In a completely lopsided, dull final, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga knocked off Mikhail Youzhny 6-3, 6-3 to win the Rakuten Japan Open Tennis Championships in Tokyo.

Tsonga is peaking when he needs to be, looking to be in good shape to defend the bevy of points he earned this time last year by winning Paris and making the Year End Championships.  If he can keep it up through Shanghai and Paris, he should be able to repeat the feat and make the WTF in London come November.

If the trophy for winning Metz was the alien baby, I'm pretty sure the Tokyo trophy is the ship the alien used to get to Earth.

Ernests Gulbis, another one of my Latvian brethren, advanced to the third round of a tournament for the first time in THIRTY-TWO tries, beating Juan Monaco  6-3, 4-1 ret. in the second round of the in Tokyo.

After reaching the quarterfinals of the Cincinnati Masters event in 2008, Gulbis ascended to a career-high ranking of #38.  He had been on the up and up for some time, making the fourth round of the 2007 US Open and the quarterfinals of the 2008 French Open.   He was also the only player besides Roger Federer to take a set off Rafael Nadal on Nadal's way to the 2008 Wimbledon title, a resume that indicated an impressive ability to threaten the best players on any surface.  Now that he had broken into the top forty, Gulbis looked like a lock to continue deep runs at major tournaments, and to rise into the ranks of seeded players.

But it didn't quite work out that way. 

Gulbis didn't make another quarterfinal (or main draw third round) for over a year, a precipitous fall that sent him out of the top 100.  For a player

It wasn't that Gulbis couldn't win any matches.  In eighteen of the thirty-two tournaments, he won his first round match.  But he was a jaw-dropping 0-18 in his eighteen previous second-round matches, a number so absurd that it indicates an entirely mental issue.  Only eight of the eighteen second-round losses were in straight sets, which indicates that more often than not the gap in ability between Gulbis and his opponent was less than enormous.

So what caused this second round breakthrough for Gulbis? There are two possible reasons, as far as I can see:

1. The change may also be Hernan Gumy
2. Gulbis was simply lucky to face an injured opponent in the second round, and if Monaco had been at 100% the streak would have continued.

If he keeps this up, maybe he can give Anastasija Sevastova a run for her money in the race to be the highest-ranked Latvian.

Stay tuned to The Daily Forehand next week for our interview with Gulbis.

They're more than a thousand miles apart, but Andy Roddick and Juan Martin del Potro played remarkably similar crappy tennis in their first matches of the Asian swing, as each lost his first match since the US Open to a qualifier.

Roddick looked bizarrely punchless against #143 Lukasz Kubot, letting Kubot dictate play from the start.  Kubot jumped out to a two-break, 3-0 lead to start the first set, and never looked back.  Roddick was far too passive throughout, playing the sort of unassertive baseline tennis that got him in so much trouble circa 2007.

After disposing of his first racquet, Roddick seemed to play somewhat more dialed-in tennis in the second set. But the punch still wasn't there, and Kubot broke for the fourth and fifth times to take the match in straight sets by the score of 6-2, 6-4.

Roddick's terrible statistics tell most of the story. He ended the match with a totally uncharacteristic five aces and four double faults.  Even more surprisingly, he won only 58% of points on his first serve, and only 28% on his second serve. 

Roddick should have been plenty ready for this match, having already won a round of doubles in Beijing yesterday with partner Mark Knowles.  But he completely laid an egg today.

#189 Edouard Roger-Vasselin, a French clay courter, was the qualifier to show top-seeded del Potro the door in Tokyo.  del Potro was a finalist in Tokyo last year, but didn't come anywhere near defending those points, losing 6-4, 6-4 in the first round.

del Potro's loss is arguably less surprising than Roddick's, since he's a known slow starter in tournaments.  I watched him nearly get knocked out of the first round of Washington by Yen-Hsun Lu just a couple months ago, as he came out of the gates slow after a long layoff.

del Potro probably has been too busy partying in Argentina to do much practicing since winning the US Open, which is totally understandable.  If he doesn't right the ship by Paris, though, there could be some cause for concern.