Author: Mertov

Wimbledon First Round: Feli Grabs Roger’s Record, Keeps Going… and Going… and Going…

Feliciano Lopez def. Federico Delbonis 6-3 6-4 6-2

“It means a lot to me. As I said before, it’s not about reaching this number of the most consecutive Grand Slams played. It’s about being 15 years or more playing at the top level.”

This quote, by the 36-year-old Feliciano Lopez, essentially sums up the man’s accomplishments over the last 21 years. Yes, he turned pro 21 years ago, in 1997.

His was referring to the fact that he broke Roger Federer’s record of consecutive Majors played with his 66th appearance in a row in Majors this morning, when he stepped on to Court 7 to face Federico Delbonis at Wimbledon.

The last time Feliciano Lopez did not play a Major, in the 2002 Australian Open, Lleyton Hewitt was the number one player and Pete Sampras, Yevgeny Kafelnikov, Gustavo Kuerten, Patrick Rafter, Juan Carlos Ferrero, and Andre Agassi were some of the names found in the top 10 of the ATP rankings.

Throughout his streak of 66-straight participations in Majors, Lopez has not acted as a tourist either. He has reached fourth round or better seven times (four-time quarterfinalist) and has consistently been a player that other top players would prefer to avoid in the early rounds. As for his record in five-set matches, Feliciano is 21-10 in Majors and 3-1 in Davis Cup, for a career record of 24-11. This is an athlete who knows what it takes to win, even when he is having a bad day at the office.

The Spaniard is the iron man of tennis. If and when you see him up close, you can judge for yourself. He is a specimen.

Granted, playing Delbonis on grass does not represent the highest order of challenge, but that should not diminish what Lopez put on display today. Unfortunately for Delbonis, Feli had a wonderful day at the office. In fact, everything clicked on all cylinders, except for one game from which he immediately recuperated.

Lopez started the match with an ace, finished the first set with another, and the match with his 19th one. His serve was so effective that, on top of his 18 aces (vs one double fault), he won 93% of points started with his first serve and Delbonis could not return 36 out of 65 of his serves back in the court. Two second-serve aces and a winning percentage of 58% on points started with his second serve were the icing on the cake.

The stats will tell you that he served and volleyed seven times in the match. The reality is that he did it a lot more. It’s just that he did not have to volley. He “approached” the net 20 times, winning 14 of those points.

Impressed yet? That is only half of the story.

He won the majority of baseline rallies, including a 20+-shot rally early in the second set that would have been the envy of most clay-court specialists. He kept Delbonis in check with his deep backhand slices and flat forehands, never allowing the Argentine to dictate rallies with his forehand like he usually prefers to do. Lopez made 21 unforced errors in total, only one more than his opponent who is, by nature, a baseliner. Most of those were on his forehand (16), usually his weaker side.

Beyond the numbers, his forehand was an important part of his win today. He accelerated balls with it whenever he got the chance, earning five direct winners and a ton of low drives that either ended with him winning the point at the net, or forcing Delbonis into errors due to the worry that the Spaniard may follow them up to the net.

Delbonis, for a while, tried to work Feli’s backhand side knowing that, at least, Feli cannot produce winners from that side (he did not, zero for the match). However, that meant Delbonis, being a lefty himself, had to strike down-the-line forehands instead of his preferred sharp, cross-court topspin ones. That also allowed Lopez to use his lefty slice to glide balls deep into corners, making Delbonis add mileage to his legs.

Lopez bided his time during those rallies until the Argentine either went for a risky shot and missed or landed a ball short so that Feliciano could take it on the rise and approach the net with a slice. It worked to perfection. Delbonis was all but resigned in the third set. Lopez, liberated, put on a show. The nightmare ended for Delbonis in a matter of one hour and 29 minutes, by a score of 6-3 6-4 6-2.

I mentioned “one bad game” earlier for Feliciano. It happened when he was serving at 1-0 in the second set, the only game in which he did not put a single first serve in (0 for 5). He also committed his only double fault in it and made three forehand unforced errors. It was a glitch in an otherwise five-star performance. The irony is that Lopez was a perfect 14 for 14 on first-serve points won in that second set. Yet the set included the only break against him in the match. It’s just that he did not get to start any points with his first serve in that game. Stats can be tricky folks.

