Unless you’re blessed with an outstanding memory, it is hard to say that
any particular tennis shot was the best you’d ever seen. Maybe there was
something better twenty years ago that you’ve simply forgotten. So I will
qualify the statement by saying that on Tuesday I saw what might have
been the greatest shot I’ve ever seen. I don’t particularly like the player who
hit the shot, and I was happy (not to mention incredulous) when he lost the
match shortly thereafter, but I do believe it’s worth remembering the moment —
and watching the YouTube clip identified below, before it’s too late. If you’ve
ever played tennis, you’ll appreciate that the shot was well-nigh impossible.
Before we get to that, however, there was a whole lot of tennis to be played.
Photos of my day appear in this Snapfish album.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Women’s Doubles, Quarterfinals, Armstrong
Lisa Raymond/Samantha Stosur (10) d. Marina Erakovic/Jelena Kostanic Tosic, 7-6(3) 6-0
The unseeded team — Erakovic a righty, and Kostanic Tosic a lefty —
mostly stayed back on serve. It didn’t hurt them all that much in the first set,
which was the only one I watched. After I left, Raymond and Stosur served up a
bagel in the second set. With Kostanic Tosic serving at 5-5, 30-30, Erakovic
intercepted the service return but netted her forehand volley for a break point.
Erakovic atoned with a winning overhead, forehand volley, and drop volley to
help her team hold. The tenth-seeded team saved a set point in the next game,
after Raymond overhit a forehand off an Erakovic net cord that followed a
cat-and-mouse exchange at the net. Raymond and Stosur, like their opponents had
done previously, reeled off three consecutive points to save the game and go to
a tiebreak.
Erakovic served the first point of the tiebreak and held. Raymond and
Stosur then ran off six straight points, featuring, at 4-1, a nice forehand
volley by the serving Raymond off a Kostanic Tosic return and past the net woman
Erakovic. While the underdogs were able to save two set points, the favorites
closed the set on Stosur’s serve, with her overhead followed by a backhand
volley winner from Raymond.
Women’s Singles, Quarterfinals, Ashe
Elena Dementieva (5) d. Patty Schnyder (15) 6-2 6-3
When I arrived in Ashe and scouted out a place in the shade, Dementieva
was already up a set and a break. In any match where her double fault rate is
barely over 4%, she will be extremely tough to beat, and this was the case on
Tuesday.
Shortly after I sat down, the southpaw Schnyder hit a big forehand down
the line for a winner to recover the break and level the second set at 3-3. That
was all she wrote. Dementieva broke right back with an inside-out forehand and
was not to be troubled again.
Is Dementieva, Jankovic, or Safina the best player currently on the
women’s tour never to win a major? Will one of them break through this
week?
Men’s Singles, Fourth Round, Ashe
Novak Djokovic (3) d. Tommy Robredo (15), 4-6 6-2 6-3 5-7 6-3
I watched the first three sets of this tussle, leaving when it seemed
that Robredo had run out of answers against the more powerful Djokovic. It
looked like a battle between a middleweight and a heavyweight. After I left,
Robredo surprised by claiming the fourth set, but Djokovic came through in the
end.
Having watched a fair amount of Djokovic, I still ask myself what makes
him so good. Yes, he has a good serve, but it’s hardly a cannonball. Yes, he has
good groundstrokes, but nothing obviously outstanding — aside, perhaps, from his
well-disguised and dangerous backhand down the line. Yes, he is competent at the
net, but not a natural volleyer. I think the answer is nothing more remarkable
than that he does everything well, does not have obvious weaknesses, and wears
opponents out. Since he and Rafa Nadal are virtually contemporaries, it will be
fascinating to see how many major titles Djokovic can add to his Australian
crown of earlier this year, and whether one of the young guns — Andy Murray,
Juan Martin Del Potro, Marin Cilic, or Ernests Gulbis — will eventually
supersede him. One note about Djokovic that’s worthy of mention: he still
bounces the ball a lot before he serves, but the
skeins of 20+ bounces seem to be in the past. Let’s hope
so.
