monday morning Archives - World Tennis Magazine

By Blair Henley

Fans got a rare look at the intensity in Sam Stosur’s blue eyes on Sunday. She was without her signature sunglasses for her late night match against No. 12 seed Elena Dementieva, but she didn’t seem to miss them. The Australian saved four match points (and needed two of her own) before finishing off her veteran opponent 6-3, 2-6, 7-6 (2) officially at 1:35 am on Monday morning. It was the latest finish ever for a women’s match at the US Open, finishing five minutes later than the 1:30 am finish in 1987 between Gabriela Sabatini and Bev Bowes.

Stosur, seeded fifth, was down 3-0 and 5-3 in the final set, but thanks to some gutsy play and the support of some rowdy Australian fans, she was able to work her way back into the match and into a final set tiebreak where she proceeded to dominate.

Australian tennis player Samantha Stosur — Samantha Stosur

Dementieva has reached the semifinals at the U.S. Open three times in addition to reaching the final in 2004. Compare that to Stosur who, up until this year, had never advanced beyond the second round in New York. With such a difference in experience you would expect the rookie to fall apart in a high-pressure situation, but it was Dementieva who crumbled. Throughout the match she continued to look hopelessly up at her mother sitting courtside. She never quite regained momentum after letting her final three match point opportunities slip away at 5-4 on Stosur’s serve.

The Aussie was a French Open finalist this year, but after losing in the first round of Wimbledon, she has struggled to get back on track. She was even forced to miss two U.S. Open warm-up tournaments due to an arm injury, but that’s clearly behind her now. She will take on Kim Clijsters in the quarterfinals who started off the day with a 6-2, 6-1 drubbing of Serbian darling, Ana Ivanovic, who held serve only once in the match.

“I was on the big stage again,” Ivanovic said. “Lots of emotions came back and I just felt a little slow and just a little bit out of it.”

Despite the disappointing loss, fans are undoubtedly encouraged by the progress of the former No. 1. Though overmatched by Clijsters, she has looked increasingly confidence and comfortable on court in recent weeks as her ranking has moved from outside the top 60 to inside the top 40. Let’s hope there’s more where that came from.

Venus Williams followed in Clijsters footsteps with a 7-6, 6-3 win over Shahar Peer. Peer was doing her best to snap a five-match losing streak against the elder Williams, but in the end the 16^th seed was just happy to make it match. Until today, Peer had never won more than four games in her previous meetings with Venus.

“Every time I played Venus before I had a tough time and she was always kind of killing me every time. She’s always there. She knows what she’s doing, and I’m sure she’s going to play better every match,” Peer said. This was much closer than our other matches though. For me it was a good performance.”

Venus will play No. 6 seed Francesca Schiavone who downed an injured Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 6-3, 6-0. The 20th-seeded Russian has been struggling with a right arm injury for the past month, and Schiavone took advantage. By securing her fourth win in New York, the ultra-fit Italian has surpassed the total number of matches she’s won since capturing the 2010 French Open title back in June.

Rafa Nadal was fist-pumping and gyrating all over the court in celebration after this excruciating semifinal, a 6-4, 3-6, 6-4 triumph over ball-crushing Ernests Gulbis that seemed headed for a very dangerous third-set tiebreak, and you knew from Rafa’s post-match exhileration that he was particularly happy to get out of this one.

It was a final-four match at Rome that was significant for a few reasons. For Nadal, it pushed him to his 10th consecutive win on clay this year without a loss and into his second final, to play amigo David Ferrer, following his dominance at Monte Carlo two weeks ago. It also demonstrated, once again, his resilience and resourcefulness in dealing with a hot opponent. At 23, Nadal still doesn’t get enough credit for his ability to make adjustments in mid-match.

For Gulbis, who had taken out Roger Federer in the second round, it raised a pretty important question: Just how good is this guy?

His ranking of No. 40 will improve significantly when the ATP computer spits out the new list on Monday morning and, after what he has shown these last few weeks, there are a lot of people wondering if he’s top-10, even top-5 material. His ball contact is so impeccable that, even on clay, his ground strokes are lethal from just about any position on court.

As for foot speed? Good enough. Guts and heart? “I (bleeped) in my pants,” he said after confronting match points against Federer last week — a remark that will be remembered, humorously, for a long time. But he never choked. Was it Rod Laver who said that when he felt tight on court, he didn’t let up but, rather, just hit harder. That appears to be Gulbis’ philosophy as well, though he made a couple of fatal drop shot mistakes in the final game of the Nadal match, which we’ll get into in a moment.

This was a match with just three service breaks — one in each set. Nadal defended his serve with pinpoint accuracy and his ability to back it up by taking charge of points early. Gulbis, meanwhile, defended his serve with pace — an average 121 mph on first serve. Maybe that doesn’t seem particularly high, but when you factor in those slice serves to the deuce court which require less speed to be effective, 121 is Andy Roddick territory.

Gulbis presents opponents with two major difficulties. One is his first serve, which he got in an extraordinary 77 percent of the time, even at such high pace. The other is his ground stroking. He’s going for the lines and he’s not waiting for a high-percentage situation. Actually, a high-percentage situation for Gulbis is any ball he can get a shoulder turn on. He had 50 winners and 53 unforced errors in this semifinal, and that’s typical of the risk with which he plays.

But as good as his first serve is, the second is a liability against better players. The pace on that second serve is a lot better than the location, and, as the third set wore on and Nadal searched for ways to earn the crucial break, he repeatedly took advantage of the few second serves he was offered. If Gulbis is to break top 10 he’s going to have to get better on that second. He’s also going to have to steady down his shot selection at crunch time, though he’s doing a much better job of that under new coach Hernan Gumy.

Serving to stay in the match at 4-5 in the third, Gulbis inexplicably settled on a couple of drop shots on the first two points. Nadal was all over both — easily. Rafa then made a couple of remarkably returns off first serves to close it out at love. And was he happy to get out of there.

One of the best things Nadal did in the third set was to get more topspin on his returns to Gulbis’ backhand side. The Latvian clearly was not as comfortable with high balls off his left as he is off the forehand side. Once Rafa was able to force cross-court rallies between his (left-handed) forehand and Gulbis’ backhand, he was in command. Where Gulbis’ forehand does not break down in long rallies, his backhand does.

He’s fun to watch because he gives you a lot of gestures and body language, but he’s also a bit tiresome as you watch him go to the towel after every service point, wiping a forehand that looks completely dry. This is classic Greg Rusedski time-wasting, but, then, Nadal can push the clock between points, too.

Gulbis admits that he wasn’t always fully committed to his training, but that he is now. If he continues this kind of play, he’ll be a factor at the French Open and certainly one at Wimbledon and the U.S. hardcourt season this summer.

Charles Bricker can be reached at nflwriterr@aol.com