Let me finish by adding to Feli’s post-match conference quotes. He agreed that the quality of his serves played a key role in his high-level of performance in this match and went on to make enlightening comments about longevity and success on the ATP tour. Here are some highlights:

— On his longevity:

“I think the way I play maybe also. I think I don’t play so many rallies. Also my technique. I play quite easy, so I don’t make a huge effort in every single shot that I play. That’s also important. […] I haven’t, you know, suffered any big injuries in my career. This is the most important thing. And also mentally, I have the strength enough to be, you know, playing so many years (smiling).”

— On breaking Federer’s record of 65 consecutive Majors played:

“Well, when I was [thinking] about breaking the record, I thought, wow, I’m going to beat Federer at something, which is a lot already (laughter).”

— On what the streak represents to him: Lopez said the quote I used to begin this article and added this:

“For me, after 30 years always so important to be competitive and to challenge the best players in the world. This is what I thought at this stage of my career was the most important thing, to stay healthy and to be able to compete against these monsters, because for me I played in the past against other monsters, but after the 30s it was so important for me to stay fresh and healthy, just to challenge these animals, because they are very — the level overall is getting higher and higher in the last decade.” – Only Feli can call his peers “monsters” and “animals” and make it sound as a compliment.

— As to why players today suffer so many injuries, Lopez had an interesting take:

“I don’t know that much about specific things and technique, and probably the twohanded backhand guys have more injuries in the last years. This is something that I realize. I don’t know why. Maybe a doctor can tell you (smiling). But it is true that the two-handed backhand guys have been struggling with injuries lately more than one-handed backhand guys.”

— He also emphasized the idea of mental stress that players experience bleeding into the physicality of the game:

“Also, the stress that these guys they have every single day they compete, because they have to win every day. Also, the mental part is so important that it might be affected, you know, on your body when you step in the court and you have to win every single day […] because they have a lot of, you know, stress. They need to win every day. It’s also something that, I think, something to consider, also.”

— On the evolution of tennis over the course of his career:

“There is no players now that they specialize in one particular surface. I think the game has become more, you know, from the baseline in most of the courts. So when I started playing, it was the clay court players and the grass court and the hard court players. Now everybody plays, you know, more or less the same style, I will say. But the most important, for me, the bigger change was the power in the game.”

Lopez will face the fifth seed Juan Martin del Potro, another Argentine. Without a doubt, it will be a much tougher challenge for Lopez, although Juan Martin, for his part, may experience some of that stress that Feli noted above.

Until next time…

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Wimbledon First Round: Rodina “Finds A Way,” Again!

Evgeniya Rodina (Q) def. Antonia Lottner (Q) 3-6 7-5 6-4

Antonia Lottner, the 21-year-old from Germany, has had a great grass-court season so far. Ranked at 128 in the WTA, she has slowly but surely began knocking on the door of a top-100 ranking for the first time in her young career. She did so, by winning four matches in s’Hertogenbosch as a qualifier – including an impressive straight-set victory over the second seed Elise Mertens (WTA no.15) – before losing in the quarterfinals to Viktoria Kuzmova.

Then, in Mallorca, she qualified again for the main draw and lost in the round of 16 to Anastasija Sevastova in three sets, after a convincing defeat over WTA no.51 Aliaksandra Sasnovich in straight sets.

She won three more qualifying-draw matches to earn her first Wimbledon main-draw appearance. With ten wins on grass in her pocket, the in-form Lottner drew Evgeniya Rodina (WTA no.120), another qualifier. It all seemed to fall into place for a great shot at a top-100 ranking and a breakthrough outing in this Major.

Except that her opponent – the 29-year-old Rodina – is a pesky competitor, a problem solver, and an experienced customer.

Lottner did begin the match on fire though. She hit three winners to break Rodina’s serve in the first game and added more from both wings until a bad game at 3-2 in which she double-faulted, framed a forehand, and sailed a backhand deep to lose her serve. Rodina went up 40-0 in the next game but Lottner came back to break and never looked back in the first set. She won it 6-3, producing 19 winners and an ace on the way.

