The Pseudo-Science Surrounding Rafa’s Slump

Nole’s been unflappable, but pretending Rafa’s slump hasn’t been a contributing factor in at least some of those losses would be just as disingenuous as not giving Nole his due.



Since this weekend there’s been a concerted effort to analyse, rationalise and, in some cases, explain away that slump.

Whilst most of this theorising contains an element of truth, I can’t say I completely agree with any of them. Much of it is simply a heady mixture of pseudo-science and wishful thinking.

Given the scale of Rafa’s domination and his iconic status in the game, this “need for answers” is, of course, completely understandable.

In certain cases, however, this overarching impulse to ‘explain’ has proved so consumptive that it’s lead people to see things that really aren’t there.



1) However poorly Rafa is right now, he’s either won or reached the final of every event he’s entered since the Aussie Open – going out in all four Masters finals to none other than “Nole the Unsinkable”. Immediate observation: Some slump.

2) Even so, a slump is a slump: let us please call it what it is, and not go turning it into some illusory call for him to change his game. Yes really.

3) More to the point, I really can’t see the need for ANY rationalisations – not in any case, the more Freudian ones.

However much we might like to romanticise it, the truth is that no one really knows what starts, perpetuates and ultimately ends a slump: it’s not wholly analytical or technical in nature, but then neither is it as mystical as some appear intent on presenting it.



Whilst no one would deny that the manner of Murray’s departure in the Aussie Open final was what led to his slump – the worst since he entered the top ten – did any one of us see him emerging from it on what is unanimously thought of as his “worst surface”?

Not only that, but to come within one set of bagging two of the biggest scalps this season: Rafa on clay (Monte Carlo) and Nole the Unsinkable (Rome)? (Also both on his “worst surface”)

If Murrays too good not to emerge from a slump, the odds of Rafa failing must be considered non-existent.

The trouble with all the analysis surrounding Rafa is that its being carried out within the false economy of Nole’s streak – which WILL come to an end, just as certainly as Rafa’s slump will.



Should it happen as soon as next week, its entirely conceivable that Rafa goes on to win Slam number 10. Not to take anything away from him (how could I?), but it’s also entirely conceivable that Nole goes out in R16 to one….Jurgen Melzer.

Streaks often end in the most unspectacular way imaginable and without due deference to anyone’s narrative.

Then where will the pseudo-science and mystical charms be?

Rome: CALL IN THE ARMY.

 

 

NOLE: 39, THE WORLD: 0

 

1) There’s only so many ways in which you might underline the warped and, it seems, iconoclastic nature of Nole’s streak. What was once simply ‘astonishing’ has now acquired something of the profane. Nothing is to be gained by adding to any of that, other than to say, N-I-C-E.

2) Anyone that denies thinking he wouldn’t be affected to a lesser or greater degree by Saturday’s exertions against Murray is either in denial, or simply basking in the view afforded by hindsight. 

3) His level in the first set, in particular, was even higher – if this is possible – than during the semis.  Eye-wateringly awesome as that is (and, in its own way, rather chilling), it’s also true that he needed to win this in two.

4) It wasn’t a case of if, but when the effects of the previous day’s exploits would catch up with him. Let there be no illusions that a player as savvy as Nole wasn’t fully cognisant of this.

Or that there wasn’t a premeditated strategy of preventing a third set, which would, quite frankly, have proved disastrous, however poorly Rafa might have been playing. (see ‘Tentative-Rafa trumps Tired-Nole’)

5) Planning such a two set blitz is one thing – it should come as no shock that a player as skilled as Novak is able to execute upon it. Similarly, its not impossible for a world class athlete to pool all his or her (limited) resources into a calculated attempt at playing death-defyingly well up front, knowing full well that it can’t last.

Far better to do that and lose, than to allow yourself to get embroiled in a three setter you can have no hope of winning.

Rome: Weird Schliz Happens.

Only saw the latter half of this so not really qualified to speak.

Which of course means I’m gonna.



