Tennis is a game of unknowns, some say, and this first round match on Court 16 would be one of the exhibits they would show if they had to defend their position in a courtroom. The match pitted the 26-year-old ex-NCAA player (Ohio State), and Lucky Loser (boy, I cannot stand that label), Mikael Torpegaard from Denmark, ranked no.188 in the ATP, in his first main draw match at Major, against the 23-year-old South African player Lloyd Harris (ATP no.91) who has been hovering between 90 and 120, give or take, since 2018.
It all started well for Torpegaard who remained well within his limits and stuck to what he does best which is, keeping the balls deep and accelerating on his backhand when given the chance. He doesn’t have any extraordinary weapons in his arsenal per se – although I would argue that his backhand sharp cross-courts can occasionally do wonders, but that is rather a specialty shot –, but he can keep a steady flow of solid-pace baseline strokes going, forcing the opponent to take risks in order to create an opening. His second serve is deceptive, landing deep in the service box with some velocity, catching an offensive-minded returner off guard at times.
Torpegaard specifically kept the rallies to the middle of the court, not giving Harris much court space to work with, and the South African sprayed one error after another on the forehand wing to start the match as a result, trying to go for angles that did not exist. His seventh forehand unforced error at 1-1, 30-40, gave the lead to Torpegaard who guarded the break advantage all the way to the end of the set. To be clear, Torpegaard wasn’t just “rallying.” He also sent a signal early to Harris that he would not be hesitant to come to the net of the ball landed short. He approached 10 times in the first set, something to which Harris should have resorted for his part (zero approaches in the first set for the South African).
Something did happen, however, in the middle of the set, that had a major impact on the match in my view. The ballkid at the corner of the court collapsed at 4-2 for Torpegaard and play stopped for around 10 minutes. It was a petrifying sight, frankly, to briefly see the ballkid on the ground flat, facing down. The umpires and the players ran to the corner to help, doctor and trainer arriving a minute later. Thankfully, the kid was eventually escorted away, walking, and play resumed.
Torpegaard who seemed flawless up to that point, must have lost some of his intensity during the pause. He lost five straight points off the gate, three of them unforced errors, more than he had made in the six games prior to the unexpected break. He recovered in time with an ace and a 1-2 punch winner to grab the 30-15 lead on his serve at 4-3. Although he double-faulted (his first of the match) to see Harris get back to 30-30, he served one of his deceptive second serves to earn a short ball for another 1-2 punch winner, and managed to hold serve to go up 5-3. It also helped that Harris was still unable to calibrate his forehand, losing the first set 6-4 on his tenth unforced error on that wing.
Nevertheless, the momentum had perceptibly took a turn by then. First of all, Torpegaard’s first serve had gone missing. By the time the scoreboard showed 3-3 in the second set, Torpegaard’s first-serve percentage had cooled down to 32% for the set (6 out of 19), as opposed to 67% in the first set. He had just come off the 2-3 game saving two break points thanks to a missed passing shot by Harris followed by two more unforced errors by the South African on his forehand. Despite those errors, Harris had cleaned up his game up a bit and was having success coming to the net (read: getting bolder due to increased confidence), something he did not do at all in the first set as noted above. The alarm bells were ringing for Torpegaard.
Harris finally broke through on the Dane’s next service game, when Torpegaard double-faulted on break point after having to pause between the serves and tell someone in the stands to keep their voices down. Yeah, when it rains pours. Harris held serve to level the match at one set each.
The rain kept pouring, unfortunately, for Torpegaard. He missed a forehand volley at deuce on his serve in the opening game of the third set and nailed the ball to the stands in frustration, earning a code violation. Harris, for his part, was feeling just fine and got the break on a fine forehand inside-out acceleration.
The pendulum had by now swung conspicuously in Harris’s favor, and his demeanor reflected the shift. He played with confidence throughout the third set, making only three unforced errors in total, and winning all 8 points when he ventured forward to the net. And he did it the blue-collar way, as they say. While he served 21 aces for the match, in the third set he only served two, doing most of the labor from groundstrokes and at the net, working the point and pushing his opponent around. It was a vastly different look than in the first set, or even the second. He broke Torpegaard twice to pocket the third set 6-2. Torpegaard, for his part, had overtaken the role of the one with an unreliable forehand, missing a bunch from that wing, especially early in games.
Torpegaard, seemingly troubled on his left leg (didn’t I say something about pouring rain?), took a medical time out at the start of the fourth set. He was one of the players who went through the isolated hard-quarantine for 14 days, so that may have had an impact — in case you haven’t heard, the hard-quarantined men are faring terribly in the first two days –, especially considering that it was his first go-round at a Major for a five-setter, although it should be noted that he played two matches in the Adelaide International last week, losing to Hubert Hurkacz in his second one.
In any case, he was clearly hampered because he began the fourth set making a visible effort to keep the points short. He tried a drop shot or two, went for uncharacteristic winners from the baseline, and tried to quickly come to the net during rallies. It worked for one game, but Harris broke the Dane’s serve on the third game when Torpegaard slammed a makeable forehand into the net.
That proved to be the conclusive lead for Harris as he broke serve a second time when Torpegaard framed a second serve into the bottom of the net two games later (most likely struggling with the left leg push upward). The South African closed the match on his serve, winning 4-6 6-3 6-2 6-2 in two hours and 25 minutes.
It will be Harris’s fourth attempt at reaching the third round at a Major (Roland Garros 2019 and 2020, US Open 2020), and he will have to play a less patchy match than this one. He put on display some brilliant tennis at times and showed his dexterity on serves, but he will need a better start and more consistency from the baseline to have a shot at defeating David Goffin or Alexei Popyrin (Goffin leads two sets to one at the time of writing).
End notes:
— Harris served four aces for a blank game at 4-1 in the fourth set.
— Despite his level consistently going down after 4-2 in the first set for the remainder of the match, Torpegaard committed only one unforced error on his backhand in the last two sets. It is a very solid shot sporting a compact and short backswing, allowing him to withstand high-velocity strokes flowing his way from the other side of the net.
— The school of forehands had a bad day at the office. The two players combined for 39 unforced errors from that wing, versus 15 on the backhand.
Sounds like a rough outing but maybe a good learning experience for the Dane. Hard quarantine no joke.
Agreed, it really is not.