pace Archives - World Tennis Magazine

By Ritesh Gupta

There are times when famed players raise their game to a certain level which results in a feeling of contentment for them. Even after being at the top when you prove something to yourself, it definitely means a lot. Also, when you know your opponent is not a mere pushover, it makes such effort all the more creditable.

Justin Henin conjured up one such display at Wimbledon Friday. The fact that the Belgian played on the Centre Court, it made her 6-1, 6-4 made her third-round victory over Russian Nadia Petrova all the more special.

For one who only returned to the competitive tennis earlier this year, Henin surely is hungry for success.

Her post-match smile summed it up all. Immediately after her third-round win, Henin mentioned that this is the best she has played since her return.

The Henin-Petrova match lasted for 68 minutes. But the first 30 minutes almost completed Petrova’s misery.

The way the first set shaped up, it was clear that Henin was in no mood to let her opponent settle down. She bamboozled Petrova with her swift movement and fluent strokes. So much so that the depth and the pace of Henin’s groundstrokes made Petrova retrieve a lot of balls in an awkward fashion. Henin also negated Petrova’s service games with ease and that only mounted the pressure point after point, game after game.

After being broken thrice in the first set, Petrova lost her control. Her frustration became quite apparent. Not happy with the situation, she slammed her racquet on her foot and on the ground.

At times such antics may not lift one’s spirit, but they can definitely break your opponent’s tempo.

Perhaps that was the case with Henin. She lost her serve early in the second set, owing to a couple of loose strokes. Petrova, though not serving the way she is known for, varied her pace and improved her first serve percentage for a brief period to make a match of it.

But Henin soon broke back after Petrova failed to stave off fourth break point in the sixth game. A couple of games later, the Russian’s resistance came to an end.

Henin’s victory showed she was on top her game and quite focused. She knows she can’t afford to let the advantage or rhythm go, especially the way she squandered 5-2 lead in the second set in her second-round match against German Kristina Barrois before recovering to win in straight sets.

The timing of Henin striking form couldn’t have been better. She next faces Kim Clijsters for a place in the last eight, definitely the biggest match in the ladies’ singles so far.

Importantly, Clijsters isn’t spending too much time on court. She was equally ruthless in her 6-3, 6-3 win over Maria Kirilenko of Russia.

By Charles Bricker

Four games into the second set of what looked like another Rafael Nadal steamroller, Andy Roddick suddenly shot toward the net behind one of those massive serves and, just for an instant, I felt like screaming, “At last! Serve and volley. What took you so long!”

Roddick got the point and most of the others that followed and, while you couldn’t say with 100 percent certainty that this was the turning point in this beautifully played semifinal at the Sony Ericsson Open, I’d be willing to bet a fiver that it was.

Only briefly and only in isolated moments afterward did Nadal look anything like the formidable killer who had powered through Roddick in the opening stages of this 4-6, 6-3, 6-3 victory. It was a triumph that sent Roddick and his prodigious serve into his fourth championship match of the season.

It’s one of the wonders of tennis the way these matches sometimes turn around on a simple change in tactics. This one certainly did. Roddick had been much too passive in the opening set, putting too much air under his ground strokes, hoping to force Nadal to generate all the pace and depending on his near-flawless serve to get him into a tiebreak, at the very least.

If that was coach Larry Stefanki’s game plan, it might have been worth a try, but it didn’t work well as Nadal broke early and just fed off Roddick’s too-safe ground strokes.

Fine. Let’s go to Plan B. And everything turned around midway through the second set as Roddick, probably on some pre-arranged decision with Stefanki, made two strategic decisions, both producing the desired effects.

First, serve and volley tennis. This wasn’t about holding serve. Roddick probably could have maintained his serving edge without coming in behind it. It was about getting Nadal out of a comfort zone or, at least, making him think about something else. That’s not exactly new-age thinking, nor is it necessarily effective against a player as great as Nadal. But if you’re getting your tail whipped, you’ve got to change the ambiance. Roddick converted only 15 of 25 points at net, which isn’t exactly Sampras-like. But his presence up there heavily discomfited Nadal, and that’s what this was about.

Second, Roddick flattened out his ground strokes and went hard after Nadal’s forehand, hoping to eliminate some of the Spaniard’s heavy topspin, and it produced enough shorter returns to allow Andy to seize some control. And with the control came confidence. And with the confidence came the breaks he needed.

One of the most important points in this match came with Roddick serving at 3-3 in the second set when he won a 14-stroke rally. Big deal, you say? Against Nadal on this particularl afternoon, it was very big, and it was a whopper of a confidence reinforcement for Andy.

The second-set break came at 3-4 and love-40. After yet another short Nadal ball, Roddick lashed a forehand to the forehand corner for a clean winner, then closed out the set by winning the last 11 points.

Nadal was in full retreat now and, in the third game of the final set, he had two chances to put away a key point on serve and failed on both an overhead and volley. He then gave the break away on an easy forehand into the net.

It was an amazing turn-around and, the way Roddick was serving, this semi was over and out right there. It’s well known that Roddick has one of the two or three best serves in tennis, but he’s been at an even higher level the last few weeks. When Nadal broke in the first set, it was only the second time that Roddick has been busted in 64 service games dating back to his loss to Ivan Ljubicic in the Indian Wells final.

Before we leave this match, there were two significant changeover moments this afternoon.

* After the opening game of the second set, Roddick lit into chair umpire Fergus Murphy, who has had his share of controversial moments over the years. Roddick thought he had won Game 1 with an ace. Nadal, who was walking toward his chair, knew it was an ace. So did the linesperson. But Murphy overruled, forcing Roddick to challenge.

“You’re overruling on a ball in the far court,” Roddick pointed out as he approached his chair. “You’re right and I was wrong,” Murphy acknowledged. And Roddick snapped back: “Yeah, well we already know that. Far court. You know better than that.”

* Then, on the changeover in the third set at 3-2, Nadal, grimacing and clearly unhappy, pounded his right thigh with his fist. I’d never seen that kind of emotion from him before. Was he hurt? Was he angry that his knee had flared up again? He never called the trainer and I guess we’ll have to wait to hear more about that. It could have just been his inability to make the right adjustments in this match to Roddick’s adjustments.

Whatever the reason, he’s off for the clay season and Roddick is into Sunday’s final and a chance to win his second tournament of the year (Brisbane) and his second Sony Ericsson Open.

He’s not just a slugger anymore. Stefanki has given him all the mental tools he gave, at various times in his coaching career, John McEnroe, Yevgeny Kafelnikov, Marcelo Rios and Tim Henman. He’s given Roddick the ability to think through the right changes in mid-match and how to combine brute power with clear thinking.

Charles Bricker can be reached at nflwriterr@aol.com