Robredo jumped ahead in the ninth game of this match, breaking serve with
the help of a double fault from Djokovic at 30-30. Serving out the set, Robredo
got off to a superb start when he chased down a drop shot and then a Djokovic
volley to hit a winning passing shot. Robredo held at
love.
Though the second set was punctuated by a visit from the trainer to
assist Djokovic, it was not close. Djokovic broke for 2-0 and again to close out
the set. In the third set, Djokovic broke serve at 15 in the fourth game and was
never headed — at least not while I was still watching the
match.
The stands behind the court were packed by fans desperate to sit in the
shade, while the rest of Ashe was sparsely populated. There were some tetchy
moments between the people who held tickets in the shaded area and visitors.
Since I was one of the visitors and I kept expecting to get tossed from my seat,
I thought it was time to move on after three sets.
Men’s Doubles, Quarterfinals, Armstrong
Maximo Gonzalez/Juan Monaco d. Bruno Soares/Dusan Vemic, 6-2 6-7(3) 6-3
I caught only the final two games of this match and have only two
observations.
Both sides played one up/one back. It’s not a long-range formula for
success in men’s doubles, as Gonzalez and
Vemic has one of those balding guy ponytails going on. Opinions may
differ, but that’s probably another not-too-great
idea.
Men’s Singles, Fourth Round, Armstrong
Gilles Muller d. Nikolay
Davydenko,
6-4 4-6 6-3
7-6(10)
As the players warmed up in front of a small crowd, with Ashe crowded
with fans watching Djokovic v. Robredo (as it would later be crowded for those
watching Roger Federer and Igor Andreev go five sets), we could hear music
coming over from Ashe during a changeover on that court. It was the late, great
Warren Zevon with Werewolves of London. There are times when you just
have to love the US Open, and this was one of them — even if the sun was beating
down and the ice cream vendor was no longer plying the upper deck of Armstrong
during the second week of the tournament.
After his marathon win on Sunday, I thought that Muller had stashed his
drop shot somewhere in the garage, but he hauled it out again several times
against the speedy Davydenko, and got away with it more often than I’d have
predicted. Muller also holds onto a traditional shot that you don’t much see
these days, and this one I like. Like many players with two-handed backhands, he
adds variety to his game with a one-handed slice. He uses that slice fairly
often as an approach shot, unlike the topspin approaches one sees today. It can
work quite well, and it’s disguised, in that the opponent can’t tell right away
whether Muller is employing underspin to keep the rally going or to launch an
attack.
Muller got through his first crisis in the seventh game, savings three
break points, primarily with unreturnable serves. Muller doesn’t serve all that
hard — in this match, his first serve averaged 120 mph — but the novelty of
being a lefty gives him an edge, and he is effective with a slice out wide in
the ad court, which is not hit hard but runs away from a righty’s backhand. The
stat sheet shows that Muller served 20 aces in this match; there must have been
a like number of serves that Davydenko was simply unable to
return.
Davydenko handled his first crisis less adroitly. Serving at 4-5, 15-30,
he double faulted, then totally mishit a forehand passing shot, and suddenly the
set belonged to Muller. This had to be a novelty for Gilles, considering he’d
lost the first two sets in each of his prior two matches. Muller went up an
early break in the second set and was serving at 4-2, 40-15, but Davydenko
ripped off four consecutive points for the break back. In his next service game,
Muller saved two break points at 0-40, but not the third, when his forehand
approach sailed long. So now Davydenko was serving for the second set, and he
closed it out at 15.
After the fifth game of the third set, Muller took a medical timeout to
have his left knee taped. I used the time for a men’s room break, only to come
back to find that Muller had broken for a 4-2 lead. When it came time for Muller
to serve for the set, he fell behind 0-30 and then 15-40. He bravely served and
volleyed on a second ball and hit a beautiful backhand volley to get to 30-40.
