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ROLAND GARROS 2014 - FRIDAY 6 JUNE IP: 46.255.183.159 Posted on June 6, 2014 at 10:18:36 PM by David Barnes
ROLAND GARROS 2014
FRIDAY 6 JUNE (DAY 13)
That old crowd-pleaser Mansour Bahrami was on court yesterday, playing with Cedric Pioline against Mikael Pernfors and Mats Wilander in the over 45s ‘Legends’ event. Vintage stuff in more senses than one. Introduced as ‘the man with, still, the best tennis technique in the world’ he ran through his usual routine, and by the start of the second game we had giggled and laughed ourselves silly already, with his missed overheads that turn into winning forehands, the shot between the legs that works, the ball bounced high and caught in the left pocket of his shorts, the questioning of a line call, and, one not much seen before, the throwing of a ball at a linesman in mock disgust and anger. Bahrami and Pioline lost in straight sets, but it didn’t really matter. It never does, and therein lies the fun.
Fun was the last thing on the menu today in the men’s semi-finals; apart from anything else, there was 825,000 Euros at stake for each victor, doubled if he went on to win on Sunday. The problem for Gulbis was one he had presaged when talking about his teenage years; “About Djokovic, - I came to Niki Pilic's academy at one point and he was before me there, and then I stick to that place, and he was just coming and going. He was really professional already at that time. There was one Croatian guy who was all about the girls at that age already. He was dressing up, looking good, putting perfume, sunglasses, going to talk to the girls. I see Novak, he's going to stretch, you know. And Novak told me that, yeah, you can have anybody. Can have all the girls in the world. But to be really successful in tennis, you need to . . . something like that he said to me. I remember it still. That's a kid who is 15 years old. I didn't forget”.
And so it proved today, Gulbis being a step or two behind the pace in most of the rallies, relying on charm and improvisation whereas Djokovic employed immaculate timing and technique. The Serb won the first two sets with ease, lost the third as Gulbis remembered that this was a serious occasion and not some game played in front of a few teenage girls looking on in the local park, but hung on in the fourth to come through 6-3, 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 in just over two and a half hours. The heat appeared problematic for both players, but at key moments it was the Latvian’s egregious unforced errors that sealed his fate, notably two wayward backhands at 3-3 in the fourth set, when it looked at though the momentum was perhaps swinging his way. Gulbis said afterwards; “If I cannot take this weather, what I'm going to do in Australia? For sure it wasn't the heat. I don't know what was it. You saw also Novak. He also didn't feel great at the end of the match. It's just that he was more consistent, especially in the end. He just put the ball twice over the net, and I missed it the third shot. That's it. That was all the difference”.
“I still think it's not a job. I think it's half hobby. It's enjoyable job, very enjoyable job. The more I play these kind of matches, the more I'm going to get used to these situations. For me, I take only the positive stuff out of it. Yeah, I need to be in these situations once, twice, three times, you know, and then I can maybe make that extra step. I will definitely take it as a stepping-stone”. He was asked how far he thought that journey would take him. “All the way to No. 1”, he shot back. You wouldn’t bet necessarily against it, but old habits die hard.
Murray’s journey towards a first Roland Garros final came up against the buffers of Nadal’s superior clay court game, as it did at the same stage of this tournament in 2011. All he could have done to stand a chance of winning was to serve better and be more aggressive on the return, but Rafa served with scarcely believable accuracy, power, and consistency, and was too often able to run round his backhand and dictate the point in rallies, his forehand an especially impressive combination of topspin, speed, height over the net, and pinpoint placement. Apart from these lapse in strategy, Murray didn’t play as badly as he did at times in previous rounds – it was merely that Rafa, in his second home, Roland Garros’ Philippe Chatrier court, was in imperious form and playing by far the best tennis of his tournament. No wonder Uncle Toni was so offended when he was put on Suzanne Lenglen twice in the run-up to this semi-final. No wonder Judy Murray has had her dyed [yet again – why does she do it?] a new and uncomfortable peroxide white – anticipating the horrors of the match, perhaps, and trying to rule out any further capillary deterioration on account of her son’s shock results on court.
One had some sympathy for Murray as he walked in to his press conference, since he is the most savage of critics when it comes to analysing his performances, and he did not disappoint in terms of self-flagellation today. “He served well and I didn’t return well. He served very close to the lines. But the problem is if you don't do anything with the return, I mean, he was just battering the next ball into the corner. So you need to try and do something with his return. Maybe I was going for a bit too much. Then when I missed a couple in a row I would get a bit tentative. It was a tough day for me. I’ll need to bounce back quickly from it because I’m not happy with the way I played today. I didn’t give myself a chance in any of the sets and that why I’m disappointed . . . you want to be competitive”.
Rafa will be in his ninth final here, and he has won all eight so far. “Thank you to everybody here, they make me feel a little bit at home” he said on court to Fabrice Santoro after his semi-final victory. In retrospect Andy never stood a chance today, and many now feel, having seen Rafa in action, that neither will Djokovic, dearly as he would love a first title here, on Sunday.
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David Barnes/Topspin, 2014
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