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Andy Roddick Loses His Cool, Loses Early in Second Round Upset
by Ben Rothenberg on Sep 2, 2010 1:33 AM EDT
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Andy Roddick had a disappointing US Open in 2009. He lost in the third round to John Isner, falling in a fifth-set tiebreaker after dropping the first two sets.
Roddick came into the 2010 US Open with few points to defend, and relatively little hype, given the media swarm that always buzzes around Roddick in New York. But Roddick failed to meet even the measured expectations that were set for him by the so-called experts of tennis.
Under the lights at Arthur Ashe Stadium, Roddick fell 3-6, 7-5, 6-3, 7-6(5) to Janko Tipsarevic (the most recent recipient of The Daily Forehand bump), meaning that Roddick failed to defend even the modest third round points he had earned last year.
Though it might seem like an exit in the second round would mean going out with something of a whimper, Roddick was extremely colorful in what turned out to be his final grand slam match of the year.
For starters, Roddick was wearing a bright blue shirt, a departure from the cycle of white, grey, and black that he has worn ever since switching to Lacoste some five or so years ago (maybe the occasional navy blue snuck in there, but that would have been it). The bolder color certainly didn't embolden Roddick's game, as he played some of the most passive, restrained tennis possible for someone who purports to have a power game.
Roddick did go full-blast at one point in the match, however. After being called for a foot-fault late in the third set, Roddick tore into the lineswoman who made the call, haranguing her for mistakenly saying that it was his right foot that hit the line instead of the left.
Roddick ranted on and on about the call for the rest of the third set, yapping at the lineswoman and nearby Tournament Referee Brian Earley for several minutes afterward. The emotional outburst awoke the crowd for the first time in the night, a crowd that Roddick had completely failed to utilize to his advantage to that point.
Though it might have helped his energy level for the remainder of the loss, the entire lineswoman incident reflected really poorly on Roddick. Though he did not cross the line from "obnoxious" to "threatening" the way Serena Williams did last year, Roddick still acted like a bullying ass. If he knew that he only ever foot faults with his left foot, why did he ask for clarification as to which one it was?
Replays showed that the call was the correct one, and two additional foot fault calls made later in the match showed that it was not an isolated problem for Roddick.
But as problematic as Roddick's feet were for him, it was his head that did the most damage tonight. Roddick played incredibly cautious, tentative tennis off the ground, not delivering his forehand with the cracking power he did back when he won this tournament some seven years ago. His serve also wasn't nearly as lethal or aggressive as it has been. Tipsarevic hit more aces than Roddick, and generally held with greater ease.
I don't understand why someone who possesses the power Roddick does would try to turn a match into a track meet, but that's what he did today. Against the speedier Tipsarevic, Roddick prolonged rallies, instead of forcing the issue and imposing his game.
It's a broken record-like refrain at this point, but this loss has to go down as one of the most disappointing in Roddick's career. After how well he played on American hard courts in the spring, making the finals of Indian Wells and winning Miami, his summer was horrendous. Falling short of the quarterfinals at the last three majors (and losing to unseeded opponents at each) is not inspiring stuff.
Andy Roddick can still win another major.
But not if he plays anything resembling the tennis he showed tonight.
* * *
On a personal note, I'm fairly glad I hadn't published my full bracket predictions yet, because I had Roddick winning the whole thing this year. I knew he had tough draws in his early rounds against Tipsarevic (and Monfils), but I thought the early tests would serve him well as his path crescendoed into Davydenko, Djokovic, Federer, and Murray or Nadal. While losing my champion in the second round of the tournament will wreak major havoc, my predictions are actually holding up fairly well everywhere else. I'll put up the graded drawsheets tomorrow.
Murray Repeats in Canada
by Rick Limpert on Aug 15, 2010 7:38 PM EDT
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When a player starts each season they keep a grocery list of goals they want and need to accomplish in that 12-month period to have a successful year. Andy Murray was able to put a checkmark by a bunch of the items on his list this week with his 7-5, 7-5 victory over Roger Federer at the Rogers Cup in Toronto.
