I fell asleep last night to the sound of David Ferrer and Alexander Dolgopolov battling out a semi-final match in Acapulco. Ferrer is the defending champion and is not called the pit bull for nothing. I love the guy. Dolgopolov has been getting noticed slowly last year and really came up for air at the Aussie Open. I cottoned on to him during the summer hard court season last year. He’s a fascinating newcomer. If Raonic is the gentle giant, Dolgopolov is like a bouncy road runner and apparently just that crazy as well. Andy Roddick played him for the first time in Brisbane in January prior to Melbourne and said he’s aggressive to the point of psychosis. Now what other player would give you that kind of accuracy and wit? I really hope Andy commentates after he hangs up his racquets.
Back to this young 22 year old Ukrainian. Friends call him Sasha, on the tour he is known as Dolgo, or, even shorter and easier, the Dog. Unlike Raonic, who is even younger, this fellow does show the inconsistency of a newcomer. But then he produces jaw dropping brilliance and completely befuddles his opponents and the spectators. You really don’t know what’s coming or when. In a tight first set, the Dog won it by serving and volleying on a second serve. No one does that.
He speaks English well, having lived in New Jersey for awhile. He may still live there, I’m not sure. He looks like he wouldn’t be able to hit ten balls off a backboard, he’s so small, petite even. I suspect his hair is half way down his back when it’s loose. And when he was playing Wawrinka the night before, it was hard to say which face was more pockmarked.
Ferrer did win the match, got on top in sets two and three and took them 6-1, 6-1, so that’s the difference in this case between steady persistence and the hand of experience vs. flamboyance and it’s all new to me land. But keep your eye on this guy, he’s fun to watch. I’ll be looking for both his and Raonic’s matches in Miami, and I’m sure a lot of others will join me.
Tonight Ferrer will face Almagro in the final, not a match to miss. Almagro is having a fantastic year, on a twelve match winning streak. I remember seeing him play on one of the outer courts at Wimbledon, when he was still chunky and kind of playing at things and I wasn’t sure if I liked him or not. But he’s a top notch player especially now that he slimmed down and decided to take it seriously. Tough to call the winner.
Over in Dubai, Roger Federer never seemed to quite put it together in the final against Novak Djokovic. You kept thinking, hoping he would ignite, pull out in front and never look back. But Novak is really playing exceptionally well; for every crappy serve he made last year, he’s throwing in an amazing bomb now. When you follow the sport over some years and the players over some years, it really is interesting to see the patches they go through, the ups and downs and how they manifest themselves, in the serve, in the ground game, in the mental game. Dinara Safina was number one for a time, not so long ago, and now she has fallen into the two hundreds I believe.
Ferrer won the final in Acapulco and that was no gimme. Almagro had a 5-2 lead in the first set and then David fought back and took it to a tiebreak which he won. He broke Nico in the first game of the second set, but then Almagro woke up, got out of his funk over having lost the first set, a set he should have won, and went on to take the second in another tiebreak. Ferrer never gives up and now that the crowd was satisfied they would get a third set, they stopped chanting for Nico so much (he’s a lot of work, that guy, it was exhausting to get him to dig in for the second set…)and got behind Dabeeed a little more. Anything Ferrer wins, he deserves to win. He’s one of the hardest working players, his forearms look like rope, and if there is one guy to learn from when it comes to steady as she goes and keep your mental focus, David is it. He took the set 6-2 and won the championship for a second year in a row.
There was tennis in Delray Beach and that’s where Juan Martin del Potro was playing. His semi-final match against Mardy Fish was his biggest comeback test so far and he won. Mardy apparently thought a strategy of hold my own serve and wait for a few mistakes from Delpo would get the job done but after losing the first set, he reconsidered and got more aggressive. It wasn’t enough, and I’m always sorry to see Mardy lose, another of my favorites.
Juan Martin faced Janko Tipsaravic in the final and here came one of those frustrating odd matches. Neither player had it going. Del Potro couldn’t seem to move around the court and for the big guy that he is, he usually does move quite well. He wasn’t firing forehand missiles either. Janko was out of sorts in his own way. Neither one seemed to have any energy. Tipsaravic should have won the first set about a half hour before he lost it 6-4. It seemed to go on and on, frustrating and painful to watch and finally I threw up my hands and said enough. I changed the channel to E! for pre-Oscar red carpet coverage and it was a lot more interesting. Suffice it to say, DelPotro won the match and the championship 6-4, 6-4.
Whatever else happens this year, we all want Juan Martin to regain his former glory and go further. Prior to his wrist injury that took him off the tour for the entire year, a very long time in tennis, he was the biggest threat to the top players and a guy you could watch play all day long. His game is a lot like Soderling’s and it’s worth going to see one or the other or both just to hear the sound of their forehands. Even Roger doesn’t create that much power. When Delpo won the US Open in 2009, he had to beat both Rafa and Roger, the obstacle course any challenger has to face and no one can successfully maneuver, and not only did he beat them both, he pretty much gave them a lesson.
Over in the Middle East, the women were in Doha after Dubai last week. Wozniacki and Zvonareva made it to the finals and Vera played some fantastic tennis to take the title. She deserved it and I was happy for her since she has lost in finals the last two times she played there, once to Venus and another time to Sharapova. Caroline looked like she didn’t know what hit her, she’s gotten used to winning in finals.
Most of the tennis energy is focussed forward to Indian Wells in another week. But there’s Davis Cup this week for the men (US in Chile), and the women are in Monterrey Mexico and Kuala Lumpur.
Stay tuned. And starting in Miami, I’ll have a new I Phone and will be tweeting. You will be able to follow me on Twitter and/or right here at WordPress.com. Once I set it all up, the tweets will show on the blog page and if you follow on Twitter there’ll be a link to the blog. The age of connectivity. Plus, I’ll have my camera in Miami, so look for on and off court visuals from that colorful city.
