Ankle. . .knee. . .thyroid. What else could go wrong with Mardy Fish’s sometimes fragile body?
How about a cramp at match point, leaving you to wonder what sort of nightmarish scenarios were racing through his mind. Like, perhaps, “How could this be happening when I’m on the cusp of taking down Juan Martin Del Potro and reaching the quarters of a Masters 1000 event.”
It was 5-3 in the second set tiebreak at the Sony Ericsson Open when Fish spun quickly on an inside-in forehand and, before the ball had raced past Delpo to give Fish a match point, his left leg buckled.
He walked around at the back of the court, trying to give it a stretch, and lost the next two points. But at 6-5 and under who-knows-what kind of potential cramping stress, he zinged a body-shot first serve that the tall Argentine looped back over the baseline.
Game over and no nightmares. In fact, anything but. The victory sent Fish into the quarters against little David Ferrer, whom he hasn’t played, surprisingly, since 2007. Their head-to-head is 3-3, though Ferrer has won three of the last four — all on hardcourts.
The Fish-Delpo match was billed by the hype generals as a chance for Fish to come closer to surpassing Andy Roddick in the rankings, and, though it’s sort of a big deal, it really is fairly inconsequential.
Roddick has some physical issues to deal with, accounting for his second-round defeat to Pablo Cuevas as well as his loss of 990 ranking points, since he was defending a full load of 1,000 after winning Key Biscayne a year ago.
Roddick’s point total, when the new rankings come out Monday, will be 2,270, putting him about No. 15. Fish, defending 90 points at Key Biscayne, now stands at 2,196 and, with a win over Ferrer, will gain another 180 to reach 2,376 and surpass Andy.
Big deal? OK, yeah, sort of. But, as Fish noted a couple days ago, no matter what the rankings say, he’s not declaring himself the U.S.’ No. 1 player.
This 6-4, 7-6 (5) win was not Fish’s finest work and, while he won the opening set with an enormous piece of luck, I’ve always held the philosophy that in many ways you make your own luck.
Fish was working on his sixth set point when Del Potro three times drove him so wide on the forehand side that Fish could do little more than hit fly-swatter forehand returns. After the third, Delpo fired to Fish’s backhand side, where Mardy steadied himself the best he could and hit a ball that slapped the net and flopped dead on the other side, leaving Del Potro no chance at a retrieval.
Luck? Yep. But if Fish doesn’t put out the extreme effort of getting those three forehand defensive shots, he’s never has a chance to hit the backhand net-flopper that wins it. Voila! You make your own luck.
Fish served great, really mixing up with deliveries, including a number of kickers on first serve — one of the most underused serves in men’s or women’s tennis. His backhand was off for much of this match, and that’s his best ground stroke.
But it was warm out there, so cut both men some slack. Not the hottest day of the tournament, but the most humid and I’m not sure how many towels Delpo wore out with his frequent moppings between points.
In the end, en excellent win for Fish and the end of a string of semis or final finishes this year for Del Potro, who is working back from a 2010 injury.
If Fish indeed moves ahead of Roddick, it’s not clear if he can hold it very long. He has 61 points (second round, Madrid) to defend before the French Open in late May. Roddick has zero. Mardy is penciled in at Houston in a couple weeks and Roddick is planning to play three clay-courters in Europe (the 1000s at Madrid and Rome and at Nice).