Climb Every Montanes

Albert Montanes d. Frederico Gil, 62 67(4) 75

Congratulations to Albert Montanes on defending his Estoril Open title, and commiserations to Frederico Gil, who wasn’t able to build on his achievement of becoming the first Portuguese man to reach an ATP tour final and deliver the trophy for his home crowd. I didn’t see the match, so I’ll turn instead to naughty T, official NB agent provocateur and attender-of-Estoril, who summed up Gil’s performance in the final as “ripping victory from the jaws of defeat and then shoving it back down its throat”. Wise words.

Still cute though.

Anastasija Sevastova d. Arantxa Parra Santonja, 62 75

Just when you thought all there was to Latvian tennis was Ernests Gulbis, Anastasija Sevastova pops up to take her maiden WTA singles title. I’ve never seen her play but she’s had some solid results this year and it’s worth remembering that last year we also had a maiden titlist in Estoril who nobody had ever really heard of. Her name? Yanina Wickmayer. I’m just saying.

The Latvian Sharapova?

Americans in Belgrade, Marin in Munich, F(r)ed in Estoril

So here’s the state of play. Somewhat ironically, there’ll be an all-American final in Belgrade.

 John Isner had a great win over Stanislas Wawrinka and Sam Querrey disposed of little Filip Krajinovic, in his first ATP semi-final courtesy of Novak Djokovic’s withdrawal. He lost 61 62 in front of his home crowd.

Welcome to the wonderful world of the ATP!

In Munich, Marin Cilic has somehow cobbled enough wins together to be in the final. Yes, it’s one of those weeks. He actually played really well against Marcos Baghdatis today and got better as the match went on, which is, I suppose, a good thing.

It’ll be Mikhail Youzhny facing him in the final, after Youzhny disposed of Philipp Petzchner who had knocked out the defending champion Tomas Berdych. Youzhny is up 3 -0 in the head-to-head with Cilic, by the way. I’m just saying.

And the shock of the day in Estoril was Roger Federer’s 62 76(5) loss to Albert Montanes, the defending champion, in Estoril. It was a rain-delayed day, the conditions were terrible and for whatever reason, Federer just didn’t adapt at all. It was a mystifyingly lame performance from him, although he insists he isn’t worried – his post-match comments basically added up to ‘meh, these things happen’. I was fairly impressed with Montanes, though, who didn’t let either the conditions or the unexpected lack of resistance throw him off and is now in an excellent position to defend his title.

 

Lost in the Federer shuffle, however, has been the fact that Frederico Gil has become the first Portuguese player to reach an ATP final and he’s done it on his home ground, beating Guillermo Garcia-Lopez 62 57 63. Heartwarming stuff.

It’s Not Finished …. It’s Finished

Good news? Juan Martin del Potro is through to the third round of the Paris masters to face Fernando Gonzalez after a three-set win. (I feel the urge to go ‘YEAH BABY!’ a la Ola Jordan at this point, but I shall restrain myself. Oh, what the hell. YEAH BABY!). The bad news? Said win came over Marat Safin, ending his career 64 57 64.

 

I thought JMDP played quite well overall. He made only 2 UFEs in the first set, served his 500th ace of 2009 somewhere during the second set, and if it hadn’t been for a badly-timed wobble (probably the lack of match practice) serving to stay in the second set he may well have got it done in two. I think Marat was reasonably satisfied to have his final match be against del Potro – if only because, as he said during the post-match presentation, that may possibly entitle him to a share of the prize money should JMDP win the whole shebang – and there was, er, shall we say genuine warmth between them at the net.

JMDP was basically wholly adorable, directing the crowd to applaud Marat, sitting down next to Marat for a chat, and printing ‘MARAT’ on the camera and getting Safin to sign it instead of signing it himself. All of which was making me wibble a little bit, and that was before Marat’s goodbye ceremony, where a bunch of players past and present came on to wish him well and applaud while he was presented with the key to the Bercy stadium.

Here’s video of the whole thing, from match point on, in case you missed it:

I realise I’ve spent most of this post talking about JMDP and not Marat. The truth is that my fandom relationship with Marat has been so long and rocky that I don’t quite know what to say. Still, I’ll miss him. I think we’ll all miss him.

Oh just have some more photos.