The German kept going for her shots, making her opponent scramble and run balls down. Rodina could hardly gain any traction in rallies. The 6-foot-1-inch Lottner was serving big, nailing her forehands, even striking winners from low balls on her two-handed backhand, which required her to really bend her knees.

Don’t get me wrong, Rodina can get a lot of balls back and frustrate opponents. This defensive type of play is not a challenge from which she runs away as a player. But on grass, against a hard-hitting opponent that was clicking on all cylinders, she needed to modify her tactics. It may put her in an uncomfortable style of play, but it was necessary. And Rodina is the type of player that would definitely be on board with “uncomfortable,” if it means that it can turn the tide in her favor.

So, the Russian began to get aggressive with her groundstrokes at the cost of making more errors, which she did. After recording only six unforced errors in the first set, she made 11 in the second**. But she also began sinking her teeth into the match, because she started to take away the comfortable take-a-step-forward-and-nail-the-winner routine that Lottner had adopted since the match began.

**I do my own count of unforced errors for reasons that I have expressed many times in the past. Well, there is more coming a bit later in this piece. There are several things that stat people in counting unforced/forced errors, with which I disagree strongly. You will see me underline one of those reasons. Bear with me.

Rodina started going for bigger returns on Lottner’s serves. She also began hitting down-the-line more, to counter the way her opponent was moving into the court to cut off the cross-court ones. Lottner began finding herself chasing balls sideways (or backward) and her one visible weakness – a slow first step which makes it hard for her to change direction – began to surface. Rodina hit nine winners in the second set (vs three in the first) and that does not include the times she forced Lottner into errors because the German was having to hit bigger shots from behind the baseline, instead of hitting them from inside the court like in the first set.

None of this guaranteed a comeback for Rodina. It simply allowed her to remain on serve in the second set. In fact, at 4-5 down, Lottner had a legitimate chance to close out the match on her return game. At the 15-30 point, on a short second serve by Rodina, Lottner stepped inside the court for a winner attempt. She slammed the forehand return in the net. Rodina won the next point to go up 40-30, and held serve to equalize at 5-5, thanks to another forehand return missed in the net by Lottner.

These were not errors caused by Rodina’s good serves. Lottner missed them while attempting to go for winners. She then lost her service game – the only break of the second set – and Rodina extended the match to a third set by holding hers. In a matter of less than ten minutes, Rodina went from being two points away from losing the match in a routine straight-set affair to being leveled at one set each.

Let me pause for a moment and focus on Lottner’s forehand return errors. She had previously missed three of them in the very first game of the second set, two of which were winner attempts on Rodina’s second serves. Apparently, that was only the beginning. She continued to miss forehand returns – very makable ones – throughout the rest of the match.

It was the one glaring error-prone area in her game. I understand that putting pressure on Rodina’s serve by returning big was part of her game, but when you miss that much, should you not perhaps consider a more conservative return, one that goes higher over the net and simply lands deep by the baseline, so that you can perhaps set up your winner attempt on the next shot? Instead, she kept firing one risky forehand return after another.

And she kept missing one forehand return after another.

This one missed at 3-2 in the final set, 15-0 on Rodina’s serve

Lottner made ten “unforced”** forehand-return errors in the second set alone. She added eight more to the tally in the final set. I noted earlier how Rodina was willing to make the “uncomfortable” adjustment if it were necessary. Lottner was not, did not.

**Stay with me, and you will see why I have “unforced” in quotation marks.

The adjustment Rodina made after the first set ended, in the meantime, began to bear fruit. Rallies were a lot different in the third set than in the first. You no longer saw Lottner inside the court, directing rallies and finishing them off with winners that she got to strike from inside the baseline. Instead, you saw both player hitting hard in punch-to-punch rallies, and Rodina having more and more to say about their patterns. It also helped that Rodina’s first-serve percentage was at a spectacular 91% (31 out of 34) in the final set, while Lottner’s first-serve percentage got progressively worse throughout the match (73%-64%-60% for the three sets).

Rodina made ten unforced errors in the final set, which was in line with the adjustment in her aggressiveness after the first set ended. Lottner, for her part, made 16 unforced errors on her forehand alone, with eight of them being on returns. And that brings me to my last discussion point – or, my rant, I shall say.

