Congrats to Nishikori and Garcia-Lopez who both got titles this week in Barcelona and Bucharest respectively. My attention however went to the Andujar who had a great week in Barcelona and defeated David Ferrer with some really clever clay court tennis including drop shots, varying pace, spin, and finishing many points at the net. If you can bewilder David Ferrer, you’re doing something right. Andujar played well in the final too, but it was Nishikori’s week. I can stop marvelling how much racquet head spin the current top 5 player gets on the ball. If he stays healthy I’m sure …
I don’t want to be a grouch, but the above is not really the most exciting line-up for the Madrid Open Quarterfinals. The absence of Djokovic and Federer stand out as glaring holes and personally I would have liked Haas and Dimitrov to beautify the draw with their all-court games and one-handed backhands. But enough whining. We still have some great matches to look forward to. My pick for the Madrid Open Semi-finals: Nadal, Nishikori, Murray, and Tsonga. Some thoughts on the separate matches: Nadal vs Ferrer. Ferru is a runner, a terrier, but how is he going to beat …
What a line-up we have at Madrid Open (formerly Madrid Masters) today. We have lots of top players in action, Nadal, Federer, Murray Ferrer, Berdych, Tsonga, to name a few. The most interesting match-ups in my mind is another battle of the double-handed backhanders (yesterday we had Tommy Robredo vs Tommy Haas in a well-played match) with young hot-shot Grigor Dimitrov taking on Stanislas Wavrinka, in-form Tommy Haas playing clay-demon David Ferrer and hard-hitters Verdasco and Tsonga pairing up in a heavyweight contest. Federer and Nadal are also playing of course, but as a heavy favorites. Murray and Simon will …
Most people probably thought it would be easy for Nadal to beat his compatriot Andujar, but tricky windy conditions together with great resistance and aggressive play from Andujar made the three setter a whole lot tougher than predicted. Andujar was attacking Nadal and although the world number one managed to win the first two sets, he was down 5-1 in the third. Then Nadal launched his famous fighting skills and together with Andujar’s nervousness he managed to win the third set in a tie-break. Nadal has now had to fight quite hard in both his opening matches which should have …
