Grass Court Warmups

Several grass court warmups were completed yesterday.  The main happenings were:

1) Madison Keys won in Birmingham and entered the top 10 for the first time.  Her issues in the past have not been lack of power, but rather, how to harness that power to produce more winners and fewer unforced errors.  She seems to be making progress there, and she has all of the tools to win majors – big serve, huge groundies.  It will be interesting to see what she does now.

2) Murray defeats Raonic in the Aegon Championships in London.  Raonic got up a set and a break, but then his play dipped for a key interval that allowed Murray to break him three times in a row.  He also missed an easy volley at the end of the third set when match point down.  Raonic played well enough to win the match, but the distribution of bad shots was very unfavorable.  On the other side, Murray left all of his relatively poor play in the first set, which he lost, but then went on to win.  This match again reinforced the notion that tennis is a game of big points, not “the most points”.  Both of these guys are going to be hard to beat in the early rounds of Wimbledon.  Tennis commentators made a big deal that this was a battle of the coaches – former tennis rivals Lendl (with Murray) and McEnroe (with Raonic).  Sounds like a lot of nonsensical hype to me.

3) Mayer beats Zverev in Gerry Weber Open in Halle.  In the semis, Zverev produced an outstanding victory over Roger Federer.  Zverev patiently waited for the right time to open up rallies, hit the ball hard from both sides, moved quite well and served very well at critical moments.  The only mistake he made came on the first point he served at 2-2 in the third set.  Federer returned the serve, and Zverev then hit a ball close to Federer’s baseline.  Federer returned that shot to Zverev’s backhand corner, but didn’t have to – the linesman call Zverev’s shot out.  Zverev challenged and the out call was overruled.  Zverev then made his mistake.  He argued with the umpire that he should have been awarded the point because Federer didn’t have time to make play on his shot.  This claim was made after Federer successfully returned the shot!  Of course, the point was replayed.  We can attribute this incident to the heat of the moment where a young player is playing the most important match of his life.  Still, Zverev should not try to wheedle points out the umpire that he doesn’t deserve.

            Zverev then lost to Florian Mayer in the final.  Mayer had beaten a tired Dominic Thiem in the semis, and his funky game was too much for Zverev to handle.   In addition, Zverev did not play as well against Mayer as he did against Federer.  Overall, Zverev showed that he will be a major force on the tour.  Although he lost in the final, he competed very hard, saving several match points before finally succumbing.  I see a great rivalry between Zverev and Thiem just down the road.

4) Caroline Garcia wins in Mallorca.  She beat Anastasija Sevastova.  This was a great tournament for both players.  We’re all waiting for Garcia to win more consistently.  Let’s see if she gets the needed boost from this victory.