My regular readers know how much I complain about the way unforced-error stats are kept. Double faults are counted as unforced errors sometimes, while return and passing-shot-attempt errors are never counted regardless of the circumstances. This match is a great example of how stats fail to emphasize the most significant number of this match.

You look at the official stats and you see nine forehand unforced errors for Lottner in the second set, and ten in the third. Well, my count would be closer to that, if I were NOT to count routine forehand errors made by Lottner on RETURNS.

I am sorry but if the opponent hits a mid-pace second serve that sits right there for the returner to nail a routine shot, and yet she misses it, that should get recorded as an unforced error. In fact, it is obvious that Lottner was considering them as sitters, because she would painlessly step inside the baseline and go for winners. When you add the errors that she made on those returns into the count, you get Lottner with 16 unforced forehand errors in the second set, and 15 in the third, instead of nine and ten.

More importantly, you understand that it was not forehands in general that were causing the short circuit in Lottner’s game. It was her forehand returns. The devil is in the details folks. Stats should reflect every detail that counts.

Rodina ended up winning the match 3-6 7-5 6-4 in two hours and one minute.

It was a terrific comeback by the Russian who appeared to be outmatched for almost two sets. However – and I apologize for quoting myself from earlier –, Rodina is a pesky competitor, a problem solver, and an experienced customer. The Russian is not a great athlete, but she has won many matches of this type in her career, during which she fabricates a way to turn things around against seemingly superior talent. She remains underrated in this sense, quite frankly. Here is a match – one among many in her career – where she was willing to do what is necessary, no matter how uncomfortable, and come out on top.

She will next take on Sorana Cirstea who pulled one of the early upsets of the tournament by defeating the 19th-seeded (and last year’s semifinalist) Magdalena Rybarikova in straight sets.

Until next time…

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Roland Garros Match Report: Women’s Final

Simona Halep defeats Sloane Stephens 3-6 6-4 6-1

Photo: Jimmy48Photography

There will be a number of well-written pieces focusing on the stories of Saturday’s two women’s finalists at Roland Garros, especially on Simona Halep who handed Sloane Stephens her first loss in the finals of a tournament by a score of 3-6 6-4 6-1.

Therefore, I will pass on that angle and jump straight into the nitty-gritty of what happened on the court over the course of the 2 hours and three minutes that it took for these two champions to carry the match to its conclusion.

When two exceptional baseline players like Halep and Stephens face each other, first few games are critical. One cannot afford to have a slow start, because that would not only mean that she is allowing the other to get ahead on the scoreboard, but it may also give her the false sense that the other player is better than her from the baseline – read that, beating her at her own game – and trick her into making a premature tactical adjustment.

Although both players made it through the first three games with around the same number of unforced errors**, Halep committed three of them in the third game alone, two in a row from 30-30 to lose her serve and go down 1-3. She started the next game with two more unforced errors which eventually led to Stephens confirming the break and going up 4-1. Sloane never relinquished the lead and took the first set 6-3.

**Usual disclaimer: I keep my own count of the unforced errors, double faults are not included.

Because of the timing of those few errors by Simona, Sloane led by a set in the scoreboard and appeared to be the superior baseliner up to that point in the match, holding precisely the kind of edge that I mentioned above.

Of course, I can never be sure of what exactly what goes through a player’s mind, but Halep already appeared to be looking for solutions in the latter part of the first set.

For example, during a long rally in the 15-15 point of the 4-2 game, Halep threw everything but the kitchen sink at Stephens in terms of varying the height and pace of her shots. She hit some shots with heavy topspin, added some mid-pace high-loopers, and squeezed in a flat, hard forehand. She won that point, but in the next one, Stephens answered right back with a dandy of a forehand. Then, Halep missed the return deep, and Stephens put the game away with a clean forehand winner.

Just like in that game, even when Halep found a pattern that temporarily worked, she struggled to replicate it point after point against a player who is on fire. All those rallies in the first set must have felt to Stephens like they were taking place in the comfort of her living room, simply because she had the lead. I remind everyone that she did not start out that way, committing six unforced errors in the first two games. If you think she played a flawless first set, think again. She played a flawless after she got the lead at 3-1. In fact, if you watch the first two games and the last four in that set, you would believe that it’s a 50-50 affair.