Pico, Nico Win; Troicki Ousted

So this week’s action hasn’t really kicked off on the ATP side yet, but there were a few results of note. Pico put in a clean performance against an overmatched Josselin Ouanna in Lyon, who started brightly and faded quickly, and fifth seed Julien Benneteau did well to put away Alberto Martin, 76(1) 61. Third seed Viktor Troicki lost to Karol Beck (who I’m familiar with inasmuch as he isn’t the German Beck) 64 in the third in St Petersburg, and in Vienna, Daniel Brands was confirmed as Marin Cilic’s potential second round opponent. Nicolas Almagro survived a very tough challenge from Australian Peter Luczak to win the deciding set 61, and Frederico Gil beat wildcard Stefan Koubek in three.

Lyon

Singles – First Round
[4] J Monaco (ARG) d J Ouanna (FRA) 63 62
[5] J Benneteau (FRA) d A Martin (ESP) 76(1) 61
F Serra (FRA) d C Rochus (BEL) 63 63

Doubles – First Round
L Mayer (ARG) / M Vassallo Arguello (ARG) d O Hernandez (ESP) / A Montanes (ESP) 63 67(4) 10-7
M Melo (BRA) / A Sa (BRA) d B Becker (GER) / F Santoro (FRA) 62 63
S Bolelli (ITA) / I Ljubicic (CRO) d R Hutchins (GBR) / H Tecau (ROU) 63 36 10-6

St Petersburg

Singles – First Round
K Beck (SVK) d [3] V Troicki (SRB) 76(4) 46 64
B Phau (GER) d [WC] S Vovk (RUS) 63 62
D Istomin (UZB) d R Schuettler (GER) 64 64

Doubles – First Round
[WC] M Elgin (RUS) / T Gabashvili (RUS) d [4] S Lipsky (USA) / R Wassen (NED) 63 64
J Cerretani (USA) / D Skoch (CZE) d E Korolev (RUS) / F Moser (GER) 76(5) 63
J Chardy (FRA) / R Gasquet (FRA) d K Beck (SVK) / F Polasek (SVK) 62 76(4

Vienna

Singles – First Round
[5] N Almagro (ESP) d P Luczak (AUS) 57 76(3) 61
D Brands (GER) d R Kendrick (USA) 76(5) 75
V Crivoi (ROU) d J Hernych (CZE) 63 63
W Odesnik (USA) d [Q] L Rosol (CZE) 62 57 76(6)
F Gil (POR) d [WC] S Koubek (AUT) 46 64 64

Doubles – First Round
C Kas (GER) / P Kohlschreiber (GER) d [WC] J Hajek (CZE) / D Koellerer (AUT) 62 64
M Kohlmann (GER) / A Peya (AUT) d C Ball (AUS) / T Rettenmaier (USA) 76(4) 76 (10)
A Seppi (ITA) / S Vagnozzi (ITA) d N Almagro (ESP) / G Garcia-Lopez (ESP) 62 76(5)
[3] L Kubot (POL) / O Marach (AUT) vs M Chiudinelli (SUI) / P Luczak (AUS)

Just Another Day For You and Me in Paradise

I can’t believe I’ve been exiled from paradise. No more Queens until next year. Well, there’ll be none of this working crap next year. I’m taking the whole week off! Remind me to write a “save holiday days” note to myself … Meh, I’ll probably be unemployed by then.

So today I had Centre Court tickets (no acess to free bar land today). I rocked up just as Blake won the first set against Querrey and popped in to see the second.

It was a fun set, although it did nothing to remove my first impressions of Sam Querrey … that he just shouldn’t be a tennis player, from the way he looks. He’s a stegosaurus to Juan Carlos’ velociraptor. He has the face of a yokel from Minnesota or Oklahoma or some place like that; he stumbles and lumbers and takes huge cuts at the ball; and yet, he’s really good … It’s a puzzle. I like it.

I had the feeling he’d lose the third set, so I popped off for the first of many beers and then took a wander out to the practice courts. My mind’s going terribly blank about who I actually saw, but I know I spent some time watching Frederico Gil perform hilarious fitness exercises with his trainer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jamie Murray was out there practicing with partner-of-the-week Jonathan Erlich and we also spotted Colin Fleming, one half (the hot half) of the duo who took out the Bryans. Janko Tipsarevic was practicing one court up, so we nipped up to get a closer look.

I went across the way to see who was there and found Melo. He was waiting to use a court, but there was really no-one else around and it was a bit awkward, like he was waiting for me to ask him for his autograph or something. He jogged around in slow circles right in front of me, which I enjoyed watching. Then I turned around to find Mikhail Youzhny a couple of feet away. He really is quite gorgeous. I’d never noticed. His eyes are stunning. I came back a little later to watch a bit of his practice.

