Delray Beach – interesting results

Delray Beach is a 250 event that has great tennis but rarely augurs major shifts in the balance of power in the men’s game.  However, this week was different.  Frances Tiafoe, a young American who showed signs of major improvements late last year, went all the way, defeating Juan Martin del Potro and Denis Shapovalov along the way.   He did it with a reasonably powerful serve, a big forehand, and consistency from the baseline.   One thing you can count on if he wins: he will describe it as “unbelievable”, a word he employed more than 10 times in just a couple of minutes of post match chatting.  Given the development in his play of late, the result was actually not so unbelievable.  He looked quite solid in winning, and it will be interesting to see where he stands on the American men’s tennis ladder in a few months.

Another surprise was the other finalist, Peter Gojowczyk of Germany, ranked in the 60’s.  He beat John Isner and Steve Johnson on his way to the final.  He was beaten handily in the final, but may have been hampered slightly by injury.  His ranking is now 51, and Tiafoe moved uup 30 spots to 61.  These guys will both be in more main draws now, so we’ll see what they can do. 

Kvitova is back.  Petra Kvitova has run off a string of big wins, capped by the title in Doha.  In a 13 match winning streak she defeated Svitolina, Wozniaki (probably should have lost that one), and Muguruza.  It’s weird that a player who won Wimbledon twice could be called an underachiever, but such is the case with Kvitova, who lost many more matches than she should have prior to her hand injury.  Her comeback after the hand injury earned her plenty of well deserved forgiveness for some losses, but at this point, with her recent play, we can consider her fully recovered.  Maybe the threat to her career will cause her to return to the game with new focus and lead to a level of domination commensurate with her talent.  When she is on, nobody can beat her.