However, context is everything, and the first set did not feel like it went neck-to-neck. Stephens appeared to be dominating. So, Halep looked for answers in her bag of solutions. She did not lose her cool** and pursued different paths to come up with a working formula, even though Stephens was operating as smoothly as possible.

**Let’s please put the “she freezes” or the “she crumbles under the moment” narrative away for good.

Again, this is my observation and I cannot know for sure what goes through a player’s head, but as soon as the second set began, it appeared as if Halep turned extremely aggressive and began nailing as many shots as possible.

The problem was that, in her attempt to play a riskier brand of tennis, she either went for some low-percentage shots and missed (see the 15-15 point in the first game, when she tried to hit too perfect a forehand down-the-line while backing up far behind the baseline) or Sloane produced some five-star counterpunches to negate Simona’s aggressiveness (see the very next point at 15-30, Halep hits three high-octane shots in a row, but Sloane gets them back and puts the fourth one away with a backhand down-the-line rocket. See also the second deuce point in the same game for yet another such example).

Down 3-6 0-2, Simona persevered and dug even deeper for a solution. She tried moving forward on floaters, winning three points in that game thanks to swing-volleys. She held serve, but she was still down a set and a break. There was no doubt that her on-court IQ was in overdrive and calculations would not end until she found one.

Until that point, Halep used mixed patterns for the most part (whether consciously or unconsciously, I don’t know), meaning that, she did not specifically work Stephens’s forehand or backhand, but switched back and forth a lot, targeting the open spots (see the 30-15 point at 5-2 in the first set if you prefer to see an example). No “triangle patterns”** were to be found in her shots.

** It is a term used – by some coaches and pros – to make allusion to the triangle trajectory of the ball going back-and-forth when one player stands on one side of the court and moves the other player around. The moving player is expected to run every ball down and send them back to the same corner on the other side. It’s your conventional consistency drill left over from the 70s and 80s that centers on building accuracy in your strokes while working on your stamina.

When Stephens was serving at 2-1, and Halep led 0-30, it was the first conspicuous use of triangle tennis that I saw in the second set. Halep hit seven shots in a row to Stephens’s backhand before accelerating the next one to her forehand. Stephens missed the forehand in the net. The seven shots hit by Halep were not intended to be winners. In fact, a couple of them were mid-pace, topspin shots that Sloane could easily send back. When time came to step in and accelerate for Halep though, she went after Sloane’s forehand and collected the error.

Halep began to adopt this pattern more and more frequently during rallies.

Granted, Stephens put together her worst sequence from 2-1 up to 2-4 down in that second set and made a bunch of unforced errors. So, the turn-around cannot be attributed to Halep’s variation of the triangle by any means, but it must have helped her mentally to discover a pattern that works in her favor, because she repeatedly went back to it, even if she lost a few of those points (see the 30-0 point at 4-3 for Halep).

Halep played three more points using that pattern in the 4-4 game, working Sloane’s backhand side with mixed pace, then accelerating to her forehand side. In the 15-0 point of the 5-4 game, Halep hit five shots to the ad side, four of them being regular-paced deep shots, and two accelerations to Sloane’s forehand side, the second of which collected an error from the American’s racket.

Photo: Jimmy48Photography

Halep began the final set in the same vein as she looked to force the same pattern in five out of six points in the first game (the other one was a return miss by Stephens). Again, Sloane’s deuce side of the court was only targeted for accelerations. Otherwise, Halep kept a steady flow of clean, measured, topspin shots coming to Sloane’s backhand side. On the 40-30 point, Halep hit five “safe” but deep shots to Stephens’s backhand and followed it up with another acceleration to her forehand. Stephens’s forehand clipped the net and kicked up, giving the advantage to Halep. Two shots later, Halep put the ball away and led 1-0 in the third.

In the second game, three more points were directed in this pattern by Halep. At 30-40, she sent another high topspin to Sloane’s backhand corner and got a short ball back from the American. She stepped in and nailed the ball to the deuce side. Sloane got to it but returned the defensive forehand in the net. Halep now led 2-0.

In the last point of the next game, Halep hit seven out of the last ten shots to Stephens’s backhand side (only accelerating one) and hit the other three hard to her forehand side. The point ended with an error by Stephens. Halep now led 3-0.