Next it was over to Court 9, where we got front row seats for a doubles match between Benneteau/Llodra and Hutchins/Huss which had been carried over from Wednesday. Benneteau/Llodra won fairly easily, but there were lots of fun points and some antics. We clapped loudly and obnoxiously for the Frenchies (and Rachael made sex noises) which earned us lots and lots of eye contact.

Afterwards, Llodra was loitering in the exit … waiting for somebody … probably us However we spent too long debating whether or not we should go over and he left. Not that we were done with Michael Llodra. Oh no.

We went to go and watch some more of Tipsy practicing – he teased us by getting his shirt half off. His hitting partner was gorgeous too and very fun, although none of us could identify him. We tried to get a picture with Tipsy after he finished, but he escaped us. Did walk past Ivan Ljubicic, wearing a bright blue tracksuit and a very grumpy expression. I don’t care what anyone says, it’s not natural to have a cranium that huge.

We headed off for a beer, stopped to light a cigarette (well, I did) and suddenly spotted a pair of white-shorted buttocks staring at us from the nearest practice court.

Who owns these cheeky plums?

Michael bloody Llodra, again!

… The upshot of which was that a large portion of the afternoon was spent smoking and staring through the fence at Llodra arranging himself in a variety of mildly sexually suggestive positions, in between looking over at us. The tease.

Enjoyable as that was, I very much wanted to see Roddick-Hewitt, so we headed off to Centre, running into Youzhny (again) and vlogger Travis Parrott on the way. As I’m sure you saw, the match was delayed by a security alert. Lleyton and A-Rod spent the whole delay leaning on the net, chatting very amicably with each other. Once things got under way, the tennis was absolutely cracking – the best match I’ve seen at Queens this week. Hewitt had his chances, but Roddick was just that little bit tougher – and with the sense that he had plenty left in the tank, too.

The sunburn incurred watching that was reaching slightly unbearable proportions, so after it was over I took a break for another beer and managed to miss the entire first set of Simon-Youzhny. Popped back in to Centre for the second, when the sun had thankfully gone down a little. I’d never seen Gilles play before, and it’s astonishing the palpable difference in the power of his shots compared to someone like Roddick. He played well in the second set, but completely collapsed in the third; he looked like he just gave up, which was very sad to see. Then I received word that Melo and Sa were playing Karlovic and Lovko on court 9, so I hustled over there for the super tie-break when Youzhny was leading 4-1 in the third.

Steve Ulrich was standing right behind me watching the end of the match, so I tried to take a sneaky picture of him. He saw and was not impressed:

0-40.

After that match finished, suddenly the only tennis going on was Jamie Murray and Jonathan Erlich on Court 1 against Coetzee and Kerr (NB: names may not be accurate). What seemed like the entire viewing population stampeded over there to try to get in, despite the fact that Murray and Erlich were a set down, and in fact went 3-0 down while we were queuing to get in.

It was pretty terrible, and yet … hilarious in a tragic sort of way. If nothing else, the last few games did provide me with perhaps my most precious memory of the day (apart from Llodra’s ass); a pathetic Erlich flub into the net off one of the weakest second serves in history that had to be seen to be believed. Seriously, I could have done better, and my hand-eye co-ordination is so bad that I hit a rubbish truck on my driving test. I’m just saying.

And so my second and final day at Queens for this year ended on an appropriately tragicomic, Brits-failing note. Roll on next year, I say. ROLL ON.

Tuesdays with Murray

So did I mention I went to Queens on Tuesday? I did?

In my defence, this was the first live tennis I’d actually been to since Wimbledon 2007 and I was totally over-excited – so much so that I forgot to bring a camera and was reduced to using my phone camera. So I apologise for the bad quality of the photos, but they’re mainly to prove I’m not making all of this up … I was also for most of the day one or more of the following: stressed, hysterical, shy, over-stimulated, drunk, drunker and very drunk. So don’t expect any quality stalkage or match analysis either.

One of the reasons I was so stressed was that I didn’t actually know which tickets I was going to have until I got there, which made it difficult to plan ahead. As it happened, they were Centre Court tickets and not half bad:

We sat here to watch all of Boss-Grosjean – although sadly the Big John had to retire – the second set of Roddick-Vliegen and bits of Monfils-Golubev. Tiny bits. Roddick-Vliegen was OK; A-Rod is such a fun player to watch, diving and rolling and all sorts, and Vliegen was playing to the crowd a little. Roddick does let the crowd bother him though; several times he turned and motioned the section of seats where I and Tennis Neophyte Friend were sitting to be quiet. I hope it didn’t have anything to do with me trying to explain the scoring system to TNF in a stage whisper. A drunk stage whisper (we’d had a couple of beers by this point).

