, 4-6, 6-3
I’m going to take this one squarely on the chin – I obviously thought he didn’t have it in him. A charge to which I can only plead that he mostly doesn’t have it in him. At least not when it matters most.
I’m not going to argue Soderling wasn’t all there.
There was certainly an uncharacteristically high number of short balls landing in the vicinity of Dasco’s forehand (of all places) and a scandalously high percentage of misdirected overheads that almost suggested a certain squeamishness about finishing off a point.
Though credit where it’s due and all that – a lot of that was simply down to Dasco weathering the storm and converting on the opportunities presented to him – like those five or so forehand zingers he fired off those short balls Soder-Pop kept sending his way, Nadal-like in their curvature.
But then neither am I about to argue in favour of extrapolating all sorts of clay-court jollification for Dasco over the coming weeks.
Dasco’s forehand is truly an awesome feat of engineering. It puts him a cut above the more traditional clay courters (of which I’ve had a lot to say on over the past few days), but perhaps therein also lies the rub.
Most of the time it seems like he can’t make up his mind about what exactly to do with it. Like it shouldn’t even be there. He wants so desperately to be Daveed Ferrer, yet is cursed with a marginally flatter version of Rafa’s forehand – only with more pace.
Like a trigger-happy Gulbis trapped inside a clay courters body, what sets “Dasco-SizzleHands” apart is at once also the source of the angst I suspect must plague him at his most critical moments – hardly surprising things should go to pot, as often as they do.
Such obvious incongruity has it’s benefits of course: it allows you to coax your opponents into a false sense of security before zapping their carefully honed image of the player they think you are with strokes you’re not meant to possess.
It’s the type of thing the arthouse critics tend to love, but remains, unfortunately, the exception to the rule.
Mundane as it might sound, such grotesqueries aren’t the way of the world - a greater degree of coherence is what, I suspect, ultimately fosters the consistency that carries players through many more matches than the relatively few transient higher profile victories they might score on the back of that one party trick.
Not sure where that leaves Dasco-Sizzlehands - doomed just like his namesake?
Certainly hope not.
(Photo: AP)
When MC was stripped of it’s mandatory status a couple of years ago, I thought it was all but destined to collapse into a Rolex sponsored scenic sideshow. The stuff of $20K cocktails and starchy-white Marquees, where the rich and famous congregate to exhibit their shiny yachts, whilst professing an unbecoming “love for the game” that I suspect has rather more to do with wanting to preserve the event’s veneer of prestige.
More to the point, I rather believed it might turn into a cutesy opportunity for someone not named Nadal (and preferably outside of the top five) to pick up some “cheap” points – my thinking being that the big wigs would pencil in the week for some rest’n rehab ahead of Rome.
That the event should be a vehicle for Rafa’s return to form, shows what a jarring couple of years it’s been and speaks of exactly the sort of romanticism that makes this the sport I love.
You have to go back all the way to 1919 to find the last time we had a final here as one-sided as this, and even then Frenchman Max Décugis managed to get twice as many games from Romanian Nicholas Mishu (Massu’s family tree anyone?) as Dasco did from Rafa today.
Borg only lost around 21 games when he won the title in the early eighties (though remember to contextualise that by noting he took out more top ten players en route, including the world #1) – this year it only took Rafa 14.
The pedantic analyst in me remains keen to draw attention to the fact that Nadal’s first two opponents were, well, Michael Berrer and Thiemo de Bagel – and that his subsequent three were the hardest of hard boiled clay courters – physical agitators for the rest of the tour maybe, but largely benign in their effect on Rafa.
The unthinking fanboy, meanwhile, remains keen to whack the pedantic analyst over the head with a skillet.
We all know playing clay courters is little more than a practice session for Rafa - their shorter, loopier balls sit up nicely into his hitting zone making it likely he’d beat up on them armed with nothing more than that skillet of mine. And as for those practice sessions of his, well, they’re notorious for sometimes actually being more demanding than any three set match he plays.
What’s perhaps more interesting is how those subsequent three matches played out.
I must admit I had it chalked up in exactly the opposite way, with Ferrero possessing the weakest and most dated of clay court styles, and thereby the likeliest customer to take up a “buy-one-get-one-free” offer at the Nadal Bagel Factory.
Ferru, I essentially had down as the three litre engine version of the lower-emission Mosquito.
Dasco meanwhile, with his greater pace and forehand (as well as what he achieved in Oz last year), I had assumed to be the more dangerous of the three.
JCF’s greater experience and, I would say, fitness, as it turned out, trumped the mental fragilities of Dasco and Ferru, who looked beaten minutes after stepping on court – another glowing endorsement of his recently assumed “#3 clay courter” status, despite going out in straights.
Would I be more convinced if Rafa had faced Jo-Willy rather than Mosquito in the quarters and Djoko rather than Dasco in the final?
Probably, though I still think he’d have won the title. Equally noteworthy, however, is how this less gelatinous route through to victory will in all likelihood garner the levels of confidence and momentum necessary to oust a Jo-Willy, a Big Rob or indeed any other flatty come Rome.
Baptisms of fire are overrated.
Sometimes you need your way cushioned back to success.
With that in mind (and Rafaelites will be pleased to hear this), I’ve given the elephant it’s marching orders.
It’s been my muse over the past week charting Rafa’s ups and Muzza’s downs.
With Rafa on the up again, I’m afraid this room simply ain’t big enough for you – never mind the both of us.
Be nice.
*sniff*
***
Other MC musings:
-- If you’re at all unsure of your form on clay, best not to term one good showing your “best <ever> match <of the year>on clay” (delete as appropriate). Both Jo-Willy and Djoko said as much of their respective performances against Almagro and Nalbandian. Both also fell far short of that in their next matches, with Djoko in particular going down in flames.
-- To be fair to Tsonga, I actually thought he played well against Ferrero. That he can play on clay should be resoundingly clear. That he fell short against a guy he should be able to beat 24 hours later is rather telling too.
-- Djoko’s poor semi final showing is in some ways even worse than what happened to Murray, who does at least recognise the need to appear consistently mediocre in his “sticky patch”. That Djoko can go from his “best form of the year” to not far off his worst in the space of 24 hours suggests there’s still work to be done. Parting ways with Todd may only have been half of the story (if that).
-- Learnt to view Dasco in a gentler, more ‘familial’ light. With both his parents in Monte Carlo and his father courtside in almost every match this week, Dasco was able to ‘keep it real’ (I ascribe a new meaning to phrase that each day) if not completely rediscovering something of the form that’s eluded him since early last year. Daddy Dasco's presence seems to me be an assuring, undemanding and wholly worthwhile one - I’ve rather grown to like it.
(Photo by Julian Finney/Getty Images)