I could go on and on with more examples, but you get the idea. If you thought that Stephens’s backhand was a major problem for her in this match because of the amount of errors she committed (12 forehands, 21 backhands by my count – officially it’s 13 and 25), you were only partially right. When using this pattern, Halep actually banked on collecting errors from her forehand side, especially on the accelerations. It worked more than once, on important points.

This also took away one of Stephens’s favorite activities, which is to hit counterpunches on the move. Instead, she remained static in one spot for a string of two or three shots (or more) and engaged in rallies where she had to fabricate the pace, or else she would find herself under pressure when she hit a short ball.

Fans of Stephens must be disappointed, and they are probably focusing on the three bad games in the middle portion of the second set. They are right in that Sloane’s level did go down. But surely, it would have been too optimistic to expect her to stay at the level she played during the first hour.

Plus, Halep’s come-back win cannot be entirely attributed to the three-game bad streak by Stephens. Halep deserves a lot of credit because she remained cool-headed while trailing for almost 45 minutes against an opponent who was not only playing high-quality tennis but also answering the call every time Halep made an adjustment in an attempt to turn the match around. Halep persisted, persevered, persisted, and won.

If anyone has anything to say to me about Halep lacking on-court IQ from this moment forward, they can bet that I will throw the “Roland Garros 2018 final” card right back at them.

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Roland Garros Match Report: Dominic Thiem vs Marco Cecchinato (semifinal)

This was as close a match-up to your typical David vs. Goliath encounter as you could see in the French Open, without involving the name Rafael Nadal. It pitted Dominic Thiem, an established top-ten player who has proven himself to be one of the top clay-court performers in the ATP ranks, against Marco Cecchinato, a virtual unknown to casual tennis fans whose rise to fame dates back to… three days ago!

That’s right, hardly anyone knew the 72nd-ranked player in the world before Tuesday’s quarterfinals, even though he had defeated Pablo Carreno Busta (no.11) and David Goffin (no.9) to get there.

It took his victory over Novak Djokovic in the quarterfinals – and the dramatic fourth-set tiebreaker that ended it – for most tennis fans and some so-called experts to familiarize themselves with the Italian.

Marco Cecchinato (Photo: Cameron Spencer – Getty Images)

He is your classic clay-court player, relying on his footwork and consistency from the baseline, while possessing a great touch. He neither has any big weapons from the ground nor possesses a powerhouse serve. He can drop-shot like you have never seen before, but that does not count as a weapon in the sense that you cannot base your entire plan on drop shots – more on that later. His tenacious baseline prowess was enough to carry him to his first career ATP title in Budapest earlier this year.

Thiem got out of this tricky semifinal match-up in straight sets, which is great news for him and his fans. I called it “tricky” only insofar as David vs. Goliath match-ups go, because in terms of what Thiem needed to do, it was not that complicated…

Until Thiem took it upon himself to complicate things, at least for a while…

In my match analysis of Thiem’s quarterfinal win over Alexander Zverev, I praised Thiem’s on-court IQ during the first set. I was ready to do again in this piece, because he began the match with a good game plan, setting the tone of the baseline rallies in a way that favored him.

This main theme of this plan consisted working the backhand of his opponent with high topspin shots, making the Italian muscle the ball back above his shoulder level over and over again. That would either him into committing errors or sending back short balls on which Dominic could pounce from inside the court. It also included the use of kick serves to the backhand on the advantage side to gain the advantage early in the rallies.

Assuming that Thiem successfully imposed this game on his opponent, Cecchinato would be limited to winning points via the use of “left-over” patterns such as the ones related to the use of drop shots, big first serves, or attacks to the net.

That would spell doom for Marco because he was not going to win the match using left-over patterns like the three above. Here are the reasons why:

Firstly, you cannot build your whole game plan on the use of drop shots, because they are specialty shots, so to speak. One should use drop shots sporadically at best, and only as a tool to render the larger game plan more efficient. In fact, drop shots lose their effectiveness when used too frequently. It’s an accessory shot. It’s a risky endeavor to hit drop shots against the best athletes in the world anyway, but even beyond that, and I will be blunt here, you will go nowhere if they represent the central component of your so-called winning plan.