The best/worst thing about these seats is that we were directly opposite the balcony outside the players’ lounge/whatever, which filled up with random as the day progressed, but during JCF-Grosjean was like a voyeur’s paradise. I saw Marat stomping past a couple of times; Grigor Dimitrov (who is striking even from that distance) with Lundgren; Gabashvili play-hugging Lopez, who was wearing an idiotic red hat and returned to watch Ferrero a little later; Paul-Henri Mathieu watching the whole thing – I thought to support Grosjean, but possibly to check out Ferrero, his next-round opponent. (Obviously he should have paid more attention). Oh, and John Lloyd and BBC sexpot Andrew Castle wandering back and forth.

We also spent quite a bit of time in the car park outside Court 1. There’s a spot where you can watch one end of the court:

 It’s also a great place for player-spotting as they all come and go. At various stages I saw British no-hoper James Ward (he once took a set off Marat Safin, you know), Sam Querrey (who is ENORMOUS), Ivo Karlovic (who kindly took a picture with me and my friend, who asked him to stoop down: he said “I never do that”), and Gael Monfils waiting for a car at the end of the day. Robby Ginepri stood watching Fish for a good five minutes before anyone asked him for a photo (which I took for a nice Japanese girl).

Robby no-mates.

Gael, his friends and his enormous clown feet. Love him.

There’s also Court 9, which we never actually sat on, but did stop in to watch at various points and from various angles; on the other side of Court 10, we watched some of Koellerer-Benneteau, at least until Koellerer shouted in a frightening manner in our general direction.

Maybe he wanted his ball back …

Speaking of balls, we also took in some Court 9 action from the other side, stepping out from the tunnel to watch a little Darcis-Capdeville (I never actually saw Capdeville, but there was some loud swearing coming from the other end which I assume was him). A ball actually came off Darcis’ frame and hit me, so I promptly hid it in my handbag and looked innocent when he came looking for it:

I steal your ball, Steve Darcis. I STEAL IT AWAY.

Just along from this bit, there’s a tiny gap in the curtains you can use to spy on the practice courts while you’re trying to get through the crowds to the bar. I took full advantage of said gap to perv on Marat and Grigor Dimitrov, who were hitting together on the top practice court, to the best of my ability.

Grigor’s striking, even from a distance …

Marat. He missed one forehand and threw his racquet. I’m serious.

You see where those people are standing to watch? This was the scene of my first meeting with TW’s Rachael. I nipped down to see who was there and suddenly found an embarrassment of riches: Gael Monfils hitting on the far left …

Unidentified ass in foreground.

Hutchins and some other people on the near left …

Now this I know to be Hutchins ass.

On the right court nearest to us, Frederico Gil and Andreas Seppi were both hitting with, er, people we didn’t recognise (Seppi’s hitting partner, who was hot, has been tentatively identified as Colin Fleming), while on the far right court, Murray was hitting with Gilles Simon.

Seppi, Gil, Murray.

In fact, Rachael and I were standing in the only free spot (actually IN the entrance to the court), so at various points Daniel Nestor, the Bryan brothers, Hutchins, Gil, Baghdatis and Mahut literally had to squeeze past one or both of us. I felt a little sorry for them, actually. It must suck to have to fight your way through crowds of fans ooh-ing and cooing at Murray and completely oblivious to you. (Rachael and I knew who they were, of course. But we were pretending to be cool. Actually, Rachael was just being cool.)

It had an odd sequel, actually. As Murray was leaving the court, everybody rushed up to the other end of the alley to get a picture. We decided (being, as aforesaid, cool) to stay where we were, wait for Seppi to finish and get Rachael a picture with him. However, our plans were frustrated by the fact that he blatantly saw us waiting and chose to leave a different way.

But just as we were lamenting this fact, Murray came down the path towards us with the security guards holding all the people who’d rushed up to see him. We were literally blocking the path, and the upshot was that I took a picture of him with Rachael … who hates him. She’ll tell you he was grumpy about it, I think he was quite nice. I will say that he is quite a specimen in person. Seriously, he’s hot.

After this, TNF and I got a little distracted by being given press passes and access to a free bar (NEVER give me access to a free bar), so tennis viewing from that point on was sporadic at best, I’ll be honest. However, we did race out when we got a text from Rachael, telling us that Cilic’s doubles with Ljubicic had been moved to Court 10 – which you can get right next to.