Gasquet d. Federer 4-6 7-6(2) 7-6(4)

First point: Reeshie pulling off this schliz should surprise precisely no one. Oh I know, his brain was meant to turn into jelly-beans in the final set tie break , and it didn’t. That is surprising.

What isn’t surprising is his big-budget game: everyone knows he has this kind of result in him.

Second: Rome pulling off this schliz should surprise precisely no one.

Remember in 08 when around half the draw retired with injury and Stan Wawrinka made the final? He wasn’t even awesome back then – and I seem to remember Novak winning the whole thing having barely played three matches.



Not to mention Fed imploding against Volandri the year before. And he was awesome back then.

Weird schliz happens in Rome. And what’s more is, we may not be done yet.

Think, in particular, of Nole’s streak.

It would be exactly in keeping with Rome for someone completely out of sorts to put an end to it. In straight sets, of course, and all with out any ceremony whatsoever. Someone who thinks of clay as his “worst surface”. Someone like, say, Andy Murray.

It’s just so hilariously incredible, its actually credible. (Thanks @artincircles) 

Rome: Govt. Health Warning - Serve-Volley may induce Identity Crises in certain players.

“Is this how Rafa sprawls his legs – can someone help me out here please?”

“I AM Rafa!”

“SHE ain’t Rafa!”

“I should be Rafa – I am NOT Justine people. Would never do that to you”

“Heinz keeps telling me I’m Rafa.”

“I’M SPARTICUS!”

“Even Rafa doesn’t think I’m Rafa.”

If anyone has further information on the events of the past week – please get in touch.

Here’s what seems to have happened.

-- Ana Ivanovic re-emerged on the scene rebranded as a more considered and confident force – but also bolstered by a Russian-Eastern-European Alliance intent on propping up her cause and assimilating her back in the game. One by one they folded either by design or through injury, poor form or sheer want of decorum . The Alliance had evidently not accounted for MJMS. No one had accounted for Nick Clegg either.

-- Whilst the world was still getting to grips with the idea that a Spanish serve-volleying lefty might actually have a shot at the title – Jelena and Serena put on an exhibition of their own.

Only not the one everyone was after.

-- There were some positives (JJs return to form up until that point was nothing short of inspiring), mitigating factors (Serena’s return from knee injury on her least effective surface after an outage of over three months) and even the tennis wasn’t wholly bad.

-- I just couldn’t stand it, that’s all. JJ played a shocker of a first set, Serena followed with two of her own, which, incidentally, it seemed as though JJ had only pulled through because she’d clung on to her sanity the way I’d barely managed to cling on to dear life itself.

I’m aware that certain twitterati out there thought of this in ‘epic’ terms. That word’s most readily bandied about in an effort at deceiving you into thinking that bloat somehow equates with substance.

An error-strewn mess that got so protracted it actually caused time to stand still – the way it sometimes does when you’re stuck in the tube – sardine-tinned in temperatures exceeding 30 degrees C , with only your warped sensory perception and neighbour’s nostril hair for company – I’ve been there.

So when this happened, it somehow seemed both weirdly apt and oddly satisfying.

For anyone currently domiciled on Pluto, the gist of the explanation proffered up by Serena to JJ at the net was: “…would never cheat you like that…don’t think I would do that…I’m not Justine”.

The “that” in question being this.

Oh Serena - let bygones be…present, alive and kicking thankyouverymuch.

-- Having been to hell and back, JJ might have hoped for an easier ride in the final. It was certainly shorter, and not nearly as hellish. Unless that is you consider drop shotting one’s opponents until their ears bleed viable on-court conduct.

Serve-Volley’s only half the story.

The thing about MJMS is she didn’t simply look to defeat her opponents. Most of the time she seemed to be having a party bear-baiting them, before tying them up in all sorts of knots they didn’t even know existed – her style of play doesn’t simply contrast that of most baseliners, it seems to grate.

I’ll have two please.

-- Time also for people to get off their very high horses over this little caper. Not what you would call her finest moment, though lest we forget – coz some folks clearly have – Gonzo was embroiled in a very similar scandal not two years ago. Don’t remember half as many dagger eyes being directed his way.

