US Open Final Thoughts and Qualifying for F23! – Shubert Blog

Written by: Staff on 13th September 2011

US Open Final Thoughts and Qualifying for F23! - Shubert Blog |

What’s up?! Did you guys enjoy the Djokovic/Nadal final earlier today? I was able to catch the 2nd and 4th sets and thought the action during the points was quite impressive. You really can’t tell how fast the balls are traveling or the trajectory of each shot, but for the most part I could see that Djokovic was able to cover more of the court quicker and recover* faster. This could be attributed to his dieting, intense training throughout the year, or his expensive pressurized CVAC sleeping chamber, or all three! Nadal left a lot of balls short which Djok was able to capitalize on. Anything up around shoulder height, Djok was able to step up to the baseline, maintaining his court positioning, and essentially beat down the onslaught of Nadal’s high balls. With some very penetrating ground strokes and insane returning, Djok came out victorious as we finally saw Nadal stop trying on a point (match point when he didn’t even take a step towards Djok’s inside out forehand winner). Nadal really seemed to struggle on serve, and I remember hearing the commentators mention that he wasn’t trying to Bomb his first serves in anymore like he did last year. Nadal said it was a slight grip change that allowed him to hit serves upwards of 120smph into the 130s, but apparently he wasn’t consistently making them so he backed off and went to his usual slices and percentage serving patterns. Today, I think Nadal’s serve was shut down because Djok was able to handle the lefty slices and rock Nadal’s confidence so much that I think I saw Nadal’s first serve clocked at 102mph at one point. I think when an opponent is able to return so well, or consistently make deep returns, it makes you wonder how you’re going to hold serve ever if your best stuff is getting dished back at you seemingly faster than when it came off your strings! I had a similar experience today that I’ll share with you. . .

My match against Brazilian, Alessandro-Damiano Ventre, started out with him racing to a 5-1 lead in the first set. I was nervous, wasn’t making many first serves, and when I did manage to pop my nice flat serve in, he was able to crack it right back to my dismay. I manage to scrounge out two more games in the first set, but ended up losing it 6-3. I started the second set rather routinely, as did he. But then I was broken again to go down 2-1… At this point, I said to myself, I’m in these games but it’s just not working. “Screw it (real word usage is unpublishable), I’ve gotta just let go and try to hit through more of my backhands and be steadier on forehands. I stopped chipping my backhand return and managed to bunt a few back up the line. This surprised my opponent as errors started to creep into his service games. I found myself back on serve by hustling for every ball and getting him to miss. I held the very next game and didn’t look back. I continually bunted or luckily cracked some backhand returns the rest of the match, and his serve confidence actually went down because his first serve percentages dropped and double faults started creeping in. Meanwhile, my serve picked up because I realized my flat bombs weren’t having any effect on this aggressive baseline counter puncher. I started slicing my serves to him, found a hole in his forehand and body-serve returns, and saw my amount of free points go up drastically. My first serve percentage was higher in the 3rd set than it was in the 1st or the 2nd set (I don’t have stats to confirm this but the result speaks for itself). I was able to relax (because I was finally getting some free points), limit the judgments of my play (“Oh I’m just not playing well today etc etc), chase down everything he threw at me (Hustle!), and close out the match 3-6 6-2 6-1. I wasn’t pleased with the way I played, but I had a great feeling after winning because of how I switched things up, hung tough, and essentially beat my opponent in a third set in the final round of qualifying, guaranteeing me a main draw pay check (I think! haha). Pretty cool story, but it is far from over! Now comes the real tournament! My first round is this Wednesday at the Claremont Club against another qualifier all the way from Australia. He has a similar game style to me so hopefully I can use my younger legs and speed to out-battle him for my first ATP professional point! I’ll let you know how it goes and any other unique experiences I have. Just a side note, I’m once again practicing with Alexandra Stevenson tomorrow so I’m sure seeing her faster ball will help train my eye and legs to be prepared for anything I see during Wednesday’s match. Talk to you soon!

Dreaming about playing solid for my first point,

Shubert