Rogers cup

The Rogers cup is now complete, and the results were somewhat anticlimactic.

The men

            Novak Djokovic played Monfils in the semifinal.  Monfils had beaten Milos Raonic in the previous round by standing back and using his tremendous speed to return every ball.  Raonic was first to make mistakes most of the time, and Monfils’ serve was good enough for him to hold fairly comfortably throughout.  When Gael brought this game to Djokovic, though, he was asking for trouble.  Djokovic is the best base line player in the game.  His forehand, one of the most improved shots in tennis over the past few years, is frequently hit with 3500 RPM of topspin or more.  Novak also hits with great accuracy off both sides and moves incredibly well.  Baseline wars of attrition will not be won against Djokovic.

            Nishikori played Wawrinka in the other semi.  Stan started very well, but Nishikori eventually broke him down psychologically with his impenetrable defense and judicious use of power shots.  There was an interesting moment in this match that relates to the introductory post of this blog.  In that post I pointed out that one feature of tennis that makes it a great spectator sport is that the top players sometimes make the same mistakes as we club players.  An example of that occurred with Wawrinka serving to Nishikori, 0-3, deuce in the second set.  If you feel bad when you miss an easy shot, take a look at this miss by Stan and you’ll feel a little better.

            In the final, Novak totally dominated a spirited Kei Nishikori until he served up a break, 3-2, in the second set.  At that point Kei completely red-lined his game and broke back.  He then held, but Djokovic broke him again shortly thereafter and cruised to victory.  Novak once again showed some irritability during the match, a behavior he has manifested since the clay court warmups started.  Not sure what his issue is.  I guess it doesn’t matter if he keeps winning.

The women.

            Simona Halep played Kerber in one semifinal.  As expected, these two played some fabulous points.  Kerber and Halep are two of the four best defenders in tennis (the other two are Radwanska and Wozniacki) and their defensive skills led to some great exchanges.  Overall, though, this was a match decided by who played poorly least often.  Halep prevailed in the end.  In the other semi, a fatigued Kristina Kucova was destroyed by Madison Keys.   After a fabulous run here, Kucova’a rank went from 121 to 77!  She should now be in the main draw at the US open, so grats to her!

            In the final, Keys’ game was simply off.  She hit many balls into the net, particularly when she hit the inside out forehand.  Halep played her normal game, which is to make her opponent hit a lot of balls and play offense opportunistically by redirecting shots.  Keys missed first, and that’s about the size of it.  This blog predicted that Keys, Kerber or Halep would win the title, and it was indeed Simona Halep.