Cecchinato was as efficient as he could get with his use of drop shots – he hits them extremely well on both wings – and won several points with it. There are many examples to cite, such as the deuce point at 1-3 in the first set and the third point of the second set. He even won his first three points in the second-set tiebreaker with drop shots. But he was still down 3-6 because Thiem won the other six points that were mostly based on baseline rallies.

It is true that Cecchinato came back to 6-6 and had chances to win the set, but what took place after 6-3 in that tiebreaker was not related to any adjustments by Marco, but rather to some major blunders by Dominic.

Secondly, Cecchinato does not have a big first serve. Some players manage to build successful game plans on them, but Cecchinato is not that guy, his first serve is not that serve. He won a few free points (ex: first point of the 5-5 game in the first set) but they were rare. Let me sum it up in one sentence. His first-serve percentage was at 80% and yet he only recorded two aces. Need I say more?

Thirdly, Cecchinato will win some points at the net, but the day that he builds an actual winning plan around his volleys, you can start expecting Richard Gasquet to beat Rafael Nadal at the French Open and turn around and beat Roger Federer at Wimbledon a month later. Just let me know when, I’ll be around.

In short, as long as Thiem could make Cecchinato hit a ton of backhands and limit him to left-over tactics, it seemed that he should be able to walk out of Philippe Chatrier without much difficulty and with plenty left in the gas tank.

It looked as if that were exactly going to be the case when the match began. He worked Marci’s backhand and broke his serve in the first game. For example, on the 30-15 point, he hit a high-topspin, inside-out forehand to Cecchinato’s backhand and forced the Italian to hit a backhand above his shoulder. It fell short, and Thiem executed the forehand winner to the open court.

In the next point, he sent two more high-bouncing balls to Cecchinato’s backhand and the Italian missed the second one wide. Later in the game, when Cecchinato managed to get a game-point opportunity at ad-in, Thiem returned sharp cross-court with his backhand and pushed Cecchinato outside the court to retrieve a backhand. Marco missed it in the net. When Dominic had the break point at ad-out, he hit another sharp cross-court return and Marco missed it deep this time.

It got even easier on Thiem’s service game, leading 1-0, because now he had the luxury to start the point by serving to Cecchinato’s backhand. For example, he won the second point thanks to a wide, kick serve that forced the Italian to try to muscle a backhand return from way outside the boundaries of the court. He missed it wide. He held serve to confirm the early break.

Thiem kept working Marco’s backhand and kept winning a ton of points (see the 40-30 point of the 4-2 game, for yet another illustration how Thiem successfully implemented this strategy). Let me be clear. Cecchinato’s backhand is not “bad” per se. But it can break down if a powerful striker like Thiem applies relentless pressure to it. Nadal, I imagine, would have a field day with it.

Cecchinato attempted to favor the ad side to avoid that pattern. That backfired when Thiem hit clean winners to the deuce court that he was leaving open (see the 15-0 point at 3-2 for one example). Meanwhile, Thiem’s wide serves worked so well on the ad side that even when Cecchinato returned well, he still had too much ground to cover to get to the next shot.

For example, on the 15-0 point at 2-1 in the second set, Thiem pushed Cecchinato wide with a kick serve again. Marco hit a tremendous deep return. Thiem had to quickly back up a couple of steps but managed to hit the ball back to the middle of the court. It was enough to win the point, because Marco simply did not have enough time to recover back to the middle of the court.

It just seemed to make sense that Thiem would stick with this plan and cruise to a pain-free three-set victory. It turned out to be a straight-set one indeed, but definitely not free of pain.

Thiem, serving at 4-3, sent a slice backhand in the net and double-faulted to all of a sudden find himself down 0-40. He immediately went to his bread-and-butter and served three times in a row to Cecchinato’s backhand. The Italian missed the first two returns. He returned the third one in, but Thiem simply accelerated to the open deuce court to win the point. His plan was working, he simply needed to stick to the script.

What was not included in this script was missing easy put-away volleys in the net. It happens every now and then to every player, but it did not need to happen to Thiem at 4-3, deuce. And he certainly did not need to follow that up with an unforced error on a routine cross-court backhand to lose his break advantage.

