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IPTL SINGAPORE - WEDNESDAY 3 DECEMBER IP: 203.116.178.87 Posted on December 3, 2014 at 07:50:28 PM by David Barnes
IPTL 2014 - SINGAPORE
WEDNESDAY 3 DECEMBER
The UAE Royals took on the Manila Mavericks in the afternoon session today, the first set being a compelling match-up between Goran Ivanisevic and Mark Philippoussis, the Australian edging it 6-5 after the five-minute shoot-out, with the help of an audaciously-played 'happiness power point' at 6-4 up. The Australian had won an impressive 83% of his first serves, an achievement on which he built a performance of considerable strength and subtlety.
Fortunes swung this way and that thereafter; having not played well in his sets yesterday, Marin Cilic came good against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga 6-4, but then, partnering Zimonjic in the doubles, lost 6-3 to Tsonga and Huey. The UAE Royals came back strongly in the mixed doubles, however, Zimonjic and Mladenovic trouncing Nestor and Flipkens 6-1. The French girl rounded off the afternoon by inching past Flipkens 6-4 in the singles, so that her team ran out 26-21 on the day.
There was a flurry of excitement in the press room during play when a group of twenty or so individuals were ushered in and lined up in the rows of seats usually reserved for journalists, in front of the table and microphones where the players gather and are interviewed after matches. Shortly afterwards Serena Williams was ushered in for a 'chat' and selfie session with some of her sponsors and their families.
The Singapore Slammers team is sponsored, perhaps rather curiously, by a group of tennis-enthusiastic Indian businessmen that includes the retired cricketer Sunil Gavaskar and the Executive Chairman of Allcargo Logistics Limited, part of the Avvashya Group of companies, Shashi Kiran Shetty. Their families and friends were at first nervous, in what amounted probably to their first ever private press conference with a superstar, but warmed up noticeably once Serena started signing autographs and posing for photographs.
Serena was first on court tonight for the Singapore Slammers, playing Ana Ivanovic of the Indian Aces. In all sorts of trouble early on, she turned the power on and the match around, as all true champions - miraculously, as it seems, to us lesser mortals - are often able to do, coming out the 6-4 winner, and thus giving her team, trailing last in the overall points table after the afternoon session, a much-needed boost.
The tables were turned in the next set, when the inspired partnership of Rohan Bopanna and Sania Mirza tore into Bruno Soares and Serena Williams and triumphed 6-3. Agassi struggled against 'the magician' Santoro after that, although it was heart-warming to see the interaction between him and Serena at changeovers, the latter holding the great man's racket and offering him water in the manner of a concerned younger sister. It's all about the team, after all . . . Agassi made sixteen unforced errors, while the magician slipped up only four times, and that was largely the story of the set. A masterly win for Santoro and the Aces, who had already micromaxed their way to the top of the points table when the evening's match began.
The last set of the evening proved to be fabulous entertainment; Aussies Lleyton Hewitt and Nick Krygios played Rohan Bopanna and Gael Monfils. The set went to a five-minute shoot-out, and with the Slammers winning that 8-4, to a seven-minute 'super shoot-out' - uncharted territory, to use courtside interviewer Craig Wilson's phrase. Fabrice Santoro chose Gael Monfils to serve first (under the rules the super shoot-out has to consist of mens singles); the Frenchman had two double faults, the Czech two aces, and the home team of the Slammers won the super shoot-out 11-6, the match 6-5, and thus their first win of the IPTL tour, 24-23 overall. "We were fighting for each other out there tonight. It was fantastic", Lleyton Hewitt said afterwards. A perfectly written script in every respect.
The commentators on the live TV feed, Jason Goodall and Robbie Koenig, by the way, generally do an outstanding job; they both regularly work together for TennisTV.com, and individually for other TV stations and channels, and thus, to use a slightly hackneyed expression, know their way around a tennis court. According to the ATP website, Koenig earned earned $944,191 in prize money during his seven-year playing career between 1991 and 1998, a figure not unadjacent to what Serena is rumoured to have been paid for her participation in this inaugural IPTL roadshow. How times change, one might observe, but then he was not world number one four times, not to mention two years in a row as Williams has just been. He did produce the commentator's quote of the tournament so far, in my opinion, during the tense set between Cilic/Zimonjic and Tsonga/Huey, after an especially succulent rally; "Ah, that is simply jaw-dropping stuff. This is tennis plus plus". Music to the ears of Mahesh Bhupathi and the sponsors, no doubt.
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