Win a ATP Tour event - Check
Win a Masters 1000 event - Check
Defend a title won in 2009 - Check
Defeat Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer in the same event - Check
Qualify for the year-end Barclays ATP World Tour Finals. - Check
Win a match when conditions aren't perfect - Check
Win a Grand Slam event - To be determined
It was not a perfect performance but it was good enough and a confidence boost for the Scot heading into the final Grand Slam event of the year. Murray jumped out quickly to a 3-0 lead before Federer found his game. Murray then had an opportunity to serve for the first at 5-4, but his serve let him down. He bounced back with a break and took the opening set 7-5 on the strength of his ground-strokes.
Rain hampered the second set, but Murray did not let the delays distract him and earned another break at 5-5. He held on in the final game ofthe match, saving a break point to earn the victory and a repeat of the title he won last year in Montreal.
Murray earned $443,500 for the victory, but more important to Andy will be the momentum and confidence he will now take to Cincinnati and then New York.
Azarenka Celebrates a Victory and a Birthday at Stanford
by Rick Limpert on Aug 2, 2010 3:24 PM EDT
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Eighth seeded Victoria Azarenka claimed the Bank of the West Classic on Sunday in Palo Atlo, CA in impressive fashion. The fact that she also celebrated her 21st birthday over the weekend made it the perfect weekend for a player looking to make her way to, and stay in the top-10.
Azarenka lost only one set in the tournament in defeating Marion Bartoli, Sam Stosur, and Maria Sharapova. The Belarusian says she is heading in the right direction and is looking forward to more success on the hardcourts.
In the past ,Azarenka has struggled with the mental part of the game and had problems with her nerves while trying to close out matches.
Sharapova was disappointed by her play in the finals, but was happy to get that far. She still shows some signs of rust, but with more matches she should be fine by Flushing Meadows.
Azarenka takes the early lead in the Olympus U.S. Open Series with the win and her ranking is now up to #12.
In an entertaining doubles final: Lindsay Davenport and Lisa Huber defeated Yung-Jan Chan and Jie Zheng 7-5, 6-7 (8) and 10-8 in a tiebreaker. It's great to see Lindsay still out there even if it's just for doubles.
Melanie Oudin Still Believes, Comes Back to Beat Wozniak
by Ben Rothenberg on Jul 28, 2010 11:00 AM EDT
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Melanie Oudin pulled off an incredible comeback win in the first round of the Bank of the West Classic in Stanford, coming back from an enormous deficit in the second set to defeat 2008 champion Aleksandra Wozniak 6-7(6), 7-5, 6-3.
Oudin trailed 1-5 in the second set, but reeled off six straight games to win the set 7-5. She then trailed Wozniak 1-3 in the third set, but reeled off five straight games to win that set 6-3, and thereby the match. Notice a pattern?
This is exactly the sort of way Oudin pulled off her big wins at the US Open last year. She dropped the first set against #4 Elena Dementieva, #29 Maria Sharapova, and #13 Nadia Petrova, but thrice came back to take the second and third sets for three consecutive upset wins.
Oudin faces Victoria Azarenka in the next round, who could be described as being the type of erratic aggressive player against whom Oudin has fared so well.
She's got a long way to go before she's back in the quarterfinals of a big tournament on American blue-green cement, but it's pretty clear that Melanie Oudin still "believes."
No word on what ever happened to those shoes.
Andrey Golubev Becomes First Kazakh Singles Tour Champion
by Ben Rothenberg on Jul 27, 2010 4:53 PM EDT
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Winning the diminished but still prestigious title in Hamburg, unseeded Andrey Golubev became the first Kazakh player to win an ATP or WTA singles title.
Unseeded Golubev beat #3 seed Jurgen Melzer 6-3, 7-5 to claim his first career title.
The win boosts his ATP ranking 45 places, from #82 to #37. A strong showing at the Toronto and Cincinnati Masters events, and Golubev could be seeded at the US Open.
Combined with Yaroslava Shvedova's doubles championship at Wimbledon, this has been a pretty spectacular month for Kazakh tennis. Kazakhstan's previously discussed mission to put themselves on the tennis map by paying for the nationality of Russian players has been more of a success than anyone could have expected.
Unlike Mardy Fish, who has won back-to-back titles in these past two weeks, Golubev will not be pulling off consecutive finals--he already lost in the first round of Gstaad to fellow Kazakh import Yuri Schukin.