At 5-5, we saw the best game of the match, featuring high-quality shot production from both players and extended rallies. Thiem ultimately broke Cecchinato’s serve, because Cecchinato, as noted above, depended on left-over tactics. He needed to either hit a big first serve or produce a winner during the rally. The game ended after Thiem forced him to hit another defensive backhand that landed short and nailed it away with his forehand.

The Austrian held serve and pocketed the first set.

Logic dictates that Thiem would go back to his working – and simple – game plan, but for some reason, he did not. He would at times go for huge, flat winners from far behind the baseline. At others, he would hit the ball to Cecchinato’s forehand when he could have easily accelerated it to the Italian’s backhand. He also did not use his wide serve nearly as much as he did against Zverev, even though it was such an obvious part of a winning plan here.

So, it was a neck-to-neck affair in the second set. It went into a tiebreaker, and it took Thiem five set points to finally win it 12-10 (on a point that started with another kick serve to the outside by him), but it should have never gone that far for Thiem. It could have also taken a very dark turn for him had Cecchinato capitalized on one of the three set-point opportunities he had himself.

First one came at 7-6, and Dominic saved it with a wide serve (Marco missed the return in the net). Second one came at 9-8 and Dominic saved that one too with a wide serve (Marco framed the backhand out). Again, the winning formula for Thiem was so clear from one end of the match to the other that I kept wondering why he tried anything else at all. He took a page out Cecchinato’s book when he saved the third set point with a beautiful drop shot.

Cecchinato’s mental resolve took a hit once he went down by two sets: “I go a little bit down with mental, and physically I play so many matches, so I think is normal,” he said after the match. Thiem echoed those sentiments: “The second-set tiebreak was the big key to the match, 100%, because obviously he felt all the matches from these two weeks after that.”

Dominic Thiem (Photo: Cameron Spencer – Getty Images)

The match ended 28 minutes after that tiebreaker with the final score of 7-5 7-6 6-1 in Thiem’s favor. It was an up-and-down performance by Thiem, one that probably made some of his fans feel uneasy. His decision-making was questionable at times, not because he had a bad game plan, but because he did not stick to it. When your plan works, why stop doing it? To be clear, Thiem did not completely stop using it, but used it only in short bursts.

There is some good news for Thiem and his fans. He has not had to play any five-set matches so far, winning his last two in straight sets. He also showed high-IQ in terms of devising a working game plan against both of his last two opponents. Against Zverev he remained loyal to it all through the first set (he did not need to in the second and third ones). Against Cecchinato however, he did not, and he paid for it by playing a much closer match than he should have.

For Thiem, on-court decision-making will matter the most. The question is, can he execute his plan properly? We know that he already has one for Nadal because he literally said so in his post-match press conference: “he’s a big favorite against everybody. Still, I know how to play against him. I have a plan.”

“If I want to beat him, I have to play that way like I did in Rome and in Madrid.
But I’m also aware that here it’s tougher. He likes the conditions more here than in Madrid, for sure. Best of five is also different story. I think also a good thing is that I faced him already twice here.”

As to whether Rafa will allow that plan – or any other one – to succeed or not, that is a completely different question. That is the challenge that Thiem must overcome if he aims to go where no other tennis player has gone before, which is, to defeat Rafael Nadal in the final round of the Internationaux de France on Court Philippe Chatrier.

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Roland Garros Match Report: Rafael Nadal vs Diego Schwartzman (quarterfinal)

Thursday Update:

My latest match report/analysis of the quarterfinal match between Rafael Nadal and Diego Schwartzman is now posted on Tennis with an Accent —> Nadal – Schwartzman: the Pivot Point Before the Rain

Player quotes, tactical analysis, the central sequence of the match (no, it was not the rain interruption), etc..

Note: You can also follow Tennis with an Accent for great coverage of Roland Garros. I am delighted to be contributing to their efforts this week.

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Roland Garros Match Report: Simona Halep vs Angelique Kerber (quarterfinal)

Wednesday Update:

My latest match report/analysis of the quarterfinal match between Simona Halep and Angelique Kerber is now posted on Tennis with an Accent —> Minding Her Own Business: Halep Wins with Her Head

Note: You can also follow Tennis with an Accent for great coverage of Roland Garros. I am delighted to be contributing to their efforts this week.

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