THIS close.

He was adorably serious and grumpy about the whole thing. I fell in love. More in love. Also, he isn’t quite as skinny as he looks on teevee, and he has a nice stomach. A *really* nice stomach, even if he’s crap at doubles …

There were only about 20 people watching, it was a nice way to finish off the day. Well, finish off the tennis-watching part of it and get back to the free bar, anyway …

The World Outside RG: Frederico Gil

Check out this article on Frederico Gil.

His name might be increasingly familiar to you – he reached the semifinals of Johannesburg and Costa di Saiupe this year, and if memory serves was relatively impressive in a hard-courts loss to Nadal. But did you know he’s the first Portuguese man to earn direct entry to Estoril?

I like his game a lot, but he mainly comes across on the court as a hard worker and a sweet guy, and that’s the impression that this article gives, backed up by Portuguese pundit Manuel Perez:

“I have never seen a Portuguese player so mentally strong in 23 years of following the sport,” admitted Perez. “His greatest strength is his mentality. He isn’t a talent like Nuno Marques, who everybody said could be a Top 30 player but [who] made mistakes during his career. Frederico knows how hard the tour is. He knows how to practise and how to manage the press intruding in his personal life.”

It’s also interesting in terms of the struggles and demands of representing tennis in a country like Portugal, which has produced few tennis stars – something that Michelle Larcher de Brito will also have to deal with.

Barcelona Results: Rafa Rolls, Richie Rogered by a Rochus

Nothing too earth-shattering at the Barcelona Open today. Rafa rolled over Frederico Gil, 2 and 2. I saw most of it, and Gil was making some very unfortunate UFEs including badly-timed DFs. But really, does anyone think it would have made much of a difference? It’s Rafa, for god’s sake.

Nalby overcame an early wobble to beat Kunitsyn handily, and Kolya continues to notch up solid wins after his long absence from the tour. Wild-card Gonzo overcame newly-shaven Chucho, and two more seeds fell – the slumping Soderling to hilarious Italian Potito Starace, and Richard Gasquet to Mighty Mouse Christophe Rochus. Seriously, if Richie loses a match he never should have, is it even an upset any more?

Oh, and in the battle of former champs, Robredo took it easily.

Nice to see Gaudio back in the main draw of an ATP event, though.

Singles – Second Round
[1] R Nadal (ESP) d [Q] F Gil (POR) 62 62
[2] F Verdasco (ESP) d [Q] N Lapentti (ECU) 75 63
[3] N Davydenko (RUS) d A Clement (FRA) 76(2) 62
[5] [WC] F Gonzalez (CHI) d J Acasuso (ARG) 64 64
[6] T Robredo (ESP) d [WC] G Gaudio (ARG) 76(6) 61
[7] D Nalbandian (ARG) d I Kunitsyn (RUS) 75 64
[8] S Wawrinka (SUI) d M Youzhny (RUS) 75 61
[9] R Stepanek (CZE) d J Tipsarevic (SRB) 76(2) 60
[10] N Almagro (ESP) d J Chela (ARG) 36 76(4) 63
C Rochus (BEL) d [13] R Gasquet (FRA) 61 67(2) 63
P Starace (ITA) d [14] R Soderling (SWE) 76(5) 26 62
[15] T Berdych (CZE) d O Hernandez (ESP) 62 46 63
[16] F Lopez (ESP) d [Q] S Ventura (ESP) 26 64 63
J Monaco (ARG) d [Q] D Gimeno-Traver (ESP) 75 64

Doubles – Second Round
[1] B Bryan (USA) / M Bryan (USA) d T Parrott (USA) / F Polasek (SVK) 63 64
S Aspelin (SWE) / W Moodie (RSA) d [3] L Dlouhy (CZE) / L Paes (IND) 76(5) 76(3)
[4] M Bhupathi (IND) / M Knowles (BAH) d R Lindstedt (SWE) / R Soderling (SWE) 46 61 10-8
L Arnold Ker (ARG) / F Gonzalez (CHI) d [6] M Fyrstenberg (POL) / M Matkowski (POL) 62 63
L Kubot (POL) / O Marach (AUT) d [8] M Melo (BRA) / A Sa (BRA) 75 64

Doubles – First Round
[WC] G Alcaide (ESP) / A Martin (ESP) d S Huss (AUS) / R Hutchins (GBR) 36 75 10-8