Reflections on a Fall

Coverage

2010

Davidoff Swiss Indoors

Thursday, 04 November 2010 20:58

Reflections on a Fall

Written by Tina van Eickels

Post-match interviews are different at fall tournaments. The “How are you feeling?” questions sound more concerned, the “What do you think about your season?” ones are lacking the “so far” qualifiers. There are still plenty of points and money to play for, yet the focus already seems to be on what had been and on what will come to be next season.


Strange
David Nalbandian, for example, says he doesn’t have big goals for the remainder of the year. The Argentine is just out to collect some ranking points and confidence to be in as good a position as possible for 2011, when he hopes to close the gap to the Top 10. For a player of his talent, Nalbandian sounds modest. But modesty is probably what you are left with at the tail end of a season interrupted by a nine-month absence due to surgery; the player himself said his year has been “very strange.” “You always have doubts [about surgeries]. I couldn’t continue playing, but if the surgery goes bad, then it’s over. That’s it,” he related, but quickly added: “I had a good recovery. After Wimbledon, I played some tournaments that made me feel better. It is tough to feel 100 % after injuries, but I feel good.”

For Nalbandian’s opponent, the No. 6 seed Marin Cilic, the year has taken quite a different course. The 22-year-old started out strong. Of his first three tournaments, he won two (in Chennai and Zagreb) and reached the semifinal of the third, the Australian Open. But since then, his best results have been reaching the final in Munich and making the semifinal in Washington, where he lost to… David Nalbandian.

Nalbandian was reflective but in good spirits after his win

Today, Cilic seemed on his way to even the pair’s 2010 record. He broke the Argentine in his first service game and, while a short loss of concentration brought the set back on serve, regained the advantage by breaking for the set, 6-4. But the Croat couldn’t build on the momentum. His error count from the baseline went up as Nalbandian started to increase the pressure with his powerful groundstrokes. While Cilic’s serve helped him keep the score close, his dependency on good delivery also made him take a lot of risks on his second serve, resulting in double faults at crucial moments. Nalbandian, on the other hand, lost only six points on serve in the last two sets, taking the match, 4-6, 6-4, 6-4 with a blasting forehand winner.

Drained

While Cilic’s loss meant the end of his hopes to qualify for the World Tour Finals in London, American No. 4 seed Andy Roddick is still in the running. His win today over Kazakhstan’s Andrey Golubev put him 155 points ahead of Fernando Verdasco, currently in the 9^th spot. Both players tried to be aggressive and dictate play, but Roddick was more successful. He broke Golubev three times and only surrendered his serve once, when Golubev managed to push him far behind the baseline. When it came to serving for the match, however, Roddick showed off his signature strength, taking the final game with four unreturned serves.

Roddick is playing Basel for the first time since 2003

“I’ve been feeling short of fitness and practice time for a while now. I am actually surprised how well I played,” Roddick, who has been struggling with illness all season, including a mild case of mononucleosis in the summer, said afterwards. “I don’t know why all [of a] sudden, you can put together two good matches, even though you spend more time on the rehab table than anywhere else”.

Maybe Radek Stepanek knows. The Czech also had to deal with mononucleosis this year, though, in his case, it wasn’t as mild. “My body was drained from sickness,” he explained. “I tried too early to come back, and it affected me for four, five months.” Asked where his game is now, he says he is constantly working hard to find ways to play better. Today, he managed to do so in the course of a single match. Having lost the first set 3-6 to Colombia’s Santiago Giraldo, Stepanek successfully changed his approach. While the second set was closer than the score of 6-2 suggests, Stepanek stormed past Giraldo in the third, winning the set at love. “I knew I had to do something different, so I changed strategy. I completely destroyed his rhythm and his confidence on court.”

Complicated

For Serbia’s Novak Djokovic and Viktor Troicki and for Frenchman Richard Gasquet, the season holds an extra highlight: the Davis Cup Final in Belgrade. Gasquet and Troicki will play each other in the quarterfinal tomorrow, for a semifinal meeting with either Djokovic or Robin Haase. But Gasquet rejects the idea of a match against either Serb being a conclusive preview of a possible Davis Cup encounter. Going back and forth with French journalists the 24-year-old shared he doesn’t know if he will be playing for the national team in Belgrade, and that he is not sure whether he would have a better chance to appear in the final if he did well in Basel, then proposing that a Davis Cup meeting would be an entirely different match either way, Gasquet interrupted himself laughing, “Am I being too complicated? I understand myself, do you?” Not all fall post-match media appearances are somber.

Gasquet almost made things complicated in his meeting with Tobias Kamke when he failed to serve out the match. But the German, who has good groundstrokes but a rather weak serve, couldn’t capitalize on the momentum, and Gasquet broke the World No. 72 once again to take the match, 6-4, 7-5.

Richard Gasquet and the media try to reach an understanding

The Frenchman will have to step up his level in the next rounds. Troicki received a walkover today when Paul-Henri Mathieu withdrew, but Novak Djokovic proved to be in great form in his match against Jarkko Nieminen. This contest featured the best tennis of the day, with a mix of long fast baseline rallies and angled volley winners. Serving at 3-3, Djokovic saved four break points before taking Nieminen’s serve in the following game, then holding for the first set. The second set was even closer, with both players holding serve to force a tiebreak. In the breaker, Nieminen had a chance to send the match to a third set, when he set up a 6-4 lead with a forehand winner. But he couldn’t handle Djokovic’s return on the next point, sending a volley long. After saving the second set point with a forehand winner, the Serb drew the return error to get match point, which he converted with a winning passing shot.

More photos from Thursday in Basel

Photos by Tina van Eickels