If this isn’t the shot of the season on the ATP tour and possibly one of the all-time single point sequences, then it certainly must be top five or, possibly, top three.
It happened Sunday afternoon at the Legg-Mason final in Washington, D.C.,. and showed why Gael Monfils — not Rafa Nadal — is the greatest pure athlete in the game.
Gael Monfils
You don’t have to watch this point over and over to appreciate it. One time is enough. But you will want to watch it over and over because, if you haven’t seen Monfils perform with this kind of incredible speed and athletic ability before, you will be quite amazed.
Monfils lost the point, but not before he saved three volleys and, in one of the most acrobatic and athletic plays you’ll ever see in tennis, leaped approximately three feet on the dead run to return an overhead from Radek Stepanek.
OK. Here’s how it happened and I wouldn’t be surprised if it hits youtube.com by Monday, allowing you to see it in full color.
Shortly after a long rain delay, Stepanek was serving at 4-3 and 15-love. Step’s first ground stroke was a backhand deep and flat to Monfils’ forehand corner. Gael made a sliding (yes, sliding on a hardcourt) retrieval, his shoes screeching as he came to a halt outside the plane of the doubles line.
His return was defensive, down the middle, and Radek, already well on the way to the net behind his first groundie, guided a forehand volley now deep to Monfils’ backhand side. No problem. Gael, his long legs in full flight, was there and threw up a lob.
Stepanek retreated a step, measured it and slammed the overhead straight on, a little to the right of Monfils’ center mark. And here’s where the gasps occurred.
On a full run to get back into position, Monfils jumped, his right arm stretched high, and he returned the smash. How high was he? I’d make the height of back-wall curtain about six-feet and, looking straight at Monfils, his waist was about even with the top of the wall. Can we say he was three feet off the ground when he hit that overhead? I’d call that a fair estimate.
Unfortunately, he didn’t get the point, but Stepanek needed two more volleys to put it away.
I’ve seen a lot of tennis in my years, but I can’t say that I’ve seen more pure athletic ability in one point than I saw in this spectacular display.