From what I can tell MJMS is not Gonzo. She’s also been kind enough to confirm that she too, “would never treat anyone like that”.

-- On a related note, how long before we get to see MJMS and Feli-Lopez play mixed doubles together? All sorts of lefty serve-volley mayhem waiting to happen.

-- On a completely unrelated note – coz silly me, that’s what I thought Americans were to red clay – what on earth are Sammy Querrey and Jonny Isner doing jazzing it up in Serbia? Further proof you should never let the haters stop you from doing your (very lofty) thang.

-- At the start of last week, I found myself wondering whether Federer entering Estoril was even a good idea. An early loss at a 250 event – not unlikely under the circumstances – could prove devastating coming so soon after Rome, and would seem to imply that a certain tipping point had been reached.

Has it?

A slap in the face to the Daveed Ferrers of this world, who were kept out of the top ten for all those years only for him to punk out against…Albert Montanes?

A respectable player in his own right, but hardly a Kolya or a Nole, whom Fed lost to in Doha and Basel recently, both also 250 events.

For now, I’m electing to keep schtum on the topic of thresholds and tipping points, unless and until I see that Slam semi-final streak go *snap*. That really would be a tipping point.

(Photos: AFP, Reuters, AP)

Rome: The Great Leggings Crisis.

I love it when the players wear leggings. And while we’re on the topic - sleeves rock too.

It lends itself to a cosier, organic world view of the sport in which we, mere mortals, get to believe we’re not that far removed from it’s elite.

Venus of course, with her willowy frame, takes things to another level. The sixties, jewel heists, Audrey Hepburn – that sort of thing.

Fair enough? Good. Coz everything’s changed.

When Dementcha took to court in both sleeves and leggings yesterday, I may have been mildly amused, but was veering more towards wondering why I’d only seen her try it out once before – it seemed to sit well with both her athleticism, and more pragmatic, image-is-not-quite-everything approach to tennis.

We all know what happened there.

Ana followed that up with a 6-2 7-5 win over Nadia today. A quite heinous first set from Petrova, but let me unmask the real culprit: Baby-blue (sleeved) worn over suitably sleek black leggings.

# DA-DAH-DAAAAH!

Picking apart JJ’s 6-0 6-1 demolition of Venus today, two things seem to stick out.

The first is JJ’s impeccable performance. Not especially surprising given she’d been playing well all week. On the other hand, I’ve not seen this level from her since 2007 or thereabouts.

The second involves more of those black leggings - teal sleeves over black leggings to be precise. And not even the fact that she wore it so well, would prevent Venus from being engulfed in it’s fury.

Serena, Jelena, Ana and MJMS left standing. Neither wore leggings of any sort. Just saying.

No longer surprised at Bepa’s first round exit. She’s got a rather lot to answer for don’t you think?

(Photo: AP)

Rome: Ana’s Back…sorta

Ana Ivanovic has won three matches in a row.

I kid ye not - two of those were top ten wins.

Linz 2008, for the wannabe-eggheads amongst you, was the last time that happened.

When I heard she’d put out Vesnina (a player ranked 26 spots above her), I put it down to chance.

When I heard she’d taken down Vika, I put it down to injury.

As I watched her opposite Dementieva today, there was little doubt in my mind I was seeing a player transformed (That doesn’t mean I approve of all the changes, but we’ll get back to that).

You’ll hear it said often enough over the next 24 hours, so let me just observe right out that Dementcha was not at the races. Disembowel anyone that tries to tell you otherwise.

I just don’t think it matters very much is all and, in any case, doesn’t account for the radical way in which Gunhardt appears to have gone about stripping down and gutting out Ana’s game – before seemingly rebuilding it from the ground up.

Which you might argue is exactly what was required (She’d done the whole one-step-fwd-two-steps-back dance for nearly two years).

Gone, I hope, is the over-pressing, try-hard neurotic – the one that likes to paint all her misgivings as being born of “perfectionism” – and in her place sits a focused but chancy competitor. I did say I hope.

What immediately leaps out at you is how she’s no longer as interested in going for the lines – electing instead in favour of a greater margin for error, mostly (it must be said) through increased spin and height over the net.

