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. 

Tennis happenings

Dominic Thiem needs to watch it.

            Dominic Thiem has had great success this year.  In this grass court warmup season he has already won a tournament and has now advanced to the quarterfinals in Halle after beating Teymuraz Gabashvilli in the round of 16.  Thiem got off to a bit of a slow start against Gabashvilli before taking over and dominating.  The slow start raises a potentially significant issue for Thiem though – fatigue.

            Because he’s been so successful this year and has gone deep in so many tournaments, Thiem is playing a lot of tennis!  Last year he was 36-26 for the year (62 matches), but in 2016, with less that half of the year completed, he is 47-11 (58 matches).  So, he’s played essentially a full 2015 season in half of the 2016 season.  As he heads to Wimbledon, Thiem needs to start thinking about fatigue.  Although there is a day off between matches in majors, weather can sometimes force consecutive day play, and the matches go 5 sets instead of 3.  In my opinion Thiem might have been better off losing to Gabashvilli so he could get some rest.   At least Thiem won his next match without playing a point, as his next opponent, Philipp Kohlschreiber, withdrew with an injury.

Federer-Goffin

            It’s not often you see a player broken 4 times in a 6 game set, but that’s what happened to David Goffin in his first set with Roger Federer.  Of course, for that to occur, Goffin had to break Federer once.  The set was won by Federer 6-1.  If you want to know why people love to watch Roger, take a look at the point he played in the second set with Goffin serving 5 games to 6, 15-15.   Shots like the one Federer played there are, as Thomas Berdych once said of Federer’s play, a celebration of the game.  The second set tiebreaker in this match was also very entertaining.

The women

            Four former Wimbledon finalists – Bouchard, Kvitova, Muguruza and Radwanska, went out early in grass court warm up tournaments.  For Muguruza and Radwanska, the issues appeared to be difficulty with transitioning from clay, and outstanding grass court opponents.  For the other two, the problem appeared to be lackluster play far below the capabilities of the players.  That’s always disappointing to fans.

Try a different metaphor some time!

            Justin Gimmelstob, who is covering the grass court warm up tournaments for tennis channel, frequently uses the metaphor “locked and loaded” to describe players’ good forehands or backhands.  In this era of dreadful gun violence, couldn’t he find different one to use every now and then?

Tennis happenings

In this grass court warm up season, players are getting used to the grass, which can be slippery when wet!  This feature of grass is worth remembering with all the rain coming down in Europe, and the resultant potential risk of injury to players who lose their footing.  As an example, Belinda Bencic slipped in Birmingham with light rain falling and had to retire with a hip injury.  We all want to see tennis, but officials, please be careful and make sure play is safe!

Interesting coaching changes include the return of the ever-stolid Ivan Lendl to Murray’s camp, and addition of John McEnroe to Milos Raonic’ entourage.  If results are any measure, Murray and Lendl have a good relationship.  With McEnroe on his team, Raonic seems to be approaching the net on grass with the backhand slice a little more frequently.  Raonic looks quite fit and is playing very aggressively.

Coco Vandeweghe is looking pretty good on grass.  She won a tournament in the Netherlands last week and beat highly ranked Aggie Radwanska yesterday.  Grass is, in my opinion, Radwanska’s best surface, so it might be worth keeping an eye on Coco as Wimbledon looms.

A little bit of concern about Nick Kyrgios.  Serving at 4-4 in the third set against Raonic at the Aegon Championships in London, Kyrgios suddenly seemed to lose focus and served two wild double faults in a row to get broken.  It’s not a good idea to give a break to Raonic late in a set!  In the final game of the match with Raonic serving, Kyrgios played two shots with decided disinterest, and Raonic served out the match as expected.  Kyrgios has a ton of talent, but nobody can succeed at the top of the men’s game unless they try hard all the time.  Let’s keep an eye on this.

Thiem wins again

After a bit of good fortune got him through a fine semifinal match with Roger Federer, Dominic Thiem defeated Philipp Kohlschreiber in the final of the Mercedes Cup in Stuttgart to win his 4^th title of the year.  The semifinal was a wonderful display of the enjoyable features of grass court tennis, with two great players slugging it out on a very fast surface.  Federer missed some key shots that he usually puts away, and that cost him the match.  On one of the shots he had a makeable volley at match point in the second set tiebreaker that he missed.  Another was an easy volley miss in the third set that resulted in a key break of serve against him.

Thiem has now shown he can be a major threat on both clay and grass.  This guy is an awesome player with a terrific second serve and very powerful groundies.   It will be interesting indeed to follow his fortunes at Wimbledon and beyond.

Another important aspect of this tournament was the play of Juan Martin Del Potro.  Though he lost in the semis to Kohlschreiber, he hit the ball quite well and moved very well for a man his size.  Let’s hope he can stay healthy.

Advice to players: don’t make the game more “challenging” than it already is.

Yesterday in Stuttgart Juan Martin Del Potro served his first ball in the first set against John Millman of Australia with the game score at 0-1.  Millman won the point with a shot that landed very close to the base line.  Del Potro challenged the “in” call, but was incorrect.  Millman’s shot was on the line.  Del Potro proceeded to serve out the game.  In another match I saw several months ago, Sam Groth, who has one of the fastest serves on tour, served the very first ball of a match and the serve was called a fault.  He challenged but the call was correct.  Groth won the point on his second serve and served the game out at love.  The only impact these challenges had on the respective matches was that the players lost one of their three challenges.  The point of this story is that players frequently use their challenges very unwisely. 

We are not yet at the point where line calls can be made instantly on every shot by a Hawk eye-like device.   Instead, players are allowed only three incorrect challenges per set.  In addition, tennis is a game of winning the big points rather than the most points, and more big points occur late in sets.  Accordingly, players should make sure they have challenges available for big points.   So here is some advice to them:

If a set is on serve and neither player has yet won three games, don’t ever challenge unless the call is on a game point.  The only exception to this rule should be if the linesman made an egregiously bad call and the umpire did not overrule.  This happens very rarely.  When a set is not on serve, the player who needs to break back to stay in the set might challenge on a deuce point or in other circumstances where he feels that an overturned call greatly increases his chance to break back.  Later in sets there are more big points.  Deuce points can become important if a player is serving to get into a tiebreaker, for example. 

Players should also be aware of studies which show that challenges are more often incorrect when they involve balls landing near the baseline or service lines rather than the side lines or center line.  This point should be considered before any challenge is used.

As posted previously, I believe an “umpire’s challenge” should be made available for balls that are either clean winners or errors – for example, on service aces.  These challenges, made by the umpire, would not be charged to either player if incorrect.  This would allow more challenges per set.  Statistical studies have shown that calls are overturned by challenges about 30% of the time for men and 25% of the time for women.  That is a very high error rate for line calls, considering what is at stake.  An umpire’s challenge would allow more calls to be reviewed.  By the way, I’m not faulting the linesmen here.  I know how hard it must be to make calls with perfect accuracy when a ball is moving at 50-60 mph, a player is darting in and out of your line of sight, and the ball lands within a few millimeters of the line. 

Unless and until technology or rule changes afford players more opportunities to challenge, they should be very judicious about their use of challenges.  Players should know when they’re playing a big points, and should make sure they can review close calls in those cases.