Anna Chakvetadze Starts Comeback With Title in Portoroz, Slovenia
by Ben Rothenberg on Jul 26, 2010 6:22 PM EDT
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Russian Anna Chakvetadze has won her first title in over two years, stomping Sweden's Johanna Larsson 6-1, 6-2.
Chakvetadze's career has been in a slow but steady downward spiral since December 2007, when a brutal invasion by six men into her Moscow home seemingly left her understandably rattled and distracted.
Even though she lost in the second round of the tournament, Chakvetadze had a pretty impressive showing at Wimbledon this year, which seemed to have turned her around. She surprised Andrea Petkovic (who was coming off a run to the final of 's-Hertogenbosch) in the first round, then hung tough against eventual champion Serena Williams in a 6-0, 6-1 match that was nowhere near as lopsided as the score would indicated.
Ranked in the top five back in 2007, Chakvetadze had fallen out of the top 100 after Wimbledon this year, and entered Portoroz ranked #103. The title boosts her ranking 29 places, up to #74.
The win in Sunday's final improves Chakvetadze's record in WTA singles finals to an extremely impressive 8-1.
It's not a big tournament (it's so small I mocked then-#1 Dinara Safina for entering it last year), but hopefully it still represents a step in the right direction for Chakvetadze. This sort of scheduling for a struggling player like herself is smart, and is exactly the sort of thing a struggling player like Ana Ivanovic should be doing as well, instead of only entering Premier events that she will undoubtedly crash out of in the first round.
Despite the optimism this should inspire among Chakvetadze fans, winning Portoroz is not a historically great career move, historically. The five previous champions, Klara Koukalova (2005), Tamira Paszek (2006), Tatiana Golovin (2007), Sara Errani (2008), and Dinara Safina (2009), have combined for a total of zero WTA singles title since lifting the Portoroz hardware. Those were some once pretty promising players, too.
Whatever the future brings, though, it's just good to see Anna smiling again for the first time in a long time.
Michael Llodra Wins Eastbourne With Help of Coach Amelie Mauresmo
by Ben Rothenberg on Jun 20, 2010 3:23 AM EDT
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Michael Llodra beat Guillermo Garcia-Lopez 7-5, 62 in the final of the AEGON International men's singles draw at Eastbourne, a bracket that is largely an afterthought to the much more prestigious concurrent women's event held at Eastbourne.
Most notable in this story is the recent arrival to the Llodra camp of 2006 Wimbledon Ladies' Singles champion Amelie Mauresmo, who began coaching Llodra on his grass court play last week at Queen's Club. Mauresmo was the closest thing the WTA Tour had to a serve-and-volleyer in recent times, and her grass court skills and know-how are likely incomparable among recently retired players.
Mauresmo was always extremely popular among players on both tours. She played doubles with an incredible array of partners on the WTA, and was constantly popping up in photos of French ATP players as well (please take note of Gasquet's ridiculous pose).
The only other woman I can recall ever coaching an ATP player was Tatiana Naumko, whom last I heard was coaching Galina Voskoboeva. Naumko coached Andrei Chesnokov for much of the early 90s, as mentioned in this article from The New York Times. You can tell right away in that piece that it was an extremely different time. Best-of-five matches were frequent, and Newsweek had enough money to sponsor a tournament.
WTA No. 100 Ekaterina Makarova Wins Shock Eastbourne Title
by Ben Rothenberg on Jun 20, 2010 1:53 AM EDT
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Lost in the hype over the imminent arrival of Wimbledon was Ekaterina Makarova's incredible run to her first career title, winning the prestigious AEGON International at Eastbourne with a 7-6(5), 6-4 win over Victoria Azarenka in the final.
Makarova was not even seeded in qualifying, but won the three matches needed to make it to the main draw.
Once there, she reeled off five straight set victories, all against opponents currently ranked inside the WTA Top 20 (Flavia Pennetta, Nadia Petrova, Svetlana Kuznetsova, Samantha Stosur, Victoria Azarenka). What's more, Makarova didn't so much as drop a set against any of them.
Makarova played patient yet aggressive tennis throughout the weak, hitting dipping passing shot after dipping passing shot off her deceptively powerful lefty forehand wing.
Eastbourne likely has the toughest field of any 32-player outdoor tournament in the entire WTA calendar. For Makarova to come out of qualifying to win it, without so much as dropping a set, should serve notice that there could be massive things coming from her career in the very near future.
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