On the second break point, Davydenko lost a long rally when his backhand landed
just wide. Davydenko garnered a third breaker when he passed Muller with a
backhand return of a second serve, but Muller got back to deuce when he served
and volleyed on second serve, and Davydenko hit a forehand just long. Muller got
to set point with a 123 mph ace out wide and closed the set when Davydenko
misfired on a backhand return of a second serve.
Davydenko saved two break points in the third game of the fourth set and
Muller saved one in the eighth game. With Muller serving at 4-5, things got
dicey, as he fell behind 0-40. He saved one set point with a 128 mph ace up the
T and another when Davydenko’s backhand pass found the net. Muller reached the
haven of deuce with a 129 mph serve up the middle that Davydenko returned long.
A double fault meant a fourth set point for Davydenko, but Muller held for 5-5
by sandwiching a 126 mph ace up the middle and a crosscourt backhand winner
around a Davydenko backhand pass that missed the mark. The lights went on, and
it was 6:11 p.m.
Both players held serve at 15, and we went into a tiebreak. It was at
least a mini-epic, so it deserves point-by-point recounting, with the serving
player’s initials indicated parenthetically.
MaliVai Washington, interviewing Muller on the
court after the match, asked him how his attitude has changed recently. Muller
said he’s more confident and added that, a couple of years ago, he would have
folded up after Davydenko’s miracle shot, but now he said to himself he’ll never
hit a ball like that again, smiled, and went on. Perhaps naively, I assumed that
Davydenko’s amazing shot would be the turning point that brought him the match.
Not against this version of Muller, it turned out.
While all this was happening, the Federer-Andreev match was going long,
and the night session stood to be delayed. The crew took down the singles net on
Armstrong and put up a doubles net for the match featuring the
Women’s Singles, Quarterfinals, Armstrong
Jelena Jankovic (2) d. Sybille
Bammer (29), 6-1
6-4
One of three mothers currently on the WTA Tour, Bammer is a
hard-hitting lefty. Today’s New York Times says that Jankovic “largely overpowered” Bammer. That’s
not what I saw. Instead, I saw Bammer string together two or three powerful
shots, but unable to hit the clincher in court or, if in court, by Jankovic.
Jankovic was not going for winners, but she was getting everything back. In the
first set, she committed only four
unforced errors, compared to 17 for Bammer. Since they each hit three winners,
it was not a close set. Some errors crept into Jankovic’s game in the second
set, but not enough to turn the tide.
I stayed on Armstrong for this match because I was not enthusiastic about
sitting in the nosebleed seats in Ashe to watch the fifth set of Federer. As I
later learned, had I left Armstrong, I would not have been allowed back in. Day
session patrons were allowed to stay in Armstrong, but they were not allowed to
enter. As the crowd streamed into Armstrong, the chair umpire asked spectators
to take the nearest seat right away and use the change-over to look for a better
seat. The admonition was not merely ignored, it was flouted with the derision
that only a
Jankovic and Bammer began their match with three consecutive breaks of
serve, and then the second seed held for 3-1 as part of a run of 11 straights
points that helped seal the first set. Bammer had her own string of seven
consecutive points in the second set, to which Jankovic responded with a later
streak of nine. Perhaps fittingly, the match ended just before 9:10 with a
double fault from Bammer.
While the match was going on, the smell of barbecue wafted onto the
court, and one could see smoke in the lights. Shortly
after the second set began, Federer had completed his match with Andreev, and
Orleans’ Still the
One played loudly on Ashe, readily audible on Armstrong. Sad to
say, I don’t think Federer is still the one, and it’s highly debatable whether
he’ll break or equal Pete Sampras’s record of 14 major titles; indeed, I wonder
if he’ll add at all to his current holdings of 12. On this one, I very much hope
to be proven wrong.