That’s right folks, Ana’s gone down the grinders route, much in the way Novak did in 2008. He’s not been the same ever since.

Though I’m more inclined to agree that this was the right thing to do in Ana’s case seeing as how the levels of toxicity present in her game had breached all internationally agreed limits, and how taking the pressure off herself in this way seems to have allowed her to relax. She’s certainly not spraying errors anymore.

There’s also the beefier serve of course, which no longer appears to suffer from those giddy ball tosses, and which dug her out of many tough spots today.

What happens from this point on is largely down to her opponents and whether or not Ana’s in her happy place.

At her best she now seems capable of exactly the kinds of changes in pace and direction missing from her tennis philosophy only a few months ago (the word “texture” was mentioned). That I like.

At its worst, it’s little more than pushing (which would likely quickly be seized upon by a more demanding presence than Elena proved to be today).

But you know what? She doesn’t appear to care. For now it’s good enough to have her winning matches again, so I can’t in all honesty say that I do either.

Over in Estoril, some guy called Roger Federer won his first clay court match of the season. From what I hear he’s considered a good bet for the French Open, though he himself insists he’s not the favourite.

He’s right.

(Photo: AP)

Rome, Stuttgart Round Up…

Apologies for the lack of coverage. There’s a phrase you thought you’d never hear.

The apology is as much to myself as anyone else seeing as how Rome is meant to be my favourite clay court event.

Plenty of happenings this week, both of the Romanic and Germanic variety - no time to luxuriate in any one of them I’m afraid. Well maybe just this one.

Oh yes, we could indulge in a spot of trophy-biting again, but I much prefer Rafa doing his prancing leprechaun thing – don’t you?

Comeback complete….I should say.

With not a damn pachyderm in sight.

I’m sure there was a spanking great final played in Rome today, and congrats to Ferru for making his first Masters final and all that – I just didn’t happen to see very much of it.

As far as I’m concerned the real final took place on this very same arena 24 hours ago.

Up until that point Rafa’s dirt-ridden comeback, however dominant, remained possessed of a certain liminality – one that would seemingly only be removed by his taking down a shotmaker in cold blood.

Mission accomplished, though Ernie ensured there was nothing cold about it.

That’s the sound of pedantic analysis being swept away by a deluge of unbridled optimism.

-- Over in in Stuttgart, Juju picked up her first title of Career 2.0. with a 6-4 2-6 6-1 win over Sam Stosur, who, incidentally, will be world #8 on Monday.

Trouble is it wasn’t terribly convincing. One wonders what the result would have, could have been, had Stosur retained the focus that saw her reach a ten-match clay court streak. Similar levels of shoddiness pervaded JuJu’s route through the entire draw – with forehand-vulgaris putting in the odd, unwelcome appearance.

Difficult to complain very much when someone subdues a field comprised of seven of the world’s top ten players, without playing their best tennis.

One only wonders if such sloppier performances are to be a more regular feature of her second coming.

And whether shaping her entire comeback tour around Wimby, perhaps at the expense of her signature surface, is in fact the best approach.

Allez…I think.

-- At start of the week I confess I rather dissed Ernests Gulbis as “a haircut and a forehand” (after checking with Lendl of course).

Now I’m thinking “a haircut, a forehand and a drop shot too”, and a lot more besides - I’m also positively Samsonesque in my insistence he not clip those locks of his.

Monte Schmonte. Right here’s where the clay court season began. And when one of our most vaunted debutantes elected to announce himself.

***

And now a moments reflection for those no longer with us – or, to be more precise, those running a little thin on presence lately.

1) Biggest of big fish first.

Federer going out early at a Masters event no longer surprises anyone. I’ve long since given up trying to make sense of it. Think of it as the new world order.

Don’t have much time for the weary assumption that he doesn’t accord Masters events the same degree of respect and/or attention (Slams are ostensibly bigger fish, but how precisely does one go about marking down their levels of commitment by the commensurate 1000 ATP points?).

Easier to believe the less forgiving three set format and increased competition of the second half of his reign has something to do with it.

2) Oh Muzza….you almost had me convinced.

For one match only he played the kind of tennis that might have left you thinking, “Crisis? What Crisis?”.

Then of course he ran into Daveed Ferrer, and it was all revealed as a sham.

Not out of the thick of it just yet then, and clay will likely never host his best results, but perhaps some evidence that the Muzzanomic downturn might be shorter lived than initially anticipated.

3) Djoko shouldn’t actually be part of this list, seeing as how I thought he gave a great account of himself – his loss to Dasco certainly bore little resemblance to the haemorrhaging at Monte, and were it not for Ernie and Nadal the very next day, would have been the match of the event.

4) Dinara’s resurfaced. It didn’t last very long. Don’t call her Dina (Dinarik, or Dinarochka’s ok).

(Photos: Getty, Reuters, AFP)

Barca Roundup and Something Inspiring

-- I’m not inclined to apologise for the lack of Barcelona coverage.

The truth is, I’ve hardly been following Barca – my default position being that, with Rafa out, this should be Robin’s for the taking.

With nothing more than Dasco and (until this morning) lil’ol Thiemo de Bakker standing between Robin and the title, victory here would not so much serve as a signature-win, as losing would be a telling loss.

It’s not that Dasco can’t hurt Soderling, more that he’d need him to have a bad day. And right now I’d say he’s having rather more of those than Robin.

-- Sod’s learnt to slide on clay.

I kid ye not.

As little as I’ve seen of Barca, I did manage to catch parts of his match against Thiemo de Bakker today. And sure enough, there it was. Clear as day.

It was one of those moments of discovery when time itself appears to stand still - with Strauss’s “Sunrise” score playing in the background.

Trouble is, it currently looks about as natural (and as much of a stunt) as this.

Still, I can’t but help admire that he thinks it important to try.

-- My (very public) reservations about French tennis aside, Tsonga almost had me convinced these past two weeks that he’d “discovered himself” on clay.

His statements to that effect, his last two matches in Monte and second consecutive win over Angsty-Almagro in Barca this week, were almost too good to be true.

Which means, of course, that I suspect they were too good to be true.

I didn’t thankfully, get to see him fold against de Bakker yesterday, but from the reports I’ve read it was a torrid, sorry affair.

I’ve no doubt that he should be able to play on clay – it sits well with my view that clay court tennis has been rebranded over the past few years as a somewhat flatter, more aggressive affair, a not so distant cousin of hard (or indeed grass) court tennis.

In fact so sure am I of Tsonga’s ability on any surface, that I believe he’ll make the migration wholesale - foibles, warts and all.

***

So the Rome draws out. First impressions – Rafa and Roger in the same half, with a semi final face off in the works. That’s not exactly news of course, except no one seems to remember the last time this happened.

Scratch a little deeper, however, and you’ll quickly see that that’s only the (uninteresting) half of it. For this appears to me to be the most lopsided, systematically skewed draw since Daveed and Goliath squared off against one another in the “Valley of Elah Open” as the top two seeds.

In the blue corner:

• Fed to face Gulbis/Baggy in his opening match. Really? Really.
• Rafa most likely set to face Kohlschreiber in his. Yeah, His Right-Honourable Seed-Slayin’ self.
• Hell, let’s throw Sod and Big Berd in there too. I mean they can always be relied upon to capitulate, right?
• And just to prove to you we really are intent on painting every last bit of that town red, we’ll also throw in the Croatian Duo of the slightly improbable winner of IW and this year’s Delpo in for good measure too?

Meanwhile, over in the dead red corner we have:

• Djoko (who must be thanking his lucky stars),
• Tsonga/Dasco (not the toughest of tough cookies – at least not with the dough the French Tennis Federation use),
• Ferrero/Ferrer (clay courters have a place in tennis I believe, though I’m no longer convinced it’s in the clay court season),
• Muzza (in a self-proclaimed existential crisis)
• and..er...Janko Tipsarevic. Whom I only mentioned once in the past week because he can’t be a*sed to twitter.

(Photo: AFP)